Arty cards

Time to talk some more about Postcrossing, if only to keep those poor Russians and Ukranians and Japanese people (why are they always "Japanese people", and not just "Japanians" or something?) that keep straying into my blog happy (yes, I can see all sorts of data about you, curious blog-viewer).
So just a few days ago Postcrossing passed the 10,000,000 received-card mark, which was a reason for celebration, and shortly before that the Netherlands passed their 1,000,000 send-card mark with (obviously) NL-1000000. This does not mean that 1 million Dutch postcards have arrived, that number is still around 916,000, which just goes to show how many cards are still disappearing in the mail. I tried to get that magical round number, but despite some fast clicking I ended up with NL-999995 and NL-1000007. Ah well, at least I didn't stay up all night waiting for it, like some people on the forum (obsession can only go so far, really).
Anyway, the next item on my list after "Alice in Wonderland illustrations" is arty cards by Van Gogh, Monet, Renoir, Klimt, Dali, and Waterhouse. I love impressionism and surrealism and I've sent a lot of these cards, and also some by Rembrandt and Vermeer, because, you know, they were Dutch and all. But I can't say I've received a lot of them, really. The last two are non-existant, as is Renoir, to my great sadness, but I have received three Van Goghs, three Monets, one by Monets son Michel, and one Klimt (which I didn't even recognize as one at first). Most of these have come from the Netherlands, but I received this beautiful Monet card from Taiwan;

TW-368306 received 21 September 2011

and this great Van Gogh card from Greece (a rare Postcrossing country);

GR-18249 received 26 May 2011

I'd love to show you all my art cards, but I'm afraid you've either stopped reading or have scrolled to the bottom of this post to check how much more there is, so I am going to leave it at this, but not before saying that I think it is sad that there isn't more interest in art on Postcrossing, and that most people just send a touristy card from their hometown, which are not only cheap but also generally just plain ugly. But hey, to each their own, and I am just happy I do send art cards to those people asking for them!
Last but not least, one Dutch user send me this great Mondriaan card, as seen by Dick Bruna;

NL-966593 received 7 January 2012

Logo in red

So while driving home yesterday, I noticed something that must have been going on for years, but I just caught up with. The fiery red-and-yellow logo with the big M arches in the middle has somehow become a drab-greenish-brown-and-yellow logo (talking about the little signs attatched to the streetlights, btw, not about the logo on their buildings). What's up with that? I know Ronald changed his "restaurants" so that they look more appealing to people over the age of 8, but I thought the logo had remained the same. Why change from red to camouflage colours? So I started musing on that typical red that you find in so many highly successful brands, from Coca-Cola to Marlboro to the lettering on Mars bars, which you can also find in Red Bull, Vodafone, Nike, Canon, H&M... The list is endless, really. Almost all have that same reddish colour, which struck me as odd, because if you want to pick something special to stand out, why pick the same colour everyone else has?
In short, what is it with red that makes it popular? Is it the association you guys (by which I literally mean "you guys", as in men, not "you meat-eaters") have with meat and "the hunt" and showing your strength and stuff, while we women quietly gather our berries, as influenced by the hunter-gatherer psychology that is so popular nowadays (and so very flawed, being thought up post-WWII to get women back into the kitchen, but let's not go there now)? Is it because it is associated with passion and love and lust? Is it... well, for me the list kinda ended there, because I am not a big fan of red (not that I mind it, but it just doesn't make me super-happy), so I went to investigate.
I found this article on a website called "logo critiques", which is mainly aimed towards helping people create better logos (most of the logo websites I found were, for some strange reason. Is the whole "competition" part of capitalism not popular anymore?). Here (and on several other sites, I'll let you look for yourself) it says that red is associated with most of the things I mentioned above, and that it is an "intense colour". It is used a lot because it grips the viewer's attention and "has been known to raise one's blood pressure or make people hungry". Right then. They give Red Bull as an example, which is one of the few brands I can think of that actually fits their description (being associated with both energy and food). I couldn't see it working out for most of the others, I mean; McDonald's would want people to be hungry, but not agressive or horny, surely? And for H&M or Vodafone, wouldn't it be kinda difficult if their customers saw their logo and though "now I'm hungry, let's go eat" and just walk by? What about the agression and crime rate, do they go up in streets with a lot of red-logo shops next to each other? And really, does this mean that the whole obesitas epidemic can be blamed on too many red logo's?
Joking aside, there are some good reasons why McD would change from red to greenish, because (the article says) green is associated with "life and renewal" and often used to come across as eco-friendly (they are also mentioned as a good example of the use of yellow, which is the more important colour in their logo, but not if you change the other colour, because then you draw attention to it). They try to change their image, so good choice there, and they attempt at being more eco-friendly with their whole "no palm oil" business, so I can see how they arrived at this. But the "green" they picked is not so much green as military, which is associated with war, strenght, fighting, etc. So they took away red because of some of the associations (passion, agression) were unwanted and choose a colour that has none of their desired associations (food, hungry, meat), but all of the unwanted ones (agression, war)? Now I'm really confused.
Perhaps best to leave these things to those people who are being paid a lot of money to think about them. If it's all meant to be subliminal we're not supposed to think about it anyway, but to just see something red and go "Now I'm hungry/horny/hateful, let's buy some stuff!"

