Saturday Sky

I thought I was going to be posting yet another perfect sunny sky, but by the time I got home from shopping it had clouded over a bit. It was still quite warm though - it was about 26C when I got home at 3 o'clock, funny to think that on Wednesday it barely reached 11C! Yes, we Melbournians are obsessed with the weather, it changes so much that we always have something to talk about!
There was another working bee at the school to get the environmental garden project as close to completion as possible. Most of the heavy labour has been done by George, our good friend R who is the project manager, and a couple of other dedicated dads. It was good to see quite a lot of other parents there yesterday. Much to my disgust George is over there AGAIN cleaning up with R and a couple of others. I am getting a little sick of the amount of time he is putting into it - added to the fact that he is President of the School Council, and Treasurer of our Church. It is good to be involved in the community (I am just on the Education Committee at school, I used to do a lot more but gradually pulled back on my committments when they got rather overwhelming) but some family time would be nice too, especially considering that he works a good 50 to 60 hours a week at his 'real' job and is committed to being a hands-on father and husband. I worry that he will just collapse with exhaustion at some point.
The kids had a swim afterwards - our two and R's two youngest - but it still isn't quite warm enough for me to go in. Maybe tomorrow - it is forecast to be 31C today and 33C tomorrow, so the solar heating should be doing its job and heating the water up nicely by now. I am a wimp about cold water and it has to be a minimum temperature for me to go in, unlike the kids who don't seem to care!

No pics today

I've run out of textile pics to show off and I haven't got any knitting pics because my current two projects are 'in progress'. On the upside, one of those projects is an actual garment that is not a sock, that is for me, and only has one and a bit sleeves and sewing up to go! I have been dipping in and out of making a Diamond Patch jumper for about eighteen months or longer, in a nice cotton/acrylic mixture that is very washed out denim blue and looks like linen. I enjoyed knitting it, but only in small quanitities at a time. I picked it up a few weeks ago and realised that, now I have had this operation, no matter if I don;t lose astronomical amounts of weight, it was going to be several sizes too big. I didn't have the patience to frog it and start again (especially as it is modular so I would have been left with a million small balls), so I checked how much I had left in full balls, which was quite a few, and at the same time the latest Vogue Knitting had arrived and I had fallen in love with a cardigan pattern. And I realised that for once I stood a chance of fitting into a Vogue knitting pattern, even if it was their idea of a Plus Size and I won't be able to wear it till the winter (at the rate I am losing weight, which I am quite happy with). I should point out that Vogue Knitting's idea of a Plus Size is not exactly huge. I thought I would have to fiddle around with the pattern, as I was going to knit it in a totally different yarn, but I got gauge first time!

There will be pics when it is finished.

The other project is the ubiquitous pair of socks. I don't think I have photographed the last few pairs I have made. Maybe there should be a photo shoot soon.

I have had a grumpy week, which is why the knitting has progressed on the cardigan has progressed so fast. It;s cold, which I don;t normally don't mind, but our central heating is on the blink and it is taking the lovely manufactureres who shall be nameless three weeks to get a serviceman out to us. We are making do with jumpers and two ancient fan heaters that use up so much electricity that I cringe every time I turn one of. The welling has gone down on my stomach - good news, you might think, but it means that Ia m eating too much again. I have my first fill next week and that should help, in them eantime my weight loss is slowing down to a snail's pace and I am feeling guilty about overeating. I am trying to exercise but the cold really got to me! Plus I have had a sick kid at home most of the week coughing as though she has TB.

At least it means I have spent a lot of time knitting!

Saturday Sky

Another perfect spring day in Melbourne. Sun shining, no clouds. It clouded over later on in the day and got humid and close, but this was taken mid-morning. Trouble is, what we really need is rain!

As Christmas presents within our class, we each had to decorate a paper bag with a portrait of the recipient (names drawn out of a hat),, and include little parcels of craft stuff that we had lying around at home - strict instructions NOT to spend money. Some people can draw brilliant portraits. Some people can draw reasonably recognizable portraits. Some people are bad at drawing and are smart alecs so they do a bad imitation of Picasso. I'm glad to say that the recipient of the fake Picasso was increibly thrilled with her picture! 

