Here's to hoping the (outdoors) art fair we're attending this weekend will not suffer from downpours...

... had to be stowed away when we had the house photographed to put it on the market a week or so ago. And I am too lazy to put it up again.

For how long anyways? There's a constant drizzle most days (so no need for the carrousel), and if the sun starts shining (sun? in the summer? what a novel idea!), heaps of potential buyers are bound to show up on our doorstep, to see for themselves that this house indeed is picture perfect...

Top1 tested this Roman hairpin yesterday - and lo and behold, my wild bunch of hair was tamed. With just the one Stirling silver hairpin!

Click here for an overview of all the Poetry Shots made during the first year of Flowtops.

Not all of these shots made it to the blog. They did make it to print, however. We'll be taking them with us to an art fair coming up soon, and after that... we'll see.

(I am bursting with new ideas, as is Top1. We just cannot keep up...)

I am so lucky in that I have Top3 (the highly sensitive child who teaches me the importance of humour to keep your balance) and Top4 (the happy-go-lucky child I could have been under different circumstances). They have helped me find myself, see my strengths. Because of them my imagination has reached new highs.

Below is Top4s version of a Mermaid Princess at the Beach. She sometimes decorates the scene with hundreds of empty shells from our back yard. Other times she drinks tea with the Mermaid, and some other dolls. And then the scenery is forgotten, for weeks on end. Untill she adds new details, and starts playing with it again...



Please visit Francesca at FuoriBorgo for more Corner Views of the world!

We've never been good at using the rooms in our house for their intended purposes. During the first few years when we were remodelling / building, we've slept in almost all of them (except for the room which now is our master bedroom. Top1 lovingly described it as a "bat cave". Take this literally, as in a cave where bats would reside, not the weird Urban Dictionary slang). At least three rooms have served as my temporary office. The living room is mostly a gymnastics area, the dining area more often than not is our crafting corner, what eventually became my office was turned into a studio two years ago, the garage has been swallowed whole by Top1s workshop and the kitchen... well, the kitchen is where we (or mostly Top1) do our little experiments.

Just now, I finished washing up, looking at this beautiful mega-fibula in the making, slowly turning blue due to the salt & ammonia Top1 coated it with.

The kitchen being just the place where we cook? Such a limited notion ;-)

This is a thrift store find. I have no idea who Jetske is, but I thank her for creating this lovely little drawer cabinet. It sits on my office desk, looking pretty and guarding important stuff like paperclips, tape and stamps.

Top4 wanted to make an old-fashioned record player, just like the one she had seen a few months back at a local market. This time she started the project herself, and enlisted Top1 for a few details along the way.

(I enhanced the photo a bit. Still in photo editing mode...)

I just received the prints of the first series of Poetry Shots (some of which have been used on this blog, BTW). It's amazing what you can do with a keen eye for detail, a bit of imagination and good software...

It's almost a sacrilege, what happens to the postcards we Flowtops receive from family and friends a couple of times a year.




They invariably are taken out of context and put into a collage. Because that's what we do, if we have the chance. Take what we've got and turn it into art.


(Please visit the travelling Francesca at FuoriBorgo for more Corner Views of the world.)

Top4 and I joined forces to create this cute triptych, consisting of Mother Earth, Two Baby Earths and Father Earth. Don't you just love this Family Of Earthlings sprouting from her imagination?

We'll be taking this type of work with us to Art Carnivale, an art festival coinciding with a local sailing festival, in just over two weeks time (Arghhh, deadline!)

Top1 is working on his jewelry of course (we'll be updating the webshops soon), but also on reprints of a series of collages his father did in the sixties and seventies. Some of these were published in the long-gone Dutch cultural magazine Gandalf.

I'm working on a series of photographs called "Poetry Shots". Another series, called "Art is All Around Us", is already on my other website. (These are all photographs I took in the studio of artist Rieks Pepping, not of his work, but the surreptitious surroundings of his work.)

Also, I am working on a series of small installations. Working title: "Needled"...

And last but not least: We have some neat ideas to present Top3s ingenious Warhammer drawings to the art loving public.

Today Top3 created an animation that reminded me a bit of Terry Gilliams Monty Python stuff.

I've been cleaning out my studio, deciding which paintings to keep, and which to try and sell. This one is not really a good painting, so I'm not selling. But I will not throw it away either, as it contains Top4s chubby hands at age two.

(Please visit Francesca at FuoriBorgo for more Corner Views of the world. It'll be worth it!

Two posts in one day! We're on a roll!

(After just twelve years, we have a house number in place!)

This Preparing-To-Put-The-House-Up-For-Sale thing is surprisingly tough. Top1 replaced some lights and did other technical stuff, and I started cleaning the 30-odd windows and 10+ doors of the house and workshop (inside and out). I also touched up the paint on the house. In between there was a bit of work and always, always the household, Top3 and Top4 getting cranky, etcetera.

On Thursday Top4 fell ill. I followed suit. Top3 had already been ill before, and Top1 is still on antibiotics, so I guess the bug didn't really like him - he is fine.

That night was riddled with feverish dreams. Friday morning, I woke up next to a completely refreshed Top4 (Me Hungry, Me Hungry, A-ha-ha, the perfect imitation of that long-lost electronic pet called the Furby). I myself was not refreshed at all...

Luckily, the dreams left this one sentence with me, which I have since adopted as my new personal mantra: "When (not if, when) you make it to the other side, you will do so with your ability to love still intact." (Verbatim, in English. Yes, I do dream in English. Strange huh?)

A solid message from the Wise Woman rooting around deep inside my Old Sockish body.

Today, I went out and bought food for the hungry mob and did some light redecoration and decluttering. In many ways, this is a lovely home. That's why it is so sad to realize that WE do not belong here anymore. It's not a question of economical downfall. (Our mortgage is rather modest and we have ample savings.) It's just that we've outgrown the house, the village, the region. Lately, I've come to think perhaps we even have outgrown the Netherlands / Western society. Life here is so fast-paced, so demanding. The Flowtops opt out of a lot (that comes with the territory of being highly sensitive, which accounts for me and Top3 at least), and still, we struggle to find time to do the things we love. And we can't seem to connect to a circle of like-minded people around here.

Well, to put away with the moody stuff, here's a little movie of another (much chirpier) Old Sock:



PS I should really try and be more like my blogging self. Don't you feel like that sometimes? That you are a lot more insightful (or fun) on your blog than IRL?

PPS Oh, and the Sock Operator is Top4.