Out of Amsterdam

I've been enjoying my leisurely time in Amsterdam - going to museums, hearing great concerts at the Concertgebouw, catching up with old friends, knitting, and just pottering. Amsterdam is the perfect place for pottering. The streets and canals meander and invite lingering and photographing, there are quirky and often beautiful specialist shops, and there are more coffee shops and places to stop for a glass of wine than you could imagine. Great places to rest when your feet are weary.

But what is amazing for an Australian is the ease with which you can travel out of Amsterdam. Within an hour on the train (in the case of Delft and many other places) or only 15 minutes (to Haarlem) you can be in a different city with its own complex, rich history.

There are always wonderful churches in these towns. In Delft there are actually two wonderful churches. There's the Oude Kerk (old church) with its fourteenth century leaning tower



and its austere interior and simple stone marking the burial place of master artist Jan Vermeer who died deeply in debt:




I visited the splendidly restored and recently reopened Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam today and discovered a 1654 painting of the Oude Kerk by Gerrit Houkgeest. While some of the detail, and most definitely the clothing of the visitors have changed, the general impression is still recognisable. Such a sense of continuity. More about the Rijksmuseum in another post.



Then there's also the Delft Nieuwe Kerk (new church - I love the idea of a 'new' church that's more than 450 years old), built initially between the fourteenth and sixteenth century, though much of its current structure was restored after destruction by a fire in 1536 and a disastrous explosion in the national arsenal in 1645. The extraordinary 100 metre tall tower was added only in the nineteenth century. And no, I didn't climb to the top, wonderful though the view might have been.



Like the old church, the new church has an elegantly plain interior:



Both churches began their lives as Catholic churches and, until the latter part of the sixteenth century, would have been more elaborately decorated, with carved alterpieces and images of saints like grand churches and cathedrals in more southerly Europe. But after the 'Alteration' of 1578 when the Calvinists took civil power, Catholics were expelled from Amsterdam and surrounding cities and much of the great religious art that decorated the churches was destroyed or desecrated. Sort of like the cultural revolution in China, but 400 years earlier. However dreadful the destruction, I have a liking for the austerity of these great churches. You find yourself admiring the spaces created by the builders, rather than the decoration.

Lovely as these Delft churches are, my favourite is the Great Church of St Bavo in Haarlem, mainly constructed during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It dominates the town square and old markets, and with ice-cream and souvenir shops and a ticket office squashed up against its walls it gives the impression that the rest of Haarlem has grown out of the church.



The exterior is not so remarkable, but the elegant proportions of the interior with its colonnaded side aisles, exquisitely decorated ceiling and eighteenth century organ have a quiet perfection.





The church is beautiful, but it also has a kind of worldliness about it. The entire floor is composed of gravestones - around 1500 stone slabs whose inscriptions have worn over time. But you can still see that the stones often include descriptions of the worldly status and honours of those whose bones lie beneath. Then there are the beautifully modelled ships suspended near the brewers' chapel (I like the idea of a brewers' chapel):



The ships were gifts from the Shipbuilders' Guild in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and are modelled on the ships built in Haarlem at that time that brought such wealth to both Haarlem and Holland more generally through trade and commerce.

Maybe I've allowed myself to be a bit carried away by the churches - but I do enjoy a good church when I'm touristing! Of course these lovely towns have other attractions. You know you will find achingly lovely streetscapes such as these canal houses in Delft



or this neat row of seventeenth century houses in Haarlem



If you peer around corners and into lanes you'll find picturesque courtyard houses in Haarlem that, except for the bicycles, look as if they should be part of a golden age painting:



and such neatly kept houses in Delft that they satisfy every child's dream (and maybe those of some adults as well) of the perfect house.



In Haarlem you will find the archetypal Grand Cafe on the Market Square with espaliered trees and outdoor tables and chairs just waiting for the long-delayed Spring to arrive:



You might even spot a road-worker laying cobbles and wearing real workers' wooden clogs



and, despite the late Spring, you can count on finding charming displays of flowers outside shops or houses and on restaurant tables. I love the fact that the Dutch love flowers (expect my blog to burst into tulip-mania any time soon!)

Knitting in Amsterdam

Fiona's comment on my last post asked for photographs of knitters. I still find it difficult to ask people if I might take their photograph so I don't really have pics of individual knitters, but I do have some knitting and yarn activities to report.

