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Thursday, May 27, 2010

8 Things Thursday

8 Things I Have Done Since Last Thursday

1. Attended a Catholic Requiem Mass for the first time in my life (for an old family friend).
2. Finished watching the first season of True Blood.
3. Entertained friends for dinner on Saturday night and served seared kangaroo fillets and sweet chilli prawns.
4. Finished reading Australian gothic : a life of Albert Tucker / Janine Burke.
5. Had lunch with an old friend I haven't seen for years.
6. Visited Craft Victoria's latest exhibitions.
7. Spent three hours at the State Library of Victoria researching stuff.
8. Attended the Eastern Metropolitan Region 2010 Schools Concert at Hamer Hall.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Creative Tuesday

This was a piece made for my Diploma of Studio Stitch Textiles in First Year. The labels are pretty self-explanatory. The sketch was vaguely based around a photo of a Gaudi building, with the idea of abstracting it. It was fun to do the little collage. The knitted wire was meant to look like roof tiles, I think!

Monday, May 24, 2010

Monday Quote

"Australian history is the story of man in opposition to the landscape. Our explorers were driven - as we all are - by the need to survive, by ambition and vanity, by greed desire and curiosity."

Albert Tucker 1914-1999

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

8 Things Thursday

8 Things I can See in the Study Right Now

1. Several boxes of very old Mars Staedler Lumograph tins containing untouched H lead pencils date stamped 21 April 1952
2. A New Yorker calendar with one cartoon per day
3. An old battery radio that is probably about as old as the pencil tins and still works perfectly well
4. A battered yellow croquet ball
5. A pencil box my husband made in school woodwork classes a long time ago - not as old as the other two old objects, but during the second half of last century
6. A nice, modern wireless modem (just to prove that technology has advanced)
7. Part of Saturday's paper
8. One and a half dog biscuits

Wordless Wednesday

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Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Creative Tuesday


I did this during my Studio Stitches course in 2007. We were being given a very quick introduction to printing. This involved coating leaves with paint and using them for a monoprint onto fabric, then using some simple stitching and applying to paper and doing a bit more monoprinting on top. The fabric is something synthetic, I can't remember precisely but it was a remnant of something medium to heavy weight, possibly furnishing fabric, sewn onto thick handmade paper (not handmade by me!). Being me of course I could not resist embellishing it with a tiny number of sequins! Although I have never really pursued this style of work I am currently wondering if I might give it another go, it was easy and required very little in the way of materials (in this case, other than the fabric/paper/thread/sequins, all of which I already had, I used acrylic paints, which I also already had, and a rubber brayer. At the time I think I used the studio brayer but have subsequently bought a couple for myself. Oh, and leaves).

I'm not sure whether it matters that it is not square. I cannot decide if that makes it more organic or simply sloppy. I think I will say 'organic' rather than 'sloppy'!
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Monday, May 17, 2010

Monday Quote

Merry Are The Bells
Nursery Song

Merry are the bells, and merry would they ring;
Merry was myself, and merry could I sing;
With a merry ding-dong, happy, gay, and free,
And a merry sing-song, happy let us be!

Waddle goes your gait, and hollow are your hose;
Noddle goes your pate, and purple is your nose;
Merry is your sing-song, happy, gay, and free,
With a merry ding-dong, happy let us be!

Merry have we met, and merry have we been;
Merry let us part, and merry meet again;
With our merry sing-song, happy, gay, and free,
And a merry ding-dong, happy let us be!
Merry Are The Bells - English Children's Songs - England - Mama Lisa's World: Children's Songs and Rhymes from Around the World, Intro Image
This song and illustration can be found in The Nursery Rhyme Book,
edited by Andrew Lang and illustrated by L. Leslie Brooke (1897).

This charming little nursery rhyme was used to great effect by
Baby Bear in her VCE drama presentation for Semester One.
They had to work in groups of four and produce something about
alienation and isolation. At two points during the
30 minute performance the four of them said one line each of the
last verse, in deadpan voices with deadpan faces.
It was her idea and it worked brilliantly.
There was nothing jolly or merry about it at all!

