jetplane

Take off in 4 hours.

booklets

Cute little give away bookies. A gal's gotta think of her marketing. And I've been asked to be an hour early for the booklaunch on Friday, because of the tv people, huh. So a gal had to do what a gal had to do, she went out and bought compact powder and eye shadow.

(The guy in apron is going to feed me while in Amsterdam, yummie.)

airmiles

See, Big Brother knows I'm flying in, "het bed van Tim" payable with airmiles, LOL. From a V&D (department store) flyer. Thanks to Lex for emailing it to me. Send me more!

(If you look closely, you can see they used an old image, with the typography from before Piet Schreuders did his magic.)

king of dogs

Walter is asking for reviews of his new book. I haven't read it yet, but I can contribute with a visual review. I'll enjoy Walter's book, if it's only half as good as Donna's.

fall gallery

This is my last girl in tree, promise. It's going to be part of the Fall Gallery over on Toronto Illustrators. Unfortunately I am not going to make the deadline of the Dutch Illustrators Gallery, their theme is very different; "setbacks", I'd have to do some serious thinking to tackle that one, haha. And I'm too busy doing other stuff. Not even mentioning flying to Amsterdam this Wednesday.

prize winner

The contest has been won by my dear colleague Lex van de Oudeweetering! It's him above, proudly showing you "het bed van Tim", in "boekhandel Veenendaal", Amersfoort. He will receive a signed copy, congratulations. Of course Lex couldn't resist being a little mean. He took a picture of Tim leaning against two (yes, some people get to draw more than one book) books by my NRC co-worker Sieb Posthuma, and one of them is the bookstore's recommendation. So, yes Lex, I will be modest about my achievements. My book is part of a much more famous series though.

maurice vellekoop

Shit, shit, shit. I just received an invite for a lecture by Maurice Vellekoop, and I CAN'T GO. I'm in Amsterdam. I could cry. So all of you Torontonians will have to go see this uberfamous fellow Dutch guy in my place. Tuesday, October 5th, 2004, 6:30 pm. The Central Hall, Room 230, Level Two, Ontario College of Art & Design, 100 McCaul Street, Toronto. 10 bucks for non CAPIC members.

heinz schubel

We lived in Germany when Piffin was young. Piffin was perfectly bilingual, and often we used to read to her in German. Lurchi was her absolute favourite. And sublime for reading out loud, because it is written in rhyme, with an iron rhythm. You can try. The stories are a shoe brand's marketing product, they sure don't make 'em like that anymore! Frightingly German I'm afraid, I just learned that Schubel used to draw nazi propaganda during the war. And later communist propaganda, as a prisoner of war. Wise decision to turn to children's literature after that... :-~

brothers

Happy birthday to the brothers! (Michiel's brother and my brother are born on the same day, fifteen years apart however) The cards are from the Chinese art bookstore around the corner from our new house. I had never been to a Chinese art bookstore before. Wildly interesting, I'll go again. I saw a book with Chinese cave paintings. The existence of Chinese cave paintings had never even crossed my mind, cave painting for me is Lascaux, period. Maybe I should have bought the book, I didn't have much time yesterday, with the home inspection and all. But I certainly have to start working on my artistic multiculturality.

order

I found an online bookstore selling my book! And I'm choice of the week on some radio program. Gotta keep googling "Het bed van Tim", fun fun. Real Estate news: home inspection today. The sellers have not quite been telling the truth in the listing about the updated electrical wiring. So our agent is trying for a couple of thousands discount again. What a world.

pierre perrault

At least we made it to the last night of the Film Festival. We saw "La Bête lumineuse", and laughed our asses of. A bunch of guys together in a cabin for ten days of moose hunting. And it's a documentary, it wasn't even acted. Ever seen anyone cook dinner so drunk that they fall flat on their onion? And bloody too. The liver above is from the first and only moose they shoot. And the guys that did not shoot the moose had to eat the raw liver. And then puked, of course. The film was raw too, not just the liver. But I still feel my cheeks from laughing.

let's dance 2

Denmark - Latvia - Austria. To celebrate the new house, Michiel bought me "In the Shadow of Two Towers" yesterday. I don't know if it's exactly the book you would buy to celebrate the purchase of a building, but I'm thrilled. It is indeed a very very very impressive work.

let's dance

Here are ze votes from ze Dutch zjury, Portugal douze points. Chypre dix points. La Irlande, huit points. And really great real estate news too: Our offer is accepted!! Nineteen thousand dollars under asking price, the nerves have paid off. This is it.

research

Still doing research. Real Estate news: tonight our third and final offer went to the selling agent. Expires tomorrow, noon.