I've visited a couple of yarn stores - both lovely. Penelope Craft has just moved to a new location in Kerkstraat. The shop's run by an American ex-pat, Malia, and stocks all the yarns that immediately make you want to cast on for new projects.



Lots of Madeline Tosh, Malabrigo, Danish BC Garn including beautiful silk, Schoppelwolle, Lopi yarn from Iceland and , most astonishing, quite an extensive range of yarn from Australian dyer Skein (I was told by the shop assistant that this is at the urging of Stephen West). They also stock yarn from a local Dutch dyer, Loret Karman who, as well as selling the usual skeins of yarn, sells packages of 'Dutch Palettes' - collections of small skeins of yarn in colour palettes taken from Dutch painters such as Van Gogh. The store has a lovely friendly atmosphere and an informal knitting group on Thursday evenings. I might try to go. The new shop is marked by a knitting-covered bicycle in the street outside. Cute.



I've also been to De Afstap which mainly stocks Rowan yarns - an astonishing range of both yarn types and colours for those of us in Australia who are accustomed to seeing only selective ranges of Rowan. The small but well-organised shop has a display of expertly knitted Kaffe Fassett inspired clothing upstairs. Another store I'm sure I'll be popping into again.



I've visited my local knitting group - S&B Amserdam De Pijp. They were friendly and welcoming and I'll go again this week. They meet in a stylish cafe/bar just a few blocks from where I'm staying. So civilised to have a semi-private meeting room in place where you can order good coffee or wine. There were a couple of presentations on the evening I visited - one on double knitting and the other on photographing your knitting or other craft work. Unfortunately for me, but naturally, the presentations were in Dutch, but I could follow sufficiently to realise that the presenters really knew their stuff.

I discovered that the presentations were rehearsals for workshops that were planned for Breidag (translates as 'knitting day') that was held last weekend outside Utrecht. This is an annual event that brings together yarn retailers across the Netherlands (and a bit of Belgium) to display their wares. It also has associated workshops - hence the practice at the De Pijp knitting group for presentations over the weekend.



There were at least twenty or twenty-five specialist stalls - maybe more - and so much wonderful stuff that I was spoilt for choice. It would have been wonderful to attend with friends to explore and discuss and exchange ideas for what might be made from the extraordinary range of yarns. However, I was proud of myself for even getting to the fair - it required a tram, then a train to Utrecht, then another tram to the venue - and I ran into some of the people I'd meet at the De Pijp knitting group who made me feel welcome.



And yes, that is Stephen West. Malia from Penelope Craft had persuaded him to attend and sign books that were for sale. I was introduced to him by one of my knitting group acquaintances and later chatted with him as we were both admiring some unusual yarns from Belgian distributors. Stephen was buying some beautiful but very glitzy yarns so I'll be watching for some Stephen West creations with lots of bling in the near future.

This was my very modest haul from Breidag. I'm aware there will be so many opportunities for yarn acquisitions during this trip that I don't want to commit myself to too much too early in my travels:



There's three reels of fine shantung silk from the Belgian distributors, four 50 gram skeins of Shilasdair yarn (10% cashmere, 10% camel, 40% angora and 40% merino, sourced from Peru and dyed in subtle colours on the Isle of Skye) and a copy, signed of course, of Stephen West's latest book 'Made for Movement'.

And my own knitting? I cast on for Martina Behm's pattern Viajante just before I left on my travels.



It seemed a good omen that Viajante is Portuguese for traveller. But the combination of the very deep blue of the yarn I am using, the poor lighting on planes and my increasing tiredness meant I did as much unravelling as knitting - even on the initial garter-stitch section of the pattern. Since I arrived I feel as if I've been knitting and knitting but the large ball of Wollmeise Lace-Garn doesn't seem to have decreased in size at all. I made the mistake of realising that the 1591 metres in a skein of Wollmeise laceweight is more than a kilometre and a half in length. A kilometre and a half! I feel overwhelmed. I'm torn between casting on for another, smaller project to have some sense of achievement and knowing that if I don't keep plugging away on Viajante it will never be finished. There are so many great yarn distractions available in Amsterdam I'm likely to be distracted.

So Fee, that's my knitting update so far. I'll keep you informed of developments.

