Sunday, March 21, 2010

For Strange Women



I found this a very curious little post For Strange Women on a very intriguing French blog called Paradis Express that I came across some time ago and remembered to revisit last week. Delphine is a passionate gardener living 35 km north of Paris and her blog contains some real curiosities - botanic/garden themed in general - but covering the unusual, the exotic and the bizarre even! Just click on the highlighted post title and have a peek at this enchanting blog  and post featuring the line of bio-organic beauty products with an Etsy shop link!

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your blog ..... it's amazing and soooo inspiring. Nice to find you!

A small footprint from Agneta & Sweden

Ps. I have an ongoing jewelry contest on my blog. Welcome! Ds

Lorena said...

I'm starting to see a strange nihilistic trend everywhere. The hipster kids riding on Bicycles with no brakes, this type of lip gloss, fashion that is so decadent as to be anti-functional, Strange times in a strange world

Anonymous said...

Like a cabinet of curiosities, fascinating. I like it. Thanks for sharing and thanks for your earlier comments.

Caterina Giglio said...

well since I am a strange woman, I will have to check it out!! LOL!

Gabrielle Jones said...

OOOh! Sounds interesting! Though the poison Ivy Lip Balm may be a little too out there in terms of telling someone to kiss off! Where do you get the time to do all this blogging, commenting and researching??? I think you have a calling....

Sophie Munns said...

Good morning everyone!

This last minute inclusion certainly triggered something! The previous evening when exploring the extraordinary collections on the Kew Gardens Website I looked into the pharmacuetical related collection - amazing jars of all sorts of things - all natural - all the source of drugs and so on.

I was intrigued by these products because they seemed to hark back to earlier times... they had a connection with source that was not hidden. Obvious the creator of these has a very particular and quirky sense of humour. But also think theres more to it than that - it would be interesting to learn more.

The blog where I found this is also venturing further and broader afield than most garden related blogs do. Not all that is included is to my taste of course, but I enjoy the sense of curiousity and vision that the world is much more than we see and know in our neighbourhoods... Then again,,,behind that fence and front door - who knows?

em said...

thanks for the reminder - i visit paradis express sometimes. i love her amiens post... i need to go there!

Sophie Munns said...

Individually,

Sinnlighet,
nice to meet you and thanks for popping in form Sweden... will have to visit!

Lorena,
I appreciate your interesting comment... the nihilistic thing is pause for thought. There is some horrendous stuff out there.

I guess I saw the relationship to where things originate as being quite a welcome thing in this case. I know some dont like the look of "hippy food" as its too "of the earth" looking if one is used to highly refined and packaged product... this did remind me of the challenge to our conception of what beauty products should look like, do and say.
I love that you have given us something else to think about!
S

Dosfishes,
I am with you on the cabinet of curiosities idea - one I'm fond for that fact it makes us look at naturally occuring things in different ways! Lovely to hear from you!

La Dolce Vita,
I could see there could be an interest from you in those boxes of interesting paraphenalia Cat... I'd probably call you a curious woman - we are a bit scared of the connotations of that word strange...its a bold name for a fascinating take on beauty products. Go well!

Gabrielle,
That got a laugh from me! Its out there in the opposite direction to the "out there" direction we are so used to...

The blogging thing.... well ... for years I filled up visual and written journals endlessly.... loads of them - full of all sorts, passages from readings, memories, ideas, visual stuff through every phase. I dragged some into classrooms to show students what happens over time - how ideas really grow and take shape- students can think they are a waste of time unless they see the bigger picture from someone who has really used them prodigously.

Blogging terrified me when I started last May because I could not at first deal with the public aspect of it... to use the word "i" and reveal anything personal on a big , impersonal stage felt indeed risky. "What would people think" became less of a concern as the pleasure and stimulation of shared conversation with like-minded people took on. So... as for the time it takes... I'm not journalling as I once did - although I do have one on the go... the time has simply been redirected to the blog. Some weeks i feel uninspired blogging...but at other times in the background is a whole lots of research and thinking that actually gets compacted into posts...the blog has become the scaffolding for broad-ranging thinking, feeling, exploring that supports my art practice. Some posts are deliberately light and almost flippant in content - a bit of an antidote to the place I'm often in pouring over ideas.
Variety for me is the spice of life.
The bit about the calling... means something to me in that I would love to have this kind of work as a means of funding my art practice in the long term...rather than return to other well-tried options i am less enamoured with. Appreciate you words Gab!

Em,
Good to hear from you at just this moment in time when I am writing responses before I head off for the day. You were featured on Paradis Express last year... beautifully presented post on your fabulous garden. I remember my excitement at coming across the post. Ciao!

nathalie et cetera said...

i wonder when they will invent odorama internet.

Sophie Munns said...

Exactly...one does wonder about that Moss and ivy one...
have a great week Nathalie!
S

Four Seasons in a Life said...

