Gratuitous Sirius Photos

Madeiran textiles

Wordless Wednesday

Creative Tuesday

I blogged briefly about these pictures when I did them on my Diploma course, almost exactly two years ago. At the time I had intended doing more using the same techniques, but of course I didn't.

I have periodically taken photos of old buildings in my travels, still with that intention. Yesterday in Ballarat I took some more. And, thinking about it, it is still a good idea, to do more of these. So maybe I will.

They are very easy, even for someone who is as completely a duffer at drawing as I am. Take a photo (if you are going to sell them, onviously a copyright free photo!). Copy it in black and white, or greyscale, or whatever, aiming for enough contrast to be able to see major features through tracing paper. Trace said major features. Scribble all over the back, heavily, with a soft graphite pencil. Transfer to watercolour paper using a pencil or whatever you wish, but try not to press too hard as it is best not to have the scored lines on the page. When the bones of the picture are transferred, use the photocopy as a guide to go over the transferred lines, and add as many extra details as you wish, with a WATERPROOF fine line pen.

When you are happy with the sketch, and it has all the details you want in it, choose two colours of watercolour paint - complementary, analagous, warm, cold, whatever takes your fancy. We used a slightly different technique in each of the above pictures. In either case, wet the paper with clean water. (See why you need to use a waterproof fine liner!) Then either apply gentle blobs of colour and let them spread as they wish; or do the same and hold it vertically while they drip and dribble.

OF course you could use more than two colours. Or find other ways of colour washing the pictures. Whatever. I like these pictures. And of course you don't have to use old buildings, you could use the same technique with anything at all.

Scarves, beads and political cartoons

I have fitted in three exhibitions in the last few days. (It helped that two of them were at the same place!)

The first was Reflections Scarf Festival 2010 at the Geelong Wool Museum. This is run in conjunction with Craft Victoria. Every year I mean to enter some scarves. Do I ever? No of course not. I will try to be firm with myself next year! It was an interesting collection of artworks and there are various categories to win prizes in. Invariably I did not necessarily agree with the prize winners in every case - who ever does? It is always so subjective. But everyone had worked extremely hard and there was some amazing stuff there. Nuno felting was obviously flavour of the month, and very nice it was too. That is something that I know how to do but cannot be bothered doing, so it is nice to see the work of other people. There were also knitted, crocheted, woven and fabric scarves of various sorts. I deliberately wore one of my own creations, made for my Diploma course. Personally I think it was at least as good as the best that were there! Maybe I will enter it next year. I can't post any pictures of the scarves there as I don't think photography was allowed and even if it was, I wouldn't post someone else's creations without their permission. I left with lots and lots of inspiration for future creations so it was a very worthwhile visit. This was immediately after a pleasant lunch with my mum and brother instead of a 'wake' for my father.

The other two exhibitions were at the Art Gallery of Ballarat. Brilliant Beads was an exhibition commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Embroiderers' Guild of Victoria, and this is what the blurb said : Tiny brooches, flamboyant necklaces, framed pictures, tables, bottles, vases and small toys are included in a unique exhibition where diverse objects have been embellished with millions of beads to transform them into something new.

Brilliant Beads is presented by the Ballarat Branch of the Embroiderers Guild of Victoria as part of its 50th Anniversary. It brings together pieces as diverse as a beautifully beaded wedding dress to craft and an antique fire screen lovingly restored by renowned textile artist Alison Cole.

The beaded articles on display have been sourced from various places, including the archives of the Embroiderers Guild, the Art Gallery of Ballarat as well as pieces from individual Members' collections and their own work.

This exhibition is one of a series around the state hosted by branches of the Embroiderers Guild of Victoria.