Our Mural

I think we are pretty clever, really! It's hard to photograph the whole thing and still leave it possible to see the details, but if you click on it you should be able to see a bigger picture (I hope!) 

My Contribution to our Mural

Well, we had our last day for the year at TAFE yesterday. We got to go and look at the Second Years' body of work for the year and it was so exciting! I wanted to start Second Year right away!

Our final project for the year was a collaborative mural. This is my panel of it. When I have downloaded yesterday's photos I will post a picture of the whole thing, though at the time it was just propped up on a table rather than properly hung! Some time next year it, and that done by the other First Year class, and the whole story about how we designed and made them, is going to appear in Textile Fibre Forum magazine, which is incredibly exciting. 

ISE Scarf

Just realised that I have forgotten to blog about my lovely ISE scarf.


It came from Julie, whose link I can't find offhand, and included a selection of the most gorgeous origami bookmarks and a cure pair of enamelled stitch markers that her son had made at school! The scarf itself is something soft and light and cuddly, possibly Kidsilk Haze or something like that, in pure white, and it has beads through it in shades of blues and greens that are just like the sea.

Healesville Sanctuary

We went to Healesville Sanctuary on Monday, to show off native Australian animals to an English friend who is visiting. It was a beautiful day. The Sanctuary is in a lovely bush setting and runs many important breeding and rescue programs, as well as having the animals on display in as natural a surrounding as is feasible for the breed. Highly recommended! 

Fragments of Me

Rather than explaining this picture all over again, this is the artist statement I wrote to go with it:

FRAGMENTS OF ME

The original collage for this work consists of childhood photos, photos of my own daughter and niece and nephews, street maps of two of the most significant places I have lived, and the (present day) board outside the hospital where I was born.

Although I was reasonably happy with this collage and played around with some stitching ideas to use with it, I then decided that the composition was too static. While playing around with photo-editing software I attempted distorting the picture several times, and chose these three distortions to place side-by-side in a triptych.

It shows how our perceptions of ourselves as children are distorted in the real world, and those perceptions distort further as we get older and become parents ourselves. Different aspects of our lives take precedence at different times.

For me, family is a constant theme that informs how I live my life. The stitched border represents the gardens of all the places I have lived in and the domesticity that forms the bedrock of my life and relationships with others.

My grandmother’s charm bracelet completes the picture. Two of the charms (the sheep which she hung the wrong way round, and the flat iron) were makeweights that she put on to balance it out. The other charms are a St Christopher medal that belonged to one of her sons whose plane was shot down during WW2; a silver threepenny piece; and the navy badge worn by the other of her sons who was killed during the war, in the Battle of Crete.

Folder Cover

This is my final folder cover for the year. The beaded pear is the same one that I have already posted a better picture of, so I concentrated on the machine emrboidery instead. I am qutie pleased with this is as I do not consider myself to be a machine embroiderer at all and this worked out fairly well, all things considered. 

Series of Three (T is for Three)

These were hard to photograph. They are fragments inspired by the watercolour paintings of several entries ago. Each one is painted on watercolour paper and then machine stitched. It was a technique that I had wantd to try out though I don't know that it will do it too frequently - I quite liked the effect but I don't think it is destined to become a favorite.

Edited much later to add that I am going to try some layering with organza and more stitching and embellishment to soften these pictures up - next year sometime!

S is for Sand

And what do you do with sand? You bury yourself up to your neck in it, of course!

As did three other children. I'm sure the mother of the other two was as pleased as I was with the quantity of sand that came out of those clothes! It amuses me that even thirteen year olds consider burying themselves in sand to be wonderfukl fun. 

R is for Rose

Not many of our roses are out yet but this one is putting up a nice show. I can't remember if it is a Tequila Sunrise or a Whiskey Mac, they are similar and I love them both.

It's two weeks now since my op and I am much recovered. I am losing weight (yeh!!), and feeling much more energetic. I have become friends with my CPAP machine and I'm sleeping really well. It was a bit hard to judge the energy levels for a while because of the results of the anaesthetic, but now I would definitely have to say that it has made a big difference. And I saw my sleep physician today and she checked the readings on the machine and said that losing the weight I have already lost has made a big difference to the pressures needed, and hopefully in a few months I won't need to use it at all!

