This thing about books. Over the years I have thrown them out, given them away, ‘forgotten’ them, left them, made art out of them… but they have not given up. New books keep finding their way to my home, multiply, and infiltrate among those I deliberately have chosen to keep after all. They show up in new places, small, big, with dog-eared corners, fat and in all colors. But, today I have actually surrendered. The books can stay. They are welcome. All of them. Everywhere. I like them. I will even stop sorting them, because books are perhaps just like most people, after all, and should be treated accordingly. (Or something. The last thing I probably wrote just because I wanted to be a bit deep, it may seem superficial to just write about ones stuff like this.) Welcome to our home, full of books and things and stuff.
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My older brother once bought an oriental rug and put in his kitchen in Stockholm. I laughed and said that was a stupid idea. It’ll get so dirty. “Nope”, he said, “it won't. Because the wool is so dense and oily nothing can penetrate it. It’s perfect for the kitchen.” It did look great. Sometimes big brothers just know it all.
But the carpets from down here, from the warm climate of Northern Africa, are more lightweight and flat-woven. And, in general, not very dense or oily at all. I still want them in my kitchen. I want them in my hallways, my bedrooms, my studio, everywhere. I can’t even make myself roll them up and hide in a chest in the summer. This would of course be one thing in countries like Sweden, where the custom is to take your shoes off when you enter a house. But here no one never ever does - and here we have polvo, dust. Mucho polvo. And here vacuum cleaners are rare. What does one do? This:
PS. Types of (Moroccan) rugs: There are knotted, flat-woven, and pile carpets. There are rugs from Afghanistan, from China, from India, Iran, Tibet, Nepal, Pakistan, Caucasus, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and more. The ones from around our strait, the ´Moroccan´ ones, often have geometric designs, and are colored with natural dyes; henna, indigo and saffron. In Morocco in general most major cities have a unique style or design, characteristic that distinguishes their carpets. The coastal capital, Rabat, is famous for carpets woven with floral and diamond-shaped elements, and a fairly bare field. Fes reached its golden age during the thirteenth century, when the city was home to over one hundred dye workers and thousands of artisan embroidery studios located in the city’s medina. From the High Atlas region comes kilims, characterized by lattice work, bands of thick pile, and reversibility - traditional and ancient designs, passed down from weaver to weaver. Many Berber carpets, are woven by the Beni Ourain peoples from the Rif Mountains near Taza. Their colors vary from neutral shades to popping hues, with designs ranging from ordered geometric shapes to a more free-form, expressive pattern. When I lived in Stockholm I had a nice neighbor, a somewhat elderly man. He liked to go dancing, and to chat when we met. He wasn’t born in Sweden. One day while we were waiting for the elevator, he told me about his love for garlic, and how he ate it every day. Then he continued to let me in on his trick to avoid the potential odor, which he suspected possible could be a bit too much for some Swedish dance partners. After eating his garlic he would always drink a shot of cooking oil. Plain. He assured me it would work as an interior lid, and no garlic smell could escape. “And, if somehow it did anyway”, he finished, “I think women would prefer the smell of garlic to the stench of snus coming from Swedish guys, after all”. (‘Snus’ is a moist powder tobacco product consumed by placing it under the upper lip for extended periods of time. It is very common in Sweden. Sometimes it’s called Copenhagen in English, for some strange reason).
I could only agree. Garlic has many other benefits. I don’t think I need to tell anyone about them. We all know it’s good for your blood pressure, for your cholesterol level, that it works as a natural antibiotic, and all that. Natural and harmless. In one of the largest Spanish newspapers one could also read the other day that garlic is a most important remedy in the treatment of sexual impotence, and that it is excellent against the loss of energy and exhaustion. My dancing neighbor probably knew that as well. Actually, what I had intended to write about was how to grow your own garlic, because ours is coming up and looking really good. But it made me think of my former neighbor. I know he moved to Södertälje outside of Stockholm later on. Anyhow, some of the long green stalks called scapes that emerge from the garlic can be pulled off and eaten too, if you wish. How to store avocados?
