A new child has born

I started to felt just lately. Thanks to dear Mann for telling me the ABC of felting and kindly sharing some wool with me. I thought it was more fun to felt together with someone, so I invited my cousin Marge to felt with me. 

 

We started very optimistically, everything covered with hot water and soap and the more we tried to felt, the more we realised that neither of us knows much about what we do. But the will was great and we both managed to felt something – I don´t know what Marge has done with her greenish-brownish felt, but I used my felt to make a pair of oven mittens. They appared to look not very bad and I took them in use.

 

Then I felted shoes to Marta, my lovely pink newborn niece. Well, the shoes are a bit bigger than her feet but what do I know about children. But I guess it´s quite all right, because it ´s summer now anyway and the shoes are too warm for wearing them right now. My sis Irge got a present as well – a felted nursing necklace, I made it to match the color of the shoes.  I pondered if I should give something to the new daddy Mart as well – a pair of felted earplugs perhaps?- but I think Mart has had his fun already and has to get used to the crying and diaper changing part. 

What can I say- felting feels good :)

Family members do not eat each other

You haven´t heard from me for a while, I know, I´m sorry. Usually I love writing but the long snowy winter made me a bit sullen and I hid myself among small piles of painted glass and colorful mosaics. The mosaics I made gave me warmth :)

It´ s my favorite part of a year now – SUMMER. 

I find myself wandering around in our garden, watering canister in one hand and some freshly picked flowers in another. Our greenhouse is full of tomatoes, chillies, capsicums and all kind of herbs. There are also two exotic plants in the greenhouse – sugarleaf plants stevias (stevia rebaudiana ). The stevias grow in tropical places in North and South America and stevia is said to be up to 300 times sweeter than sugar. The leaves are really really sweet.

Our two cats – Tjorven and Hallu are following me to everywhere I go. Barn swallows are giving them a hard time - the poor birds returned after a long flight to their summer home and found two annoying creatures wandering around in their garden. 

Tjorven is really the hard case, lively little half-tailed devil. She was a indoor cat for the whole winter, watching a „bird cinema” thru a frosty window or from the telly. Oh how she desired to take a part of the meal with tomtits and sparrows.   

Anyway – I announced to both parts- cats and barn swallows- that we are a family now and family members do not eat each other. 

Do apples grow on maple tree?

I think they do. I can see them anyway -  they are there.

I have chosen a maple tree for shooting my mosaic bowls and plates. It´s a  great maple tree, I have to say.  It holds two hammocks at summer time and is a prefect shade against hot rays of sun when I´m reading a book and drinking an ice cold ice-cream shake or a rum and coke cocktail in a hammock.

The tree gives some pure and sweet juice at spring time. At autumn  there´s a magical mushroom circle around that maple tree and it also keeps me on my toes when I´m raking it´s golden leaves into huge piles.

And now, in the middle of winter, it kindly offers it´s branches for my photo-shooting. I love that tree.

 

 

 

 

I´m waiting...

...for a day when nothing wet comes out of this grayish winter sky - I think we have had enough snow and sleet for this year, so PLEASE, Sun - please come out!

I have this new gorgeous coffee table in my bedroom, waiting for me to take some photos of it. The light inside is quite bad and I don´t like electric like either, so I´m planning to take some photos outside. Rain - or snowdrops on the table and on pieces of mirror would ruin it all, soooo I´m waiting  :)

New plates

I have made four new plates in two days and I´m more than satisfied - I have to admit that my mosaic work is not good for my sleep (I´m dreaming and daydreaming about new patterns and techniques all the time), but the result gives me pure pleasure. Damn it - I´m getting good at it :)

 

How and where it all started - my passion for mosaics

Welcome to my Mosaic blog.  Dear reader – please don´t mind my hubbly English or it ´s grammar – I will write freely and without checking the translator all the time. So take it or leave it – this  is my mosaic blog. Probably it´s going to be a bit like my mosaics, a colorful bit from here and there.

 So how and where it all started – my true passion for mosaics?

It started in the beginning of February 2010 in Bali, Indonesia. Me and my partner Alan were staying in a town called Ubud. We rented a motorcycle and did a big tour in this very chaotic neighborhood. The traffic culture in Estonia (it´s where I´m from) is far from perfect, but in Indonesia it´s just absolutely crazy. Cats, dogs and old folks wandering around on the main road. It was nothing we hadn´t seen before, but so far it was our first trip on a motorcycle.

Luckily Alan is a great driver, but without any rules it´s hard to drive safely. Somehow we managed not to kill all of those chicken and cats (ok, we didn´t actually kill any), we headed to North to see some volcano. On the way there was a big colorful market with all kinds of beautiful arts and crafts. That was also the place where I discovered mosaics.

 Me and Alan were amazed by the beautiful mosaic pieces. First I didn´t understand, how was it made, but when one of the sellers tried to explain us that all of those mosaic pieces are cut and glued piece by piece, I found it totally amazing and very crazy. Who on earth could have such patients!? But oh, how pretty it was.

 We coudn´t buy anything from the markets because our back bags were quite heavy already and mosaics are heavy as well, so we left Ubud and Indonesia.

 Our next destination was Philippines – a lush and green country with really friendly people, good beaches and great views. Our dream was to visit some islands and to stay few weeks on a beach, fishing and snorkeling, reading and dreaming.

 We found what we were looking for – few uninhabited and truly beautiful islands. The time on those islands was the best time after Australia's West coast, where there is so much wilderness. No noise, no traffic – just Alan and me, a coral reef with colorful fish, hot white sand, sand-dollars and shells, stars, coconuts, tent, big hammock and few books.

 It was a lovely time, and it was a time when I realized I was carrying something else than my back bag - something made me heavy inside and on the night with the full Moon when I couldn´t get any sleep in a tent I realized that it was the mosaics that were haunting me.

I started to figure out in my head how the mosaics are done, my mind was so involved with it.  It was in Philippines where I bought my first glass cutting knife and few other tools, I started planning and couldn´t wait to get back to Estonia to try to make my first piece of mosaic.

After couple of months I was back at home. I started to experiment, but everything that could possibly go wrong, went wrong. It was impossible to cut the glass, find the right paint. When I finally found a good glass cutter and learned the technique how to cut glass, new faults appeared. Bubbles in the paint, uneven grout. But the will was strong and I didn´t give up.  And I´m really glad about it today.