It was really fascinating. I did take lots of pictures, which was permitted, but as I said above, I don't post pictures of other people's work. I took them for my own interest and reference, for display methods as much as anything else. In fact a great many of them were made from books and magazine designs, I think, whereas I design my own stuff, as I was going to point out if anyone accused me of taking the photos so that I could copy them! There was a lot of wonderful, precise work there, probably of a much higher technical standard than I could do, but I had the usual problem I find with the Guild work, in that technique tends to be more important than originality. Which is fine for lots of people, and it isn't really a criticism of people who prefer to work that way. It does, however, explain why I am reluctant to join the Guild! Again, there was lots of inspiration.

The final exhibition I went to see, at the same Gallery, was In Your Face! Cartoons about politics and society 1760 - 2010 :

This exhibition celebrates the tradition of making social and political comment in the form of the cartoon and caricature about current affairs, a tradition that goes back many centuries but has been at its most vibrant since mass circulation printing became commonplace in the late 18th century.

Visitors to the exhibition may be surprised to discover that the things which amuse, annoy, terrify and bamboozle us are in many cases the same as those which exercised the minds of our ancestors 200 years ago - sex, politics, religion, fashion, doctors and lawyers, and, of course, the Royal Family.

In this journey through two centuries of cartooning visitors will look back to Australia's British roots, with the work of satirists such as William Hogarth and James Gillray, with insights into contemporary society and politics from such household names as Nicholson, Tandberg, Leunig and Spooner.

The cartoons cover a range of themes, including John Spooner's personal selection of his favourite cartoons by the great 18th century artist James Gillray. It also gives insights into the things that have tickled Ballarat funny bones from the goldfields era to today.

This special paid-entry exhibition is drawn largely from the Art Gallery of Ballarat's own extraordinary collection of cartoons and caricatures, which is one of the best in the country.

Again, really fascinating. Wonderfully, I had the rooms to myself at that point, so I was able to linger as long as I liked and really read everything. I knew a lot of the cartoons, both the oolder British ones and the Australian ones, but there was still plenty there I did now know and it was wonderful to catch up with old favorites too. I bought the catalogue and there will be plenty of interesting reading there.

Next week we are going back to Canberra to finalise my father's stuff. This time we are taking the kids and staying for a week. Although there will be a lot of hard work, we are determined to include some galleries along the way.

Blogging Changes

I have decided to give up on my five-days-a-week blogging for the moment. Things are possibly about to change dramatically at Sheeprustling headquarters in the near future - good changes, but disruptive ones if they do come off. So I will continue to blog about stuff, and include pictures of stuff, but not to a regular timetable.

Of course, maybe nothing will happen, and then things will return to what I laughingly refer to as 'normal'.

Since starting writing this post, developments have occurred, but in the backwards sense. Our house is dissolving around us and we either need to rebuild or move. After a lengthy period of looking around, we finally got into negotiations with a building firm recently, but had our third meeting with them yesterday at which the costings came out at way over our budget. If they had come within budget, there may have been a flurry of moving and rebuilding almost immediately, as we have to fit in things around Baby Bear doing Year 12 next year. While we still have to find an alternative, it looks like nothing with be happening quickly now. I was pulling back on the blogging because I thought I might have to do a lot of immediate packing and organising. But I have decided to keep to random musings for a while rather than the previous organised structure, which was fun for a while.

I went to the Bead and Gems Show at the Melbourne Showgrounds last week. I was looking for some specific stuff and won't post pictures. Lacey's Stiff Stuff is brilliant stuff for bead embroidery, and hard to get in Australia, but makes for very boring pictures when it has not yet been embroidered upon - for those who don't know, imagine a heavy white interfacing. I was also looking for cabochons that made me think of certain things, and I got quite a lot, but a pile of cabochons in various colours isn't necessarily very interesting either. Otherwise I don't think I would go to that particular show again just to browse - I went for the first time last year and it was interesting, I went this year because I was looking for these specific types of stuff, but for general browsing it wasn't really my sort of thing - nice to look at all the sparklies but most of what I do is in seed beads and, although they were on sale there, I tend to buy a themed selection online for a specific project when I want them, rather than wanting to right through crowds and then not find everything I want.