It is just a bit early to state that my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome was actually caused by sleep apnoea, but certainly I am feeling better every day.

I survived two weeks of a liquid diet after the op, to help my stomach heal, and now I;m on two weeks of 'mushies' during which I have to 'transition' to solid food. I had some mashed up fish last night, mashed apple this morning and scrambled eggs for lunch. I am amazed that what to me looks like a minisicule quantity (about half a cup) of food actually makes me feel full and satisfied. I have my first fill in four weeks time. I really do think I have found a method of weight loss that will work, for the first time ever. I always ate healthy food, just far too much of it, and this so far seems to be helping me cut down on quantities very helpfully indeed. 

My first forays into watercolours

We had to do collages and then turn them into watercolours in class recently. I can't paint, and I had never used watercolours before. The collaging process was fun though. I ended up doing two.

Just for fun, I collaged them together on Picasa. I like the result. (It's the top picture).

There will be three small stitched pieces coming from this - we had to choose three postcard sized sections to turn into stitch. I haven't finished mine yet but had better get a move in as everything is due in on November 3rd!

Saturday Sky

It was chilly this morning (for Melbourne in October) and there were some tiny sprinkles of rain, but nothing like enough. (We are in sustained and serious drought). Lots of clouds during the day, some of them quite darkish, but nothing that even registered in the rain gauge. This is the view over the fence into next door, they are a lovely Sri Lankan couple with a little boy of about twelve months who is so cuddleable and cute that you just want to eat him up! 

Q is for Quite the Young Athenian

This is Wombat playing a young Athenian (i.e.) crowd member and chorus) is the school production of A Kidsummer Night's Dream. I've already blogged about how proud we were that he was able to take part in this production after he had solidly refused to be involved the previous two times (it happens every second year). This year he followed direction, was co-operative, and loved the whole thing. It's a big thing for an autistic kid to cope with, no matter how high-functioning, so I thought he deserved to be immortalised here. The toy dog, Pep, goes to school every day and most of the kids are good enough to accept that and not tease him for it, bless them. 

Saturday Sky

Baby Bear took these photos for me yesterday while I was still in hospital - isn't she a good girl! There was a working bee at the primary school which kept everyone busy.

I am home, feeling as weak as a kitten, but largely pain free (except for a persistent sore neck and headache which I think came from the hospital bed!).

I now have to live on liquids for the next three weeks. So far I have only managed water and fruit juice with a couple of mouthfuls of chicken broth, but intend moving up to more broth and possibly even a cup of tea today. I am still bloated from all the gas they pump inot you during the op - though that has improved a lot.

It hurts to sit at the computer for any length of time - I am fine lying down, walking for short periods, of sitting in an armchair. So not much blogging today. But thanks so much for all your kind words, I probably won't get back to all of you individually so I hope you are reading this and acccept my heartfelt thanks for your kind thoughts and words. 

Tomorrow is B Day

TOmorrow I go into hospital to have gastric lap banding. I am alternating between being excited and terrified. It's a bit like having a baby - you know it's going to hurt and be undignified, but you want to get it over and done with so you get on with your life again.

I haven't blogged recently because I have had my head down doing schoolwork. Only four weeks left till the end of the academic year, and I have to miss this week, so I am working hard to get myself into a position where I can comfortable manage to allow myself some 'sick leave'. That is what I am aiming for by the end of today and things are looking good at the moment.

I have had to spend the last two weeks on a strict diet using Optifast. I am cross with my surgeon for putting every patient on this beofre the op without any examination of individual circumstances - a strict diet makes sense, because most people who need this op have a fatty liver, and it's a good idea to shrink it a bit - but I am lactose intolerant and no mention was made of the fact that Optifast is, on the whoole, pure milk products with vitamins and minerals thrown in. There is a soup, but it tastes like dog vomit and I threw it away. I managed three of the shakes before I was sick. I have been managing with the chocolate mousses and chocolate bars three times a day (how does this teach you good eating habits, BTW? And I don't even have a sweet tooth) plus the allowance of fruit and veges (the easy bit) plus all the water (also the easy bit). But I have been having such bad stomach pains and other nasty intestinal symtpoms (won't go into details but let's just say that last night I only just got to the bathroom in time) that this morning (after puking up my Optifast breakfast) I have thrown it all out and I;m spending my last day before banding eating sensibly. Two weeks of this have turned me from someone who ate sensible foods, albeit in enormous quantities, to a buleimic eating 'chocolate' three times a day. At least after the op , although I have to live on liquids for a while and then purees, they can be actual food. I have written lactose intolerance on my hospital admission forms because if anyone offers me a nourishing milky drink in hospital I will get violent with my IV stand!!!