A) Don’t pick them. They won’t ripen until you do, so if you leave them on the tree they’ll stay fresh. or B) scoop ripe avocado flesh into a blender, mix with salt, put in airtight plastic bags, and freeze. Well, these are two pretty bad advises, as far as I am concerned. As for A) : If you don’t pick them you won’t be able to eat them. As for B) : Plastic and use of electricity will do neither you, the avocados or the environment any good. Avocados grow here. The areas around Cútar, Macharaviaya, Velez-Malaga, Benamargosa, Benamocarra and Iznate is bursting with them. Soil conditions and climate make it possible. It’s one of the very few places in Europe where they do. (But even if they have planted them in Spain since the early 16th century, avocados actually originally come from Mexico.) · Avocados are fruit. · Avocados have no cholesterol. · Avocados contain 30% easily digestible oily fatty acids and approximately 70% water. · Avocados are bursting with nutrients: vitamins, A, B-complex, C, E, H, K, and folic acid, plus the minerals magnesium, copper, iron, calcium, potassium and many other trace elements. They provide all of the essential amino acids, with 18 amino acids in all, plus 7 fatty acids, including Omega 3 and 6. Avocados contain more protein than cow’s milk. · Avocados are said to icrease your libido. Just like cava, almonds, vanilla, ginger, cinnamon,pepper, garlic, nutmeg, chocolate (and frog legs!). So don’t leave them on the trees. Forget about the freezer. Don't store them. Just eat them. Moroccan tiles? Not these. But hydraulic cement tiles sometimes go by that, as many of their other names; encaustic cement tiles, mosaico hidraulicos, ladrilhos hidráulicos, carreaux de ciments, Spanish mission tiles, encaustic cement tiles, French cement tiles, Spanish cement tiles, hydraulic floor tiles, encaustic tiles, hidraulicos, Spanish mission tiles, mosaics de pasta, redondo tiles, rajoles hidràuliques, baldosas hidráulicas, pasta potosis, hidraulicos antiguos, ladrilhos de água, baldosas decoradas, baldosas hidráulicas, hidraulicos antiguos, hidráulicas de cemento… you name it. But they are not really Moroccan, maybe not even tiles. At least they are not kiln fired, or made from clay, but from cement, and cured by water and air only –just like ordinary cement. The top layer of the mixture is color tinted. So, instead of a thin coat of paint or print, the color is integral to the tile and goes approx 5mm deep. They appeared in the late 19th century in the south of France. Some say the first tiles were made near the country's first Portland cement plant. They spread fast to Latin America and in Europe. Around the turn of the 20th century they became very popular in the United States, and were considered high-end floor covering, used in thousands of landmark public buildings and palaces. Through the 1930s and 40s they were common in California and Florida. In the 60s they disappeared. But now they are making comeback, as a beautiful and high-quality alternative to modern industrial products.
Where do you use them? Indoors, outdoors, cafés, bedrooms, in public areas, in private bathrooms, abbsolutely anywhere. How? They can be installed on cement or wood subflooring. The thickness of the mortar depends on the eveness of the subfloor. Leave a very tight grout joint and use non-sanded grout. The visual effect should be more like a carpet. Clean with pH-neutral soap and water. Skip the sealing. It makes them slippery and they don’t age as beautiful. Where do I get them? They are still in production. Search the net. Try some of the names above. Sometimes you can also get a hold of old used ones. Scann places who sell used building mataerials. If they only have few of each you could be in luck, because the seller might not understand how beautiful a patchwork can be. (Victoria did, but she gave us a great price anyhow.) It's appearantly called 'Shabby Chic'. I would rather describe it as an easy, cheap and creative way to recycle semi-old furniture you've found - and add som great color to your place. 1. Hit and scratch the piece of furniture a few times with a chain, and/or something else that causes deep marks in the wood, if there isn't enough to start with.
