15 February 2015

Warmer walks

I haven't posted here in a while. The truth is I haven't used my (beloved) camera since I started  to post iphone photos here (a new addiction I must say), but lets be honest: its not the same thing... 


Today, I picked up my camera from the drawer where it's been cocooning for the winter and found all these photos, taken in late October (2014) in Sintra, during one of the many walks...


... (and naps on the grass) enjoyed there. 



I was particularly happy to see these next 2 pics, taken in the gardens of Palacio da Pena, where we found an old abandoned chapel. Really a magical place.


Long live warm(er) days!


* some of the photos were taken by J

3 January 2015

A Japanese day to start of the New Year!

Purely by accident we walked by a new Japanese place in town called Taska Kome and decided to go in and have a bite. The owner is a lady called Yuko and the food is delicious. 


It gives you a taste of the other side of Japan's gastronomy besides sushi, though sushi is great as well here.


 The best was saved for last: green tea ice cream with azuki beans and sweet potato pie (surprisingly great).


After lunch we went here to see an exibition called "Boro - the fabric of life" (boro means ragged).
Japan's mended and patched textiles sewn from nineteenth and early twentieth century rags and patches of indigo dyed cotton.


The beautiful arrangement of patches and mending stitches was borne out of necessity and was not planned by the maker.


Boro textiles were stitched in the old farmhouses, often at night, by the light of one dim andon, on the laps of farm women. 


This unconscious creative process has been object of many articles, praising the beauty of this technique which is becoming more and more recognized and admired, certainly beyond the  utilitarian purpose for which they were initially created.


Of course nowadays, there can be a tendency to romanticise these textiles, yet this art of repair did not begin as an abstract philosophy but was born out of pure necessity: “Boro textiles were the domain of the ordinary man and represented a collective, impoverished past.
However their inherent beauty is undeniable.

Happy New Year Everyone!