Brisbane 3

While we were away, we sent Sirius off to have a happy long weekend with two labrador friends of hers.   She romped so much that she needed a serious bath when she came home.  She does not approve of baths!  She always looks a poster child for the RSPCA afterwards.

This was my breakfast on our last morning.  It tasted even more divine than it looked.  Potato, spinach and fetta cakes, a poached egg, parmesan crisps and tomato salsa.  I am salivating even now ...

I had a gorgeous time at a Surrealism exhibition in the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) but couldn't take any photos there.  This is a Bridget Riley in the permanent exhibition - though come to think of it that might have been in the other art gallery there.  Can't remember!

Having a drink outside the restaurant at the other art gallery.  Interesting sculpture.

The ibii think they are sparrows.

And I leave you with the alien invasion of Brisbane.  It is stealthy.  It is disguised as art.  It IS coming to get you!

Brisbane 2

I think I mentioned in the last post that there was some great street architecture in Brisbane.  I can't quite remember where this was, though possibly on Southbank, where there are some excellent museums/galleries/theatres etc.

I stood on the exact spot on the quarterdeck of HMAS Diamantina where Japan surrendered to the Allied Forces on the two dates mentioned above.  That was actually rather an eerie feeling.

Read this notice carefully.  Notice the flaw?

That's right, ibises (ibii?) can't read!

More street architecture, this time of the suspended kind.  Not far away from this, at street level, seems to be a popular spot for street performers.  I can't remember if the young man there when I was taking this photo was juggling fire or swords, or maybe flaming swords, but you get the general idea.

These are not great pictures of a stunningly beautiful thing.  A bougainvillea walk.  The sweeping curves of the steel and the wire were amazing.  The bougainvillea itself was only just coming into bloom, though I imagine it would look spectacular in full flower, but on the other hand this enabled one to see the underlying structure better.  Just believe me that it was absolutely gorgeous.

Um, that is a tree.  Obviously.  Of some sort.  That we don't get in Melbourne.

Brisbane 1

Great excitement.  George and I actually went away for a weekend - three days, eve, - ALONE.  The only other time we have done this in eighteen years was when my father died last year, which was hardly fun.  (Not because I mourned my father - he was a horrible man - but because it involved a lot of untangling of things and was very emotional anyway).

We went up for a 50th birthday party and, although George has been there on business lots of times, he has never taken the time to sightsee, so we were tourists!!

(There, by the way, is Brisbane, capital of Queensland for non-Australians)

These photos are in no particular order, but I don't have the energy to rearrange them!

Ella's Pink Lady, as sailed around the world by Jessica Watson.  I wasn't a big fan of hers, to tell the truth, though I promised to revise my views if she made it all the way without having to be rescued.  She did, so I grudgingly agreed that maybe she had achieved something worthwhile after all!  This was at the Maritime Museum.  It was quite interesting to look at, actually, after seeing it on the TV so much at the time.  And, although clean and tidy, it wasn't over-spruced - you could see that it had genuinely sailed around the world.

A pretty Brisbane building.  This is probably typical of older Brisbane architecture.  A lot of Brisbane is rather new and shiny and modern but I really liked this style.

These are examples of some amazing street architecture.  There is a big square in the CBD near the river and it is full of these spheres.  They are metal balls in these two sizes (I didn't count how many but there must be at least 20 or so) scattered around, and the sticking-out bits are vegetable strainers.  Some people my age might remember that you could get them in threes and they fitted in a saucepan - maybe just in Australia, who knows?  G's mum had some.  So they have small holes in them, and they look all mysterious and alien.  And at night, the lights come on.  Every sphere has lights in it, either plain or coloured, and they REALLY look like aliens then.  I tried to get a good picture of that but failed :(

This is an attractive flame red tree.  Possibly it is even called a flame tree.  Lots of pretty trees in Brisbane, which is semi-tropical, or sub-tropical, or something.

More interesting street architecture. And trees.

OK, several views of Brisbane from a ferry.

And this is a model of either a crocodile or an alligator at the Maritime Museum.  It amused me.

The birthday party was amazingly good fun.  On a boat.  With much bubbly.  And not quite enough food.  And a core group of middle aged people drinking and dancing to the songs of their youth, much like they had done 30 years previously, only with more expensive drinks and a slightly earlier bedtime.

