A Tentative Foray into Poetry

Apologies for what is largely a repost, but I wanted to add something to this collection of images and it seemed best to repeat the information about the sculpture.

George and I spent a week in northern NSW and southern Queensland over Easter. Among other things, I was hugely taken with a sculpture in Brisbane called Forme del Mito by Arnaldo Pomodoro. It tells the  story of Agamemmon from Ancient Greece. Fabricated in cast bronze each piece has its own identity. ‘The Prophet’ Cassandra, ‘The Machine’ Aegisthus, ‘Ambition’ Clytesmnestra and ‘Power’ Agamemnon King of Mycenea.  I think it was commissioned for the World Expo that was held in Brisbane in 1988. 

It was, presumably, inspired by the gold death mask of Agamemnon, which is displayed in Athens after being found at Mycenae:

Last semester I studied the poetry of the early and middle twentieth century - mostly European, with some American and a very small amount of Australian poetry (the omission of Australian poetry was essentially because of the very late adoption of modernity by Australian poets, compared with the rest of the world). During the course of this (very interesting) subject we had to write poetry as well. This is a bit of an experiment - it will be the first time I have posted any of my creative writing in this blog. One of my poems was inspired by this sculpture. The style owes much to the Russian futurist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky.

Here's a couple of pictures of the sculpture:

FORME DEL MITO, ARNALDO POMODORO

It’s three o’clock

                should you be asleep?

Broken stars collide with bats

                so much for sonar

Fruit bats don’t need satellites

                actually they do

No, not clouds

                not rain

                                not fog

                                                not plagues

The Milky Way has vanished

That can’t be good

What is the morning?

                the colour of twelve

                                the hunter’s stew

The death mask four ways in a Brisbane square

The dog at the door and

                the wolf at the fold

And the colour of twelve

                and the water-rat drowning

Where can you get a drink, I’m hot

C Judy Edmonds 2015

The Adventures of Bobby and MoMo - Fiji

It became necessary for George and I to visit Fiji for a week. He was working a lot of the time, so Bobby and MoMo came along too, to keep me company where necessary. They thoroughly enjoyed the luxurious Westin Hotel on Denauru Island. The beds were very comfortable.

We visited the Marina, had lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe - and Bobby got a bit excited about the cocktail menu. Don't worry, we all drank iced water. I rarely go to a Hard Rock Cafe, though now I have been to one in America (cannot remember where), Paris and now Fiji. Three in 25 years is probably allowed.

Later, we stopped for a refreshing beer. I rarely drink beer, but Fiji beer suited the Fiji weather (mid to high twenties, pleasant breezes) so I drink more beer in that week than I do in a whole summer. It wasn't very strong. Bobby tried to steal mine, but I resisted,

 On Denauru Island there is a cute shuttle bus for tourists called the Bula Bus, for which you pay F$7 for a day ticket and can travel as much as you like. We used it to travel between the hotel and the Marina, and back. It has a thatched roof and is a bit of a tourist gimick, but quite fun and useful. MoMo and Bobby were a little disconcerted about it though, sitting on long benches with no windows.

They were all worn out when we got back to the hotel room. Can't blame them, so were we!

 At breakfast every morning I was given a hibiscus. I tried wearing it once and George laughed at me, so I let MoMo have them. They looked better on him anyway.

 And then good old Bobby got hold of it. Made a tasty snack after the photo op, I believe.

Now here, for once, is a genuine photo of Bobby with a bottle of water! I must admit I had always assumed Fiji Water was just a marketing lurk, but it turns out it actually is bottled in Fiji.

Finally it was time to leave. Bobby and MoMo relaxed for one last time under a vase of tropical flowers before we left for the airport, slightly tanned and having had a great time.

Bobby the Ram and MoMo do Springwood

George has been spending a lot of time working in Sydney recently, and as uni was finished for the semester we decided that I should pop up for a weekend - as it turned out, not in Sydney itself, but in the Blue Mountains, in Springwood. It was a most delightful weekend, staying in a cottage with an open fire and pottering around.

