Cape Town Travelogue Part 1

Monday 12th March          After getting up at 5:45 am and because the baby's sleep schedule as soon as we arrived in Fish Hoek, on the peninsula outside of Cape Town, at our self catered chalet we all had a nap.  A neighbor stopped by to let us know that it was a bad idea to leave our balcony door open because baboons would climb up, enter the house and raid the refrigerator!  (I found out later that this actually occurred at the rental a couple of months earlier.)  That afternoon we went to the the first town founded by Europeans on the Cape, Simon's Town.  We started off at a little strip of white sand beach outside the train station. Much to my toddlers delight it is a great place to meet dogs since it is one of the few dog friendly beaches.   Much to my oldest boy's chagrin, the waves are just too mellow for body surfing in the bay.  My younger son combed the beach and found some treasures; a sea urchin, a shell and a bivalve.  We found out that there was a sewage pipe draining into the water and we decided to leave. 

It was time to go into town a pick up a few supplies.  The town is filled with old buildings and this photo is just an example of the buildings you find on the Saint Georges St.  It turns out we had to hustle because the shops close between 4 and 5 pm.  After the groceries stop it was time to grab a bite.  We had pizza and pasta at Cafe Pescados.  The music was US alternative pop and the decor was photos of old Hollywood icons. It felt like the US after living a year and a half in South Africa.  The food was tasty too.  We were warned by our waiter that Simon's Town gets pretty rowdy in the evenings with the visiting sailors from the Naval base and would not be child friendly much longer.  That's OK, we were going home anyway.  We have all been sick for the last two weeks and my oldest is still in the middle of it.  We needed our rest.

Tuesday, 13th March                 We began our day at the UNESCO World Heritage site, Boulder Beach, a nesting site for the African Penguin. The sand is fine and white and strewn with immense rounded boulders.  As soon as you pull into the parking lot you see the penguins waddling around.  In fact, you must be wary because they like to hide out under your car.  March is breeding season so the penguins were hanging out in pairs.  There were also Rock Dassies peaking out from the rocks.  I recommend visiting the penguins early while the beach is uncrowded. 
We then drove down to the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve.  The clouds stared rolling in and it began to mist so we ducked into the Visitors Center.  That was fun as there are a lot of hands on displays and elements the children could enjoy.  We learned a lot about the flora and fauna of the Fynbos, the rarest of the biomes. 
From there it was a quick drive down to the Cape of Good Hope and one of the tourists snapped our obligatory family photo taken from the the furthest south and western point on the African continent.  Boy, was it windy. We then headed to Cape Point to visit the light house and to grab a quick bite at the Cafe.  That is quite a climb up to the light house.  Too bad we had such poor visibility, I am sure the view of the ocean would have been magnificent. My littlest one needed a nap so we took the scenic route up north along the Atlantic road to Nordhoek for the beaches to get some big wave action for the boys.  Sadly, it was so windy there the boys did not get to body surf because the flying sand was scouring them.
Everyone agreed to go back to Boulder Beach and visit the penguins again after dinner.  The boys climbed all over the rocks and even swam through little crevices they found between the boulders.  My baby and I played Stomp the Wave, a game we invented which is pretty much entirely described by the title.

Poppy ATCs

My newest creations for a Swap-bot exchange, poppies.  I can't say I have a favorite flower.  It is like having a favorite color, too many are beautiful to pick just one.  I do have several flowers that I really love and poppies are one of those.

I used a technique to create the flowers where I layered tissue paper down with gel glue.  When the tissue paper is dry, I cut it into the desired shapes.  The background for the ATC is a commerically available flocked (fuzzy) paper with Gustave Klimt lines and spiral.  I used that to suggest the stems and seed pods of poppies.  I then enchanced the lines with colored pencil.  It was a fun project and I plan on using a similar technique for the Iris ATC swap coming up.  Last day to sign up for that swap is 24th of March.

