hello sweet friends, how are you? oh busy friday! are you having a busy day as well? i was invited for a private event of ikea, to introduce the new catalog and i was so thrilled to be invited and to be there. i will share some photos with you later! but even if i am not able to share with you the cover of the new catalog (which is beauuuutiful!), i am able to share other images and let me tell you that i feel a bit of an ambassadress of ikea now! getting to know some of the people that are behind that huge brand is really fabulous! but i will get there later, now i am going to share another interview about those who live far away from their countries! i had this lady here before, when i featured her shop on a {wednesdays on etsy}, and for most of you, she is well-known as an artist and blogger… and very cherished by all of you as well! her name is katrien, known as {pilli-pilli}, and she is a guest today because she is from belgium, but is living in italy now. let’s see how that happened, shall we?
1. Untitled, 2. sweet things, 3. Celebrate, 4. Ann/Anne sentiments, 5. Short Gibson, 6.Reader, I married him., 7. awaken me, 8. away, 9. IMG_4812
hello… how are you? tell me… who is pilli pilli – katrien? who is katrien… mmm. that’s a tough one, but i guess that if had to pick three words to describe myself, they would be “sensitive”, “playful” and “stubborn”. and pilli pilli… well, she’s my inner child, and like all children she has a very open mind! she strongly believes in magic, loves to listen to the many stories animals and plants and things have to tell us, and is not intimidated (or at least tries not to be) by ‘should’ and ‘should not’. also, she represents my most positive side. i would say that i am generally a positive person, but whereas real life can sometimes get you down or grumpy (which is normal i guess), pilli pilli always looks at the bright side of things, where a big rain cloud doesn’t announce a whole day of drizzle and cold, but is just a really pretty shape with a shower of silver drops!
where were you born? i was born in belgium, in a small called ‘leuven’, and grew up about 15 kilometers from there in a quiet village on the outskirts of brussels.
1. 6/52 – I’ve came to you not to make you love me, but rather to make you realise you’re worth loving for., 2. occam’s razor, 3. Untitled, 4. Maps, 5. morning start, 6. see the sea fan, 7. Untitled, 8. Untitled, 9. “She’s a peach, she’s a doll, she’s a pal of mine”
and now where do you live? and you have been living there for how many years? three years ago i moved to italy where i now live in a little city tucked away in the dolomite alps.
why did you decide to go abroad? i have always been a traveler, and plotted my first move abroad when i was barely 18 years old, when i decided to move to amsterdam to study philosophy. after that i was offered a job in a belgium museum and so i moved back, but only to start hopping about between different cities and changing house a number of times in the course of 4 years. i guess i just loved the idea of being a bit of a gipsy… and for a long time i was convinced that i would never settle down. but then, on one of my travels, i met an italian boy who was a bit of a gipsy too, and things sort of took off from there. now, five years later, we are planning to buy a house high up and hidden away in the mountains…
1. Sailing Takes Me Away, 2. blue tears, 3. Untitled, 4. Untitled, 5. Selfportrait, 6. fruitmasters, 7. IMG_2719, 8. #8, 9. +
what challenges did you face when you started living there? the infamous italian bureaucracy! being belgian means i’m a european citizen and so i guess i expected that moving inside the european union was going to be a mere picnic. yet after moving to italy it took me a long time to get all my paperwork sorted out, which was very, very frustrated! but now everything is the way it should be (it all came together a couple of months ago), and so i feel that i can finally start to really enjoy my new home country without having to worry about healthcare and taxes…
what do you love the most about your current country? nature. definitely. belgium is quite crowded as a country, and as a result there’s not much space left for the untainted version of nature, but here in italy, there are still large portions of the country where man is just a small dot in the landscape. oh, and i love the italian sun! i’m a july child, and so i love summer! but belgium can be quite grey and drizzly, and you never know if summer is going to be nice or not, and so i really appreciate the certainty of the italian summers during which even the wind feels like a warm bath!
1. Misty morning in Halong Bay, 2. book storage, 3. ♡小徑鳥屋, 4. petit et grand, 5. I wait for cloudy skies, 6. Song Cycle., 7. Untitled, 8. {114:365}, 9. Untitled
what do you miss the most about your home country? well, my family of course! being far away from home can sometimes leave you feeling cut off and isolated, but luckily we often find the occasion to meet up somewhere along the european continent!
if you could choose, what would you take from this country to yours? the sea. now i know that this might sounds kind of strange, especially since belgium has a coastal line of about 65 km long, whereas italy’s coast stretches out for an impressive 7600 km and includes some of the most amazing places on the planet (who’s ever been to cinque terre for example will know what i mean), and yet lately i miss those northern seascapes that are characterized by quiet shades of grey and big clouds drifting by swiftly.
what is your favorite word in your current language? meraviglioso! which means wonderful…
1. Traveling back in time., 2. A meter, two horses & a sweet witch…, 3. cranberry, 4. ( 8 / 10 ), 5. Cat People #4, 6. Untitled, 7. cherries, 8. Untitled, 9. 000043
first a note on the mosaics! in my opinion katrien creates the most beautiful mosaics from all the people i know on flickr! i am always deeply drawn to these images. whatever the subject, the colour or shapes, they are always incredibly beautiful! second, i was so inspired by her story… first because traveling what she traveled must have been quite an experience, and second because she changed her home for love… creating in another country her home, with her love. and for me, that is something precious! as i had told you, katrien has an {etsy shop} + {blog} and of course, a {flickr account}. feel free to follow her and her projects! see you in a bit!
images: several photographers (click on each caption for original source, click on the image for {pilli-pilli’s} flickr account)
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