Friday, January 31, 2014

fairytale friday with fairy tale about the wicker chair

























Fairy Tale About The Wicker Chair
written by Hermann Hesse

     A young man sat in his solitary attic.  His greatest desire was to become a painter, but first he had to overcome quite a few obstacles.  To begin with, he lived peacefully in his attic, grew somewhat older, and became accustomed to sitting for hours in front of a small mirror and experimenting with painting self-portraits.  He had already filled an entire notebook with such sketches, and he was very satisfied with some of them.
     "Considering htat I never went to art school," he said to himself, "this sketch has turned out rather well.  And that is an interesting wrinkle there next to the nose.  You can see that I'm something of a thinker or something similar.  I need only to lower the corner of the mouth a little.  Then I'd have my own special expression, quite melancholy."
     But when he reexamined the sketches sometime later, most of them no longer pleased him.  That was irritating, but he concluded from this that he had made progress and was now placing greater demands himself.
     The young man did not live in the most desirable attic, nor did he have a very agreeable relationship with the things lying and standing around this attic.  However, it was not a bad relationship.  He hardly noticed the objects and was not very familiar with them.
     Whenever he failed to paint a good self-portrait, he read for a while from books and learned what had happened to other people who, like him, had begun as modest and completely unknown painters and then had become very famous.  He liked to read such books and read his own future in them.
     So one day he was again somewhat sullen and depressed and sat at home reading about a very famous Dutch painter.  He read that this painter had been possessed by a true passion.  Indeed, he was frenetic and completely governed by a drive to become a good painter.  The young man found that he had many traits in common with this Dutch painter.  As he read further, he also discovered many that did not exactly fit him.  Among other things he read that whenever the Dutchman had not been able to paint outside due to bad weather, he had painted everything inside, even the tiniest object that met his eyes, unflinchingly and passionately.  One time he had painted a pair of old wooden shoes, and another time an old crooked chair--a coarse, rough kitchen and peasant chair made out of ordinary wood, with a seat woven out of straw, quite tattered.  The painter had painted this chair, which nobody certainly would have considered worth a glance, with so much love and dedication and with so much passion and devotion that it became one of his most beautiful pictures.  The painter's biographer found many wonderful and appropriately touching words to say about this painted straw chair.

























     Here the reader stopped and contemplated.  That was something new that he had to try.  He decided immediately--for he was a young man who made very rash decisions--to imitate the example of this great master and to try this way to greatness.
     He looked around in his attic and realized that he had actually not paid much attention to the things among which he lived.  He did not find a crooked chair with a set woven out of straw anywhere; nor were there any wooden shoes.  Therefore he was momentarily dejected and despondent, and he almost felt discouraged, as he had often felt whenever he read about the lives of great men.  At those times he realized that all the little indicators and remarkable coincidences that had played roles in the lives of the others had not become apparent in his life, and he would wait in vain for them to appear.  However, he soon pulled himself together and realized that it was now his task to be persistent and pursue his difficult path to fame.  He examined all the objects in his little room and discovered a wicker chair that could serve him very well as a model.
     He pulled the chair closer with his foot, sharpened his art pencil, took his sketch pad on his knee, and began to draw.  After a couple of light first strokes, he seemed tohave captured the form sufficiently, and now he inked in the thick outlines with a few firm and powerful strokes.  A deep triangular shadow in a corner attracted him, and he painted it full of strength, and so he continued until something began to disturb him.
     He worked a little while longer.  Then he held the sketch pad away from himself and examined his sketch carefully.  His very first glance told him that he had completely failed to capture the wicker chair.

