





Written by
Rima Staines
at
1:17 pm
60
words from others
Tags: bedford tk, christmas, house on wheels, rest, street trading, sunrise, travelling, winter
PHEW! What a gargantuan journey of a mountain we have just climbed, and here, now, on the eve of our departure we sit with aching bodies and creaking minds and half mad smiles on our grubby faces.
Apologies for my quietness here of late.. this really has been a huge upheaval for us. We have felt like we've been gestating for months in a wooden sawdusty womb, elbowing for room between boxes of stuff and now this week we have been born. For all the romance of our adventure, it has been such a struggle getting to this point. There have been tears and black clouds, deep snow and ice, worries upon worries, mechanical complications and utter physical and mental exhaustion.
The animation is finished at long last and it is lovely.. and so a couple of weeks ago I climbed down the ladder from the attic where I had been living to launch myself into frenzied packing and chucking. How on earth I have accumulated so much stuff I do not know.. and it is hard being brutal when you are sentimental. Nevertheless, a houseful of chattels has had to be shrunk to fit inside a vehicle. Every time I go the local shop to buy biscuits they ask after our progress and the conversation continues between them... "could you fit everything you own into a horsebox?" "Pfrrfffffffftt! No Way!"
Written by
Rima Staines
at
6:42 pm
76
words from others
Tags: bedford tk, journey, leaving, moving house, travelling, winter
CAN YOU HEAR IT? A tinkling crackity-crickity peppering all over the hills. It sounds like the breaking of a thousand tiny glasses under a thousand tiny boots. The ground is hard as stone and walking on the earth sounds like my feet are knocking on a wooden door that leads to Underground. All of nature is iced in mid sway and crowned with winter jewels rarer than diamonds. A low sun scatters fractals of beauty between the tips of grass blades and the furthest reaches of my eyelashes.
Jack Frost has been here.
Written by
Rima Staines
at
9:47 am
36
words from others
Tags: ice, jack frost, nature, scotland, winter
ANOTHER WICKED flu has had me cast down these last few days which is the very last thing we could do with right now. There simply was not time to get ill! But I had to give in to the sofa as my body and head felt quite entirely drained of life. Today I am upright again tho on the phone I still sound like an old horse who has smoked 80 fags a day all his life.
I have been finishing off a drawing this afternoon which I had started some weeks ago. Here it is above, Hiding the Hedgehog ... I have not the faintest idea what it's about ... I'll leave you to imagine a tale around it! This drawing, along with two other recent pencil doodlings, The Spoon-Eared Child and The Coffeepot, are being offered as prints in my shop in honour of a sort of One-More-Week-To-Go-Sale ... in fact it isn't really a sale at all, since everything's still the same price but I can't think of another word! Basically, I have decided to temporarily close the shop when we head off to give me a little breather while we embark on our grand journey and anyway, the last post date for those of you Over The Sea is looming too.
So all that is a round about way of saying Roll Up! Roll Up! Last chance to grab Christmas presents in the Hermitage Etsy Shop!
The blinds will be pulled down over the frosted windows of my emporium on Friday 5th December.. so .. quick!
I will of course be opening it up again come the new year, hopefully with some new drawings therein.
Meanwhile I'll leave you wondering why on earth that hedgehog needs to be hidden...
Written by
Rima Staines
at
4:23 pm
25
words from others
Tags: etsy, flu, hedgehog, pencil drawing, prints, rima staines
THIS is what we woke to this morning .. these wonderful brown heather hills dusted with an icing of snow. It's very cold indeed and we are busy as ever, tying up knots in things.
We've had pre MOT headaches galore and would like to say a big and heartfelt thank you to Andy for helping us out of a tight mechanical corner :)All the last minute little dots on the Is and crosses to the Ts are arriving in jiffy bags in droves, much to the interested eyebrow raisings of the owners of the local B&B where we have to go to collect the parcels: hooks and elastic to hold books in, more door knobs, portholes and quite excitingly, a Beamish oil lamp. I think it's an old miner's safety lamp, and filled with some oil (which also arrived in the post) it sits handsomely in our truck alongside another dear little oil lamp which I already had.
The animation has about 4 more scenes plus title sequence to be completed before it's finished, and when it is done, I will turn into a whirlwind of boxes and binbags and dustpans and brushes until the truck is full of our things! There are many more things to do, and we'll still be adding extras when we're on the move as we settle into our home.