How to sit still and do nothing

So this weekend I spend, together with my boyfriend of course, huddled up in a sterrenkubus (cutest website ever!) or "starcube". They're really really small (compared to a house, of course, if you're used to camping like us then they're huge) and incredibly cute. They come with added telescope and a lot of information about astronomy and the universe and such, so it is a holiday home and stargazing-crash-course rolled into one. It was really cold this weekend, and we'd heard some stories about the cubes being very cold, but it was warm and toasty inside (wouldn't want to be there with -13 next weekend though!). And in the morning a biiiiig basked filled with more breakfast things than you could ever dream up was waiting outside, so life was good.
Now we both needed a bit of a break, so we had agreed to do very little; read some books, watch some movies, eat a lot of crap, sleep in, and that was it. All of this failed miserably. Somehow, we never get around to the "doing nothing" thing on holidays, we always fill our day to the max. So yesterday, we first drove to the village my boyfriend's father is from, to check out his old house, and then to Ootmarsum where we visited the local open-air museum, and then in search for lunch we stumbled upon the cutest little tearoom ever, the owner squeezed us in without a reservation, and we had some great British food with an even better view. And then we went to the local star observatory where we got into such a lengthy conversation with one of the volunteers that we left way after closing time. And then we had a great dinner in a nice bistro, and then we watched the first of the movies on the list, and then it was 12 o'clock. Wheeeere did that day go? Luckily enough the sky was overcast, or we would have been watching stars too!
How do other people do this? I mean, how do other people just go somewhere and read their books and watch their movies and go away again having done nothing but the things they planned on doing when they came there? Are they just that much more tired than we were? It's not that we feel that we need to do these things because otherwise our day would be wasted or anything, we enjoy doing them, we don't do them because others will think that we "did nothing" or anything. It just really puzzles me, how we seem to cram 20 things into 1 day and then come home even more exhausted than we left (not that we did this time, but our last summer holiday was pretty much like that). Are we just not exhausted enough to sit still, or is this normal holiday-behaviour? The last cannot be true, because there are people who book into a hotel and then spend 2 weeks laying next to the pool never knowing whether they are in Turkey or Spain. So I guess it must be us.
Not that I find any of this a problem, by the way, I am just musing (see title of blog) in my happy, relaxed, post-minibreak (to use a Bridget Jones term) bliss!

Stripy Sensations

(Two posts in one day, within 2.5 hours of each other... What has the world come to?)

So I was getting at the intermediate Innocent hat level, which is no more difficult than the beginner level, in my opinion, it is just more of a hassle with having two balls of yarn attached and moving them around so that you do not accidentally knit in a thread you're not supposed to (did not happen, but might have happened if I didn't pay enough attention). I choose the "thirsty caterpillar" colour combination from the website, because it looked cool, and then I wanted to do some sort of "piggy in the middle" thing, but the pink thread was so much thinner than the green thread that it would have looked really odd, so I just went for purple and light blue. Safe to say, these took me somewhat more than half an hour;

Ugly picture, macro is not my phone-cam's thing!

Yup, the second one is taller, which gives it the impression of falling over. It looks less hat-like, but it was easier to do, so I may just keep doing that (look at me, changing a knitting pattern with less than a week's worth of experience... I can feel this going down the "baking" route).
So the whole "sewing together" bit is still going a bit wonky, there must be some simple trick to this that I am missing, but as the point here is knitting and not sewing I can't be bothered to look up how to do it. And some of the hats I got from the bottles have far more thick and grotesque lumps on their insides (yes, I checked the insides of the other hats, I am that obsessed).
So next up is a more fancy and difficult pattern on one of the hats, and I think after that it is time to check out some other things, because I have the feeling that this whole hat-knitting thing is going good enough as it is. I do still have to make the little pompoms for the top, of course, but that I did in primary school, so how hard can it be? Time to check out my "Knitting for cool girls" book to see what cool things I will be knitting next (looks like a contradictio in terminis if I ever saw one)!

The Austen character in us all

So yesterday evening the BBC brough me the best of two worlds; Masterchef on location in Bath, catering to Austen-fans (because of the 200th anniversary of Sense & Sensibility). Followed by a fancy 5-course dinner for some distinguished guests, including several decendants of Austen's brother Henry (there obviously are none of herself), some critics who I now know from sight, which is slightly disturbing, and the guy who played Wickham in the 1995 tv version of P&P (seriously, his voice was still exactly the same (see here for a Youtube clip, appearently the BBC put the whole series online)! He looks really nice, though, not at all like his fictional counterpart).
So apart from looking at people who try to produce great food at high speed, I got to check out all the Austen-dress-ups, and play the game of "which Austen character are you?". Not that people dress up like a certain character, per se, but you can generally tell what someone is like, just from the way they talk and behave. There was an awkward, pale girl who was the perfect Chalotte Lucas, a sprightly, silly, giggly one that was Harriet Smith, a stern, serious, tormented Jane Fairfax and a pompous, arrogant Robert Ferrars. I think it's great how you can just see all the people that she wrote about, without them ever having the slightest idea that they resemble a certain character (let's hope so, at least, one wouldn't want to go through life realizing that one looks like Robert Ferrars). A great game to play, especially when dealing with real Austenites.
A word of warning though; don't try to do this on your friends or family, because firstly it will not fit (you know too much about their personality to squeeze them into any Austen character, because as much depth as she gave them, she could never draw out a full person) and secondly you will not be able to see them in any other light anymore. My boyfriend once commented, when I was watching Emma, that one of my friends behaved like that girl, and now I cannot help but see bits of Harriet Smith around the edges. Not something you want. Also, never ever try to figure out which Austen character you yourself are, for everybody probably wants to be Lizzy Bennet or Emma or Woodhouse something, but in truth there are a lot of Anne Elliots and Elinor Dashwoods, and even some Charlotte Lucases and Lucy Steeles, amongst us. No problem there, of course, the world needs all kinds of people, but it is generally best not to realise these things about oneself!