In Amsterdam

So I'm in Amsterdam. Both before I came and now I've arrived people have asked 'Why Amsterdam?'and the only answer I can give is 'because I like Amsterdam'. That begs the question of what it is about Amsterdam that I like. Amsterdam's not a large city - either in area or population - but it has the attributes that I like in a larger city, such as wonderful museums, good music, great design, original fashion and, more generally, cosmopolitanism. Because it's small it's relatively easy to get around. The trams function well and take me most places I wish to go. And because it's small and flat it's a very walkable city. The Netherlands itself isn't renowned for its cuisine but there's an emphasis on food freshness and lots of restaurants highlighting the cuisine of its immigrants.

Beyond all these sensible reasons for liking Amsterdam there's something less tangible. I just like the way it looks. Of course, any city that is built around canals has a head start in the beauty stakes.



Amsterdam seems to have a wonderful geometry and regularity, but once you look a little deeper, there are all sorts of variations and eccentricities within this regularity. The city's not neatly laid out in a grid pattern - like Sydney it follows the paths set out by past inhabitants - so I think the appeal is about scale. The houses line up neatly along the streets and are roughly the same heights and proportions as each other.



Then you look closely and discover differences - of window size and arrangement, of colour and finish, of age, and even of function when the houses are interspersed with warehouses



Even when there is a need for infill building that inserts modern structures with the old, the proportions are retained. I love these surprises:



I haven't been doing anything particularly touristy - apart from popping in to reacquaint myself with the lovely Begijnhof which you can approach through an arched doorway and small tunnel from busy Spui. It's magical as you pass from crowded streets to the green square where the oldest houses date from the fifteenth century. The Square originally housed an order of lay Catholic nuns and even today, when it is administered by the city, the Beguinhof is home only to single women.



All the photographs I've taken have just been what I've encountered as I've gone about daily tasks - organising my tram ticket, finding some knitting needles because I'd brought the wrong size, buying a ticket for Bach's St Matthew Passion on Sunday. One of the pleasures of Amsterdam is that so much of it is photogenic. However, I would advise any visitor to move beyond the city centre with its fast-food and souvenir shops, its litter and its fun-fair attractions. Awful, and so easy to escape by walking just a few blocks.

As I was buying my concert ticket I walked through the Museumplein and was attracted by crowds of people around the Rijksmuseum, which has been largely closed for several years for extensive renovations. Fortunately for me, the grand reopening is on 14 April so I'll have the opportunity to see this grand museum and its collection in all its restored splendour. But back to the crowds of people. The star of the Rijksmuseum's collection, Rembrandt's enormous The Night Watch, was being moved to its new location in the building. Because of its size it could not be moved internally, so the painting in its climate controlled crate was moved outside the building through a specially enlarged door, lifted down with a crane, and then walked around on a trolley to its new location where the crane operation was repeated.



There were crowds of police and Museum staff and even groups of school-children cheering as the air-conditioned crate moved past. A great happenstance event.

One day in Singapore

I'm travelling again. I've just made my way to Amsterdam via Singapore. For readers of my blog I'm sure it's now very clear that I love to travel. I'm not sure why this is. I used to assume that everybody loved to travel and that it was lack of opportunity that prevented some people from doing so. But over time I've discovered that not everybody likes to be 'elsewhere' as much as I do. I like the way you can't take things - customs, ways of doing things - for granted when you're not at home. I like speculating on why things are the way they are and what impact that has on people's lives. And I like just looking at places - at the patterns and colours and and the way they are brought together in the natural or cultivated landscape.

So, I've just arrived in Amsterdam, where I've swapped houses for month or so. When I booked my air ticket I was unsure how well I'd cope with a long flight after my hip replacement, so I organised a one-day stop-over in Singapore. Over the years I've been very rude about Singapore, describing it as boring and too clean. Really, I should have known better. One of my implicit travel rules is that almost any experience can be interesting for the traveller - you just have to look and wonder.

I had only a long day to spend in Singapore and was unsure how much I would be able to manage with my more limited mobility. Many years ago I had visited the Botanic Gardens in Singapore and had memories of the wonders of the orchids there. So, relatively early because of the heat, I went to the Gardens. They were already buzzing with activity. People out for early morning walks, joggers, parents with children with bikes and tricycles, families already setting out picnics under shady trees and tai chi practitioners. When space is at a premium, as it is in Singapore, such gardens are greatly valued and, in this case, beautifully cultivated and maintained.

The orchid garden within the Botanic Gardens is exquisite. The display of the orchids against densely arranged, varied tropical plantings, as well as the blooms themselves, is wondrous.



The paths meander and at every corner there seems to be a new bank of unexpected colour and patterns. Some of the paths had arches of tiny yellow and brown orchids, and there were periodic bowers of dense vegetation for shelter from the sun.