John Foster Dyess

     Angrily he drew a new line into the sketch and fixed his eyes grimly on the chair.  The sketch was still not right.  It made him mad.
     "You demonic wicker chair!" he screamed violently.  "I've never seen a beast as moody as you are!"
     The chair cracked a little and said with equanimity, "Yes, take a look at me!  I am as I am, and I won't change myself anymore."
     The painter kicked it with his toe.  The chair swerved backward to avoid the kick and now looked completely different.
     "You dumb chair!" the young man exclaimed.  "Everything is crooked and wrong about you."
     The wicker chair smiled a little and said softly, "That's what's called perspective, young man."
     The painter jumped up.  "Perspective!" he yelled furiously.  "Now this clown of a chair comes and wants to play schoolteacher.  Perspective is my affair, not yours.  Remember that!"
     The chair said nothing more.  The painter stomped loudly back and forth a few times until someone began pounding beneath the floor with a cane.  An elderly man, a scholar, lived under him, and he could not bear the noise.
     The young man sat down and looked at his last self-portrait.  But it did not please him.  He found that he looked more handsome and interesting in reality, and that was the truth.
     Now he wanted to read his book again, but there was more in the book about the Dutch straw chair, which irritated him.  He now felt that the writer had really made much too much of it, and after all...
     The young man looked for his artist's hat and decided to go out.  He remembered that he had long ago been struck by the fact that painting was not very fulfilling.  One had nothing but bother and disappointments, and in the end even the best painter in the world could portray only the simple surface of objects.  For a man who loved the profound aspects of life, it was no profession for him in the long run.  And once more he seriously thought, as he had done many times, about following an even earlier inclination and becoming a writer instead of a painter.  The wicker chair remained behind in the attic.  It was sorry that its young master had gone.  It had hoped that a decent relationship could finally develop between the two of them.  It would have liked at times to speak a word, and it knew that it certainly had many valuable things to teach a young man.  But unfortunately nothing ever came of this.

James Gulliver Hancock
    

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Wednesday, January 29, 2014

weekly wednesday eco lingerie design discount



Week 2 of the Armoire Wonderment Inventory Clearout
     The decision has been made to offer a leap and bound discount every week on Wednesdays.  I personally agree with Wednesdays most of the time.  They do not stand in the way and open a breathe of aire like the tallest perch you can see from your window.  Yes, Wednesdays will do.  As each week may be juxtaposed with new ideas, so flies the weekly design love from our Under The Root shop.

    This is week two of a bit more brilliance by the continuation of 50 percent off an entire section of the ready to ship designs.  The prices all reflect the decrease.  This discount will be ongoing for one week, until next Wednesday begins the succeeding design choice on the chopping block.  There are nearly 40 pieces ready to go and sparkly and new.  The sizes range from small to large with the measurements listed with each design.  There are lingerie drawer satchets, arm spats, and blindfolds too.

     The authentic reason for these peculiar discounts is to deplete the materials in our stock, for the next evolution can certainly use some padding of the kitty.  We have aspirations for using organic hemp in our designs.. possibly added organic materials as well.  That's right, it is time to move into a more sustainable, extra whopping, super monster fireflies on these pieces.  Yes, there will continue limited, one of a kind materials in the work for some designs, but I am ravenous to push the envelope of what is possible with hemp... and it is essential to inquire for your assistance in the purchase of materials process.  You receive our designs at out of the ordinary prices as we build the revenue for extraordinary materials of the future.  

read more or purchase...



Monday, January 27, 2014

modern dance monday with kt niehoff





















Lingo Productions 
     The project of KT Niehoff.  It is the container for her creative works in all forms: performance, commissions, writing, film, teaching and research.  Lingo expands and contracts in numbers depending on the demands of the work, yet is centered around a reoccurring cast of characters who have been instrumental in the creation of Lingo's vision.
     In the last three years (2009-present), these bravehearts, lunatics, magicians, actors and yes, dancers, include: Bianca Cabrera, Shaun Kardinal, Aiko Kinoshita, Jody Kuehner, Ricki Mason, Michael Rioux, Kelly Sullivan, Ivory Smith, Aaron Swartzman, Evan Ritter, Scott Colburn, Markeith Wiley, Ben Delacreme, Joanne Whitzkowski, Alex Martin and others.
     Lingo Productions has been presented internationally in Canada (Dancing on the Edge Festival, Vancouver BC), Japan (Alti Buyoh festival, Kyoto / Tori Hall, Osaka), Ecuador (Alas de la Danza, Quito - with support from Arts International), Germany (as one of four companies chosen to represent the U.S. at the 2004 Tanzmesse, Düsseldorf) and Cuba (Cuidad en Movimento, Havana). Nationally, the company has been presented by venues including On the Boards, Seattle, The Joyce SoHo, NYC, SUSHI, San Diego, Alverno Presents, Milwaukee, Jacob's Pillow Inside/Out Festival, The Southern Theater, Minneapolis (through an NEA funded touring initiative Niehoff created called SCUBA), The Oregon Britt Festival and Vanderbilt University, Nashville, as well as many colleges and universities throughout the U.S.
      Lingo's artistic integrity has been recognized by such institutions as The National Endowment for the Arts, The National Dance Project, The National Performance Network, Meet the Composer, Seattle, Washington and King County Arts Commissions, Arts International, The Bossak/Heilbron Foundation and the Jack Straw Foundation.

