Hygge

Ah – Summertime – Sweet, Sweet Summertime.

It’s June 23rd. The days are long but we’ve past the very longest day of the year – which might make me melancholy – accept I’m forever mindful of that schools out schedule, and so feel that summer stretches before us still, in all it’s short sweet Canadian glory.  apple blossoms

The apple blossoms have faded but the peonies are still blossoming and hanging their lovely heavy heads. yellow peony

It’s disheartening to know they will droop and scatter their generous petals soon but in a few days the garden vegetables will be ready and my favorite – the raspberries – will follow.

 

One of my earliest memories is of picking raspberries beside my grandmother in a magical patch of juicy red sweetness that absolutely enveloped me.

raspberry summers

And there will be days and nights at the lake – kayak and canoe trips sliding over the still water, swims at sunset and campfires after dusk. rose swims

 

 

Evenings with family or friends gathered around an outside table slurping up the sweetness of peaches and cream listening for the call of a loon on the lake and seeing flashes of fireworks on another shore. girls play

So the longest day has come and gone but summer is only just begun …

The Baby Would Be Alice, and the Book Alice In The Womb – So Hygge

Candle light, bundled-up babies, knit sweaters, warm coffee with close friends. I’ve just been learning about  ‘hygge’ – a Danish term for the art of accepting the long dark days of winter and taking a gentle respite with them, the concept of restorative coziness and making ordinary moments more meaningful. While making cranberry sauce and watching The Gilmore Girls revival on a snowy evening (very hygge) I heard the most delightful quote – ‘I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.’ – Ralph Waldo Emerson.lucy nap

Oh, so true. How books make us. And too, how we make books. When my eldest daughter, an artist and lover of science, was pregnant – she sat quietly with winter storms outside, and sketched the embryonic happenings going on inside her womb. Her soft sensual drawings of egg to babe are scientifically accurate but are surrounded by imagined creatures, flora and fauna.  The baby would be named Alice, and the book, Alice in the Womb.

Alice in the Womb, is so hygge. It’s visual narrative engenders a feeling of well being andshea-drawing-by-rose thus it’s an unique and soothing  colouring book, and a beautiful learning tool (the drawings are numbered for referral in the glossary), but most of it details the rich inner life of nine months in the womb.

blocks-by-roseMy daughter now has a second daughter – and has created a second book – the wild and unusual ABC Monstrosity and 123 – for kids and grownups to colour or read. With two small children and an eclectic art practice, her days of hygge are fewer, but she couldn’t be more content then on her trips to the nearby post office with a cozy little one’s mittened hand in hers, and copies of Alice in the Womb or ABC Monstrosity to deliver to destinations far and wide. alice-in-sleighOrder now from Shea Proulx through Etsy or Amazon and you’ll receive them in time for the holiday season – packaged with lots of love.

Click here for  Alice in the Womb from Amazon and ABC and 123 Monstrosity from Amazon.

Click here for   Both books from Etsy