Diary pages from LouLou in England

I love these images of diary pages, from the website of Louise Best, aka LouLou, who loves (and makes) books and lives behind a hedge in a village in England.

She has a website here, and a blogspot there, and even a shop over at Etsy. Take a look...LouLou loves yoga, too, and has written some long blog letters from a trip to India. She's the adoring mother of two daughters.

We are both fans of the Garden and Cosmos show, put together by the brilliant people at the Freer and Sackler Gallery on the Mall in Washington, DC. My dear friend Deb, who works there (toiling long hours in the warren of museum tunnels under the Mall) found LouLou for me...a birthday gift from a fellow Leo.

There's a photo of postcards LouLou/ Louise has made, inspired by the glorious Garden and Cosmos. And the lovely diary pages offer mind mapping of yet another kind.
LouLou has a nice name for this place where you can sometimes locate fellow blogartists – the "interwonderweb"....indeed!

"Garden and Cosmos" Embellished Clothespins

Consider the humble wooden clothespin: one of the great little inventions. I got pulled into a new little crafting obsession with this stumbled-upon tutorial from Pin and Paper (who endearingly describes herself as "mother, crafter, knitter, reader, writer, procrastinator. Sarcastic, self-deprecating, exhausted yet inspired"). It's very easy, and before I knew it we had a crowd of embellished clothespins, perfect as magnets or an alternative to paper clips.

My first batch was made with beautiful postcards from my friend Deb, from the Garden and Cosmos show at the Freer and Sackler Galleries in Washington, D.C., where she works. Here's a glimpse. I loved seeing that show last November, and the images continue to haunt and inhabit – now they are hanging from their own clothespins. The photos aren't fabulous, but the clothespins really are!

Bambi in the Christmas Tree

We went to Minnesota for Christmas, as we always do, for a few all-too-short days with my parents at City Bella, framed on either side by that 12-hour drive. A bit of ice, but not too bad this time (last year was terrifying).

We had a wonderful time – a whirlwind, a pause, a gasp of fresh cold air, a van packed to the max with stuff, a trudge through the snow, a trip to IKEA for lamps (one of them, on my desk now, cost only $2.99), a visit to the Walker Art Center to see the Text/Messages art books show, a visit to TMORA, The Museum of Russian Art, to stand in awe in front of the icons, a Christmas morning brunch with Grandmother Boo and her Christmas Box Theater, in an audience of many children, a visit with Thea and Sandy and Jenny, and one with Rose, and a trip to Wedge Co-op with Wally, our Bush Tucker man (patient, reliable gatherer of food), where we got watercress, clementines, fair trade tea, seeded wheat bread, free-range chicken, bath salts, and everything else. Meals, did I mention the meals? My parents are fabulous cooks.

When we returned, we came into the house to find a Christmas tree (we'd skipped all decorating this year), left by my dear friend Deb from Kensington, Maryland. She adorned it with the gas station stag I found on our visit to her house at Thanksgiving (she's keen to my Bambi obsession). Under the tree were some beautiful presents from the Freer + Sackler Galleries, home of the magnificent Garden and Cosmos Show. It was such a joy to walk in to find this enchanting tree, which I moved into the dining room, next to Sav's drawing of the trip to Minnesota, and the wooden bear with girl on his back from TMORA, that my mother gave me for Christmas. The sweet tree is still there a week later, but most of the candy has disappeared.

Garden and Cosmos at America's Mall

We made our way to America's Mall, along with throngs of other people. There will be a big event there on January 20th, so we kept trying to imagine the space filled with 4 or so million people. Mike and Deb debated all day: "Should we plan on coming? How close should we try to be?"

Deb now works at the Freer and Sackler Galleries (where January 20th will be a day-of-work, somehow), home of Asian art and a specialized collection of American art that includes a lot of Whistlers. We learned quite a bit about the Smithsonian Institution, the world's largest museum complex and research organization (9 museums, 9 research centers, and the National Zoo). And all of those museums are free and open to the public.

We went to the newly re-opened American History Museum, where Deb and I enjoyed the "Within These Walls" exhibit, as well as a glimpse of Julia Childs' Kitchen. ("Keep into the kitchen, and make it a real family room, and part of your life," said Julia.) We also saw a nice exhibit on the subject of book illustration, where I snapped this photo of Indian motorcycle images.

All of us walked to the beautiful American Indian Museum, where we had a delicious lunch. (Isn't it interesting that the acronym is AIM, as in the American Indian Movement? I'm sure there is a story there...) We noticed how the curves of the building, walking paths and pools en route to the museum create an atmospheric calm compared to the grid-like paths alongside the mall. After lunch Deb and I walked through the magical Enid A. Haupt Garden to the Freer and Sackler, where we swooned over the (east) Indian Garden and Cosmos show.

(That's three different types of "Indian" in a single blog post – one written while our thoughts are also tuned to the terrible situation in Mumbai.)

The Garden and Cosmos catalogue is absolutely sumptuous, and I've been pouring over it in the hours since we came home. I'm also planning to join the Freer and Sackler Galleries facebook page. I wish I had a month or two to spend exploring the museums along America's Mall, where displays of ingenuity and brilliance abound.