latest roll of film

last spring

I love my iPhone because it is the most extensive photo diary. Seeing as I almost always have my phone with me and feel slightly less conspicuous pulling it out when something catches my eye, a lot more gets captured. This has meant thousands of pictures and an external hard drive—plus a lot of memories. Here is a (very small) collage from spring 2012 (mostly June). Puppies!, sunbeams through tree leaves, overcast skies, fluffy peonies and pink-frosted tulips, library books, ballet schools, blue hydrangeas, lilacs falling over brick walls, old ivied academic buildings . . .

New York, day 17

Seventeen days in Manhattan. How lucky am I? Of course I’m sad to be leaving, but I’m so incredibly grateful to have had this time here. It’s been magical. I feel like Harry leaving Hogwarts. I want to start counting down the days until I can go back again.

For the past three years that I’ve gone to New York I’ve literally cried my way through the airport, but I didn’t this time, and I think the only reason is that I could not wait to be reunited with the best dog in the entire world. (And to give her her new toy from Barneys New York, which she destroyed in under an hour.)

2013 so far...

2012

some highlights of 2012;
New York City!, 25 February to 10 March 2012
starting classes at a new ballet studio that I love, 21 March 2012
seeing the Bolshoi Ballet perform Don Quixote, 26 May 2012
picking up my yellow Labrador Retriever puppy Lexington and bringing her home, 8 June 2012
camping with Mum and the pup, 30 July to 1 August
seeing The Nutcracker from the best seats I’ve ever had, 5 December 2012

favourite reads (or re-reads) of 2012;
1. Save Me The Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald
2. Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger
3. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
4. The Crack-Up by F. Scott Fitzgerald
5. Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov
6. The Waves by Virginia Woolf
7. The Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling
8. Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction by J. D. Salinger
9. A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway
10. Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
11. A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
12. Dracula by Bram Stoker
13. Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald
14. The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
15. Bunheads by Sophie Flack

Christmas!

This Christmas couldn’t have been better, with tons of snow, mulled wine and a Downton Abbey marathon. ♥ I am now going to start on some of the books I’ve received!

winter ♥

Lately has been beautiful, though much of it has been spent revising for exams—re-reading and re-writing notes—which has not been without enjoyment itself; reading Oscar Wilde and the Aesthetic movement hardly feels like ‘work’—but in between I have been able to enjoy the snow, which always makes me feel like a child again, and blue twilights and trees strung with colourful lights lining the streets, and toffee pennies and clementines and the scents of pine needles (our Christmas tree went up yesterday!), strong coffee and mulling spices, and winter air has a scent of its own that must be one of the most beautiful scents I’ve ever known. (My favourite perfume is Philosophy’s Pure Grace, in part because I find it has some of the smell that rushes in when a door is opened to the cold wintry wind outside.)

Also, I went to see Anna Karenina (at an old cinema with red curtains in front of the screen and a balcony, no less), and it was beautiful, beautiful, perfect! The dresses, the music, the furs, the snow, the ribbons, the jewellery, the interiors, the train! . . .

Nutcracker season!

A recurring theme seems to be nutcrackers, Brown Betty tea pots and the colour red.

I just got back from Alberta Ballet’s performance of The Nutcracker. Absolutely magical. The costumes and sets were unbelievably perfect in every single way, I want to live in them! I will never get tired of The Nutcracker, there is just too much to love. My favourites are always the party scene, snow (obviously), and the Arabian dance. And I love standing around before the show starts, seeing all the little girls dressed in glittery shoes and red or navy winter dresses and white tights and ribbons... The Nutcracker is a little girl’s dream come true. That feeling is rarely replaced or mirrored anywhere.