runcible spoon

Something pretty

This artwork, entitled 'Heart and Soul', is by Helena Tay.

I found her piece on Noise, a website showcasing youth art.  They have a different feature artist every day - all under 25.

Tay was born in KL, Malaysia, and says that she 'just wishes to see lots of colour and quirkiness in everyday life.'  Amen to that.

I think this image is gorgeous - all retro and sweet and endearing and cheery. Tay has a completely kick-ass website too.

Cloudberries

Is that not the coolest name for a berry?

It's insanely cool, and the fact that people eat a berry named after clouds just happens to be one of the first things I ever learnt about Norway.

When I was nine, the irrepressible, inimitable and wonderful Svanhild and Olaug came from Norway to visit us in Australia. They were truly long-, long-, long-, long-lost relatives and I just thought they were the bees' knees!

They carried in their large suitcases many, many cheeses, some smoked salmon and a large tub of cloudberry jam things which cannot be named here as they were All.Highly.Illegal due to Australia's strict Customs laws. But I digress.

The container that the jam was in was along the lines of what you might expect paint to be carried in and had its own handle - it was an industrial-sized shipment!

Now, today, I see that someone has come upon this blog by way of the search "cloudberry jam in Sydney Australia". Truly a web surfer after my own heart.

I'm sorry to say that my blog would not have helped you in your quest - but I now feel compelled to share my knowledge and can assure you that the delicious jam is obtainable from any IKEA store in Sydney ;)

Thoughts from a professional nose

I read this great article about a year ago, by a woman who works in Paris as a professional 'nose' for one of the big perfume houses.

A nose, I gather, is someone with an extraordinarily fine sense of smell who is employed by the perfumery for their skill and astute judgement in assessing fragrance - just the way that some people have very fine palates for wine.

I don't think it's so much a case of being a 'perfume freak' in case you're imagining some OTT Sex and the City-wannabe tripping around Paris overloading on perfumes and high heels. This woman seemed more to be a freak of nature, in that she was unbelievably attuned to scents and their connection to memory and emotion.

What stayed with me was her argument that society is suffering from a (fake) scent overload (a somewhat contradictory stance, given her job). She made a very convincing case against over-scenting, saying that she has little interest in her kids being exposed to lavender-scented toilet bowl cleanser and air deodoriser that smells like pine.

Instead, she said, she wanted them to know what the smell of a mouldy cupbard is like and what books smell of after they're stored and what smelling fresh-mown grass makes one feel.

I really liked that idea - the notion that particular, ordinary scents are worth educating ourselves in, and that all scents have value, purpose and meaning even if they're not the smells you think of as 'important' or 'beautiful'.

If a worm falls in the forest ...

Over lunch I heard a wonderful fact.

We were discussing the notion of worm farms (as an alternative or auxilliary to composting) when mention was made of a friend's colleague whose job it was to raise squillions of worms for use in worm farms.

Apparently, when you entered the large shed where they were all being housed, the air was filled with the low grumble of thousands of worms all munch-munch-munching at once. What a great noise!

Cats, giraffes, snoring etc

I'm sitting here working (or at least trying to approximate that activity), when I hear a strange noise. A little bit snuffly, a little bit dry, and very, very regular. Puzzling ...

Oh my god! I know what it is. How could I forget that cats can snore?

That would be funny to me just on its own, but when it's a teeny-tiny breathy snore coming from the world's largest, tallest, densest, most horse-like orange tabbycat  - basically, he looks like a giraffe trying to impersonate a housecat - then it's fucking hilarious.