Digital world

In the combined influence of just having watched Die Hard 4 and an interesting conversation I had with a classmate yesterday, concerning what is real and what is surreal, I started musing about our digital world. I realise that it is ironic, or maybe paradoxical, to be telling you this via that same digital world, but that's the way it works. Or at least, that is one of the conclusions I could draw from both influences; everything is connected, and if you want to be "in" on that connection, the internet is the way to go.
Now said classmate is veeery much into the theories of Jean Baudrillard, who was a French philosopher trying to make sense of the world (aren't they all?). Now we do not agree on about 90% of everything when theory or philosophy is concerned and this case was no different. He argued, as does Die Hard 4 in a way, that the digital world is the new "best thing". Everybody is always online, people feel angry and lost when they cannot check their e-mail for a couple of hours or when others do not immediately respond to private messages or their Facebook status. Now according to Baudrillard, this whole internet-thing is a fake version of the real world, but a fake version that will try to overcome the real thing so that the real thing does not exist anymore and the fake thing is all that is left (I'm trying to explain it as simply as possible, also because I haven't actually read his theories myself, I just know two guys who are really into him). So basically, the fact that "we" are all finding this internet thing the most important part of our lives, is something that the internet wants, and it is something that is detrimental to the real world.
Now I have problems with several of those assumptions. First of all, what I usually do when someone is talking about "everybody doing something" is look at the majority of people, who in this case are not online 24/7 (most of my friends don't have a smartphone) and don't need to. It's just a small percentage, and that small percentage is based in the western world, because you can be sure that people in China or India are not constantly checking their e-mail, they are working their butts off. So, First World Problem. Secondly, I don't think the internet has any intention to overrule the "real world" (the whole discussion of that real world is we will just put aside for now). The internet is something that we are all making and doing together (although the US government has other ideas about that right now...), it is not a Terminator-like-thing out to get us. We are freely putting our attention and energy and love into this system, it is not asking anything of us (okay, some websites/companies are, but again, they only exist by the merit of their users). And lastly, personally, I like the internet, I like being able to go to Wikipedia or IMDB or a news website and find what I want to know within seconds. It is a brilliant system when writing essays (I cannot imagine how I would do without it, but for hundreds of years we did, so I am sure I would be able to do it too), and great for keeping in touch with friends or classmates or former friends or former classmates. But it is not the be-all and end-all of my existence. I'd rather knit another hat or read some more in my Fry book or go for a nice long walk than spend all my free time "online". I'd rather meet those friends in person than read their Facebook status (I've never done the MSN or Skype thing), and I do meet most of them regularly, at least those people that I genuinely care about meeting. People in researches show that we generally get angry or angsty when someone asks us if we could live without the internet for a week, but I think they would get the same response if they would ask people whether they could live without a refrigerator or washing machine for a week, it's just that the latter questions are never asked (because we are so used to those appliances now). It is just a tool, like so many tools, it is not a goal in itself.

That's what I think.

However, I do have to admit, to get back to the Die Hard perspective, that it is scary how many things you can only do online. There is a commercial on Dutch tv right now, in which an old man fills out his bank statement on a paper slip (like we all used to do 5 years ago), and the bank ensures the audience that you can still do things "the old way" with them. But I am afraid that will disappear too, when the "older generation" has become too small a group to profit from. Not that that would necessarily be a bad thing in itself, it's just progress (the same goes for e-books, really), but the whole idea of not having some physical evidence that your money is stored somewhere safe is somewhat disconcerting. And the "everything is connected" thing is a bit scary too, although again, that is mainly our online life, it does not truly (physically) affect our real life if something happened to our Facebook account. But it is something to think about.
But still, I do not see the world as bleakly as that we are all headed into the black digital void where we will all be glued to a screen without ever doing "real things" in the "real world". Partly because there is no "we" to speak of here, it is mainly wealthy young westerners with a lot of free time (if we all needed to do hard labour for 12 hours a day just to get food on the table this whole thing would be a non-issue), and for most of them, it is just a thing to keep their mind occupied. But maybe my outlook on things is too bright, being based mainly on my own feelings and experiences. Time will tell.
(And comments are always appreciated!)

The Mad Hatter Knitter

Somewhere in my first post here I let drop that I wanted to learn to knit. Now I know that knitting and "wild knitting" or "Yarn bombing" are very popular and hip and trendy, (which you can also see from the title of the knitting book that I got for Sinterklaas, which involves knitting for "cool girls" with advise for how to set up your own "knitting group") but that wasn't the reason I wanted to learn how to knit. No, it was those little Innocent hats. "Everybody" was making them, and we have about 8 in the house because my boyfriend kept bringing them home to me, and I kept getting more frustrated that I couldn't make them myself. And I think that frustration breeds creativity, so no other excuse was needed; I wanted to know how to knit!
Now I could have learnt how to knit in primary school, but I didn't want to, because I preferred doing things with wood and glue and paint (not that I was any good at those things, either). I could have learnt how to knit like most little girls do, from their mother or grandmother, but as all of use have very little patience, don't want listen to anyone's advice, and I was not one to sit quietly for 2 days, stitches slipping away, hands cramping, without poking one of my needles into someone's eye, it made sense not to learn it that way.
But lo, I learnt it myself! Well, with the help from several instructive YouTube clips and knitting website, most of which were in Dutch, because the knitting jargon is confusing enough as it is, and I have heard of "recht" and "averecht" and "insteken, omslaan, doorhalen, af laten glijden" before, but not of "purling" or "the long cast-on". And it worked! Well, not immediately of course, and I dropped a lot of stitches, and there was some swearing and hissing, but I got there in the end. I still miraculously keep having more or fewer stitches than I start out with, and I have no idea where they are coming from, but I now feel experienced enough to deal with that in a calm manner instead of throwing everything across the room. I cannot read a knitting chart or anything, but I can follow the beginners instructions on the Innocent website, and thus create.... (drumroll)

The colours are much nicer if they're not killed by the flash of my phone-camera!

Hats!
Now the first one was a disaster, because I had the wrong number of stitches to begin with, and then when it came to the decreasing of the stitches, I suddenly did the purling the wrong way around (don't ask how) and I ended up with the mess on top you see there. The second one went fine, but the thread kept unravelling as I was stitching it together, so I had to cut off pieces to thread it through the needle again, and I almost ended up with an open-bottomed hat (and we wouldn't want that!). The third one went eazy-breezy, no problems at all, and took me about half an hour! That must be some sort of record!
Next on the agenda, the intermediate hats! Stripes! New methods! More that can go wrong!
I'll keep you posted!

Tuinvogeltelling

Het is dit weekend weer tijd voor de Tuinvogeltelling! Mocht je nog niet hebben mee gedaan, ga dan even naar http://www.tuinvogeltelling.nl/, tel een halfuurtje de vogels in je tuin, geef het door, en SOVON is weer een beetje blijer. Op dit moment gaat de mus "aan kop" (hoewel wij die nog nooit in onze tuin hebben gehad), gevolgd door de koolmees en de merel. Van die laatste zag ik er ook een paar, want onze lijst van dit jaar was:

• Koolmees 3
• Merel 1
• Roodborst 1
• Vink 2

Jammer genoeg kwam de groenling die regelmatig in onze tuin rond wandelt niet even voorbij, dat zou de telling weer iets interessanter hebben gemaakt, en het aantal merels is ook nogal laag, omdat we meestal een gezinnetje (papa, mama, en drie brutale kindjes) hebben die de wormen tussen de terrastegels vandaan peuteren, maar nu was papa alleen. Maar ondanks dat, een mooi lijstje voor zo'n klein tuintje in Groningen!