I may have a plan for a series of bead embroideries. Well, rather, I DO have a plan, but I;m not sure now exactly how it will pan out. It may also include small art quilts and be a long time in the making. But it is an idea that will not go away in my mind and it will still be there when I actually want to do something about it.

I have been knitting mindless stuff, even more mindless than socks. I am using up some of my novelty yarn collection (bought in single balls for things like scrumbling) to make mini ponchoette type things. They are good for keeping the shoulders warm and adding colour.

. I am not quite sure why I think it would be more efficient to store these yarns in made-up items in my overfull wardrobe, rather than as balls in my overfull yarn collection, but it made sense at the time.

Cooking has occurred. Well, living in a family of four, plenty of cooking has occurred, but only one recipe from the 'test the cookbooks' thing. I seem to have a million little pamphlet-type cookbooks, many of which come free with magazines and things. This one came from one of them: Easy One-Pot chicken Bake from Australian Good Food Italian Favorites. It's so good we have had twice! Of course I can never cook a recipe without tweaking it, no matter how much I swear I won't (except for baking, where I leave the general proportions strictly alone and only ever alter flavours). I used chicken breast fillets instead of thigh fillets, rosemary instead of thyme (it's the only herb I've got growing at the moment and it is wicked with chicken and potatoes), and this time I only had green olives, though the first time I made it with the black olives stated in the recipe.

This post has been in the making for two or three weeks, interrupted by the events related in the last post. I am going to post it now otherwise it will never happen.

Explanation of sorts

I had a blog post in draft all ready to go, just waiting to take some pictures. It was explaining why I had decided to stop using the blogging format that I had been using for a few months and just post stuff when I felt like it. Even the circumstances of what I was doing changed during the week I took to write that post, and I added extra notes here and there. It was turning into a novella, with footnotes.

Then life royally screwed me over and that post is still in draft form. I will still post it, possibly in its current form but with extra footnotes! and photos.

I have been estranged from my father for many years - the last ten years this time round, with many other intervals of estrangement in particular. Although a highly intelligent and interesting man, he was also very obsessive and cruel to those closest to him. The latest parting of the ways came after he said unutterably cruel things to me about my young son, and I decided that my children had to come first.

He died last week. And I had to deal with the arrangements. It involved a sudden dash to Canberra, finding the body (no-one knew where it was, for a while), finding the will, etc. He was an obsessive hoarder. Not just books and pictures and things, but empty cardboard boxes and plastic bags. Queanbeyan recycling won't know what's hitting them right now! We spent two days sorting things out, and will be going back in a fortnight to sort the actual objects properly so that they can be distributed according to his will (which he had placed in a safe place two years ago, then during a reorganising spree placed it on a chair and piled stuff on top of it and never retrieved it from there. It took a long time to find it).

I promise the next post, during the next few days, will have pictures!

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.

Wordless Wednesday

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 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

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

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'!

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!

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!

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.

Wordless Wednesday

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

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

Wordless Wednesday

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.

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

Friday Update - the Sequel

I had fun at the Australian Quilt Convention! See the goodies I bought.

There was interesting quilts there, too. As usual, I liked the smaller art quilts the best, but could appreciate (and like) a lot of the more traditional quilting as well.

I thoroughly enjoyed myself. But I came away feeling perturbed about something. The three years I spent studying textile art was supposed to enable me to discover my 'voice' and come away with a defined body of work which I would build upon for ever afterwards. In one way I did discover my 'voice', the very detailed bead embroidery that I love the best of everything. But nobody is ever likely to pay the price for that sort of work that I would like to sell it for, so I am unlikely to make money out of it. Maybe I could write and (probably) self-publish books on it, which is a possibility but would still not make money in any serious way. I am a lousy teacher - too impatient. There are other things I love to do too. Nothing I bought today had anything to do with bead embroidery (I already own the books I like the best on that subject, though there may be some new ones that I don't know about yet!) but with other things that I have already experimented with but want more inspiration and technique to encourage me. I have had a couple of forays into selling on Etsy, or rather NOT selling on Etsy, though I am planning to start again. There is also an Australian equivalent that I am building a shop for ... From the market research I have done, for things to succeed in these online marketplaces they need to be reasonably inexpensive and postable (obviously), and preferably have a unique selling point. I am working on things like this.