We recently (nervously) had it weighed, and found to our relief that it amounts to a mere five and a bit tons. The limit is 7.5, so there is still room for a book or two! I'm also in my infuriatingly last minuteish sort of way still trying desperately to sell my car.. if anyone would like a little 1976 Renault 5 with personality, a few creaking knees and an excellent engine, do have a look!
Written by
Rima Staines
at
3:35 pm
19
words from others
Tags: beamish, oil lamp, packing, renault 5, scottish hills, snow, winter
Written by
Rima Staines
at
4:06 pm
32
words from others
Tags: bedford tk, cupboards, furniture, homes on wheels, moving house, woodwork
FOR THE LAST TEN YEARS I have suffered under that ancient curse. The Curse. The monthly affliction of women. My period pains have been beyond bearing. Every four weeks I would be bent double, on hands and knees, screaming in pain and vomiting. If I was caught unexpectedly at work, I'd end up laid out on the floor under desks clutching hot water bottles, colleagues stepping over me. I became for a day or two, a complete zombie to pain. I know that many women suffer from period pains, but mine were otherworldly compared to most. My face would turn green and I'd lay writhing in pain in a hallucinatory swoon. There was nothing that would help, I have been to many doctors, who prescribe either the pill or lethal painkillers, neither of which is an answer for me. I was sent for scans and investigations which all came back clear. I tried homeopathy (which helped briefly), yoga, cramp bark, agnus castus, raspberry leaf tea, black cohosh, endless ineffective pain relievers.. and I was desperate, clinging to my hot water bottle as the only slight relief I could find, knowing I'd have to go through all that again in four weeks' time.
I am generally a very healthy person, but this one thing rendered me useless for at least two days a month, which if you work it out would mean at least a whole two years of my life spent in pain. And that excruciating pain, I thought, had got to be treatable. It was not normal that I should experience it so badly.
Some months ago I wondered about acupuncture .. but didn't know anything about it. And here in blog land met the lovely Diana Moll, a Chinese medicine practitioner based in California. Over some time she diagnosed me via email the Chinese medicine way. She asked all sorts of questions about my health, life and things, questions about temperature and temperament, and I had to send her frightful photos of my tongue! From this information she gleaned that something was stuck as I had always thought. Something needed to get moving in my lower abdomen and it was stuck because it was cold. She told me Chinese medicine looked at things in terms of a weather forecast, rather than a diagnosis, therefore leaving the door open for a more changeable outcome. The body and its energy is affected by cold and hot, wind, wet and dry. And pain or illness is seen as an imbalance of these things, an imbalance of your energies.
Written by
Rima Staines
at
3:50 pm
44
words from others
Tags: acupuncture, broomstick, chinese medicine, herbal, mandrake, period pains, TCM, tea, the curse
WHEELS, as you will probably know by now, are one of my favouritest of favourite things - Especially when attached to things they are not usually meant to carry along, like people, musical instruments, artifacts and best of all, houses :) Whenever I come across another artist who puts wheels in their work, my heart does a little leap of comradeship.
Our own wheeled home is growing, growing, and we are at present looking for a set of seven 20 inch wheels for it, which will be easier to find tyres for on our travels.
I thought it time to show you some treasures amongst the work of other artists I have tripped over on web wanderings recently. From time to time I like to show you works that have made me smile and inspired and gladdened me instead of joining in with the blog award thingamyjigs that get passed around these parts. Over the last months Moonbindery, Qi Papers, Dogberry Hill, Snapper & The Griffin, Krisztina Maros, Amy Short, The House of Edward, Lost Stones, Ink Haven, Mille Fiori, Moonroot, Bimbimbie, & Gypsy Root have all been so kind as to pass me awards and tags, and for their appreciation and lovely words I thank them heartily. Apologies if anyone is left out in the cold there.. my brain is still all a-scramble. I have also received the most kind and appreciative writings by the two most recent clock recipients, Nina and Allegra.Indeed Allegra sent to me in the post a most thoughtful gift, a good-journey talisman made with an old piano key, charms of significance and a photograph of me as a young wheeled-home dweller :) All the elements of it are intended to connect us like a knot in a long string to the old gypsy journey tradition and it is to be nailed with a horse nail to the door to bring us luck.
Also in this beautifully wrapped package came a book Tres Deseos
(~Three Wishes) illustrated by a recent blog discovery of mine, Gabriel Pacheco ...