I will politely point out to my surgeon, when I see him, that it would be a good idea to check with his patients rather than just having a blanket policy of putting them all onto Optifast!

Saturday Sky

This is my first Saturday Sky entry - a typical Melbourne spring day. The big eucalpyt is ours, in our front garden, and the other trees are on the other side of the road. 

Hate CPAP machine

Rotten CPAP machine. I thought I'd had a good night's sleep last night but I feel blinkin' terrible today - headache, all over aches, knackered, just like I'd never made any attempt to get the CFS under control.

I have vowed to give this a month's trial, and I will, and I will do the sleep study to see if it's working. But I've got to start feeling better than this, I can't sumon the energy to do anything except play on the computer and I have mounds of schoolwork waiting to be done, to say nothing of the clean washing that is taking over the house! (And the dirty washing, too, for that matter).

GRUMP

Sleep Study Results

Calling it a sleep study is like calling sleepovers sleepovers. A friend of ours calls sleepovers 'wakeovers'. Well, I think they should be called wake studies! It was NOT COMFORTABLE. However I slept enough for useful results, and they were quite illuminating.

Yes, I have severe sleep apnoea, though not the normal kind (why would I be normal?) My oxygen saturation doesn't drop during the aponea episodes, which is weird. But I do have them repeatedly and I do wake up about once every minute or two ALL NIGHT. And I have Periodic Leg Movement Syndrome, which is like restless legs but only when I;m asleep (Jejeune, if you are reading this, you were right when you mentioned that to me!) SO... I am on a four week trial of a CPAP machine and taking Clonazepam for the leg thing. The sleep doctor said, looking at my readouts, that the technical term for the way you feel after sleeping like that is 'STUFFED'. She's not surprised I have been exhausted and aching all over for five years!

I've only had the machine for two nights so I am not sure yet about whether it is working,. Yesterday I felt much the same as usual and had had some problems getting to sleep with it attached (though I did perservere). Today I feel ike I do on my good days - which is a good sign, as I don't have many good days, and it's nearly 2pm and I haven't wanted to go to sleep yet). The fibro is about the same as it would be on a goodish day. I can;t expect a sudden reversal of the ill-effects of five years damage, so I am being cautiously optimistic at this stage.

It's school holidays and Baby Bear is involved in a drama production all week. She has rehearsed twice a week all of last term and this week was dress rehearsals and then performacnes. We went last night and it was fun. She didn't have the big part that she deserved (being one of the few people who can actually both carry a tune and project her voice!) but she was excellent in her smallish character role and got a lot of people talking.

Wombat is having an enforced quiet week - his two best friends are in the production so he can't play with them, and he is tired from school, so we are slobbing around together watching The Simpsons and things like that.

I have mounds of school work to do. I started tackling some last night and might do some more this afternoon.

I joined the Saturday Sky webring last week but only on Saturday afternoon so didn't get round to posting a picture. There will be one most Saturdays from now on!

Bondage

Well, it got your attention more than a title like 'Sleep Study Tonight', didn't it!

I am undergoing a sleep study tonight, at home, which means I have to be inserted into a remarkably attractive contraption of wire and leads and electrodes and box things, and then have a good night's sleep. If I was enthusiastic about bondage, no doubt it would fulfil certain fantasies. However I feel claustrophobia coming on already.

This is because it was compulsory to see a respiratory physician before my operation could be finally approved, and she looked at my medical history and insisted on a sleep study. It is possible that I have sleep apneoa or hypoventilation, and if so they need to know before shoving me under an anasthetic. Fair enough. More excitingly, it is just possible that if one of these is diagnosed, it might be an underlying cause of the CFS - something that no-one else I have seen for it in five years has actually mentioned. (To his credit George did mention it last year but I never followed through on it).

At least I don't have to go into hospital overnight and try to have a normal night's sleep there! I will be in my own bed, and more comfortable at least.