Child Doll Show at the Johannesburg Art Gallery

This weekend my husband and I visited the Johannesburg Art Gallery. The Gallery is located in downtown Johannesburg, an area I have never visited until now.  Downtown streets and sidewalks in the area are packed with sidewalk vendors, taxi stands and people making it quite hard to drive down the road.  It is a contrast to the areas of South Africa I usually visit and I got to see why this country is called overcrowded.  The Gallery is located in Jobert Park.  As my husband and I strolled through the park to the museum we passed crowds of  people picnicing and lounging in the grass watching Manchester verses Liverpool on a large flat screen TV.  
In the gallery, the exibits were interesting but surprisingly few items were on display. The website says that the Gallery has only 10% of its collected works on display and I wonder, with all of the empty space why more of their inventory was not on show.  I enjoyed looking at the exhibit on the first two black South African women to have their own shows, one in the 1940's and the other in the 1960's.  The Dutch master paintings and prints were interesting as well.  The exhibit that intriqued me the most, however, since I am a doll maker, was Play, Ritual and Inspiration: the Phansi Museum Collection of Southern African Child Figures. (The Phansi Museum is a Southern African crafts museum in Durban.) 
The picture above is reprentative of some of the Southern African 'Child' dolls.  She is from the Ndebele tribe, created in the early 1900's, made of glass beads, sinew, wood.  This photo was found on the Jacaranda Tribal blog, an African fine arts dealer.
Child dolls are found in many styles from the various tribes through out Southern Africa.  The dolls were created by women.  In some tribes the dolls were given to a man the woman was interested in as a part of courtship.  A man might keep several dolls until he made his decision of which woman to marry.  In other tribes girls were given the dolls to care for until she had a child of her own.  Dolls were also used in fertility rituals.  A terrific selection of dolls of the various tribes with photographs of girls and women in traditional dress can be found Gallery Ezakwantu.

Dolls today:  The child doll is no longer used in the tradional ways, the styles of doll seen in the Gallery Ezakwantu links created today are largely sold to the tourist market.  If you are interested in ways dolls are used today there is a great doll project called the Uthando Project.  The project aims to assist with healing of children who have lost one or both parents from AIDS.  The website has a free pattern that you can use to make dolls to donate.

An Owl, A Goddess and Fashion Things...February ATCs

February's ATCs so far...the upper left is my Fashion ATC, upper right is the Hera card and at the bottom is the front and inside of my Brown Owl ATC. 

For the Fashion ATC, I choose to be influenced by the Saque gowns Watteau made famous in his paintings in the early 1700's.  The Saque (sometimes called Sack) is a loose dress flowing from the shoulders.  This style of dress has been occilating in and out of fashion since the 1960's. 

The Hera card was fun to do.  I felt that I had no depth of knowledge on her story so I spent a little time researching her.  In preparing the card I discovered that items associated with Hera are the peacock for pride, the cow for her beautiful large, cow-like eyes, and the pomegranate, symbolic of life's blood and death.  We all know the stories of Zeus cheating on her and that she was very vengeful.  If her story were told in modern times, she would be a more sympathetic, less shrewish character than she comes across in the ancient stories.  She would also be kicking Zeus to the curb.

Finally, the Brown Owl card is made from a stamp I hand carved.  I also tried something I have always wanted to do, I made a 'door' in the card.  The quote from Carl Jung reads 'Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart.'

White Tara Speaks to My Soul

A friend of mine is quite ill and needs some TLC from his friends while he remains in hospice.  His wife has asked many of his friends to send Valentines day cards to him. White Tara is a Buddist manifestation of compassion and healing.  Birds have been a symbol for the soul for a very long time.  I hope he enjoys the card.  The inside says, You are Loved.

And Now For a Magic Trick: The Disappearing Nine Patch

Now that I have mastered a simple quilt style  I have decided to move on to something more complicated, the Disappearing Nine Patch.  (Thanks to my friend Beth for mentioning this pattern to me)  A very good tutorial for this quilt style is found here.
This is a small quilt (54 x 54 in) for my little daughter.  I have selected from my stash of Asian fabrics and picked out some Kawaii inspired animal prints from Spoonflower designers and, of course, added one of my designs.  Like Allison mentions in her tutorial, I eyeballed the middle cuts for the nine patch.  I really recommend measuring it---if you look, you can see where some of my seams are off.  I actually quilted this one since it was so small but will hiring someone with a longarm machine when I sew larger blankets.
Spoonflower designs in my quilt:

A. Protea Petals Pink by bloomingwyldeiris
B. Cute Creatures by indescribble
C. Cherry Blossom Bambi Pink Aqua by zesti
D. Super Cute Kawaii by marcelinesmith
E.  Run Bumbi Run by killer_tomato

The next quilt top will likely be for Margaret for all of her help cutting out squares.  I will begin cutting my younger son's material as well.  He is going for a watery theme.

Four Mediums For Merbabies

A couple of posts ago I mentioned hosting a ATC exchange on Swap-bot.  Here are the results of my work.  From the many ideas I initially sketched, I decided to create my cards experimenting with different materials.  The first card completed was the colored pencil and ink drawing of the merbaby playing with his tail on the lower left.  The second one is the merbaby hiding behind her mommy (upper left.)  This is done in oil pastel and I like the pastel's watery effect.  The third, in the lower right corner) is a cut paper and ink merbaby playing with a starfish.  I was going for a Charlie Harper feel, reminiscent of his piece, Otter Delight.  (Browse this commercial site for more of his work)  The forth, upper right, is an ink and watercolor drawing inspired by Disney's Silly Symphonies-cartoon shorts created between 1929 and 1939.  Check out the cute video.