The Maroon Diaries

I didn't wake up so well this morning. As soon as I was conscious I felt irritated, disconnected and anxious. My mind was running over in circles of negative thought. I felt the shadows of the night's dreams - quite a string of disconnected anxieties - still present in the morning light. This is something I'm used to. It's a common feature of a depressive illness - to wake up in the midst of the hardest emotions, and to struggle to rise out of them somehow to reach the realities of the day that is unfolding. Taking care of how I wake up is an important part of my mental health management. The discovery of the blogosphere was a remarkable boost to my morning experience, possibly the best one since I discovered tea-drinking in my late teens. First thing, when I wake up in the morning, I make a cup of tea. I often dream of having someone to make a cup of tea for me and bring it to me in bed - oh, surely, the very definition of luxury - but in the meantime, the thirst f...

A couple of recently discovered op-shop treasures. Once upon a time, someone took a linen tea towel printed with a picture of wombats and made it into a wall hanging, adding a backing layer of fabric, highlighting features of the image with sewing machine embroidery...  and stuffing one of the wombat shapes into 3-D relief with some polyester filling. It's a wonderful creative effort, but I don't think it really worked out. The lump of stuffing pulled the shape and line of the cloth all out of whack. It just wasn't going to sit straight or flat. But I wanted that beautiful tea towel. Out came the quick-unpick... I was stoked when I spotted this funky little cup. Like many tea-drinking enthusiasts, I'm quite particular about the vessel from which I partake. I don't like mugs, but the traditional tea cup is too small, and life is too short. I'm always looking out for something pretty and pleasing in design, with a nice low shape. And this one...