And if I run amok through the house in the wee hours making like Frankenstein's monster, well, that'll give 'em something to talk about at the sleep centre!

P is for Pear 4

This pear was done in blackstitch (only in green, actually) on evenweave white linen. 

P is for Pear 3

The pear is made from Tyvek. I painted a sheet of it with bronze acrylic paint, then ironed the whole sheet and cut out a pear shape from it. This was stuck down and hand stitched around onto the background. The background was prepared from crumbpled up brown paper, roughly smoothed out again, and Vliesofix that i had painted with acrylics and, when it was dry, ironed onto the brown paper. I then machined lines onto it to give (I hope!) an impression of a table and a wall behind. 

P is for Pear 2

The pear is made of air drying clay, painted with acrylics and then with gold wax rubbed on it. It is on a lightly quilted background using echo quilting done by hand. The pear is glued onto the fabric ground and then surrounded with peyote stitched seed beads. 

P is for Pear 1

This is going to be on the front cover of my folder for TAFE this semester. It is bead embroidery on felt, using mostly seed beads with a few accent beads thrown in. 

A Long Time Between Posts

What a week!

We lost two great Australians this week ... one in-your-face loudmouth who was actually a superb naturalist and conservationist, and one wonderful author who I have loved since childhood.

The whole world knows about the death of Steve Irwin. Presumably the stingray was a contract killer called The Jackal who has now snuck off to South America with his ill-gotten gains, paid off by Australia's much-abused reptiles. Seriously, my heart aches for his wife and children. I hope they have the resilience to remake their lives.

Colin Thiele died aged 85 or thereabouts. One of his best-known books is Storm Boy, though he wrote many others. One of my best childhood memories is lying in bed on a Sunday morning, the sun streaming over me, listening to Storm Boy on the radio and crying copiously over Mr Percival, then trying to hide the fact that I was crying when my mum came into the room. Many years later, George took me to visit the Coorong where it was set, and I fell in love with the bleakness and wildness of it, and the amazing bird life. Definitely one of the most special places I have ever visited.

Since I started writing this post a couple of days ago, Peter Brock has also died, also doing the dangerous thing for which he was famous (motor racing, for non-aussies).

It was also a momentous week for us personally. Wombat's school does a whole school musical every second year, and so far Wombat has totally refused to get involved. It has always been a fraught time for us because he has become more and more autistic as the preparations ramp up, and I have always ended up pulling him out of school for a couple of weeks around the time of the actual production. This year I assumed the same would happen, but lo and behold, he insisted on participating and was JUST LIKE ALL THE OTHER CHILDREN. It was extremely emotional for us to watch him up on stage singing along with all the other kids, just like a 'normal' kid. He has had a really great year, except for the appearance of rapidly worsening OCD (but at least it wasn't Tourettes as I had thought - not yet, anyway!) I was as proud of him on Tuesday night as I have ever been of Baby Bear when she was the star of the show - it was an even bigger acomplishment for him.

And I have taken the plunge and decided to do something serious about my future health, and filled in paperwork and got confirmation of dates after much research and great trepidation. I am going to have lap band surgery to help me with my spiralling weight, and hopefully that will help (if not cure totally) my CFS and fibromylagia. Of course the surgeoun does not believe in CFS and thinks it is totally to do with my weight, but then he's a surgeon, isn't he, and if you can't cut it out or sew it up, it can't exist, can it? I am having the op on October 12th and I am terrified, but I know it will be a really good thing to do. In the meantime I have had to have lots of blood tests (I felt like Tony Hancock after they filled SIX TUBES with my blood yesterday) and have to have a sleep study done tomorrow night - at home, but still a nuisance. Then oif course there will be pain and starvation and other icky things, but in the long run I know it will be a GOOD THING.

Gum Leaves

We aren't doing as much stitch work this semester as last semester, but this is one piece I did a few weeks ago. We had to do something illustrating over-and-under techniques. I had a huge amount of fun doing this!

It is not necessarily botanically or zoologically correct - I don't think this sort of eucalypt has that sort of leaf gall, and i don't know if a spider that looks like that one spins webs and hangs around in trees like this, but I confess I was aiming for effect and not accuracy!