     Just as I found this womyn.. there was a moment of clarity in the future for her work.
    
     The finale of Lingo Productions has happened, April 2013.  A step that Niehoff says has been a long time coming, this entails “the simple act of disbanding the company itself.  And all that goes along with the assumption, and the responsibility that a company model requires.”  In no way, however, is this a finale for Niehoff’s art-making ambitions.  Almost running parallel to her theories on movement, it seems that Niehoff’s thoughts on art are experiencing an “unhinging,” and a delving further into a new branch of creativity.  Collision Theory and her other works on a variety of platforms have given Niehoff a new kind of fulfillment, and she plans to continue experimenting even further in that direction.  “My sensibility, or my ideas of what an active art is, has really started to change and shift over the last six years, and its gotten pretty abstract,” she says.
     Niehoff’s presence as a dance maker and teacher in the community will be mutually missed. “I love the dance community here so much.” she says. “But I want to develop a new relationship with the art world and also the dance world here. I want to mentor and be present and somehow be in it, but I need to do it in a different way now.” If anyone is capable of doing things a different way, surely Niehoff is.
excerpt written by Mariko Nagashima for Seattle Dances


















Friday, January 24, 2014

fairytale friday with appleless

Enjoy Life, It's Delicious
























Appleless
written by Aimee Bender
found within Fairy Tale Review

     I once knew a girl who wouldn't eat apples.  She wove her walking around groves and orchards.  She didn't even like to look at them.  They're all mealy, she said.  Or else too cheeky, too bloomed.  No, she stated again, in case we had not heard her, our laps brimming with Granny Smiths and Red Deliciouses.  With Galas and Spartans and yellow Golden Globes.  But we had heard her, from the very first; we just couldn't help offering again.  Please, we pleaded, eat.  Cracking our bites loudly, exposing the dripping wet white inside.

Apples of New York





















      It's unsettling to meet people who don't eat apples.
     The rest of us, now, eat only apples, to compensate.  She has declared herself so apple-less, we feel we have no other choice.  We sit in the orchard together, cross-legged, and when they fall off the trees into our outstretched hands, we bite right in.  They are pale green, striped red-on-red, or a yellow and orange sunset.  They are the threaded Fujis, with streaks of woven jade and beige, or the dark and rosy Rome Beauties.  Pippins, Pink Ladies, Braeburns, Macintosh.  The orchard grows them all.

Pommes De France


















  
     We suck water off the meat.  Drink them dry.  We pick apple skin out from the spaces between our teeth.  We eat the stem and the seeds.  And for the moment, there are enough beauties bending the branches for all of us to stay fed for awhile.  We circle around the core, teeth busy, and while we chew, we watch the girl circle our orchard, in her long swishing skirts, eyes averted.

Apple Picking
























      
     One day we see her, and it's too much.  She is so beautiful on this day, her skin as wide and open as a river.  We could swim right down her.  It's unbearable to just let her walk off, and all at once, we abandon our laps of apples and run over.  Her hair is so long and wheatlike you could bake it into bread.  For a second our hearts pang for bread.  Bread!  We've been eating only apples now for weeks.
     We close in; we ring her.  Her lips fold into each other; our lips skate all over her throat, her bare wrists, her empty palms.  We kiss her like we've been starving and she tilts her head down so she doesn't have to look at us.  We knead her hair and kiss down the long line of her leg beneath the shift of her skirt.  We pray to her and our breath is ripe with apple juice.  You can see the tears start races down her face while our hands moe in to touch the curve of her breasts and scoop of her neckline.  She is so new.  There are pulleys in her skin.  Our fingers, all together, work their way to her bare body, past the voluminous yards of cloth.  Past those loaves of hair.  We find her in there, and she is so warm and so alive and we see the tears, but stop?  Impossible.  We breathe in, closer.  Her eyelashes brighten with water.  Her shoulders tremble like doves.  She is weeping into our arms, she is crumpling down and we are inside her clothes now and our hands and mouths are everywhere.  There's no sound at all but the slip of skin and her crying and apples in the orchard thumping, un-caught:  our lunches and dinners and breakfasts.  It's an unfamiliar sound, because for weeks now, we have not let even ove single fruit hit dirt.