It's been a while since Bobby the Ram and MoMo had had a decent break, so they came too. And posed for pictures.

In the brief time I had in Sydney before meeting up with George, I spent a while in the Queen Victoria Buildings, enjoying coffee and cake and admiring the restoration.

Edited to add: in view of the tragic events that happened at the QVB on Sundau night, which were reported after I had published this piece, I have removed the photos and other references to my time there, as it seems inappropriate.

Then I was able to meet up with George and we ate a delicious French meal in a tiny French restaurant. Bobby's time in rehab has obviously been a complete waste of time :(

There is a fabulous secondhand bookshop in Springwood. These books followed me home - useful for Lit studies, of course.

Bobby and MoMo enjoyed brunch in a trendy Springwood cafe.

We went to the Norman Linsday museum, and of course, there had to be a Magic Puddin'.

I Know Not What I do

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Peeping From Under the Table

A month ago I wrote a post about participating in Me-Made-May. I then didn't write anything else during that month, but kept telling myself it would be fine because I would make myself post at least once a week during May to explain what I was wearing that I had made myself.

Now it is the last day before the start of May and I am exhausted and a little stressed from university assignments and feeling rather not like forcing myself to do anything. In fact I seriously want to hide under the table and let the whole world pass by for a while. Except that I would have to take a pile of books and my laptop in there. And snacks. And if so, I might as well write *something*, maybe even find some photos of something. Anything other than rewriting a short story for a major assignment!

George and I spent a week in northern NSW and southern Queensland over Easter. Among other things, I was hugely taken with a sculpture in Brisbane called Forme del Mito by Arnaldo Pomodoro. It tells the  story of Agamemmon from Ancient Greece. Fabricated in cast bronze each piece has its own identity. ‘The Prophet’ Cassandra, ‘The Machine’ Aegisthus, ‘Ambition’ Clytesmnestra and ‘Power’ Agamemnon King of Mycenea.  I think it was commissioned for the World Expos that was held in Brisbane in 1988. 

It was, presumably, inspired by the gold death mask of Agamemnon, which is displayed in Athens after being found at Mycenae:

These are three of the scultpures:

I thought they were very beautiful, atmospheric and exciting.

I also really liked this scultpure in the main mall, I think, which is shell shaped and kids can worm their way through it:

Hand Made

I haven't blogged for a month but have been productive, just not in the photographing and writing sense. The only finished piece of dressmaking is the totally handsewn Alabama Chanin inspired dress that I am blogging about today. There are another two dresses partially sewn waiting by the sewing machine, too, plus another cut out but not started, and fabric washed and prepared and patterns prepared to cut out another three things. (And uni starts on Monday, so I'm not really sure how quickly any of that will progress!) There are also two small shawls finished but not blocked or photographed.

I love the Alabama Chanin look (there's a link to her site on my list of links on the side of the blog, if you don't know what I am talking about) but for my first go I did not want to go to all the trouble of the stencilling and reverse appliqueing and stuff that looks so fantastic but I suspected I would get bored and grumpy with it. I intended to do a very simple tunic/short dress and make a feature of the seams with contrasting thread and possibly a little bit of stitched embellishment, just using one layer of jersey. In the end I gave up on the embellishment because I found it impossible to keep my tension on one layer of jersey - doing the seams and binding was easier because it was always at least two layers, so if I do another piece (and I would like to) I might consider double layers and a touch at least of reverse applique or something similar.

I used 1 metre of 100% cotton jersey from Clegs (navy blue), and the heaviest Guterman thread (uphosltery, perhaps? I can't remember) used double (bright red). I drafted the pattern from a jersey nightie I love could easily be worn as a dress, and it fits comfortably.

Navy blue is incredibly difficult to photograph. It didn't seem to matter whether I used natural light, filtered light or flash, it never came out the right colour. It is an ordinary, bog standard navy blue. It looks abominable just hanging on a hanger but I promise it looks better on, I'm just terrible at selfies.