Lemon tart with poppy seeds

So today I decided to bake something ambitious, because my baking-self-esteem needed a boost after the failed honeycomb, and it would be nice to have something to nibble on during the weekend. So I decided to make a "Lemon tart with poppy seeds", which also originally involved raspberries, but I will not use raspberries in the middle of January, because I am a little bit too environmentally conscious for that. Anyway, this tart involved a weird form of shortcrust pastry. Now if you have never made or used shortcrust pastry, then you cannot understand how brave this decision was, and if you have ever used it, then I pity you. Shortcrust pastry is the dread of every amateur baker, and in Baking Made Easy, Lorraine actually says "I know pastry is the nemesis of the average person's baking repertoire", but also that "this pastry is crumbly, buttery, and completely lovely". Which is both very true, and the only reason I still put up with the stuff. It falls apart as soon as you look at it, you need to cool it in the fridge whenever it becomes "too soft" (without anyone ever knowing for sure how soft "too soft" is), and then you need to blind-bake it before you can do anything else. But the reward when it all comes out nice and crumbly and warm and buttery is just so great!

Anyway, as I combined several recipes for this one, I will just tell you what I did, in case anyone is crazy enough to follow me down this road. The pastry I made is actually a combination of 3 recipes, and consists of 250 g plain flour, 125 cold butter (the recipes did not agree on whether the butter should be cold or softened, so majority rule here), which are mixed together to form fine breadcrumbs (use your fancy kitchen machine for this, if you have one). Then I added 2 egg yolks (the recipes said 1, 2, and 3), 50 g of sugar (recipes; no sugar, 2 tbsp, and 100 g), and the poppy seeds. Now you can of course do without poppy seeds if you do not like them or if you do not happen to be a person who bought 200 g when she needed 20 g and is still trying to find ways to get rid of them. Make a ball of the dough and put that in the fridge for 2 hours. Clean up your kitchen, then do some other important things, like reading the paper.
Take the dough out of the fridge, let it soften somewhat, roll it out on a floured surface until about 3 mm thick, pick it up, and put it in your prepared tart tin. Lorraine tells us here that "if the pastry case breaks, as it may, just patch it up with an odd bit of pastry". Interesting choice of modal there. Surely you mean; "when the pastry case breaks, as it will," Lorraine? If you're lucky, then this breakage does not happen when you have your pastry layer balanced on your pallet knife above the tin, as it did with me. Anyway, just somehow get it in there and get it tart-shaped, and put it back in the fridge for another 30 minutes.

Pastry casing

Blind-bake using baking beans (my boyfriend got me some for Sinterklaas) for 20 minutes at 180 C, then remove paper and beans and bake for another 5 mins. Your pastry casing is now done, and about half of your day has somehow disappeared miraculously. But it is all downhill from here!

For the filling, mix 4 eggs (or 3 eggs and the 2 left-over whites) gently together with 200 g sugar. Add 165 ml whipping cream and whisk some more. Then add the juice and zest of 5 lemons (or the juice and zest of 2 oranges you've lying around, technically turning the thing into an orange tart, but never mind), stir, and pour into the (cooled!) tart case. Bake for 45 minutes at 160 C until the filling is firm, leave to cool, remove the sides of the tin praying that the pastry won't break, and enjoy!

Orange and poppy seed tart!

Split-level tart...

As you can see, the tart came out of its casing alright, but for some strange reason, the filling seems to have split into a yellow layer on top and a whitish layer below. The whitish layer is cooked fine, it has the same consistency as the top layer, just a different colour. No idea how that happened, maybe it was the orange juice that floated to the top of the mixture? Anyway, it tastes great, really fresh and fruity, and the dough is perfect, nice and crumbly with a hint of poppy seeds! So this was a well-needed boost to my baking confidence!

Gerberas

Right, short but colourful post today!
Yesterday someone asked me which template I used for the background of my blog, and then I realised that I haven't said anything about photography in general or my background in specific! So, to add one more "creative persuit I don't have any time for" to the list; yes, I also like to take photographs! I used to do main nature/landscape shots, until my boyfriend introduced me to macro photography, and now that is my main addiction.

Now the background I used for this blog is a picture I made of a white gerbera:

White gerbera, 3 november 2010.

I turned it black&white, as you can see, but as I am a Photoshop-noob I did nothing else to it.

I love gerberas, they are my favourite flower, and as such I get a lot from people which I can then use in my photographing persuits! So here are 2 more colourful gerberas to brighten up your day:

Red gerbera, 8 april 2010

Yellow gerbera, 3 november 2010

All of these (and more) can of course be found on my DA profile!

Honeycomb

So tonight, as one of my other (as yet undisclosed) creative projects was frustrating me to the limit, I decided to make honeycomb. It is one of the shortest recipes in Baking Made Easy, and people seem to make it together with their children, so how hard could it be, right?
I used this recipe by Lorraine Pascale, only I used my cookbook, not the website. "Golden syrup" does not exist in the Netherlands, so I used normal syrup, and "bicarbonate of soda" I was unable to find anywhere, but as it is also called E500 (ii), and that is the same thing that is in my normal baking powder, I decided to use that.

Has anybody noticed how ever since I started this blog, all my baking projects have turned out like a disaster? Or is it just me?

Anyway, I did all Lorraine said, but the ingredients refused to cooperate. To begin with, the sugar did not dissolve, it just floated there in a mass of boiling butter and syrup, so I had no idea at what point I had to "turn up the heat". When it did dissolve, and the mixture was boiling furiously, at no point did it turn into a "golden-brown colour", especially not after "about 5 minutes". So after about 8 minutes (when it started to smell like burnt sugar a lot) I decided to take the pan off the heat, dump in the baking powder (which did fizz nicely), stir it (the mixture did not "expand a lot"), and put it into my baking tray.

Oh, and a piece of the parchment got stuck as well!

