Texture Tuesday 21.05

pomegranate flowers

shared with Kim Klassen’s Textured Tuesdays

Daily Post weekly writing challenge: through the door

The door to your house/flat/apartment/abode has come unstuck in time. The next time you walk through it, you find yourself in the same place, but a different time entirely. Where are you, and what happens next?

I left my parents’ house early that morning, carefully locking the door behind me as they are elderly and I do not like to leave the front door unlocked. I was off to try and find the Café des rêves (the Dream Café or Café of Dreams), a very special café my sister had told me about. When I eventually found it, it was all that it promised with its shabby chic décor and vintage clothing. I was transported into another world. I enjoyed drinking a decent cup of coffee from a one-off antique cup and saucer. I was so contented, sitting in the corner by the window watching the world go by, that I didn’t realise how fast my self-allotted time had passed and I had to hurry to get back home in time for lunch.

As I went through the front gate and up the path to the front door I thought that the garden had changed, there were plants and trees in it that weren’t there when I left. Even the colour of the front door was different and the door knocker wasn’t the brass dolphin I was accustomed to seeing. On each side of the door was a door bell. Under one, on an embossed brass plate was inscribed ‘night bell’ and over the other ‘day bell’. Paint was peeling on the frame round the door; which surprised me because usually my father was meticulous about the upkeep of the house.

I opened the door with the key I’d borrowed from my mother and stepped into the hall. Gone was the Venetian pendant glass lamp, the prints depicting the city of my birth a century ago, and the vase of daffodils on a small occasional table. Instead there was an old brown carpet with an indistinct pattern on it. The house was quiet but then the house was always quiet so that didn’t bother me but at least the house usually felt lived in.

I went down the short flight of stairs to the living room and almost bumped into the door, which no longer had glass panels in it. Inside the room was bare. A yellowish floor covering marked out in cracked and lifting tiles greeted my eyes. The large glass-fronted dresser containing my parents’ prized collection of Spode china was empty and was painted in a dull red paint. My father had spent hours with a blow torch and a paint scraper painstakingly scraping off the accumulated layers of paint and grime to reveal the surface of the plain wood underneath.

The adjoining kitchen was bereft of life and furniture too. I climbed the back stairs to what I knew as the guest bathroom only to find another bare room. It was the same in the other rooms in the house the higher I climbed until at last I reached the top floor where my parents slept. In the middle bedroom there was a bed, a chest of drawers and a chair. Next to the window there dangled a long tube made of fabric-covered metal mesh with a sort of funnel at the end. The house had formerly belonged to a doctor and she had used the speaking tube, for this is what it was, to communicate with patients who might pitch up late at night, hence the night bell for there was a funnel above that too.
On the floor was a large Moses basket. I knew where and when I was then. I was in the house when we moved in. I was only 6 months old and still small enough to sleep in one of the drawers from the chest. I would sleep in the Moses basket in a couple of month’s time.

It was strange to be in the house with almost no furniture in it. In the present day my parents were slowly divesting themselves of unnecessary clutter with a view to having to downsize at some point in the future if their state of health so dictated. The circle could soon be completed.

Read what other people discovered through the door

new ATC’s

A few years ago I used to make and exchange ATC’s (Artist Trading Cards) but as we started to travel more I had to choose a more portable hobby and began to dabble in digital creations. Yesterday I had the chance to show a couple of friends how to make ATC’s using (at last) some images from my (huge) stash. These are the ones I made.

a lucky cut with the scissors revealed the words “most faithfully” in the bottom one. Sometimes you don’t actually see what you’ve created until it’s finished. It’s the same with photographs – elements hidden at the time of taking the photo are revealed when you can view the picture on a large screen.

After so much time away from the physical act of creating a collage it was a pleasure to riffle through the images and find things that spoke to me. As always it was also a pleasure to revisit some of the images I’ve collected from various magazines over the years.

Cee’s fun foto challenge: which ways – steps or stairs

Cee set us a wonderful challenge this week: showcase steps or stairs.

mosaic stairs in the Nek Chand rock garden, Chandigarh, India

mosaic staircase at Wat Phan Tao, Thailand

the magnificent naga (seven-headed snake) staircase at Wat Prah That, Doi Suthep, near Chiang Mai, Thailand

staircase leading up to Batu cave temple near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

stone staircase in the picturesque village of Gordes, Provence

staircase in the Peranakan Mansion, Penang

2 views of a spiral staircase in Strasbourg

Tarr Steps, a prehistoric stepping stone bridge in north Devon, UK

Christmas Steps in Bristol, UK.