Apples of New York















     
     She cries through it all and when we're done and piled around her, suddenly timid and spent, suddenly withered nothings, she is the first to stand.  She gathers her skirts around herself, and smoothes back down her hair.  She wipes her eyes clear and folds her hands around her waist.  She is away from the orchard before we can stand properly and beg her to stay.  Before we can grovel and claw at her small perfect feet.  We watch her walk and she's slow and proud but none of us can possibly catch her.  We splay on the ground in a circle instead as she gets smaller and smaller on the horizon.
     She never comes by the orchard again, and in a week, all the apples are gone.  They fall off the trees and the trees make no new ones.  The air smells like snow on the approach.  No one dares to mention her but every morning, all of our eyes are fixed on the road, waiting, hoping, staring through the bare branches of an empty orchard.  Our stomachs rumble, hungry.  The sky is always this same sort of blue.  It is so beautiful here.

John Westrock




















Wednesday, January 22, 2014

weekly wednesday eco lingerie design discount

Midnight Blumen Undies $10












Triangle Bikini $15

Chartreuse Camisole $27.50


     The decision has been made to offer a leap and bound discount every week on Wednesdays.  I personally agree with Wednesdays most of the time.  They do not stand in the way and open a breathe of aire like the tallest perch you can see from your window.  Yes, Wednesdays will do.  As each week may be juxtaposed with new ideas, so flies the weekly design love from our Under The Root shop.
 
    This week is a bit more brilliant because it is 50 percent off an entire section of the ready to ship designs.  Beginning today, the prices all descend.  This discount will be ongoing for one week, until next Wednesday begins the succeeding design choice on the chopping block.  There are nearly 50 pieces ready to go and sparkly and new.  The sizes range from small to large with the measurements listed with each design.

 
     The authentic reason for these peculiar discounts is to deplete the materials in our stock, for the next evolution can certainly use some padding of the kitty.  We have aspirations for using organic hemp in our designs.. possibly added organic materials as well.  That's right, it is time to move into a more sustainable, extra whopping, super monster fireflies on these pieces.  Yes, there will continue limited, one of a kind materials in the work for some designs, but I am ravenous to push the envelope of what is possible with hemp... and it is essential to inquire for your assistance in the purchase of materials process.  You receive our designs at out of the ordinary prices as we build the revenue for extraordinary materials of the future.  

read more or purchase...



Poppy Fields Garter Belt now $20

Libby Loo Photography and model Paris Irene Cannon





















Friday, January 17, 2014

fairytale friday with the zoology fables


























STORIES FROM ZOOLOGY
Leo Tolstoy
 

THE OWL AND THE HARE
     It was dusk.  The owls began to fly through the forest to find some prey.  A large hare leaped out on a clearing and began to smooth out his fur.  An old owl looked at the hare, and seated himself on a branch; but a young owl said to him, "Why do you not catch the hare?"  The old owl said, "He is too much for me:  if I get caught in him, he will drag me into the woods."  But the young owl said, "I will stick one claw into his body, and with the other I will clutch a tree."  

     The young owl made for the hare, and stuck one claw into his back so that all his talons entered the flesh, and the other claw it got ready to push into the tree.  The hare yanked the owl, while the owl held on to the tree, and thought, "He will not get away."  The hare darted forward and tore the owl.  One claw was left in the tree, and the other in the hare's back.  
     The next year a hunter killed that hare, and wondered how the owl's talons had grown into the hare's back.




HOW THE WOLVES TEACH THEIR WHELPS
     I was walking along the road, and heard a shout behind me.  It was the shepherd boy who was shouting.  He was running through the field, and pointing to something.  I looked, and saw two wolves running through the field: one was full grown, and the other a whelp.  The whelp was carrying a dead lamb on his shoulders, and holding on to one of its legs with its teeth.  The old wolf was running behind.  

     When I saw the wolves, I ran after them with the shepherd, and we began to shout.  In response to our cries came peasants with dogs.  The moment the old wolf saw the dogs and the people, he ran up to the whelp, took the lamb away from him, threw it over his back, and both wolves ran as fast as they could, and disappeared from view.  Then the boy told what had happened:  the large wolf had leaped out from the ravine, had seized the lamb, killed it, and carried it off.  The whelp ran up to him and grasped the lamb.  The old wolf let the whelp carry the lamb, while he himself ran slowly beside him.  
     Only when there was danger, did the old wolf stop his teaching and himself take the lamb.


























