The Beautiful Blue Danube

My friend called me up at rather very short notice. "If I send you a photo of J and I taken on our recent trip to Budapest" she said "could you copy it and make an anniversary card for me please?". 

I checked my email. The photo was there. It was a lovely, happy picture of my friends but quite blurred and overall pretty poor quality.

Gulp.

But of course I made her the card, though I'm not going to tell you how long it took me!

I traced the outline of the happy couple then made some adjustments to the layout to make it work. My friend was keen for me to show the skyline of Budapest, which they had viewed whilst travelling on a riverboat along the Danube. They can be seen sitting at their dining table, toasting their 20th wedding anniversary with a nice glass of wine. Truthfully I am not sure who had red and who had white - the photo was such poor quality - but we can see them making the toast on the card and that's what matters!

Happy anniversary M and J! Can you take a better camera with you next time you go away please?

Sam's Bar Mitzvah

Sam recently celebrated his Bar Mitzvah and so I am now able to show you the customised album I created for him. Sam's Aunty ordered the album and told me that he has quite eccentric tastes. He likes The Beatles, plays the electric guitar and is in a band, though she couldn't tell me the band's name as apparently it keeps changing! He is a fan of Star Wars and of the music of Paul Simon and The Beach Boys, and is very good at art. She wanted me to include his school's badge too.

I have shown Sam with his guitar in one hand and a couple of pencils in the other. The guitar required quite a lot of attention to detail but I think I got it just about right!

I embellished several pages inside the album. Each page, like the cover, has a blue striped tallit (Jewish prayer shawl) on it. Many boys begin to wear a tallit from the age of Bar Mitzvah, 13. The reason why the tallit is striped is simply because that was the fashion in Greece and Rome in Biblical times. However, the stripes remind us of the strand of techelet (blue) once worn as part of the tzitzit, the special knotted fringes attached to the tallit's four corners. The Torah (the first part of the Jewish bible and a central document of Judaism) commands that tzitzis contain a thread of tichales (blue), which in former times came from an animal called the chilazone, thought to have been either a squid or a type of snail. In memory of this dye it became customary to place a blue or black stripe on the tallit itself.

In addition to the tallit, each embellished page took on a theme. Sam likes the British comedy Jeeves and Wooster, above, so one page included the programme's title card and the iconic hats of the two main characters. There was also a page devoted to several of the Star Wars characters, Paul Simon and The Beach Boys, Sam's school and lastly, his guitar once again.

Sam's Aunty said she thought the album was "fantastic". I hope that Sam liked it too!

Ein Hod

The artists' village of Ein Hod is situated on a hillside amongst olive groves and nestles at the foot of Mount Carmel, overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. It was established in 1953 when a group of artists, led by the renowned Dada artist Marcel Janco, moved into the abandoned Palestinian village of Ein Hawd. They believed that the village was a place where they could work, build studios and workshops, and form a creative environment for art and art education. After a period of time Ein Hod became the only artists' village in Israel, and one of the few in the world where artists live and create in every artistic media from the visual arts, to theatre, music and literature.

A few weeks ago we set out to explore it.

Many well-known Israeli painters, sculptors and musicians live in Ein Hod and their studios and galleries are open to the public. Their creations have been beautifying Israel's public places and homes for many years. Some of the old stone houses of earlier occupants - from the Christian Crusades to the Turkish Empire - have been preserved and the village mosque has been converted into a popular restaurant-bar. Art workshops for printing, ceramics, photography, silk screening and more are run, and during the summer performances take place in the outdoor amphitheatre and main square. Ein Hod simply bubbles with creativity.

We strolled through the streets and explored the private galleries as well as the main Artists' Gallery, which exhibits the work of member artists living in the village who have been approved by the local jury. We stopped many times to discuss the sculptures dotted around the village streets and in the artists' gardens. We hiked the short distance up the hill to the Janco-Dada Museum, set up in 1983 by a group of friends of Marcel Janco. The museum contains several galleries dedicated to Janco's work and also the work of young artists, contemporary art and video art projections.

Ein Hod was evacuated and the village suffered considerable property damage during the 2010 Israel forest fire but it seems to have recovered nicely. For lovers of art, landscape and nature, the beautiful village is the perfect place to spend a few hours. It certainly made for a memorable day out for all of us.

Eating hamburgers and playing the violin

I've been a busy bee creating a number of Bar and Bat Mitzvah albums lately, though I can't show them here quite yet. In between the albums there are always card orders and here are a few which I know have already been well-received.

Karin was celebrating her 17th birthday. Her grandma told me that she is into clothes, clothes and more clothes! I kept the background of the card dark and added a bright and colourful wardrobe, along with a number 17 and a few music notes. I hope the birthday girl liked my choices.

Eitan celebrated his Bar Mitzvah some weeks ago and we were happy to be able to celebrate his big day with him. His Mum asked me to create a special card based on the invitation we had received, so I set to work cutting out some teeny tiny letters, and some bigger ones too, to capture the look of the invitation. The card wasn't my usual style but it was an interesting one to create and Eitan's Mum was very pleased with it.

Lastly, Adi's Mum requested a card for her son who is football mad. He also loves eating hamburgers and playing the violin. It was a little difficult to imagine how all these hobbies would fit together, but I got everything in there!

Ein Tsur

We'd been to Ramat Hanadiv, the elegant formal gardens built as a living memorial to Baron Edmond de Rothschild, before, but it was only recently that I discovered that there are some wonderful hiking trails in the area as well. Friends took us on the Manor Trail back in January where we passed Horvat Aqav, the remains of a Byzantine farmhouse, and enjoyed beautiful views overlooking the Carmel coast.  During Passover we went back to show my Dad the gardens and also to try out another trail, The Spring Trail, overlooking the Nadiv Valley.