 Might I add the fact that the stuff hardens as soon as you take it of the heat, and that our entire sink was covered in rock solid lumps of caramel that did not want to begone, and that I had a sinking feeling that I had just wrecked our most expensive pan? Needless to say, my plan of taking pictures during the baking process kind of got lost between frantically reading the recipe, trying not to stir the mixture, and smelling burnt black sugar that would be for ever coating the pan.

Does this look like honeycomb to you?

Now it really looks nothing like any other honeycomb I have ever seen. It is much darker, almost reddish brown, and there are some lumps of baking powder floating around in it. As for the taste, well, I would love to tell you that it tastes wonderful and divine, but truly, it tastes  like fatty burned caramel. Now I do not like caramel, so I might wait for a second opinion of one who will be home shortly, but I think we will write this off as a Baking Failure.

You can do better!

I have been reading The Fry Chronicles, which is the second part of Stephen Fry's autobiography (I was unaware that there was a first part before I began reading, otherwise I would have started there) and it is one of the best books I have read in a long time. This is partly because Fry thinks along the same lines as I do, and partly because he has done a lot of things that I am very curious about (such as go to Cambridge), but mostly because his writing style is just so brilliantly dry and ironic and self-critical and humorous. He just loves his alliterations, as when he describes the "fumbling, frotting, fondling and farcically floppy failure as well as more infrequent feats of fizzing fanfare and triumphant fleshy fulfilment" (104) that made up his love life. Sometimes he can explode in anger, while still maintaining his own voice, as in "[t]he people who tell you this are cut from the same cloth as those who grow up these days to become trollers on internet sites and who specialize in posting barbarous, mean, abusive, look-at-me, listen-to-me anonymous comments on YouTube and BBC 'Have Your Say' pages and other websites and blogs foolish enough to allow space for their poison. Such swine specialize in second-guessing the motives of those who are brave enough to commit to the risk of making fools of themselves in public and they are a blight on the face of the earth" (95). It truly is a wonderful book, I would recommend it to anyone, even those slightly less interested in the person of Stephen Fry.

But that is not the point I was going to make today! And believe me, there is a point to all this.

At some point (haha), Fry discusses his choice to go into theatre, even though he cannot sing, dance, or act very well. He explains one of his motives very shortly, saying "I suppose a conviction that one can do better is a necessary part of pursuing a calling" (93), however arrogant or presumptious it may seem. Reading or seeing or hearing something, and then thinking "I can do better than that!" as a kick-starter to artistic (or other) ambitions.
So I thought about that, and I think it is true for a lot of activists, artists, actors, or other professionals, like sportspersons (cannot say "sportsmen" anymore) or bankers (although they may be leaning more towards "I can do better for myself!"). You need that kind of drive to get going and keep going, in some things.
But on the other hand it's also very daunting, trying to be better than Ian McKellen or Vincent van Gogh or The Beatles or whatever. I mean, if I think about reading a book by Ian McEwan and thinking "I can do better than that!" it not only feels like blasphemy, it's genuinely untrue. I don't think I can do better than him, on the contrary, every time I read a very well-written book I feel like I will never get there, I will never be that good. And that is precisely one of those reasons why I tend to give up after a while; I have made some progress, something is visible, words are on the page or paint is on the canvas, and I look at it and go; "This can never be as good as X or Y! I might as well stop here, because it will all be for nothing anyway!"

And that, my friend, is what we call the wrong attitude!

So the insight of today is; I should become more arrogant. No, I shouldn't. But I should become more self-confident and not expect some masterpiece on first attempt, but think about the fact that Ian McEwan, or even Stephen Fry for that matter, must have written several drafts before their words were put that perfectly on the page. You can only get better with practise (I used to have a primary school teacher who was always telling me to "Practise! Practise! Practise!"), and you (I) will only practise if you do not think about all the masterpieces that are out there, but focus on what you are doing. Although you do have to be aware of it, of course. So that may not precisely be what Fry was talking about, but then again I am not "pursuing a calling" and not as ambitious as many think me to be, even though I do still dream of a life as an author (without all the stupid tv programs and quiz shows and whatever). Anyway, it's not as if he became what he set out to be, because he was determined to become a teacher in a boarding school. So who knows where we (I) will end up.

So that was my Fry-induced insight of today, and I hope it may do someone else some good as well!

Blue Monday

The blog is up 1 week today, and we've just had the 100th pageview. Looks like it is going good, especially as they're not all from the Netherlands (like that Ukrainian person that wandered around for a while last Thursday... Leave a comment people!).

So today it is Blue Monday, the paper informed me as soon as I opened it, the day somewhat arbitrarily calculated as being the most depressing day of the year. It makes sense, in a way, because it is still winter, and no nice holidays or spring or anything to look forward to.
Well, I don't really believe in that kind of thing, especially as today the weather is really light and beautiful, we've had the first serious frost of the year and the whole world outside feels fresh and crisp and white and clean. It is a bit sad for all the plants and animals that thought that it was spring already, but most here in the city will survive, and it is just so beautiful with the white hoarfrost on the trees and a very oily thin sheen of ice on the water.
So no depressive feelings for me today, at least, not until I started talking to other people. I will not name any names, but in random order, in the last 24 hours, someone broke their very expensive phone, someone broke up their relationship, someone took a nasty fall, and someone saw an accident in which a young person was killed. Sounds like enough to make you sad and depressed.
But then again, that's life. That has nothing to do with Blue Monday or Friday the 13th or whatever day of the week. Bad things happen all the time, and you may not be aware of them all the time because they are not happening to you or those close to you, or you may be in such a happy place yourself that it just passes you by somehow. Not much we can do about it, apart from not focussing on them so much that it seems like only bad things happen, which will make you depressed and sad and think dark thoughts (I know, I've been there). So we should just find a happy middle, and I think I can say that I have found mine :)

Scone time

So today I decided to make scones, because I had never made them before, and because we were really hungry after having walked in crisp forest air for about 2 hours. So I looked up a receipe at the BBC website, which is my default baking website if the thing I want to bake is not in one of my cookbooks, which the scones weren't (there was one weird receipe which included mascarpone, which we did not have in the house, strangely enough).

Scone time!