This is a detail of the stretchy stitch I used to attach the bindings round the neck and armholes. There are a variety of options but I liked the simplicity of this one. The seams and flat felling are done in running stitch.

This is just another stitching detail, the same as before, but it gets a bit closer to the real colour.

I haven't worn it yet but will soon. Yes, I know summer is technically almost over in Australia, but there is always substantial warm (and often hot) weather during March and sometimes into April, and it's also designed to be a layering piece worn with a long or short sleeved Tshirt underneath and over jeans or leggings, so I intend to be able to wear it all year round.

It was fun to do. Yes, it was time-consuming, as you would expect with a totally handsewn item, but I could do it all in front of the TV and it was oddly relaxing to do. I'll have to wash it in a lingerie bag on the delicate cycle but that isn't a huge imposition. I really enjoyed the handsewn ethic, down to the fact that I drafted my own pattern from something I already owned.

Fun With Sharp Needles

Fianlly, what I started at Geelong Fibre Forum last year has been finished. Well, more or less finished - it is a triptych and I can't decide how to arrange them or finalise the piece.

The work is called (at the moment anyway!) We Look At The Land Through Different Eyes, You and I.

I won't go through every step of the technique I used, as Carolyn Sullivan teaches this and it is definitely not my place to reproduce her class! But I will run through the main steps.

The base for these pieces is wool/viscose felt from Spotlight - good quality and nice to handstitch through. Then I used an embellisher machine to apply bits of hand-dyed scrim (by me) and prefelt (not dyed by me), embellished a few pieces of hand-dyed silk ribbon (not dyed by me either). Then lots of stitching in Appleton's crewel wool, two strands in the needle - mostly kantha stitch and seeding stitch. Then I ran the embellishing machine over the whole piece again to embed the woolen stitches (and make sure the other bits were thoroughly embedded. Finally, lots of kantha and seed stitching in variaged perel cottons (commercially dyed).

The inspiration - we spent a morning sketching views and close-ups near Geelong Grammar, and taking photos too. During the afternoon of fiddling around with our sketches, narrowing down possibilities and in many cases making further sketches from photos, I settled on a sketch I had made of a photo of a eucalypt.

Carolyn helped me to isolate a section of the sketch I had made. While mulling over the final sketch I was suddenly sparked by memories of a lecture the previous night by an artist whose name I have forgotten, and a book I studied for Literature - That Deadman Dance by Kim Scott - and came up with the idea of looking through the tree and seeing the landscape at morning and night out over the water, and in reverse from the sea to the bush and midday. Using the lines of the bark and seeing the background through them - to me it gave me the idea of a 'ghost gum' - not in the sense of the actual gums that are known as ghost gums, but a ghost of the past/present/future of the landscape and the people.

It's another example of slow creating, as it took quite a while, but I can honestly say that I loved every second of doing this work. So much so that I have another one at the design stage, vaguely inspired by Mrs Dalloway - I certainly didn't start out intending to create works based on books I am studying, but it seems to be turning out that way right now!

Edited to add - an embellishing machine is a needlefelting machine - it looks like a sewing machine but is much lighter and has a set of needles (5 in mine) with barbs which mesh threads together when you run it up and down through the fabric. I have the cheapest domestic version.

One Word To Rule Them All

I've read a few blogs around the place about choosing one word to inspire them throughout the year. Apparently many bloggers have done this before. I did idly trace through some links to a website where this idea may have originated, even downloaded the 'worksheet' that was meant to help you define your special word. I then read the four page worksheet and realised that I would be wasting an hour or so to whittle down choices of a word that I would then completely fail to live up to, just like I do with all but the vaguest resolutions.

Damn it all, I thought in disgust, what I need to do is stop dithering around and FOCUS.

Oh, look, there's a word that might be quite useful in organising myself this year. Oops, it seems like I accidentally picked out an appropriate word while railing against the idiocy of trying to pick a word.

So, completely against the grain, I am declaring that my word for the year will be FOCUS.