I am currently working on a series of three Pear pieces, which will form my P is for... in a week or so. One pear piece has turned into such an undertaking that it is actually going to become my folder cover for the semester rather than one of these three pieces - of which two are done and the other one is still being mulled over. 

It's Amazing What You Can Do With a Garbage Bag

We set Baby Bear the challenge to see what she could create to wear out of a garbage bag (this is in reference to her aunt's statement that Baby Bear would look good wearing a garbage bag!). This is what you get when you give a creative thirteen year old a cheap black garbage bag, then Dad takes photos and said creative thirteen year old plays with the photo in Picasa and Paint. We are thinking of making this the theme of her birthday party next year. 

Stitched Up Festival, Wangaratta

Two weeks on and I haven't blogged about this!

We had to leave Melbourne earlier than usual to drop Sirius off with her dog minder, so i got an extra hour in Wangaratta. This gave me a chance to go to the aerodrome plus some exhibitions in the town itself.

I fear that a semester of 'art school' has turned me into an artistic snob. I found myself going around the exhibits at the aerodrome muttering under my breath. There was some lovely stuff there, certainly, but nearly everything that won a first prize in its section was so conventional, while the wilder stuff rarely got even a commendation. There was a lovely series of A5 embroideries, for instance, that made me think of encrusted corsets - lots of exciting techniques and effects - and absolutely nothing for them. That artist did win a prize in another section, but with the most conventional (and least interesting) of her pieces.

It was nice to see a lot of (excellent) work from High School dressmaking students, demonstrating some really nice flair for what they did. Some of them should be wearing some nice clothes in the future.

Then we popped into town and went into one of the wool/patchwork shops. Upstairs there was a small exhibition of (mostly) small art quilts. They blew me away. Some of the best work I had seen in a long time, and one of the artists was doing something that I have been contemplating for a while, and I came away full of inspiration. I also bought some Opal sock wool (currently being turned into a pair of Feather and Fan socks for me - the first 'lace' socks I have knitted!) and some hand dyed fat eights.

Then there was an embroidery exhibition that was also pretty exciting. Some of it was, again, quite conventional, but the level of technique was so high that I forgave it (after all I use some quite conventional techniques myself!) A few times I found myself thinking 'yes, I;ve read that book too' as I could tell where the particular techniques had come from, which made me smile.

Again I came away feeling inspired and enthusiastic.

At the last minute I dashed into an exhibition of church embroideries - which was way over the top, I don't really like ecclesiastical textiles much though there were two lovely Australiana themed pieces that were refreshing and beautiful.

O is for On The Steps of the GPO

This is our standard family meeting place in the city centre. It;s where George and i used to meet up, many years ago, and I think the meeting place he used wit his family when he was a child. We call it, 'by the flower seller at the GPO'. That's because there was once (for many years) a flower seller in the little alcove to the right of the picture. He hasn't been there for some years now. In fact, it isn't even the GPO (General Post Office) any more. It's a boutique shopping mall - I haven't ever been in it though it is supposed to be lovely and VERY up market.

This picture was taken 18 months ago when we went in to see the Myer Christmas windows, another Melbourne tradition.

Years ago there was a bagpipe player who would busk up and down the Bourke Street Mall, in which this is situated - the only tune he knew was 'Scotland the Brave'. I alsways associate that tune with this place too! 

Project spectrum - July - Purple

This is a pin I made for Baby Bear to wear at music camp. She likes to wear handmade things there as everyone is a bit eccentric!

I am currently finishing off another purple pin for my July swap pal, in between sock knitting and schoolwork (oh, and housework - ha ha! - and kid care!) 

N is for Natural Dyes

I am fascinated by natural dyeing, though I am forced to admit that this is the only lot I have actually done! It is my homespun, dyed with lemon-scented gum. I used alum as the mordant, it being the only one I had to hand (it's used in swimming pools). Actually getting other mordants has put me off a bit - they would all have to be got mailorder or by trecking across town. Yes, they are poisonous too, but then I keep poisonous dyes in the shed too so the mordants could be stored there.

I am now keen on trying it out with fabrics. I have been reading about rust dyeing, and one of my tutors last semester had done a lot of cloth dyeing with dirt. I met a textile artist last weekend who had been using local plants to great effect, too.