Domus love

Here's a run through of my latest personal home-related projects. Essentially, little chores I kept postponing due to work and related chaos. Stuff requiring so very little effort and yet, once finished, yield such satisfaction.. yes we're dealing with general-disposition alteration matters here. Once you get down to crossing out long forgotten projects from your to-do-list, the rewards reaped can border on the ridiculous. Or so I find.

A Pelmet: to generally enhance the atmosphere at the dishwashing end of the tiny kitchen space. I am of the opinion that a tassel or three can go a long way towards making life and daily chores bearable activities indeed. The flat and very carefully lined pelmet hangs on a spring rod for minimum effort and damage. I must thank Alexandra for helping me figure out and put up said rod on a night-in where I was a sip away from collapsing. So yes.. even though the sheer ugliness of sliding aluminium windows is something I shall forever have to contend with, at least the baroque swirls of the pelmet numb the pain.

A Brooch Storing Solution: Taking my cue from a favourite vendor at the flea market (teh ex-brooch collecter whose name I still haven't got round to asking) who keeps hers on a strip of textile which can be rolled or hung up as a display I have ventured to make my very own so as to save my ever-growing collection from ruin ... the 'all jumbled up in a trunk-like tin box' solution was not making life easier for anyone and frankly, not caring about the pieces just because I have a rather non-chalant attitude towards collecting was making it all look like the sad affair of an over-spender. I have now paid my dues by separating the golden from the silvery and colour coding the items for easy access. Only sad thing about it.. I only have round about 10cm of free space left and that only means I shall have to start another strip soon.

And Cushions: I kept piling them in a drawer away from sight. I kept buying mismatched covers for 5o euro cents from jumble sales and charity shops.. I even had the audacity and presumptuous impudence to hide the hand woven moroccan one in the front for so long.. how could I have postponed the stuffing and threading of such a generous gift from Mohammed the carpet vendor for so long

(story goes:

me: 'aaaa.. very nice cushion' (I sit on it and look at the carpets)

mohammed: 'you are nice maltese people, my friends, Miss please take a cushion.'

me: 'I LOVE YOU MOHAMMED'

or something like that)

That's all I got round to photographing really.. I'll soon have photos of some of the curtains up.. the curtains also being a project I've been postponing.. a big project I often dreamt about, pelmets that filled my zzzz-hours with unfolding pictures of symmetrical oriental flourishes. Here's a picture of my sewing chair. It loves and cradles my lower back just as a sewing chair should. An unlikely shape choice you might think... well it is... but my grand dreams of a kitsch neo-roccoco affair on wheels haven't yet materialised, and I fear that if they did the resulting chair might still not be all that comfy to work long hours in.

On another totally unrelated note.. here's a duck casserole dish which I love.

And just a carefully edited glimpse into the major project in clay which has been keeping me super busy this last month or so. I need to keep this under wraps for teh moment even though I'm tempted to shout out about it and my newly found (or rather re-explored) love for working in clay from the roof into the insect ridden august nights.

Tokens and trinkets; heads and hands

What a lucky coincidence. This is a favourite place I visited relatively recently, when my epic search for a job was still at its beginning. The museum in Birgu which houses La Vallette's sword and hat (and a swank hat at that), then absent from its gilded shrine since it was on loan. But my selective memory chose to rest on this head of a mourning and perhaps even penitent lady, the ex-votos and a general view.. a dramatic interior .. and some other religious tokens, yellowing documents and altars.. some three of them if I'm not mistaken. I found a job in Birgu and it feels promising.

I find myself trying to justify this obsession, in the wake of (very) amusing accusations, not directed at me personally, but put into even more amusing songs, tagging similar obsessions as (god forbid :o) 'hip' obsessions. But I won't be dwelling on this. I only court such thoughts when I presuambly run out of things to do.. which of course is never really the case; therefore I am not ready to exist on a false premise. Oh and I could never be hip because I actually have 'hips'.

So instead I'll write about how I kept shunning my father's craft until now. When I tried to throw my first vase I was given some 6 equally sized spheres of clay. The first flew off the wheel, as did the second and the rest. I wasn't a natural but my dad wasn't too keen on teaching me either because I ws keener on making my own dinner set rather than make an artistic career out of it.

Nowadays I stick to one or two types of clay and engobes and try to avoid working in the garage when the dad is there.

I need the material to serve my needs. I need to realize my superficial needs, those little dreams with holes pierced through them to serve as charms or tokens for the jewellery. At one point, after almost everyone you know has generously donated you every little piece of unwanted and odd object they owned, after all the scavenging at jumble sales and bazaars and the life-long hoarding.. you find your little creations actually begging for something else. Often, I find, it's direction and a fundamental idea.

To cut a long story short: I stopped pooh-poohing the possibility of creating something valid (within the superficial boundaries offered by all things bling and fa'xx'on) and created some hands and heads.

These heads and hands are slip cast and hand-drawn.. tiny paint-brushes, magnifying glass and all. Each carries its own little story: one carries favourite lyrics about the risen christ, another has tea-party cut-outs, skulls, tattoos, anatomical diagrams, architectural plans, dodgy menus and a tribute to red-heads. Bleeding hearts, mustaches, dramatic statements and pretty dolled up faces. Gloved hands, apple trees, sailor's hands, heraldry, and HOLY CROSSES.

What are 'labti' called in english?

Threaded plastic encasing displaced realities.. trifles really.. moments in spoken time and surprisingly related pictures. Neck pieces, mobiles, objects of security... although the feathers and teeth are still missing from the small equations.

I need to thank all of those who donated me so much of their stuff.. tin boxes and all. (which I must admit always come in handy when one insists on keeping every stray button). I have tried to give new life to these trinkets.. hopefully they will find new homes..

Just like those stories we grow up listening to.. travel realted stories, ghost sightings, familiar anecdotes that pass through you and are somewhat altered. Poetic license, shifting ownership.. an organic affair.

My great-grandma had 20 children. 16 of them died at the age of two. The second survivor child, my grandma, was brought back to life when her dad placed a live fire under her cot. The story carries numeric resonance and I've carried it with me since I was a child.