The Spring Trail was an easy 2.5 kilometre hike which lead to the Ein Tsur spring. The views en route were magnificent, though the winter flowers - the rakefot and kalaniot - seen in abundance earlier in the year, were all gone.

People inhabited the Ein Tsur area 10,000 years ago. During the Herodian period there was a big village there. Our walk led us past remains of the walls and towers that surrounded the village and storage rooms. The main reason that people settled at this site was the spring located at the bottom of the hill. The Romans built an aqueduct, a large pool to store the water and a bath house there. 

There are three rooms inside the bath house - the cold room, the tepid room which was used to get your body used to the heat, and then the hot room where steam opened the body's pores and helped clean your skin.

After admiring the bath house we wandered towards the spring. A tunnel was carved from the spring to increase the flow of water.  A stream of water flows along a covered canal which prevents dirt getting into it. Finally this canal reaches the storage pools, where the water was used as drinking water for animals, for the bath house and swimming, and also a reservoir that supplied water for agricultural use.

The spring at Ein Tsur has also been called 'The Spring of Fertility'. The Bordeaux Pilgrim, an anonymous traveller who visited the Holy Land in 333, made particular note of the spring and wrote that women who wash in it become pregnant. An important find at the spring was a hoard of 2,000 coins dating from the early fourth century to the seventh century. It is believed that they were thrown in by women seeking cures for their infertility, like a kind of wishing well.

We passed a columbarium on our way back up the hill. The Romans built a special tower near the spring, above, to house pigeons. This tower was called a columbarium, from the Latin word "columbary", meaning dove or pigeon. In order to grow crops the settlers needed water, but also fertiliser too and pigeon droppings were perfect. The pigeons could also be used for food and for religious purposes.

We continued following the trail  past Beit Khouri, an Ottoman era farmhouse, later inhabited by a Christian family. Here the farm manager and workers lived in large vaulted rooms, along with the animals they cared for. The remains of a mosque, built by the Christian el-Khouri family for their Muslim farm workers, can also be seen. This building later served as a dining hall for a group of pioneers who settled the site after Baron Edmond de Rothschild purchased the land in 1913. During the following years three groups of Halutzim (pioneers) settled at the site, but they faced very hard conditions. The rocky land was hard to cultivate and the rooms teemed with insects from the area of the spring. Malaria took a heavy toll on the settlers but, despite the hardships, they lived in the area for several years and managed to dry out the swamps.

A Baby, a Birthday and a (Foot) Ball

New baby cards are by nature quite a last minute thing. A friend was travelling to Australia and her sister gave birth to a baby girl just a few days before she was due to leave. My friend wanted to give her sister one of my cards (actually she and her older kids have quite a collection of them already!) but preferred to wait until the new baby had a name. 

Did I say last minute? It was. But I aim to please.

The card, inscribed with the new baby's name and birthdate, shows all the family, with Mum in the foreground holding baby Jordy. I added a couple of baby items, and luckily found a kind local who was willing to take the card to Tel Aviv, where my friend popped it into her bags before leaving.

She left me the sweetest message when she saw the card.

"Thanks Lisa for doing this. With all the gifts I have, I know this will be the one most appreciated by my sister."

I'm glad I worked quickly on that one.

Lauren is a writer and poet and so, when her sister asked me to create something pretty for her birthday, I knew that a notebook and pencil had to be in there. I added balloons, cake and bunting to give it a birthday theme but do hope that the birthday girl spotted the book!

Finally, another customer wrote to me to remind me that he has ordered several cards from me in the past "which all the recipients have loved". He had a friend's wedding coming up and wanted to give him one of my cards too. Could I make one? Of course I could!

The groom is an Arsenal supporter, just like the boys in my own family, whilst the bride plays the piano. They both share a love of cooking. I have shown the couple standing under the chuppah (a canopy beneath which Jewish marriage ceremonies are performed and which also symbolises the couple's first home together). The groom is wearing his Arsenal shirt and has a football tucked under his arm and a kippa (skullcap) on his head. The photo my customer sent me showed him wearing a quite specific design of glasses. I hope I got them about right. The bride is ready to do some cooking and her favoured instrument, the piano, can be seen in the background. There was a lot to include but I think everything is there.

Mazal Tov (congratulations) to all!

Josh, Gaby and Tequila too!

One of my regular customers emailed me with a request for three cards. The first was a card for a friend who has moved countries. She sent me a photo of the friend and asked me to write בהצלחה, 'Good Luck', on the card, along with "We miss you".

Their friend is a very caring doctor, as well as a great handyman. Apparently he always has tools with him wherever he goes. He has a very special relationship with his dog, Tequila, and I was asked to include him, or her, in the picture too.

I have shown the doctor in his white coat, with a stethoscope around his neck. He has a spanner in one hand and some other tools nearby. In his other hand he has a Samsung Galaxy. Apparently he is quite attached to that as well.

The other requests were for Bar Mitzvah cards for my customer's twin nephews. She asked if I could put tefillin (check out my recent post here to remind yourselves what they are!) on both boys' left arms, and said that they should both be wearings caps too.

Josh, above, is apparently very sporty. He loves football and is a big Manchester United fan. He likes listening to music on his iPod and also playing games on his PlayStation, below.

Gaby is also very sporty. He favours cricket and my customer asked me to show him wearing a green Proteas shirt (The South African national cricket team are nicknamed the Proteas). I added the cricket bat in his right hand. He loves to draw too, thus the paper and pencils in the foreground, and enjoys playing with remote control cars. Both boys have "beautiful blue eyes".

The final request was to add a 13 somewhere on each card, the age that Jewish boys become Bar Mitzvah, and to write 'Mazel Tov Gaby / Josh' on their respective cards. There was a LOT to squeeze in but I think I got it just about right!