HARES AND WOLVES
     The hares feed at night on tree bark; the field hares eat the winter rye and the grass, and the threshing floor hares eat the grain in the granary.  Through the night the hares make a deep, visible track through the snow.  The hares are hunted by men, and dogs, and wolves, and foxes, and ravens, and eagles.  If a hare walked straight ahead, he would be easily caught in the morning by his tracks; but Mother Nature has made a hare timid, and his timidity saves him.  

     A hare goes at night fearlessly through the forests and fields, making straight tracks; but as soon as morning comes and his enemies wake up, and he hears the bark of dogs, or the squeak of sleighs, or the voice of peasants, or the crashing of a wolf through the forest, he begins to toss from side to side in his fear.  He jumps forward, gets frightened at something, and runs back on his track.  He hears something again, and he leaps at full speed to one side and runs away from his old track.  Again something makes a noise, and the hare turns back, and again leaps to one side.  
     When it is daylight, he lies down.  In the morning the hunters try to follow the hare tracks, and they get mixed up on the double tracks and long leaps, and marvel at the hare's cunning.  But the hare did not mean to be cunning.  He is merely afraid of everything.

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

weekly wednesday eco lingerie design discount




















     The decision has been made to offer a leap and bound discount every week on Wednesdays.  I personally agree with Wednesdays most of the time.  They do not stand in the way and open a breathe of aire like the tallest perch you can see from your window.  Yes, Wednesdays will do.  As each week may be juxtaposed with new ideas, so flies the weekly design love from our Under The Root shop.

    This week is the Isadora Sentient Extra Long Scarves.  Beginning today, the price descends from thirty five dollars ($35), to twenty dollars ($20).  This discount will be ongoing for one week, until next Wednesday begins the succeeding design choice on the chopping block.  There are colors to choose from our seasonal color chart inside the listing.   

     The authentic reason for these peculiar discounts is to deplete the materials in our stock, for the next evolution can certainly use some padding of the kitty.  We have aspirations for using organic hemp in our designs.. possibly added organic materials as well.  That's right, it is time to move into a more sustainable, extra whopping, super monster fireflies on these pieces.  Yes, there will continue limited, one of a kind materials in the work for some designs, but I am ravenous to push the envelope of what is possible with hemp... and it is essential to inquire for your assistance in the purchase of materials process.  You receive our designs at out of the ordinary prices as we build the revenue for extraordinary materials of the future.  

read more or purchase...



























Monday, January 13, 2014

modern dance monday with niddy impekoven



























excerpt taken from Empire of Ecstasy
     Probably no other dancer of the era more strongly evoked an aura of feminine innocence and geniality than Niddy Impekoven, yet she spent much of her career struggling against efforts to mold her body according to an image that conflicted with her desires.  She was born in Berlin in 1904; her father was a prominent actor, and her family contained many members involved in one way or another with the arts.  The great moment in her education came when her father permitted her to study for six weeks at the Loheland school in summer of 1918; there she experienced a freedom and awareness of bodily expression that decisively confirmed her desire to dance. 
     In 1918, Niddy created her curious series of doll dances, which in addition to the "rococo" doll and the Munchener Kaffeewarmer included miniatures inspired by the wax or porcelain figurines created by Lotte Pritzel, Erna Pinner, and Kathe Kruse.  The Erna Pinner doll dance appeared in the film Wege zu Kraft und Schonheit (1925), with Niddy wearing a delightful polka dot clown costume with black stockings and gloves.  She slumbered in an armchair until the twitching of her sleep and dreams propelled her into whirling, jerky, puppetlike movements that quickly exhausted her and caused her to fling herself back into slumber on the chair.
     Her father, however, felt the Loheland approach lacked rigor, so she took some lessons from perhaps the most prominent ballet master in Germany, Heinrich Kroller, who appreciated the uniqueness of her talent.  From then until 1923 she created a new program of dances every year, and these made her an object of enormous adulation throughout Germany.  Her exquisite, nubile embodiment of fairytale feminine innocence often provoked dark, possessive impulses in her male worshippers, and she became eerily conscious of the power of her seemingly harmless art to produce pathological consequences—or rather, to reveal secret conditions of illness, remoteness from innocence, in others.
     Most curious in this respect was a book about her, Briefe an eine Tanzerin (1922), written by Fred Hildenbrandt, feuilleton editor for the Berliner Tageblatt.  The dances of Niddy Impekoven awakened in Hildenbrandt a rapturous, unbridled, incoherent, even fanatical language of glorification:
She dances the breath of rapid-breathing anticipation, the play of a thousand things gleaming in the daylight, she dances the storm of tenderness, the weariness of all meanings, the blessed languor of the heart, she dances the sun, which creeps through the morning window, and she dances the early footsteps on the street which press in on her in her sleep.  So she spreads in her arms, her hands, her lips and eyes the shimmering mosaic of love and no one is there who can destroy it with naked eyes.  Her body is the chosen instrument of dance, the chosen instrument of love.
     In 1926, John Schikowski observed that, despite their evolution toward an 'adult' phase, Impekoven's dances were "still always the dances of a child" and disclosed "a world of naive feelings": "This world is small, but it is full of beauty and fairy-tale radiance.  This child gazes with large, teary, strangely shiny eyes, an aching smile on the lips.  A sick child.  Even over manic exuberance a little, melancholy cloud hovers.  Poignant the droll exaltation, the grimacing gestures.  Touching the little desires which strive toward heaven, without soaring, but rather helplessly seek their chains.  Tensions and releases of a gentle, sweet softness which appears vacuous when it does not assume a child-like style.  A perfectly polished body" 
     In 1955 she published her brief and poignant autobiography, Die Geschichte eines Wunderkinds, which examined her life only up to the age of fourteen and suggested that the image of childhood innocence pervasively defining public perception of her concealed a measure of suffering, self-sacrifice, and anxiety that one could never really transcend and that in any case hardly affirmed the innocence of her audience.   