So I found this receipe and it looked alright. I prepared all my things, mixed my dry ingredients, then mixed in the milk (to which I had added half of the egg, because most receipes for scones require an egg to be mixed in, and I thought they might become very dry without it), at which point I should have "a soft dough". Well, I can tell you, it was soft alright. Soft like porrige is soft, or pancake batter, but not like something that I can subsequently "pat out" and then "stamp out rounds" from. Must've been because of the egg I added. So I added about 100-150 g extra flour, which turned the dough into something that could actually be handled, but at that point I had messed with the receipe so much that I thought it would never work.  So I cut out some rounds with a glass, glazed them with the egg, put them in the oven, and feared the worst.
But lo and behold, it worked like a charm!
So we had them with some butter and jam and a nice cup of tea, and now feel completely revived!

Poll time!

Right, I added a poll (see ---->), because I can! No, really, because I was "talking" (do we still have to put this in quotes? I always feel like Joey when I don't know if something should go in quotes (obscure Friends reference no. 1), but if I don't put it in quotes you might think that I have no social life and do not see real people any more) about this on Facebook, and we all agreed that we are talking to things all the time, be it imaginary friends, or pets, or computers, or etc. But then we all thought others would feel that we were crazy for doing it. But if we all do it, than how can we think it is crazy? So, tell me, do you talk to inanimate objects?

Unfinished

Yesterday evening I watched a program on BBC2 called Unfinished, in which the attraction and use of unfinished art was discussed. Of course there was talk of Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Austen's Sanditon and Coleridge's "Kubla Khan", but they also mentioned a portrait of George Washington that was deliberately never finished, and that has been on the 1 dollar bill for 100 years now.
Now I have to admit that I did not watch the whole program, so I may be saying some stuff that is unrelated or unrelevant, but as I thought about it this morning, there were two things that surprised me.

Firstly, when the presenter, Alastair Sooke, asked (random, non-Austen-reading) people whether they would rather read the unfinished Sanditon by Austen, or one of the completed versions by other authors, all of them chose the unfinished version (there may have been dozens who chose one of the others, but they were not in the program). All of them said something along the lines of "this is the way she meant it, and the other author doesn't know for sure how it was to finish" or "this is the real thing, because it is just her words". Now this is interesting, because there have been so many people who did try to finish it, starting with one of Austen's own nieces. So why do people try to finish novels, when others don't really want to read their versions? Is it just to satisfy their own curiosity, or because they are so sad or frustrated that it isn't finished? Do they really try to finish it so that others can read it, or do they write mostly for themselves? But why publish it then? I don't know the answer to these questions. I am also not a person who would read a finished version by someone else, or who would try to finish it myself, because it just is what it is, she died while she was writing it. The same goes for the Dickens story, which has recently been completed and turned into a tv series. Again, just to make money out of it? What purpose is served by finishing something that you don't know how to finish? We just don't know how it was supposed to end, can't we just leave it at that?
(Now I think I should put in a disclaimer for the Robert Jordan fans, because he also died before he could finish his Wheel of Time series, and Brandon Sanderson finished it (and added some more books in the process). Now Jordan actually wrote down how the series was supposed to end, and he wanted to choose his successor, but in the end his widow had to do that for him. So I think this is a very different situation, because the author knows that they are going to die, doesn't want to disappoint the fans of the series, and thus deliberately asks another writer to finish it for him. So here we actually know how it was going to end, and it is with the author's consent, which makes all the difference, to me.)

Secondly, the issue with the painting surprised me, and not only because I had never heard of it before. Apparently, Gilbert Stuart realised that he could make money from the unfinished painting, made 130 replicas, which he sold for a lot of money. So could we then really call the thing unfinished? I mean, Stuart clearly did not intend to finish it, because he could make a lot of money without doing so, and even Washington himself was quite content with the unfinished thing, he even ordered a replica for himself. So when do you call a painting unfinished, or finished for that matter? I know I have had difficulty deciding whether a painting was done, and I have heard other artists express the same problem. But can we call something unfinished when the artist clearly has no intention of ever going back to finish? I mean, if the artist isn't sure themselves, it is another issue, but in this case the label of "unfinished" just adds to the value of the thing. (The same really goes for "Kubla Khan", because it is generally thought that Coleridge just added the mystique of saying that he was interrupted when writing it, but this is what makes it so popular, the air of "there could have been so much more!" even when there really couldn't.)
For me, with a story (novel) it is different, because you have your overall story arch and when that is done the story is "done", and you can keep adding minor characters and in-between-scenes all you like, but when the story is told, it is finished (and for those authors who write in a linear manner, like Austen, it is even easier than for people like me, who jump ahead and leave blanks in the middle that may or may not be filled in at a later point). But for a painting... I don't know, maybe it is because I am more a writer than a painter, but sometimes an "unfinished" painting, with areas of canvas still showing, really is finished. And I would say that that is the case with Stuart's painting, because we can all agree that he never intended to finish it anyway.

So what is the draw of these unfinished works? Is it because we can fill it in for ourselves, imagine what the ending must be like, and thus in a way become artists ourselves? That is something you do whenever you read a book; you always have a picture in your head of what the characters or the buildings or the surroundings look like. With paintings it is the same, I think; I always try to imagine what lies outside of the canvas area, or what a scene would look like if it were painted from a different angle. So personally I cannot understand the obsession with finishing unfinished works by others, because I think that the only goal that is served by it is putting yourself in the shoes of the artist, and in the case of Austen or Dickens, those shoes are just a little bit too large for us to fill!

Jane Austen's novels

As I am planning to write a blogpost (more or less) every day, taking my example from Jane Austen Today, I might as well add a post about Jane Austen in the beginning.

Just to get this out of the way; I am not one of those women (I can hardly say "people", for it is mostly women) who think that Jane Austen is their best friend, relationship counsellor, or dear old spinster auntie. I think she was a brilliant writer who changed the way novels are written and read, and who did much for women-writers, but I do not think that I have some sort of "connection" with her or that she is talking to me from beyond the grave. I read her novels for the social critique and the wonderful style and irony, not because they are love stories (which I think many of them aren't). I like many of the spin-off and adaptations of her novels, I have read several biographies, collections of essays, and collections of letters, I have also read the juvenilia and The Watsons and Sandition, but I do not dress up in Regency outfits or think "What would Jane do?" or write fan fiction. To me, she is "Austen", not "Jane".