folk art

I will be doing a lot of work for a European folk art festival that is being organized here in Toronto next year. So I started with searching for all the traditional costumes in the European Union. This Irish girl is a cutie.
And closely related to folk art: Make sure to visit The Jewish Messiah! Send me a copy, I want it. OMG, Grunberg is the next RAM anchor, ROFL.

iris kiewiet

Today I showed my NRC co-worker Iris a big chunk of Toronto. We are so tired. We saw tons of closed galeries (such a good idea to do this on a Monday), the MEC, Kensington, Honest Ed's and David Mirvish Bookstore. By now she is thinking about immigrating.

art spiegelman

I was too busy this week to go to a bookstore, so I haven't seen it in paper yet, but "In the Shadow of No Towers" is out. Spiegelman started drawing the comic straight after 9-11 and now it's a book. No American newspaper (other than "The Forward", a jewish magazine) had the nerve to run the comic strip, and oddly enough, Spiegelman sold it to Die Zeit. Read the customer reviews at Amazon, very controversial book indeed.

flowery dress

I must be boring you. I am not spending much time working, so my drawings take longer. Did I tell you we have a guest this weekend? I have never even met her. She draws for the same newspaper as I, and she called me because she was coming to spend a couple of months in Canada, and asked to stay at our house for a week or so. I am very curious! A colleague, wow.

I realise yesterday's face looks better, that will all be fixed.

less tree

Less tree, more girl. Gagline anyone?

tree

One day, I will draw a girl in a tree.

paul cezanne

I am so sick of the horrible weak and fluffy cheap bread the supermarkets and bakery's sell. And good quality bread is too expensive to buy daily, I think. With the quantities eaten in this household... So I started baking again. The kids love it, everybody loves it. My arms love it too, haha. And it's so easy, you only need time.

Dissolve some yeast in sugar and warm water, four cups of flour in a bowl with some salt and sugar, add the yeast, 65 ml oil and 225 ml warm water. Knead for ten minutes. One hour rising under a towel. Knead for a minute. Form the portions you want and let them rise again for 45 minutes under a plastic bag. Put on a greased baking tray and bake 10 minutes at 210 degrees. Then turn down to 180 degrees and bake for another 20 - 30 minutes. Enjoy the smell!

If you have a better recipe, please share.

ashkenaz

Ashkenaz is the festival of New Yiddish Culture in Toronto, we went to see Martin play. The pictures of the band did not turn out well enough for publication. Music is so difficult to capture in a photo! And the CIBC stage is not very photogenic anyhow. So I show you us. With the one and only Arie, practicing on a bottle (his parents won't let him have a clarinet, they hope he'll make more money playing the violin). His dad is the famous clarinet klezmer virtuoso Martin van de Ven. A lot of Dutch/Canadian cross culture at Ashkenaz. Monique, with Collected Stories, and Ot Azoj from Amsterdam. We were having drinks with them and I promised to send a request in to Grensverkeer to play their music. Weird things happened too. Creepy almost. What do you think of somebody walking around with a Munich 1972 Olympics handbag on a jewish festival? And the guy I bought a scarf from. I said something about his accent. No, he was from the US, he had needed a lot of speech therapy as a child, and he was NOT German. Later I looked at his business card; Hess & Becker.

letters to the editor

Last week's article caused quite a stir. Maybe somebody will be so kind as to mail me a better scan of these letters, so I can upload them in readable condition. They are to die for, only for Dutch readers alas.

IJsbrand helped me out, thank you, IJsbrand. Here's the scan.

charles le brun

Bezembinder has a beautiful picture blog, and yesterday he showed a Le Brun physionomy drawing. I am grateful he did, because I had almost forgotten I own a book with these drawings. But what good is a book if there is a website showing every single drawing from the book, and much larger too?

Real estate update: The selling agent has surfaced. It turns out they turned down our bid because they had a higher one. But what do you know, the others buyers couldn't get their mortgage financed. Yo, we're playing again.

fall

Don't let the picture fool you, the leaves are still green in Toronto. Today was a strange day. The ID photo's the photographer made, were out of focus. It's virtually impossible to get the seller's agent on the phone. The lawyer predates documents by eighteen months. How professional are professionals?

business trip

In this drawing the colours and the lines will do more than the forms. I hope. So this sketch really isn't that important. I haven't done too much work on it, tired from all the mortgage and immigration hassle. Our offer has been turned down damn it, now we'll have to get them to accept a little bit of a higher bid. But there is good news too, I have booked my first real business trip ever! The 29th I'll be flying to Amsterdam for the new Little Golden Books booklaunch!

Update: I made a stupid mistake yesterday. I banned ALL IP adresses, so nobody was allowed to comment anymore. My apologies, it was nothing personal against anyone. I was under spam attack, that was all. Commentbox is open to (almost) everyone again.