Focus, to me, includes concentrating on what I actually WANT to do. Obviously there will be things that I NEED to do. But where possible I only want to embark on projects that fulfil a desire including both making and the result.

Despite the post in December about sewing, I realised that I had been dithering about all over the place NOT sewing. I cut out those two patterns, spent some time tissue fitting and writing down alteration stuff, washing and ironing appropriate fabric. Then every time I considered cutting out the fabric and making those alterations, my mind turned into a butterful and my attention was caught by something shiny. Once I started focussing on what it was that was preventing me from sewing these dresses, in fabric that I like and that I actually want to wear, I realised that I did not actually want to sew them. I would have bought those dresses but the process was putting me off.

Consequently I have packed those patterns away and picked some others from the stash, and will have another go at sewing. I feel quite OK about that - I wasted about six weeks of not sewing, but actually applying FOCUS helped me to work out why I had wasted that time. Now I suppose I may have to provide future proof that sewing has happened, so here's hoping!

I have done some baking for the first time in ages - Peasant Bread - which was quite delicious and very easy. It's a no-knead bread that was quite literally easy to mix by hand (in this lovely rustic mixing bowl) even with my weak wrists. You bake it in a Pyrex bowl, which I did, though I might try it in a bread tin next time to see if it gets crustier.

I also started knitting a new little shawl once I finished the Nuvem last year, It is another iteration of  this shawl but this time in a semi solid Woolmeise sock yarn, of which I have 150g so it will be a bit bigger. It's my first time knitting with Woolmeise and it is a bit odd.lovely colour but although being the usual sock mixture of wool and synthetic it feels and knits rather like a cotton yarn. Which does not matter at all as there is no need for gauge in a shawl but I did start off trying to knit socks with it and my gauge was all over the place. It is not really pink like this picture, but a lovely red, I just couldn't get the light right at the time.

2014 and Stuff

Looking back over the last year I realise that I haven't done a lot of things that resulted in Finished Objects. Slow and happy crafting beat rapid gratification.

Oddly this seems to be the only pair of socks I have knitted this year. Could that be true? It's the only photo I can find, anyway. I think it was with a New Zealand sock wool. I call them Clown socks but I can't remember if that was the actual name of the colourway or not. I didn't even get round to putting them on Ravelry. For George, who wears them regularly.

Now this is on Ravelry. It took a VERY LONG TIME. Hence the reference to slow knitting! It finally got finished on holiday in the middle of the year. It is so fine that it fits through my wedding ring - which wasn't intentional but is a good party trick.

This is also on Rav. I haven't worn it yet, as I finished it just before Christmas and it hasn't been cold enough since then, but I look forward to getting the chance. It is greener/bluer than in the photo, which accentuates the purple which is in there but is less dominant in real life - it was very hard to photograph.

As well as slow knitting, I have been embracing slow cooking. Some of the slow cooking is actually quite fast cooking, but I'm using the term to mean more emphasis on fresh ingredients and home cooking and a lot less on processed food and lazy shortcuts. (Using a barbeque is the sort of the shortcut that I consider to be smart not lazy!) Most nights dinner is barbequed protein with salad and nuts. No, we have not gone paleo, and bread or potatoes feature with some of these meals. Risottos, simple Asian dishes with rice, the occasional couscous salad all get a look in from time to time too. The winter saw many hearty casseroles/pot roasts.

There were also holidays.

To Adelaide, where we saw in the New Year at the Hilton, and visited the Hans Heysen museum among other places, where I photographed this plant.

To the Gold Coast over Easter.

During the winter, a trip to Central and South Australia taking in Coober Pedy, Alice Springs and ending up back in Adelaide again.

And then a week in Merimbula to wind down in December.

Most of the year was spent studying for my first year of a Bachelor of Letters at Monash University. I studied Medieval and Renaissance History, and two literature subjects. This year I am doing all literature, a total of six subjects, and I cannot wait! And this year I will try to blog a bit about my studies instead of leaving the blog lonely for months at a time.