Ill Seen, Ill Said

Friday!

My weeks usually fly, but this one dragged and I thought at every point I was a day farther ahead than I was—a small but pinprick agony all week.

But bonus rewards: It's a long weekend here in Canada! So I might actually take some time off this weekend and do things I feel like I haven't had time to do in a long time - go to the farmer's market and gallivant and watch a movie without that looming sense of a deadline defied at the back of my mind.

I finally got my hands on Bringing Nature Home this week and plan to try my hand at some of those unruly arrangements I feel like I've been never able to master. Toronto really clears out on summer weekends (it often feels like I'm the only person left in my neighbourhood), but there's a loveliness to that... a chance to really stretch out in the city.

I think maybe I'll take a blanket to the park this weekend too and read my book in the sunshine. The days are sunny - that perfect sunniness of May, when the air is still clear and crisp, but warm too. It's hard not to be happy every time I step outdoors.

Wishing you all a lovely weekend!

Kingfisher Folly

I seem to be at a loss about what to do for holidays this year. It's definitely the area that I'd like decisions and plans made for me (lovely plans of course). I've run out of steam for all the planning and decision-making, the figuring-out that goes into a holiday. Those are the very actions I want a break from! As always, Unique Home Stays is fuels my imagination. I'd love to be transported away to one of their restful retreats. A pile of books and a case of wine, water to dip my toes in and lush walks to go on. It's all a dream. Kingfisher Folly is calling my name.

All images used with permission from Unique Home Stays

Twenty-five boxes and nine years

Over the weekend, I made a list of things I want to buy. I've long made these kinds of lists... what I need to complete my wardrobe, my apartment, my sorry life. When I moved to Canada, and was starting from scratch, necessity drove these lists. I had no couch, me bed. I had no bookshelves, no electronics.

After I had decided what city I was going to live and found an apartment, my parents shipped the boxes I had packed up before I left Ireland. Anything I didn't take, they weren't going to keep for me. I pulled out the list yesterday, tickled by my fastidious documenting of everything I owned. It was mostly not the stuff I needed to get set up. It was everything that mattered to me.

I had to put a dollar value next to each item. Every family heirloom, each book, my riding boots... And it's funny to see what I shipped. A picture hanging set. A can opener. Did I think these would be impossible to find here? No, but I had spent so long waiting for immigration, I hadn't been able to resist buying small, shippable things for the live I envisioned. A corkscrew. Classic Jane. On each page my signature. Signature of importer - July 16, 2003.

I've felt strange sometimes about some of the things that came with me. Does Granny's Royal Tara not rightfully belong in Ireland? When she got it for her wedding, could she fathom it landing in Toronto, sitting in a warehouse out near Pearson where we went to collect it. And where will it go to next? With me happily childless... I feel ill-equipped to ensure its safe passage into another's hands.

Those first lists I made when I got my apartment were overwhelming with necessity. The contents of those twenty-five boxes had no shelves to sit on, no place to rest. It all grew slowly. Frustratingly slowly. The pictures I shared last week are the result of all slowness. My sofa was the most expensive purchase I had ever made. It alone took me weeks to decide on.

I mostly tried to play the "wait" rather than compromise game. I saved up for the version of things I really wanted. Sometimes I couldn't wait and put things on my credit card. I weighed up those decisions. I worked hard so the lists could get shorter, so I could get back to a time when I thought about spending money on holidays instead of on a rug or bed or lamp.I sometimes felt like a huge failure because everybody else seemed to have all this shit together.

Even other people I know who emigrated... they just went to IKEA and did it in one bout. I seemed intent on dragging it out for myself. But I wasn't just emigrating, I was also building a permanent home for myself for the first time in my life. I've lived longer in Toronto, in my apartment, than I have anywhere in my whole life. We always moved and I always dreamed of this. I wasn't just emigrating, I was exploring, acquainting myself the very idea of home.

This is all a long way of telling you what it felt like when I made my most recent list and found it to be a short and without necessity. Sure, I lust after certain things, a leather chair, a particularly expensive bedside lamp. But the urgent necessity is gone. It may have taken nine years, but I've found and built a real home for myself in this city I was wholly without connection to. It has all woven itself into the fabric of my life.

That feeling dropped on me suddenly... just making a list... marveling at how short it was... feeling proud of what built from scratch and those twenty-five boxes.

13th Street Winery

"an aroma redolent of fruit blossom, lemon/lime, granny smith apple and wet stone"

Could there be a more beautiful description? When it comes to wine, I don't know a lot. My family are huge wine drinkers and like most things related to my family, I somehow managed to stay on the outside of it. Not that I don't love wine, I simply don't know a lot about it.

But I know what I like, mostly citrus and berry tasting white wines. I like a lot of Ontario Rieslings. And I think New Zealand's Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc is a revelation... guava and mango-tinged wine? Hell yes! My recent Ontario favourite (as of Saturday night) is 13th Street Winery. I feel like a field trip is order!

I sometimes wander into the LCBO and wonder what it would be like to know that complex world, to browse row after row, not making my ultimate decision based on a funny formula of label, price and description. I put it on the list of things I might learn about, get inside of. But part of me likes where I am, without the burden of context and comparison, just liking the immediate taste, the colour, the feel of the glass in my hand, the company that gathers when I open a bottle.

My beauty essentials

I buy many different lotions, potions and pigments. It's such a sweet, easy pleasure... a new lipstick or nail polish, a cream that soothes, a mask that softens. But if I had to choose my everyday essentials, they would be these products. It took a long time to land on these products. Some I've used for years, some are brand-spanking new. I improvise when my skin undergoes a mysterious change, I switch things up when I grow bored. Right now this is what's working.