Anyway, that isn't meant to be a rant or suggest that I have not enjoyed my day nor that I am not feeling creative. But I wonder if I suffer from some art-related form of ADD - can't I stick to any one thing but have to keep experimenting and trying to find new things to try? All of which require new supplies and books. If only I could add the hyperactivity part to it - I am so slow to get anything off the ground.

And now I will indulge in the wonderful procrastination of doing nothing about any of it, but drinking tea and knitting a sock instead. Oh, and I might start to flick through those new books!

Friday Update

Painted papers. I will be tearing and collaging these to make two-sided ... bookmarks, maybe, depending on how I feel about them at the time when I have done collaging and whatever. I was really pleased with these papers until the final layer. I just didn't know when to stop, did I! I had never used iridescence medium before and thought I would be clever and water it down and sponge it all over the papers. Well, it doesn't look very iridescent, more spotty. But the collages are going to be sealed with Mod Podge and glitter and hopefully that will be less noticeable by then.

These were great fun to make, just adding layers of shapes and squiggles with drying periods in between, using ordinary acrylic paints. I would like to do similar things with inks and watercolours too. Watch this space.

It was a short week, being away over the long weekend, and I am very pleased to have achieved anything creative.

I have also been working my way through some more cookbooks. This time, a handful of the vast number of tiny ones I have - you know the A5 format that you either buy for a few dollars or are given away with magazines. I have picked some recipes and will blog about them as I do them.

I hope to spend next week collaging.

8 Things Thursday

8 features I want in the new house that we might build sometime this decade.

1. Energy efficient everythings

2. Polished concrete floor

3. Hydronic heating

4. Masses and masses of storage space

5. A studio

6. A practical, big cook-top and oven

7. Lots of wall space for bookshelves and art

8. Eaves

8 Things Thursday

8 photos taken on our summer holiday in January, in and around Golden Beach on the Ninety Mile Beach in Victoria. It was pleasantly warm then, not too hot but lovely, quite a contrast to this week which has been wet and cold!

Creative Tuesday

This is a selection of works I made for the first semester of my first year of studying for the Diploma of Studio Stitch Textiles in 2006. Each week we had a different task. It was very challenging, especially for someone like me who could not draw (it was not listed as a prerequisite but this particular tutor assumed that everyone there could draw. I eventually picked up some skills but I was really floundering at this point).

From top left clockwise: Sweet potatoes. Organza, hand stitching, and paint applied around and on top of the fabric after stitching.

Self Portrait. Hand stitching on black felt with perle cottons based (loosely) on the (really bad) self portrait we were (cruelly!) forced to draw.

Abstract. WE spent an hour sketching still lives of objects using a variety of methods, then chose a small section of a sketch to turn into an abstract colour sketch with oil pastels, then an embroidery. Again, hand stitching, this time heavily massed together.

Apples. Similar techniques to the sweet potatoes using organza/chiffon, hand stitching and paint.

Out of these pieces I enjoyed the techniques of the abstract best although I was pleased with all of them. The stitching onto black felt with bright colours was great fun. I love hand stitching - I did have a decent go at free machine embroidery but never really took to in a big way, though may post some pictures of my efforts in the future. My sewing machine doesn't seem to like free machine embroidery - I had my biggest success with a borrowed machine that ended up being donated to a Black Saturday victim whose machine was lost in last year's fires.

Wordless Wednesday

Monday Quote

Ode to a pair of socks

Maru Mori brought me
a pair
of socks
that she knit with her
shepherd's hands.
Two socks as soft
as rabbit fur.
I thrust my feet
inside them
as if they were
two
little boxes
knit
from threads
of sunset
and sheepskin.

