whims.

My first study-free week was delicious. I read a book. I listened (really listened) to music. I wrote in my journal. I thought about things. I went to the cinema with Evan (my brother, who was also exam-free).

And then a curious thing happened.  

On Friday, I was (all of a sudden) gripped by a desperate urge to make things. My List of Things to do Over the Summer did not include making things. This making things mood just came out of the blue. (I hesitate to use the word ‘crafty’ here. A ‘crafty person’ brings to mind two images. One: Dick Dastardly rubbing his hands together and laughing evilly. Two: someone who owns a fluffy fleece with a print of white wolves on the back. The kind of person who takes their shoes off in cafes, and who has a halo of unkempt hair, and who talks in a very ‘deep’ way, but no one knows what on earth they are talking about. God bless that kind of person. It takes all sorts to make the world an interesting place. I just don’t want to be one of them. Creative not crafty. Anyway...!)

I spent about eight hours making these. (I got the idea from here) I want to hang them in my room ...which needs to be tidied.. Tidying is on my list, which perhaps explains the creative urges. It seems that where there is a list, procrastination soon follows.

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recovery.

Last week, just because I could and because I've meaning to do for a few years, I re-covered one of my favourite books, A City of Bells by Elizabeth Goudge. The copy we have (a three-in-one version) used to look like this:

Yikes. I do judge books by their covers. Most people do. It's hard not to. But (yes, yes) the cover can be misleading. I read A City of Bells quite a lot when I was younger, so if I'd payed too much attention to the (hideous) cover, I would probably be a completely different person. One who doesn't like Shelley's Ode to the West Wind, for example ('...Drive my dead thoughts over the universe...') Now it looks like this:

    

It is such a lovely story. Funny, and quaint, and beautiful (especially the parts about the missing poet and the play and the bookshop and the Grandfather and...)  

After covering it, I read the first chapter, planning on popping it back on its shelf... but I then remembered how much I liked it, and it had been so long, and I thought I'd just read it again.   

So I did! 

And it is just as good as I remembered it to be ...even if she does write quite and rather a lot about flowers. 

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a cup of spring.

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I am now officially finished second year. Halfway through university already – how bizarre. The second semester has been very interesting, especially Creative Writing and the philosophy-based class (Literature, Criticism, and Theory), and the Romantics ...but the exams at the end of the semester have made me relish* the thought of some time off. I am in the middle of compiling a list of things to do over the summer (books to read, things to write, places to visit, people to see). Making a list is always exciting, even if I know I’m not likely to stick to it.

I realise that none of this really fits under ‘something I noticed’. I don't want this blog to become an online-diary. The picture does, though. I was in the kitchen, drinking tea and chatting with my brother, when I saw it, and bounded** out the room to find my camera.(Sadly, the clematis is now flower-less due to this weekend’s wild west wind. It was so wild, in fact, that it trapped my mother and grandmother on an island for a day longer than planned because the ferry wouldn’t brave the waters.)  

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*That’s the first time I’ve ever used ‘relish’ in a sentence I think... or at least, the first time it hasn’t come affixed to ‘tomato’. The first time, and possibly the last. I’m not sure if I like it.

**Having been born with a natural lack of elegance, I can’t seem to walk from room to room: I gallop. Not very grown up. It’s something that I should really try and to stop before I’m twenty ...which gives me just over a month to break the habit. (Goodness! That’s quite frightening.)

How about a friar egg on toast?

We rediscovered this egg holder a few weeks ago at the back of a cupboard.

Most of the monks are a bit dopey or creepy looking...

...but this one at the back is my favourite:

He looks rather wise and knowing, in a gentle ‘I want to share my knowledge with you’ kind of way. Not like the one on the left (middle picture) who looks a bit arrogant and disapproving... or the one down at the front who looks like he could do with eating a few more vegetables.