Right.

In A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Reasons Why We Can't Stop Reading Jane Austen (seriously, why did nobody use that title before?) there are several essays in which a writer or critic describes their experiences with Austen's novels. One of the things that is said in several of them is that one's preference for her novels changes with time; teenagers prefer Pride & Prejudice, students Emma, and all above 30 prefer Persuasion, roughly speaking. I thought this was interesting, because my personal preference never really changed.
I read Sense & Sensibility first, when I was around 16, and I loved it very much. I then read Pride & Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, and Northanger Abbey, as I read them in the order they were published (as I suspect many will). And then I stopped, because I thought Northanger Abbey was so very different from the other novels, so very simple and childish, that I wouldn't want to read on, because Persuasion was sure to disappoint me as well. I did re-read S&S and P&P several times, but none of the others, until in my second BA year I took a course about the "long 19th century in English literature" and we had to read Emma. When I re-read that, I appreciated the wit and irony and double (triple!) layers even more than I had as a 17-year old, and I decided to read Persuasion as well, after discovering that Northanger Abbey was actually the first novel Austen had ever written, and that it was a satire of the Gothic novel, and that I read it completely out of order. So, after reading Persuasion, I could draw up my preference list, and I don't think it has changed very much since then! So here it is, in reversed order:

6. Mansfield Park
I will never like this novel. I know what she is doing and why, and I know it worked for her contemporary audience, but Fanny is just such a dull little moralizing creature, and the only chance she has of ever making her life interesting (by marrying Henry) she throws away and she settles for the only person in the book even more boring than she is. The minor characters are stereotyped versions of real humans that are just not believable. I like the writing style, I can see how she deals with many social issues, but I cannot get the protagonist, and therefore I cannot like the novel.

5. Northanger Abbey
I did not like it the first time I read it, but I have read it several times since and when you know where she is coming from, satirizing the gothic novel and being ironic and defensive about novel-writing, then it really is a very good book, especially for a very young writer. However, it was outdated when it was finally published (20 years after the fact) and it still feels outdated. And really, Catherine Morland is so ignorant and silly, I always feel sorry for Henry for having to spend his life patiently trying to educate his wife!

4. Pride & Prejudice
Yes, I know this will come as a shock for many of you! But I am not a big fan of P&P. Again, I like the concept, and the writing style, and Lizzy, and Darcy, but I have to agree with Austen herself that it is just too light and fluttery (yes, she did say that. She also said she preferred MP, and I have to disagree with her there). Nothing really happens, and even when something happens (Lydia's rush to freedom) it is all patched up nicely, no hard feelings. No raw emotion or loose ends, we'll just hold hands and skip into the sunset.

3. Sense & Sensibility
Now we get into the difficult stuff, for the top-3 really depends on which book I have read last. I am currently reading S&S, so it may go to the top again, but actually I think this order is quite settled.
Anyway, I prefer S&S to P&P, because here something really happens. If the Bennet girls are called poor and in want of a husband, well, the Dashwood girls are really poor and in want of a husband. And they have far more trouble getting one. The relationship between the sisters is far more realistic, even if they are somewhat stereotyped to portray their chosen character-element. Also, the side characters in this novel, especially John Middleton, Lucy Steele, and Mrs Jennings, are just so brilliantly self-absorbed, it is a joy to read them. Willoughby is just so much more wicked than (ironically) Wickham, although his repent at the end spoils it a bit, but Austen had to put that in to please Cassandra, so we cannot blame her. (Why I know this and where I get all these little facts is beyond me. I could probably find the source if anyone is really interested, but it would take a while, as I have about 20 Austen-related books on the shelve!)

2. Emma
This was my favourite before I read Persuasion, and I still enjoy reading it very much. All those people (and there are a lot of minor characters) crammed into that tiny village having nothing to do but to discuss each other is just such a genius concept. Miss Bates is wonderful, Mrs Elton is tragically arrogant, and Harriet Smith is just brilliantly silly. The Emma-Frank-Jane triangle is one of the more interesting relationships in all of Austen's novels, and Emma herself is just so perfectly written; on the one hand the conceited little rich girl, but on the other hand she does care for her (really quite annoying) father and does not run off the moment she receives an offer of marriage. Best protagonist, but not the best plot, which is why the winner is...

1. Persuasion
I know I am not supposed to like this novel until I am old and look back fondly on my life, but it has been my favourite ever since I read it. Austen was really writing some of her best stuff later in her life and it is a shame to think that she could have done so much more wonderful things if she hadn't died so young.
I am not a big fan of Anne because she is so quiet (but then who wouldn't be with that father?), although I prefer her to most of the protagonists, because she more realistic and contradictory than most of them (apart from Emma, which is why I like her best). But the plot here is just so wonderful, even if it is still somewhat rough so that we can see Jane Austen at work (Louisa's fall, for example), but that is the charm of it. The suspense of the story is so great, much greater than in P&P, I would say, and the emotions and feelings are described so accurately. You would almost start to wonder whether Austen herself regretted turning down an offer of marriage (but then I watched Miss Austen Regrets yesterday, so I am already in that mindset). Again, brilliant minor characters, and combined with that marvellous plot and atmosphere, it is most definitely her best book.

So, that is my Jane Austen's novels list. There may be more lists in the future, for we still have "Best adaptation" or "Worst father" or "Most moralizing clergyman" to go, but because I don't want to scare away all the non-Austen readers I will try to limit myself to one Austen-related post a week!

Alice in Wonderland

One of the items of my Postcrossing wishlist is "Alice in Wonderland cards". I am a big fan of Alice and her creator, and would especially recommend the Annotated Alice for new readers, because there are many notes that explain some of the weird and wonderful things, the symbolism, and the references to mathematics. I am less charmed by the Disney movie, which strangely combines Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, but I do like the new 2010 adaption by Tim Burton, especially because it calls itself an adaptation and does not take itself serious.
Now the original drawings of Alice (apart from those that Dodgson added to his own manuscript) were 42 wood engravings done by John Tenniel, and yesterday I received a postcard from Singapore with one of the illustrations and a little bit of text. I really love this card, which is quite small, 8 by 14 cm.