     "My aim is constantly to distance myself from 'intellectual' dance. . . . The purest, most natural dance is for me the unreflective surrender to music"
-Niddy Impekoven





Friday, January 10, 2014

fairytale friday with the silent castle

























The Silent Castle
by Rosemary Lake

     Once there was a little girl who, after the death of her parents, went to live near a great woods with her old uncle and his two grandsons.  They were rather stupid, but they treated her very well, aside from thinking girls were no good for anything useful.
     One day the boys set out together in search of adventure, and were not heard from for a long time; and her uncle became very sad.  So the girl, whose name was Belinda, said, "I will go and look for them."
     "No, no," said the old man, "you are just a girl.  Where they have met danger, what could you do?" 
     Belinda didn’t want to argue with him, so she just said, "Well, maybe I could find some help, or let you know where they are."  So the old man agreed, and gave her a good horse and a purse of gold for the journey.
     Belinda rode along the edge of the forest, asking everyone she met about the boys.  Soon she found them washing dishes in an inn, for they had foolishly gambled away all their money.  From her uncle’s money-bag she paid their debts, and they thanked her kindly.  "You’re welcome," Belinda said.  "Now, shall we three go in search of adventure?"

Nell Brinkley 1919






















 
    
     Reluctantly the boys agreed.  So Belinda wrote her uncle a letter saying all was well, and the three rode on together.
     As they rode along, after a while they came to an anthill.  The two boys wanted to poke it with sticks to disturb the ants; but Belinda said, "Leave them alone, they have not hurt us."  So, to please her, the boys went on.
     Soon they came to a lake with many small ducklings swimming in it.  The boys wanted to catch the little ducks and cook them for supper; but Belinda said, "Leave them alone, they have not hurt us."  So the boys went on, and they found plenty of fruit and mushrooms for supper.
     Then they came to a hollow tree with a bees’ nest in it, with honey running out of holes in the trunk.  The boys wanted to make a fire and smother the bees with smoke and take all the honey.  But Belinda said, "Leave them alone, they have not hurt us."  So the boys took only the honey that was running out, and they rode on.
     That evening they came to a strange gray stone castle hidden in the deep woods, beyond a still shining lake.  No moving thing could be seen.  The stables were full of gray stone horses.  The door was unlocked, the halls were richly furnished, but no people could be found.
     "Well, this is certainly an adventure," said Belinda.
     The elder boy laughed.  "Fit for a girl, anyway.  Nothing is happening!"
     Then they came to a little door hidden deep inside the castle, which had three locks on it, and one small window in the middle.