I took many photographs. I've chosen those below almost at random because all of the orchids were so lovely. Some orchids were tiny - others (not my favourites) were fleshily huge and gaudy. Orchids know how to combine colours unexpectedly. I was particularly struck by the mauve and brown combinations - perhaps inspiration for a striped shawl?



By about 11.00am it was too hot to continue in the Gardens. After a rest I took a trip on a 'hop-on hop-off' bus to have an air-conditioned sit-down glimpse of other Singapore sights. I hopped off in Chinatown and spent a leisurely afternoon exploring its streets. I thought it was odd that Singapore would have a 'Chinatown', given that more than 70% of the country's population is Chinese. But a visit to the Chinatown Heritage Centre explained that oddity and provided lots of food for thought. Singapore's rapid development over the last fifty years or so brought equally rapid destruction of old streets and buildings for new offices, improved housing and commercial buildings. About twenty years ago it was realised that there was merit - commercial and cultural - in the preservation of some of Singapore's past. Today's Chinatown preserves some of the streetscapes of the past.



The Heritage Centre is one of those museums that tries to give a sense of the past through replicas of past living conditions and through the recorded testimonies of individuals who lived and worked in what is today's Chinatown. Singapore is a city of immigrants and their descendants. In the late nineteenth century desperately poor Chinese people risked the little they had and severed their family connections to travel from southern China to then Nanyang where it was believed colonial development offered opportunities for work and improvement. Work was mainly hard and physical and living conditions were dire. One of the more touching testimonies was from an old woman who, even in the 1950's, worked long days as a construction labourer, carrying construction materials and rubble in baskets. The Centre recreates the conditions of people living and working in the old shophouses of the city around the 1950s. The building in which the Centre is housed had businesses on the ground floor, and up to twenty families crammed into small spaces on the two floors above. The Heritage Centre presents the conditions of 'cubicle' living in painstaking detail - the kitchen and single pan toilet



the combined living / sleeping spaces



and the dark, cramped hallway that also served as storage space



One of the businesses housed in the building was a tailor, and the shop and cramped working quarters of the 1950s were faithfully depicted. Again, the delight was in the detail:



I spent ages in the Heritage Centre. It's reminded me that the Singapore of high rise developments, international label shopping and law-abiding cleanliness is a recent phenomenon and is the result of hard, often exploited work by many immigrants who are now its citizens. As recently as sixty years ago things were very different. My visit to the Centre was topped off by eating in the small traditional restaurant at its entrance - rich sweet/spicy/soy noodles with prawns and vegetables. Yum.



I suspect and hope that I won't be repeating my glib, dismissive statements about boring Singapore.

Flutterby

My grand-daughter is in need of a new winter cardigan. I guess that if you live in Brisbane, as she does, then 'need' is a relative term. But even in Brisbane the evenings and mornings in winter can be quite chilly, so a not too heavy weight cardigan is just about what is needed.



I chose the colour (which in reality is a bit more eggplant-ish than these photos show) because it won't show stains and dirt too quickly and Ana Maria chose the chartreuse colour for the pocket linings. I think she's showing great colour sense already!

The yarn is Grignasco Merino Gold DK which is 100% wool but, fortunately, washable. The pattern is Georgie Hallam's Little Butterflies and it comes with lots of instructions for various modifications - sleeve lengths, contrast borders - and with excellent advice for yarn substitution. The pattern is named for the wrapped stitches mainly around the yoke that create a butterfly effect. The buttons, by the way, are much, much brighter than my photos show and a great match for the pocket linings.



I posted the cardigan off to my grand-daughter yesterday, hoping she'll like it. Maybe I'll have some photos of her wearing it - much more interesting than my hasty pics before I posted it off.

Everything old is....?

I'm very surprised that I've made this:



It's a crochet scarf made up of flower medallions. I'd say they are granny square type motifs except that they're round, not square, and I refuse to use the words 'granny' or 'nana' in any way that might imply that being older is to have bad or unfashionable taste. Anyway, I've made this crochet scarf. I don't really like crochet very much. I find that crochet fabrics are often stiff and don't have the drape I appreciate in most knitting. And, until the recent availability of Japanese or Japanese-influenced patterns in Australia, many of the designs for crochet have not appealed to me.