Dear Sophie,

The play on words, the humour 'For Strange Women' was a delight to visit. It certainly felt like white witches were busy at work here.

THank you for sharing,
Egmont

Rainey J. Dillon said...

Hello there -my first visit to your bloggy.mmmm I AM a a bit of an oddball myself & I DO dabble in natural concoctions so I will definitely pop over to suss this out.
glad to meet you!
Rainey

Sophie Munns said...

Hello Egmont...

one has to chuckle a little... it is so fanciful and unexpected I found it refreshing for sure... a little mischief.
takes you away for a moment, does it not?
Sophie

Sophie Munns said...

Hello Josie,
A new visitor...how lovely. i just quickly visited your blog and must say...you have a charming header -loved the winged clock.
thanks for popping in!
Sophie

Mlle Paradis said...

Hi Sophie! You've been so good at dropping in with me at P.P. (thx nice to see you!) and I'm afraid I've had my nose in the blog, fiddling and tweaking. but here I am now!. I agree with Gab about you having a calling. You seem to have so much energy and such a great mind for processing lots of information quickly. I won't comment further except to say that I struggle to keep up with what goes on in both of our brains - getting it down efficiently somewhere is hard for me. Although what you said about journals strikes me that you've had lots of practice in putting it all down and as we all know, practice, practice, practice makes one better at whatever one's addressing oneself to.

Anyway, quick comment about "strange women": I think every generation needs a means to express a reaction against norms. It's worrying sometimes because one wonders what the logical end to generations and generations of (what I think is generally a healthy "phase") reacting will produce. We've had beatniks, hippies, goths, tattoos, punks, piercings, ear plugs, so at this point, poison ivy perfume why not? everyone knows shock value sells.

that's my two cents tuesday! see you!

Sophie Munns said...

Hi Mlle Paradis,
Sometimes a'fiddling and a'tweaking we must go!
Let me say....your post of march 22 - Blue Mood- has me V impressed. When I came to the de Chirico's designs (love this artist - love World of Interiors mag!) I was fascinated...then loved the 'margurite' photogram, the kitchen sink is in my dreams, the plates- 1st pic, the dining room- yes please, and the blue and white tiled floor.
The aesthetic of worn but artisanal, unique and some eternal factor - I get that. I've a little quote stored away in my mind that I love..."the nobility of everyday things" - Ginette Paris...must try google.

Anyway...practice, practice, practice is SO the key MP. Well said! Did you happen to read either Slow muse's blog reference to or the actual NYTimes article on genius this week - re genius and brain studies and the fact this researcher was explaining how utterly crucial practice, practice, practice is?

The other place where I got schooled in the art of drawing together disparate bits of info as quickly as possible was not somewhere extraordinary ... oh no!
Between 2001-7 I worked as a "substitute" teacher...casual. emergency, relief....emergency best describes it!
Hauled out of bed after painting late by a 8am phone call -"please can you come and teach music, science, japanese, geography , sex education and PE today to angry hormonal teenagers in our out of control school 30 mins from your door?"
"Sure, I-cant-think-of-anything-I'd-rather-do-thanks-for-the-call !!!"
One hour later I'd be walking into the first of 6 classes for the day in maybe 6 different subjects, 6 different buildings in a new campus.
If I was lucky some dilligent person gave me a class roll, material to teach and valium on the way into the room. No...forget the substances...kids were full of them - even a kid doing 2 litres of cola before 9am can keep a teacher on her toes!!
And so the brain fired up...slowly and surely those lazy neural pathways started finding the one way to bring some pleasure to the day was to try to find the connections in all this material on my plate... and to start delivering it in a way that was alive for me and going to interest the little darlings in front of me into wanting to listen - if that was possible!
In breaks I researched in libraries, staff room bookshelves...i read every bit of material lying around in every different faculty and it made me think far more broadly than I had been... even though I would say I have always been interested in multi-disciplines.
What is a tougher assignment for thinking on your feet with unfamiliar material when looking into the barrel of the gun that was a class that might just work themselves up into a mutinous state out of boredom!
The brain explodes into action...so this emergency fall back position became a habit and it suits blogging perfectly.. only I've not had to deal with any mutinies here. Most bloggers who visit me are not swilling cola and not about to tip into teen rage. I've reserved the right to check comments before I publish just in case!
So I highly recommend emergency teaching to anyone wanting a little brain challenge! All that research coming out about 'use it or lose it' is so true. When we stretch out minds we keep discovering how to keep stretching them. Small increments lead to bigger shifts and it increases our pleasure of learning. Blogging simply provides a scaffolding for me. For someone else it might be their garden, or a community project or post grad work or their professional arena.
Great comment about Strange women MP!
And look how you prompted my brain to fire up...see...another brilliant thing about blogging.
A simple little post late a night about something rather small ... but yet not... small things connecting ot bigger pictures and all of us here are making these links. In come the range of ideas from across the oceans - wonderful!
Be visiting you soon MP,
best wishes and a big thank you for kind words,
S