Enchanted Castle by Samantha Storey

 
























     Taking turns, the children looked through the little hole.  Inside the room they saw a little grey-haired man sitting at a table.  They knocked, once, twice and he did not move; but at the third knock, he came to the door, slowly unlocked all the locks, and came out and bowed to them; never speaking a word.
     Silently the little man led them through a carpeted hall to a table loaded with all sorts of good things to eat, and when they had eaten and drunk their fill, he led them each to a comfortable bed-chamber.  And by this time they were so tired and sleepy that they all fell asleep without further ado.
     Next morning the little man awakened the eldest cousin and took him downstairs, leaving the other two children still sleeping soundly.
     Still without speaking, he led him to a glass casket, within which was scroll, only partly unrolled, which said:
There are three tasks, which if done will deliver this castle from its enchantment; and a great reward will be given to the hero who succeeds.
Task the First. Under the moss and leaves of the forest, are scattered a thousand pearls belonging to the Queen. All must be found by sunset of a single day, or the seeker shall be turned to stone.
     Upon reading this, the elder cousin rushed out to the woods and began looking for the pearls.  He searched all day, but the pearls were so scattered and so deeply hidden under the moss and leaves, that by sunset he had found scarcely one hundred.  So as soon as the last beam of sun left his hair, he was turned to stone.  All day the middle cousin and Belinda rested in the castle, wondering where he had gone.
     Next morning the little man woke the middle cousin and took him downstairs, leaving Belinda still sleeping soundly, and showed him the scroll.  The middle cousin too ran out to look for the pearls, but found only two hundred before sunset, and was also turned to stone.  When she woke and found herself alone, Belinda supposed that the cousins had decided to go on without her.  She spent the day exploring the castle and reading old books in its library, then had another fine dinner and went to sleep.
     Next morning the little man woke her at dawn.  Without speaking, her led her to the glass casket and showed her the scroll.
     "I wonder what are the other tasks," she said.  "It would be silly to risk getting turned to stone for the pearls, then find the other tasks were quite impossible."
     The little man smiled, bowed, and nodded reassuringly.
     "You mean," Belinda said, "that the other tasks are no worse?"
     He nodded.
     Belinda went outside, saw her cousins’ tracks, followed their trail, and found them both turned to stone.  She ran back and asked the little man, "Is there any way I can help them?"
     The little man nodded, and pointed at the scroll.
     "You mean – if I deliver the castle from its enchantment, my cousins will come back to normal too?"
     The little grey man nodded again, and pointed toward the stable with its stone horses, and smiled beseechingly.
     "Very well," said Belinda, "I will try."
     So Belinda took a sack, put in it the three hundred pearls the brothers had already found, and went out to search in the moss for the rest.  The moss and fallen leaves smelled wonderful, but by noon-time she had found only one dozen more pearls, and her back ached, and her fingers were sore with the digging and sifting dirt.  "I cannot do this!" she said, and sat down and wept.
     As she sat weeping, along came the King of the Ants, whose anthill Belinda had saved from her thoughtless cousins.  "What is your trouble?" he asked.
     When Belinda told him, the King of the Ants sent word, and soon five thousand ants came and searched under the moss, and it was not very long before the little insects had collected all the pearls and put them in a heap (including the three hundred pearls that her cousins had already found).  Belinda thanked them kindly, and they gave her their blessing and departed.
     So Belinda put the pearls in the sack and took them back to the little man, who beamed with happiness at the sight.  He placed the sack on the glass casket, and at once the scroll unwound to show the following words:
Task the Second: Somewhere in the mud of the lake, is hidden the key to the Queen’s bedchamber. It must be found by sunset of a single day, or the seeker shall be turned to stone.
     "How ever am I to do that?" thought Belinda.  But she went along to the lake, and there came swimming the little ducks whom she had saved.  They dived below and quickly found the key.

     Belinda gave the key to the little man, who laid it on the glass casket. The scroll unwound to show:
Task the Third: In the Queen’s bedchamber, she lies sleeping with two of her Ladies in Waiting. You must choose which is the true Queen.
     "How ever am I to do that?" thought Belinda. But she went along to the lake, and there came swimming the little ducks whom she had saved.  They dived below and quickly found the key.  Belinda gave the key to the little man, who laid it on the glass casket. The scroll unwound to show:      "Well, that might not be so hard," thought Belinda.  But when she came to the bed-chamber and opened it with the key, she found three ladies asleep, all so beautiful and wearing such soft white bed-clothes that there seemed no way to distinguish among them.
     So Belinda looked round the chamber.  On a little marble table were three cups: two of silver, containing the dregs of hot chocolate, and one of gold, containing the dregs of ambrosia and rosewater.  "Well, probably the Queen drank the rosewater," Belinda sighed, "but how does that help me find her?"
     Just then, through the window flew one of the bees whom Belinda had saved.  When Belinda told her the story, the bee at once went and sniffed the lips of each lady, and settled upon the one who had drunk the rosewater.
     So Belinda went to that lady's bed, stood straight, and said loudly: "This lady is the Queen!’
     At this the three ladies all sat up and smiled at Belinda, and the Queen said, "Welcome to our castle, my dear."  Outside, all the stone horses came back to life and began neighing and prancing.  The other people of the castle, who had been simply vanished, reappeared also; and all was life and celebration again.
     Belinda’s cousins also were restored, and when they ran back to the castle, found a great crowd on the lawn cheering Belinda as their rescuerer.  The Queen invited them all to live with her, and even sent for the old uncle as well.  She gave him and his sons a nice game-keeper’s cottage; but Belinda she took to live in the castle and gave the title of Princess. 
     So they all lived happily in great splendor and merriment from then on, and many years later after the Queen’s death, Belinda became Queen in her stead.