Sunday best: Feeling like summer

It feels like the season has turned over. After a week of rain, the sun came out with a vengeance. The trees that flank the entrance to my apartment building finally burst with leaves - they're always the stubborn latecomer. And my neighbourhood is shrouded in lilac. May, it turns out, is a pretty glorious month.

Today's look is designed just for that feeling. Casual, timeless, summer. Boyfriend jeans, the softest tee, shoes that make it easy to dash and skip and walk back up the hill...

The only thing I seem to need right now is a new book. I finished mine yesterday. Today, I'll run my hands over the shelves until I hit one I haven't read or want to reread and it will come off the shelf get a bookmark and go into my purse.

I'll resist my chores because I want to stay outside - laundry and vacuuming can maybe wait a day - and I'll try to take my work with me, so I'm not the wrong side of the window, looking out at a day that I want instead to be dropped into.

Happy Sunday!

Products: Image from Madewell catalogue, via The Neotraditionalist | Kain Striped modal T-shirt from Net-a-Porter | RB2132 - 875 Wayfarer from Ray-Ban | Current/Elliott The Roller jeansfrom Net-a-Porter | Gold linen tennis shoes from Bensimon | Mimi Big Elsie from Mimi Berry

Friday!

I can't believe it's Friday already. This week has been such a whirligig and I've been excited about Saturday since last Monday.

Last weekend, I found a new favourite coffee shop and I'm dying to hang out there this weekend and finish my book, start another. And I'm going to hit the flower markets with a friend and we're going to make arrangements together with all our shared flowers!

I've been terribly busy but also happy - the things I'm working on are all fun projects. I've also been having lots of thoughts about work-life balance lately... if it's really meaningful, desirable for a person like me, if there's a less oppositional way of phrasing it. Is it really work versus life? Can't it be work and life dovetailing more beautifully?

I think another key to my happiness this week was the fact I made room for exercise each day. I don't know why I disbelieve it... When I exercise I always feel better. What will it take to make that stick in my thick skull?! A pox upon my mutable nature!

From exercise to tasty treats... Helen's Baci di Ricotta look like something sent by the gods. And Eilis posted this video from Dublin Town (such a great site!) and I squealed with delight when I saw John Gunn at 4:10. This man sold me all my camera film and photography paper for years and his store is one my favourite places ever. On a less sentimental note, I also fell hard for the amazing footwear in this post over on Miss Moss.

And so that's it for another week. What are you up to this weekend? Have a grand one!

Coral

This shade is becoming a familiar one around here... I love these coral tones that have a bit of terracotta depth to them... a murkiness rather than that more plastic coral sheen. I seem to keep circling back to these kinds of pinkish / rosy / peachy shades this year. Some recent iterations on my radar...

Products: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

A poem for Tuesday

I've been reading Rilke at bedtime. Though this poem is at odds with the season outside, there are moments when I am too. And the days feel autumnal when I'm tired and look up from my desk too late to have seen the sunset. And there's something about age too I can't quite muster to tell you. So that I lose which season I'm in, which ones I'm between and I only know what doesn't change. This is Rilke, translated by Mary Kinzie, via.

Day in Autumn
After the summer's yield, Lord, it is time
to let your shadow lengthen on the sundials
and in the pastures let the rough winds fly.

As for the final fruits, coax them to roundness.
Direct on them two days of warmer light
to hale them golden toward their term, and harry
the last few drops of sweetness through the wine.

Whoever's homeless now, will build no shelter;
who lives alone will live indefinitely so,
waking up to read a little, draft long letters,
and, along the city's avenues,
fitfully wander, when the wild leaves loosen.

Around home

I spent some lovely time at home over the weekend. I did yoga there. I arranged flowers. I made cups of tea and read books. I tidied. I wrote, sitting in front of my window, light streaming in. It all makes me happy. The light was particularly pretty yesterday in the early evening and I snapped a few pics. I ought really to have straightened the cushions on the sofa, but you know... I sort of like it this way

Sunday best: Netsuke and other small things

Yesterday was a good day. I didn't work at all... found myself in some new places in the city, happily deciding to walk another block, go for a second coffee, stop to smell the lilacs at every house walking up the hill.

I weighed myself in the morning and that was a kick in the ass I needed. Pounds creep on very easily for us Flanagans and I always seem to let my vigilance slip when I'm overworked... feeling like the least I deserve is a treat here and there and a workout skipped. And you know how it goes... a skipped day becomes a skipped week...

So, I'm back on my exercise kick. I would love to say that weight is not something that's constantly on my mind, that I'm not always on either the good or bad side of it... but I can't. I'm never able to reach a point where I can be natural and indifferent, where I can trust myself to strike a natural balance. It's a tug-of-war that's been a pretty significant feature of my adult life.

It's interesting to note that the less I exercise the more it occupies my thoughts and clouds my day... when I just get on with it, all that conflation gets nipped in the bud. It becomes the small thing it is. So, I'll get my class out of the way today and then pat myself on the back and have a lovely day. I got all my chores done yesterday and finally found those elusive lilacs at the flower market (my apartment smells divine!)

That leaves me to find myself a coffee shop and hunker down with my book. I'm still reading the Hare with Amber Eyes and love it. I want a netsuke of my own now... and saw this one on 1stDibs though of course it's unaffordable. Rather than dwelling on my covetous inklings, I'm thinking about all of those other small things - physical and otherwise, good and not so good- that are already part of the fabric of my life. Thinking of things this way makes me happy.

Happy Sunday!

Products: The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance by Edmund de Waal | Rag & Bone The Caftan Tee from La Garconne | MiH Jeans Paris jeans from Net-a-Porter | Cognac Clutch from Clare Vivier | Grazing Horse Netsuke from 1stDibs | Air Morgan Slipper Ballet from Cole Haan | Rib ring from Odette