Do you share my interest in steps and stairs, wonder to what possibilities they lead ……

Photo Art Friday: light/shadows

This week Bonnie challenged us to work with the optional theme of ‘light/shadows’.

I loved the way the light back-lit these hollyhock flowers so I have given them minimal treatment by adding Bonnie’s texture ‘dream wonder’ which I blended with linear light and reduced the opacity

a word a week challenge: old

Turkey is a country full of marvellously photogenic old things ….. from the travertine terraces of Pamukkale

to the ancient ruins of Aphrodisias

and of Ephesus

to more recent old buildings in the abandoned Greek village of Sandima

and thence to its people

Visit Skinnywench’s site to see how other people have interpreted OLD this week

weekly photo challenge: colour

This week’s Daily Post weekly photo challenge is colour:

brilliantly coloured fabrics for sale in the market in Jodhpur, India

watercolour paint pigments for sale in Pushkar, India. I’ve no idea how they achieve this vividness in their colours and we never saw them on sale anywhere else

vegetable vendor in Pushkar

some brightly coloured saris in Pushkar

closer to home, in the Parc de Wesserling, Alsace, France:

a splash of colour is provided by this little girl’s dress

a lampshade for the garden made from woven strips of fabric

does your garden fence need livening up a bit? try weaving strips of fabric through the mesh

a vivid purple convolvulus flower

street theatre artistes in Luxembourg city

stained glass window in Canterbury cathedral

Photo Art Friday: collage

Bonnie’s optional challenge this week was to create a collage.

I can see that I haven’t quite mastered the art of blending the edges or making clean selections, but it’s all part of the learning curve. I used one of Bonnie’s textures to draw the finished composition together.

Photo Art Friday: graffiti

Bonnie’s optional challenge this week was a really difficult one: incorporate some graffiti into your image or create your own.
I never miss an opportunity to photograph graffiti or street art but producing my own was quite a different kettle of fish! I settled for incorporating 2 of my photographs of graffiti with a third one of a piece of wall to produce this

DH said he thought the result looked a mess but I was more interested in the experiment than the final result.

And just for fun:

weekly photo challenge: future tense

In today’s challenge we want you to grab an image from your world that holds the promise or portent of the future. It could be:

As everyday as the experience of waiting for a bus or train.

As abstract as something that symbolizes your ambitions or hopes for the future.

A note, prayer or promise jotted on a napkin or cross-stitched with exquisite tenderness.

The promise or portent of spring, sunrise, or storm in nature.

A street candid of someone nervously waiting on their date to arrive.

A piano falling from a third storey flat into the oncoming path of an adorable kitten. Or any other action about to take place.

Anything that involves the present and a hint of the future all in one frame.

We spend so much of our lives thinking back, or looking ahead, and even though a photo captures only one moment in time, with a bit of thought it can freeze the process of moving forward, or the promise of things to come. Your challenge this week is to seal one such moment in amber.

I’ve chosen to share some photos taken in Sri Lanka, Bali and Turkey.

Poya or Poya Day is the name given to a Buddhist public holiday in Sri Lanka which occurs every full moon day. Men, women and children flock to the temples to leave offerings of flowers to Buddha.

Every good Buddhist is expected to make the pilgrimage to the temple of the sacred tooth relic in Kandy at least once in their lifetime. The inner sanctum containing this holiest of relics is only opened for 20 minutes twice a day and people queue for hours for a chance to file past and catch a glimpse of the casket which contains it.

Many Asian people believe in the protection provided by the spirit world and Sri Lanka is no exception.
There is a great tradition of mask carving here and many buildings will have a mask of one or other of the spirits fixed somewhere to protect the building and the people living or working inside it. One of the most popular ones is that of the peacock spirit. These are a selection of masks we saw in the mask museum at Ambalangoda.

In Bali it’s hard to avoid stepping on offerings as there as so many of them everwhere. Creating them is considered an artform and they are designed to be as appealing as possible.

when a child reaches the age of 2 a little boat with a flower offering on board is sent out to sea to wish him/her well in the future

carrying baskets of offerings on their heads the people make their way to the temple

In Turkey too, the famous blue and white beads are incorporated into decorations for protection against the evil eye and are displayed in homes and businesses