My feet were
two woolen
fish
in those outrageous socks,
two gangly,
navy-blue sharks
impaled
on a golden thread,
two giant blackbirds,
two cannons:
thus
were my feet
honored
by
those
heavenly
socks.
They were
so beautiful
I found my feet
unlovable
for the very first time,
like two crusty old
firemen, firemen
unworthy
of that embroidered
fire,
those incandescent
socks.

Nevertheless
I fought
the sharp temptation
to put them away
the way schoolboys
put
fireflies in a bottle,
the way scholars
hoard
holy writ.
I fought
the mad urge
to lock them
in a golden
cage
and feed them birdseed
and morsels of pink melon
every day.
Like jungle
explorers
who deliver a young deer
of the rarest species
to the roasting spit
then wolf it down
in shame,
I stretched
my feet forward
and pulled on
those
gorgeous
socks,
and over them
my shoes.

So this is
the moral of my ode:
beauty is beauty
twice over
and good things are doubly
good
when you're talking about a pair of wool
socks
in the dead of winter.

Pablo Neruda

Friday Update

There was going to be a Friday Update last week but it never quite happened. There wasn't really anything to say. I have completely abandoned the plan of working through a specific project a month and I've gone back to flitting around trying out different ideas all the time. The original plan helped to focus me at an unfocused time but has served its purpose, at least for the time being. Now there are other things I am more excited about, though the general flitting approach is not proving very productive as yet!

There are no photos this time as most ideas remain that, ideas. I was going to paint papers today and photograph them but motherhood as intervened and I have more important things to do. The (long) weekend is also going to be spent being a wife, a mother and a daughter-in-law (with, hopefully, a quick gallery visit in the middle!) and although there will be talking and eating and sock knitting and reading, there won't be paper painting. At least one craft book will make it through the weekend though so that I can continue to think inspirationally.

The cookbook thing (as a friend called it, an 'anti-Julia' approach) started off well and will continue. The Margaret Fulton Cookbook is a 2006 fully revised edition of a classic Australian cookbook, bought for Baby Bear to encourage her to cook (with some success) and therefore it was never going to be discarded from the cookbook collection. The problem with it from my point of view was that most of the recipes that would appeal to the family are ones that I already cook by heart or else have many versions of. I ended up cooking Cardamom Cookies to go with coffee at the end of an extravagant Good Friday lunch with friends. They were hugely successful, very easy, and would have earned the book its place on the shelf even if it wasn't exempt in the first place! Subsequently many books have been scoured through but no new recipes cooked, though that will resume soon (not in the next few days, unless it is baking again, as there will be a lack of opportunities for family meals at home for most of the next week owing to visiting over the long weekend and then George being on a business trip).

Next week there might even be photos. And more regular blogging. Honest!

8 Things Thursday

8 Authors I Loved When I was a Child

Tove Jansson

Arthur Ransome

Rosemary Sutcliffe

Henry Treece

Geoffrey Trease

C.S. Lewis

Sundry adapters of Greek/Roman/Norse/Irish myths and legends (there were several I really liked)

Ivan Southall

Wordless Wednesday

Creative Tuesday

This scrumbled hat dates from the days when I was trying to create and sell patterns as PDF files. It failed largely because most of the people who bought the patterns off Etsy.com seemed to be completely ignorant about the nature of PDF files and tended to berate and abuse me for notposting them a paper pattern. (Yes, I did make it crystal clear what they were to expect). I did however sell some hard copies at the now defunct Yarn Fest that used to be held at The Highway Gallery in Mt Waverley (now, apparently, also defunct).

Being scrumbled, this one did not have a 'pattern' as such, more a recipe with lots of pictures. It was great fun to make. I also consider the beautiful model to be one of my favorite creations, though she is a lot older and taller and more grown up now than five years ago!

Monday Quote

'I didn't do it'. Bart Simpson

Regular blogging is recommencing. Serious computer problems put a bit of an obstacle in the way for a while!