Look here what I´ve got by mail these last days. So many interesting and inspiring books, magazines and parcels!

The books are a special offer/introduction from a book club focusing on design, living and lifestyle. The first one I chose was "Sommerhusliv", a book full of photoes of the most delicious and different summer residences rating from rather fancy to the more humble and primitive ones. I love this summer-like style, the feeling of holiday and easy living. I like to think of my house in that way; simple and plain furniture and interior and light colours – my absolute favorite is white! All sorts of white, creamy, and pale.

The second choise was also a photobook about the pleasures of the garden. We only have a mall garden and terrace but I really love it.I don´t know what to do without direct acces to "the ground". In the summer it´s like adding an extra room to the house: we have our meals and drink tea at the terrace – and I like to paint there. Especially the bigger canvasses where sometimes the paint is running…

Yes, and then I´ve just discovered a magazine called Cloth Paper Scissors. Most inspiring magazine about collage, mixed media, arts and crafts. There is a mix of interwievs, how-to-do-articles, artis´s profiles etc. and a lot of inspiring photoes of course.

And last but not least the post brought me the most wonderful notebook and extra papersmaterials from Linda Koch, an American mixed media artist whose blog I have been watching for the last few weeks. She has decorated the cover using old photoes and different sorts of text, writing and stamping. Part of the text is even written in Russian letters. A really nice little piece.

So of course I´m almost dying to get along reading and crafting. To get totally absorbed in another universe… But do I have the time? Am I hyper stressed and on overtime right now? Do I have to read a lot of didactic and educational stuff? Yes, yes, yes! At the moment reading for pleasure is something I´m just dreaming of… However, in one month it´s all over and done, and then I´ll simply vanish from the surface of the earth with all my new book and magazines and use at least one day reading only to enjoy myself – and without feeling guilty over the things I don´t get done, the books and teaching materials I don´t read, the lessonplans and notes I don´t write etc. etc. Just wait, it will be like a passageway to Heaven!

I simply love the faded, pale, dusty colours of used, washed-out and second-hand textiles. Doesn´t always matter if some of them have marks, spots and stains and maybe even a hole or a patch. I don´t go for the perfect – but for materials with "soul".

For instance this piece of patchwork is made out of my worn milkboy-striped painter´s jacket, an old table cloth and some tea towels. I like to recycle ideas, materials and stuff. And whenever a new spot or hole appears, I just sew a new patch on top of it, or maybe I chose to add an embrodery of some kind to cover it. In that way a lot of my pieces and clothes could be called "work-in- progress" as they are participating in an ongoing wearing down/ building up process.