There are more photos, so there will be further installments.

My Taste in Art

Your result for What Your Taste in Art Says About You Test ...

Extroverted, Progressive, and Intelligent

5 Cubist, -11 Islamic, -10 Ukiyo-e, -18 Impressionist, 5 Abstract and -13 Renaissance!

Cubism was a 20th century avant-garde movement, pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. It revolutionized European art and inspired changes in music and literature. The first branch of cubism, known as Analytic Cubism. It was both radical and influential as a short but highly significant art movement between 1908 and 1911 mainly in France. In its second phase, Synthetic Cubism, (using synthetic materials in the art) the movement spread and remained vital until around 1919.
People that chose Cubist paintings as their favorite art form tend to be very individualized people. They are more extroverted and less afraid of speaking their opinions then other people. They tend to be progressive and are very forward thinking. As the cubist painting is like looking into a shattered mirror where you can see different angles of the images, the people that prefer these paintings like looking at all angles of a problem. These people are intelligent and they are the transformers of our generation. They look beyond what is seen into what things could become. They are ready to leave the ideas of the past behind and look at what the future has to offer.

Your Analysis (Vertical line = Average)

• 
  
  You scored -18% on Impressionist, higher than 5% of your peers.
• 
  
  You scored -11% on Islamic, higher than 9% of your peers.
• 
  
  You scored -10% on Ukiyo-e, higher than 8% of your peers.
• 
  
  You scored 5% on Cubist, higher than 81% of your peers.
• 
  
  You scored 5% on Abstract, higher than 80% of your peers. 
• 
  
  You scored -13% on Renaissance, higher than 28% of your peers.
• 
  
• Interesting test!  And, for what it's worth, I think I agree with the results.

My Creative Space

Another week fraught with tedious personal and work stuff.  But at least I got to play with the new sewing machine at the weekend, and a love affair is definitely in progress!  I tried out lots and lots of stitches and stuff :)

Then I did some more playing in black thread (rather than the white which I had been using for the samplers), realising that, on the random fabric I had pulled out of the stash to practice on, it would look good for something specific I was vaguely thinking about.  (Can you think vaguely about something specific?  What I mean is that I was thinking I could use some of these stitches on fabric and then cut them up and make brooch/hat adornments from them, and then realising that the black and red would work well with the yarn I was using to make hats).

And the hat with the attached glasses and antlers?  From the other day?  Well, I canvassed opinions from people on here and on various Facebook groups and decided that it might be better to make it a little more mainstream.





So it now has a gum nut type scrumble on it.

And these are all going to be adornments for other hats in a similar style.



This was meant to be a brooch in the red/orange MazeyPrettyThings collection, but somehow got left out when I was sewing backing fabric on them.  So it is going to be sewn down to a slightly larger piece of the red and black, machine embroidered fabric.


This a dreadful photo, don't know what happened there!  But there is a glittering green button in the middle of this.



And another green button on this one.

These three will probably have brooch backs sewn onto them and pinned to hats and sold together, so that they can be worn together or separately.

Please go and enjoy some other people's spaces :)

My Creative Space

Well my work week has been distinctly uncreative, being fraught with tedious but stressful issues that i just want to forget about.  So I am surrounding myself with wonderful, creative purchases - and yes, most of them have been bought this week, except for two of the books that I bought a month ago and then forgot about!

After six months of working for a living I had saved up enough to buy myself a new sewing machine in a sale.  The last day of the sale!  It is a Janome Memory Craft 6500 and it does whizzy things.  I believe.  It will probably be Saturday before I have the concentration and energy to actually try it out.  But the instruction manual is interesting! 

Graham certainly thinks so, anyway.  Now he will be able to tell me when I am doing something wrong!  And to give him his due, he actually does know quite a lot about the subject in general and I expect he will soon be up to speed on this particular beast.  Maybe I will follow Baby Bear's lead and give it a name (she names all her musical instruments).

And then I bought some books, mostly at the Craft Fair at Jeff's Shed the other weekend, all which I am hoping will provide creative inspiration of one sort or another.  And I actually bought another three today but they can wait for another photo session!

For more creative spaces, pop over here.  Maybe some of them have actually made something rather than just buying inspiration!