2. Paint an undercolor, as sloppy as you can. Use a color that contrasts to you final choice. 3. Let it all dry a little bit. Wash some paint off with a damp rag. 4. Once dry, scratch some areas by going over the paint with a steel brush, and rubb some other areas with a wax candle (prevents next coat from sticking). 5. Paint the chair again, with another color. 6.When dry, sand the waxed areas lightly so the underpaint shows. 7. Repeat if necessary. You can't mess up :) You can just wash or sand and paint over again. 8. Grind the corners and some other areas rather hard. Think of places where there normally would be some wear and tear. Make a few more scratches. Use a steel brush on some areas, and sand other. 9. Wax with furniture wax. 10. Go over some areas with a little dirt. Done. In Cútar one makes soap from olive oil as soon as the oil is a year or two old. Actually, one can even make it from oil that has been used for deep frying... And, any soapy water left from cleaning up after making the soap can be saved and used in the washing machine. Waste? That doesn't exist. How to: 5 liters olive oil, old or new. Add 1 kilo caustic soda dissolved in water, add more water. Total amount of water: 5 liters. Stir for one hour. Pour into a form. Let sit over night. Cut. Let sit in a shady place a couple wks. The longer you wait the better the consistency of the soap. If you want a scent, add just before pouring up. Contrary to what the pictures below illustrates, the caustic soda is very corrosive, and protective clothing, especially gloves and eye protection, is a very good idea. Click below to start slide show. Some notes on Concrete Art in Spain - and how to make a simple cement / concrete foot stool12/8/2011 Concrete is used more than any other man-made material in the world. About 7.5 cubic kilometers of concrete are made each year--more than one cubic meter for every person on earth. Concrete solidifies and hardens after mixing with water, cement and aggregate due to a chemical process known as hydration. The water reacts with the cement, which bonds the other components together, eventually creating a robust stone-like material. In Spain concrete is used to make architectural structures, pavements, pipe, foundations, roads, bridges/overpasses, brick/block walls and footings for gates, fences and poles etc - and to make art. The first week of August Judy Farrar held a workshop in Concrete Art at laCultura. Above are some examples of what she showed us: Jason deCaires Taylor was born in 1974 to an English father and Guyanese mother, spending the earlier part of his life growing up in Europe, Asia and the Caribbean.In May 2006 he gained international recognition for creating the world’s first underwater sculpture park in Grenada, West Indies. His underwater sculptures, designed to create artificial reefs for marine life to colonise and inhabit, embrace the transformations wrought by ecological processes. The works engage with a vision of the possibilities of a sustainable future, portraying human intervention as positive and affirmative. Eduardo Chillida was born in San Sebastian in northern Spain 1924 and is perhaps one of Europe’s most prolific sculptors of the 20th century. His work is installed throughout Europe, Iran, Japan and the United States. In 1984, he and his wife bought the Zabalaga farmhouse in the town of Hernani, just outside of San Sebastian. They would slowly expand the property and restore the farmhouse until it was ready for unveiling as the Chillida-Leku Museum in 2000. Unfortunately, Eduardo died in 2002. Isac Cordal started the Cement Eclipses project in 2006 in Barcelona. Since then, the mini installations have spread over cities like Berlin, London, Brussels and now, Amsterdam. They are like the three dimensional family members of Claire Harvey’s little lonely characters that she painted on transparent foil; they look somewhat lost in their surroundings too. A newer addition to Spanish architectural structures made out of concrete is The Barcelona Torre Agbar or Agbar Tower from 2005. It iis a 38-storey tower located between Avinguda Diagonal and Carrer Badajoz, near Plaça de les Glòries Catalanes, which marks the gateway to the new technological district of Barcelona. It combines several different architectural concepts, resulting in a structure built with reinforced concrete, covered with a facade of glass, with over 4,500 window openings cut out of the structural concrete. How to make a simple foot stool: And we also have found the best place in the Malaga area for materials for ceramics. And, Santiago, the owner, is a gem.
Santiago Pidal Materiales para el Ceramista Av. Duque de Aveiro, 21 29140 Churriana - Málaga Tel.: 952 435 168 / Fax: 952 437 408 [email protected] Finally we have found the best place to buy art material in the Malaga area.
LaEcomonica! Materiales para Bellas Artes, Arquitectura y Diseño, Málaga. http://laecomonica.wordpress.com/ubicacion/ It might not look much frpm their website, but they have, or can get, everything - and they are knowlegable, friendly and helpful. Thank you so much Monica! ¡Hasta Luego! |
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