It is a wonderful earth toned book with very up-my-street illustrations of an old couple squashed into a chimneyed little house. Thank you Allegra for such appreciative words and thoughtful gifts.
Whilst perusing Gabriel Pacheco's work, I found a strange wheeled apple and so thought to theme my latest gallery of inspiring artworks... here I bring you a wonderful wheeled world in both two and three squeaking dimensions.
Gabriel Pacheco is a Spanish illustrator who creates hazy other worlds of strange beings with subtle colours and textures, and was introduced to the arena of children's literature by his sister who asked him to illustrate a story. I can't find out a huge amount about his creations as my Spanish is non-existent, but by the looks of it he employs a very clever mixture of digital and traditional techniques. As far as I can gather these illustrations shown here are from a tale (Calabacina) about a pumpkin.
Written by
Rima Staines
at
11:04 am
26
words from others
Tags: akira blount, akira studios, boris ivanov, dolls, gabriel pacheco, gretel parker, house on wheels, illustration, inspiration, journey, talisman, toys, vladimir gvozdariki, wheels, wood carving
WHEN I WAS YOUNG, we used to have a book called Trubloff ~ The Mouse Who Wanted to Play the Balalaika by the wonderful John Burningham, and I loved the story very much indeed. John Burningham's illustrations have a fabulous scratchy folky quality that embodies great heart. This is the amazon synopsis of the story:
Written by
Rima Staines
at
10:26 am
20
words from others
Tags: accordion, balalaika, bayan, john burningham, klezmer, painting, papirosen, russian music, trubloff, watercolour
Written by
Rima Staines
at
1:15 pm
29
words from others
Tags: animation, autumn, bedford tk, books, chimneys, cold, moving house, packing, scotland, winter
Written by
Rima Staines
at
11:18 am
40
words from others
Tags: drawing, motherhood, painting, pram, spoon, strangeness
THE LEAVING DAY is approaching fast and Tui and I are building & dismantling in clouds of sawdust & bookdust respectively. He has made more wonderful shelves and cupboards and the truck is getting more and more nookish by the day. The days here are not at the moment quite what you'd call days.. the darkness of the nighttime gets a little greyer between morning and afternoon and then it's night again! And all the while we are lashed with freezing rain.
Anyhow, from nookish things to bookish things ... I am now sitting amongst stalagmites of books, towering in teetering spires around and about me, and breathing in the floating blankets of dust that have been softly mustering atop the bookedges over time. I think I have selected my most used and treasured and least heavy books for the invitingly lovely bookshelves ready in the wheeled house. Some more good but un-squeezable-inable books will go to my parents' house :) and the last lot ... is for you! Yes.. indeed, I thought that you discerning Hermitage-reading folks would be interested to virtually browse my book shelves and avail yourself of a bargain. There's to be a Hermitage book sale! I have been a book hoarder for a long time, and I have had to be brutal. So there are some great books there .. on such diverting subjects as: tree lore, book arts apprenticeships, elvish, devils, medieval books of hours, runes, nursery rhymes, holy wells, tin whistles, fairground transport, children's book illustrating, fairy tales, anarchism and a plethora of stories...
I have put the books all on one long page, in sections by subject. And the sale can be found by clicking on that there rusty book sign to the below right. As soon as a book is bought, I'll remove the paypal button, but if two people should buy the same book whilst I am sleeping, I'll send it to whoever got it first, and I'll refund the unlucky one! If anyone can suggest a more hi-tech way of dealing with this problem I'd be grateful, but as it is I have spent two days listing everything on here... I'd love to write a little something about each book, but I think I might be going crosseyed with the effort.
Just imagine yourself standing in one of those old rickety-shelved second hand bookshops in cathedral towns where the proprietor is reading a tea-stained newspaper and customers shuffle past each other apologetically peering up and down the bookspines. There'll be a spiral staircase up or down to a chilly room with even more interesting and obscure books in difficult piles and a damp anorak draped over the radiator. To leave, you'll have to cough quietly, step around many boxes of unpacked unshelved books (possibly from the houses of dead people), and you'll emerge into the day having left a substantial number of hours behind, wedged between the yellowed pages of silverfish-nibbled academia.
Written by
Rima Staines
at
7:57 pm
27
words from others
Tags: books, dust, hermit, moving, sale, second hand bookshop, shelves