Queen of Hearts by Hajra Meeks

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

weekly wednesday eco loungerie design discount

















     The decision has been made to offer a leap and bound discount every week on Wednesdays.  I personally agree with Wednesdays most of the time.  They do not stand in the way and open a breathe of aire like the tallest perch you can see from your window.  Yes, Wednesdays will do.  As each week may be juxtaposed with new ideas, so flies the weekly design love from our Under The Root shop     This week is the Victorian Noir French Knickers.  Beginning today, the price descends from forty five dollars ($45), to thirty five dollars ($35).  This discount will be ongoing for one week, until next Wednesday begins the succeeding design choice on the chopping block.  There are colors to choose from our seasonal color chart inside the listing.    
     The authentic reason for these peculiar discounts is to deplete the materials in our stock, for the next evolution can certainly use some padding of the kitty.  We have aspirations for using organic hemp in our designs.. possibly added organic materials as well.  That's right, it is time to move into a more sustainable, extra whopping, super monster fireflies on these pieces.  Yes, there will continue limited, one of a kind materials in the work for some designs, but I am ravenous to push the envelope of what is possible with hemp... and it is essential to inquire for your assistance in the purchase of materials process.  You receive our designs at out of the ordinary prices as we build the revenue for extraordinary materials of the future.  

read more or purchase...























Monday, January 6, 2014

modern dance monday with velocity dance center seattle




















     Since moving to Seattle, Under The Root and myself, the main course of action is to return to the modern dance, body movement, and the art of dance.  The Spring classes begin today and so this journal entry is to focus on the place of my new classes, Velocity Dance Center.  Seattle is swarming with many concepts of dance, dance cinema, dance festivals, and body movement workshops.
   
     “It’ll be cool to see what these dancers . . . accomplish in the coming year under the guidance and protection of Velocity, an organization that is less a dance company and more like a hotbed of creativity that nurtures and supports dancers as they explore performing art to sometimes extraordinary limits.”
— Melody Datz, The Stranger Slog

      “How did [Velocity] and its support of local dancers contribute to your career?
In every way possible.”

— Corrie Befort of Salt Horse, Seattle Dance Examiner

      “Again and again, Velocity proves itself as both supporter and tastemaker for dance in Seattle. . .”
— SeattleDances



      "Mayor’s Arts Award and Genius Award winner Velocity Dance Center is Seattle’s premier art center dedicated to contemporary dance and performance.  A recognized leader as an artist-driven, community-centered dance incubator, Velocity fosters the creative explorations of artists and adventurous audiences through an invested commitment to education, creation, performance, inquiry, community participation, and inter/national exchange.  Velocity fulfills an unduplicated role as the epicenter for contemporary dance in the Pacific Northwest operating three studios, a dance resource room, an online journal and the only theater in the region especially developed for dance performances.  The primary art center supporting contemporary dance in Seattle since 1996, Velocity is instrumental in making Seattle a destination city with one of the most active dance communities in the nation.  In 2012 alone, Velocity served nearly 18,000 individuals; offered 2,000+ dance classes; provided low cost space to over 450 artists; activated a growing audience of thousands of dance enthusiasts; commissioned and developed 27 new works, and introduced more than 89 works of performance, film, installation and hybrid forms into the local and national dance ecology."

     

A core mission and value to the art of our bodies.  From hosting Next Fest NW to daily classes, workshops to performance venues and speakeasy.  There is a universe open enough to share.

Green Chair Dance Group image Adam Sekuler

Fire and Ice image Michelle Smith-Lewis

The Pendleton House image Tim Summers

Alana O Rogers image Tim Summers

Paige Barnes image Laurent Ziegler