Card SG-53219, received 10-1-12

I think Tenniel's illustrations are sometimes quite coarse and childish, but they were checked and approved by Dodgson himself. Also, he had the pubisher destroy the first print run because he did not like the quality of the illustrations, which shows his commitment to his work.
However, Tenniel was not the only one to illustrate Alice, and as we had the version of someone else at home (a beautiful big book with glossy picture pages that stood out from the rough pages with the text) that is the version of Alice images that I grew up with and love the most. Arthur Rackham made 13 coloured illustrations for a new edition of Alice in 1907, and one of the first postcards I ever received was one of his images. Now this is one of the bigger cards I have received, and it is glossy like those illustrations in that book from long ago.

Card US-1059430, received 4-4-11

I know there is a very dramatic art noveau-esque quality to his images that not everyone will like (and I myself don't always like very much). As Charles Dodgson passed away in 1898, we do not know what his opinion of the illustrations was. But as Guillermo Del Toro has cited Rackham as one of the inspirations for his design of Pan's Labyrinth, I think we can all agree that Rackham's influence has been great indeed.

The creative side

Right, time to stop meta-posting and start to actually tell you something interesting!
I have some "hobbies", or things that I like to do when I am not doing my "official" thing, which is studying. But I used to have a part-time job next to my studies for the last 3.5 years, which took up about 16-20 hours of my week. During this time, I did very little else (productively speaking) but study and work. I don't want to complain, it is not as if I did not have the time to do anything else (paint, bake, write, blog), but more that my head was so filled up with this 60 hour work week that there simply was not enough space (in my head) to do anything else (apart from reading, interestingly enough, I always have space in my head for reading).
When I came home from selling overpriced sandwiches, the only thing I wanted to do was eat my dinner while watching TV, preferably some stupid semi-reality program which does not require your full attention and makes you feel good about yourself, or some quiz-like program (I loooove University Challenge) where you can shout the answers at the screen and make you feel good about yourself in another way.
However, I quit that job as of December 1st, and now that the very busy month of holidays and birthdays and celebrations is over, I can already start to feel more space inside my head. This blog is an example of that, but there are other things as well; I did some serious painting for the first time in years yesterday, and I am doing some baking again, and I am planning to learn how to knit soon. No writing ambitions as of yet (still busy with essay writing), but I will try to revise my NaNoWriMo 2011 novel and send it around to those who have asked for it (or maybe post it here? Not sure yet!).
The only thing I have been steadily doing for a year now is Postcrossing, where you send a card (a real, physical postcard) to "a random person" (who is still a member of the website, of course) and then receive one from another person. I love doing this, because it shows so many different cultures and customs, because I love writing and reading long messages, and because it shows me, again and again, that humans the world over have the same dreams and wishes and hopes and fears. A man from the United Arab Emirates wrote on his profile "this project shows me that there is still hope in the world, because people can still communicate, even if their leaders cannot", which I think is very true. Not sure if this would count as "creative thing" for everybody, but it does for me.
So that is the way things are standing right now. I know that doing something creative is important to me, and that I should take the time to do it, but it is so frustrating when you cannot give something your full attention and energy that most times you simply just don't do it. I want to stop not doing things. Not because this is a New Year's resolution or because I think it will make me more interesting or "a better person" or whatever, but just because I miss it, and I think I need it.
So hopefully you'll be seeing some paintings, postcards, pictures, or writings appear on this blog very soon! And if you don't, it may even be because I am busy producing those very same things!

Waarom in het Engels?

Waarom schrijf ik deze blog (voornamelijk) in het Engels, terwijl ik zelf Nederlandse ben? Is het soms omdat ik na 3 jaar Engels studeren mezelf te goed vind om in het Nederlands te schrijven? Of vind ik dat iedereen in this day and age maar Engels moet kunnen? Of heb ik zulke grote ambities dat ik denk dat mijn blog wereldwijd door allerlei vreemden gretig verslonden zal worden?
Niks van dat alles! De belangrijkste reden waarom ik in het Engels schrijf is omdat ik me in die taal op dit moment het comfortabelst voel. Ik kan me in het geschreven woord regelmatig beter uitdrukken in het Engels dan in het Nederlands. Niet dat ik het Nederlands niet meer machtig ben (slechts 12 fouten in het Groot Dictee!), maar het schrijft nou eenmaal soepelder in de taal waarin je je het meeste uitdrukt, en voor mij is dat op dit moment Engels. Qua gesproken woord is het op dit moment trouwens meer 50/50; hoewel er wel steeds meer Engelse woorden in mijn Nederlands kruipen, maar dat is geloof ik bij vrijwel iedereen zo. Hoewel het dan meestal gaat om van die concepten die we ver-Engelsen, zoals "sales manager", terwijl het bij mij meer gaat om kleine woordjes en uitdrukkingen, die nou eenmaal beter overkomen in het Engels. Maar ik dwaal af!
Daar komt nog bij dat een deel van mijn (hypothetische) lezers als eerste taal het Engels (of Frans, of Papiamento, of Afrikaans...) zal hebben, en Nederlands voor hen misschien wat moeilijk zal zijn. En ik wil het natuurlijk voor iedereen zo leuk mogelijk maken!
Maar bij onderwerpen die echt typisch Nederlands zijn, of alleen voor Nederlanders relevant zijn, of toevallig gaan over Nederland of het Nederlands of een Nederlands concept, zal ik zeker in het Nederlands schrijven, en deze posts zal ik ook labelen als "Nederlands" (net als deze, hopelijk) zodat ze makkelijk terug te vinden zijn. Makkelijker kan ik het niet maken, wel leuker!

First time's the charm

Right-o, the first post. Always annoying to get things underway.
Anyway, here I will (hopefully) be writing some more than on my previous blog (or journal, as I prefer to call it) which has not been updated since July 2011. I am planning to post some stuff about my creative works, my writings, Postcrossings, culinary stuff, travels, and some random thoughts when they occur. Post may be in Dutch or English, as suits the occasion.
I may import my older blog posts at some point, but I also may not.
I'd love to get some comments, if only to know that people are reading my stuff, but that probably also depends on how much I will actually write!