My venture into crochet is really all down to my friend Jane who is an ardent crocheter. Last year she gave me some crochet necklaces and I'd really like to be able to replicate them and construct similar thread jewellery. And I must admit that I'm sometimes delighted by the riot of colour you can achieve with repetitive crochet motifs. So I went to one of Jane's excellent crochet classes to revise my long-unused crochet skills.



The first half-hour of the class was torture. Simultaneously, I seemed to have too many fingers and too few to follow the instructions. But I gradually remembered the techniques and felt less clumsy. I'm glad I persisted after the class and finished the scarf as I now feel confident to undertake other projects - perhaps the necklaces?

Heaven knows if I'll ever wear my scarf.



I like the vibrant mix of colours and it scrunches up well if you wind it round your neck. But the yarn's a bit scratchy (it's Morris and Son's Estate 8 ply) and it's very lairy. We'll see....



And thanks again to Margarita, my wonderful photographer.

Our part of the world revisited

It's a couple of weeks since I visited the seventh Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT7) in Brisbane. I'm not sure why I've delayed blogging about my visit. Laziness maybe? Or possibly the realisation that blogging now seems to be rather unfashionable and I'm no longer sure that what I'm writing about is interesting to others. But then, I've always seen my blog as a personal record as much as it is a communication with others. It's an aide memoire. I use it to remind me of experiences and responses that otherwise might drop from the edges of my unreliable memory.

The APT7 is a collection of works from 75 artists drawn from 27 different Asian and Pacific countries. If you live in Sydney I think you are naturally aware of Australia's Asian connection - through food, architecture, the appearance of people in the street. But whenever I visit Brisbane I am much more aware of our Pacific connection, which is somehow less evident in Sydney. The APT7 emphasised the art of the Pacific. The curators had the specific objective of revisiting the themes of the initial APT when Papua New Guinea featured extensively. I greatly enjoyed this focus of the exhibition. In my past - maybe the 1970s and early 1980s - New Guinea arts and artifacts seemed to be more common (fashionable?) than they are today. There were galleries exhibiting and selling such art and its aesthetic was appreciated and valued. So I was delighted to see some wonderful, exuberant structures and art works from Papua New Guinea, such as the enormous carved and decorated pillars and roof for a Sepik Haus Tamburan that you pass through to view other works



and I was fascinated by a very tactile and slightly menacing group of life-size figures from the Asmat Artists of West Papua - now part of Indonesia - though this work is a vivid reminder of its cultural links to Melanesia:



These works by Tongan / New Zealand artist Sopolemalama Filipe Tohi appealed to my love of thread and of textiles more generally. They build on the centrality of 'Lalava', or 'lashing' in Polynesian life - the way that the ubiquitous use of thread to lash together housing, rigging on boats, or furniture can become both decorative and part of the identity of a group or clan. These are particularly intricate lashing patterns, some made of knitting yarn



and this detailed three-dimensional work in a waxed flax-like thread:



There were wonderful modern works by indigenous Australians. I spent ages looking at these works by Wiradjuri artist Lorraine Connelly-Northy:



She has taken narbongs (string bags) traditionally made from string or other yarns and rendered them in giant form from the hard, metallic materials such as barbed wire, corrugated iron and baling wire that were introduced by white settlers:



Of course the APT7 doesn't limit its visitors' experiences to visual arts. More is always more. The day I visited there was a performance of traditional music from Iran (Persia) in a room exquisitely painted in elements of Farsi script by Parastou Forouhar. I'd managed to appropriate a folding stool (such a great idea!) that I carried with me through the exhibition and loved sitting, listening and being able to gaze at these patterns:



I'm somewhat surprised to find it's already three years since I last wrote about this great event at the Queensland Art Gallery. I'm already re-visiting experiences with my grand-daughter - building up traditions and customs that will become part of our history together. One of the many appealing things about this gallery is its constant provision for children. The APT7 was no exception. Many of the installations and works are innately appealing to children anyway. They're often colourful, and sometimes the scale is vast and you can walk through or around the works. But there are also interactive experiences for children. For example, the beautiful calligraphy of Parastou Forouhar became the basis for a computer game in which children could use the Farsi words to outline and define animal shapes which could then be animated and emailed to friends. A Japanese company, Paramodel, had covered the walls and ceiling of a room with model railway elements and provided boxes of pieces that children could use to construct their own patterns.



There was so much to see. Even though we spent hours at the gallery there were many artists whose work I missed. I enjoy the big blockbusters of famous European art we see from time to time in Australia, but an exhibition such as the APT is fresh, confronting, amusing, engaging, and tells us so much about our part of the world.