Monday, May 10, 2010

Creative Tuesday


A pair of seed bead (Japanese and Czech) and freshwater pearl earrings made for a commission in 2008. They are a fairly simple coralling stitch attached to sterling silver earring findings. I have made these in many different colours; they are fun to make and look quite spectacular though they are too long for anyone with a short neck - I can still make effective coralling earrings that are shorter, it just so happens that these ones are long. When I properly open my online shops again I will have a selection of them for sale.
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Wordless Wednesday

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Monday Quote

"Yesterday I was a dog. Today I'm a dog. Tomorrow I'll probably still be a dog. Sigh! There's so little hope for advancement." - Snoopy

Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Friday Update

Mutter mutter mutter AARRGGHHH!!!!! swear !@#$%^&&*()

I spent hours on those papers I posted about last week. Hours painting them in multiple layers. Tearing them up and collaging them, double sided onto card, sealing each side with three coats of Mod Podge. Then trying to cut them out with paper punches - too hard, on the whole - cutting them into shapes - they feel tacky to the touch despite much drying time and I hate them. Pity, I rather liked the original papers! I am keeping them in case of something original springing to mind some time in the future, but for the moment that idea has been shoved to the back of the queue.

On the good side - I rediscovered the joys of painting and colouring and I personally think they were quite attractive. I will do more papers. Painted, inked, collaged, whatever. But I will not treat them the same way.

My scatterbrained approach to creating is not working! I think it is time I set myself a proper task (the book idea was a good one but I got bored too quickly) and actually apply some of the discipline of design and experimentation that I spent three years studying. At the Australian Quilt Convention last week there were some 'art quilts' that really caught my eye. The inverted commas are used there because I am not sure how small something can be before it is no longer an art quilt, and some of these were small! I also really want to do some bead embroidery again. I wonder how much bead embroidery can be on an art quilt?

After no craft shows in Melbourne all year, fate (I won't use the word 'organisation') has decreed that there will be three in May. Last week, the Australian Quilt Convention. This week, the Stitches and Craft Show. At the end of the month, a bead show. I 'need' to attend all three. I actually thought Stitches and Craft was next weekend until I picked up the brochure last night for a leisurely look through and realised that it was on now. So I am off to that today.

Cookbook evaluation - had big plans for this week. I had chosen two chicken dishes from various places and I was going to cook both of them. They both needed chicken breast fillets (or at least I had decided to cook them with chicken fillets), oh which I thought I had plenty in the freezer. I didn't. We will eat chicken next week. I didn't feel like baking, either.

Nothing more to show for this week. Other than a reassessment of thoughts and some new ideas. No pictures though.

Some hours later - Stitches and Craft was weird. Not at all like it used to be. Much fewer exhibitors but some really exciting small independent craft labels. Also, however, some huckster stuff that made me feel like I was in a bazaar. A very strange confection altogether. But I LOVED IT. It made me feel good. It was also not very busy, which is probably bad for them, but relaxing for me. I bought some stamps and another book. I did some more serious thinking. I feel happy.

8 Things Thursday

8 Books I Have Read Recently

1. The Percy Jackson series, by Rick Riordan (OK, that's 5 books, but I didn't want to single any one of them out, they were all such fun!)
2. Go! Melbourne in the Sixties, edited by Seamus O'Hanlon and Tanja Luckins
3. Making Money, by Terry Pratchett
4. The Valley of the Assassins, by Freya Stark
5. Tied Up In Tinsel, by Ngaio Marsh
6.Collage Sourcebook: Exploring the Art and Technique of Collage, by Holly Harrison, Jennifer Atkinson and Paula Grasdal
7. The Status Seekers, by Vance Packard
8. The Sorrows of an American, by Siri Hustvedt

Monday, May 03, 2010

Wordless Wednesday

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Creative Tuesday

Ah, scrumbling, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. Thy wondrous colours and textures, thy randomness (or not), thy portability (until the whole sewing it together bit), thy ability to look great in photos .. what's not to love?

A cape I made several years ago when I discovered the frabjous Prudence Mapstone and got all excited about stuff. It is far too hot and heavy to wear in a place like Melbourne, except once or twice a year, but I still love it. I haven't scrumbled in a while but I always keep coming back to it.
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Monday Quote

" . . . Waiter! raw beef-steak for the gentleman's eye,--nothing like raw beef-steak for a bruise, sir; cold lamp-post very good, but lamp-post inconvenient--damned odd standing in the open street half-an-hour, with your eye against a lamp . . ."

The Pickwick Papers, Charles Dickens