Monthly Archive

So, after my BLAH week, I’ve got my groove back. Hallelujah!! This week I’ve been working on a special project. This quilt is for an exhibition relating to the work of our friend, Dr Mary Wade, a paleontologist. The exhibition is curated by Dr Pat Rich and she asked me if I would make a quilt as an art work for the exhibition and as a commemoration for Mary who passed on at the end of last year. What you see here is the background/body of the quilt. It will be appliqued and quilted with partial and complete images of three different types of fossils.
I don’t especially like to reveal incomplete work to anyone. At this point the quilt looks so basic and flat. Just about every project goes through an “ugly” stage, and besides that, I can look at this and see the finished quilt, but I can’t describe it adequately so that someone else can see the same thing. But, this is a forum for me to record stuff, and so here it is…
The quilt, obviously, represents the Australian soil in which the fossils are found. There are references to artesian water and layers of rock/soil/time. Technically speaking, I seldom build the entire top BEFORE doing the applique - usually I work in sections - but this time I am using a raw-edge applique technique that better suits the subject and makes this production-order possible.
I’m glad I found my mojo. I missed it.

Some days are just B L A H days, and, even worse, some weeks are just B L A H weeks. Weeks where you get to Friday (oh, is it Friday TODAY??!!!) and feel as if you have achieved absolutely nothing. Not a thing. Not one single thing.
I always start Mondays so full of hope, so full of expectation. Mondays are a day for anticipating. What will I do this week? What will I have accomplished by Friday? Well, the answer this week is,”Go away and leave me alone. This week sucked.”
It started with a cyclone. And not just Larry. Our house had it’s own mini cyclone when it became a storage facility for a whole host of furniture and personal effects that temporarily have nowhere else to live. I’m good at living in chaos. Mostly it doesn’t bother me much, but as the kids get older and we have less of it, my tolerance is lowering. Now it just plain gets me down. And the downer I get, the less able I am to straighten it out (not that there’s anywhere else to put the stuff).
Then I had a project disaster. This seldom happens, so I suppose I should be grateful; except that it was someone elses project. I should know by now. I STRESS out something chronic when working on commissions. The feeling of obligation is just so overwhelming that I crack under the self-imposed pressure. Well, maybe I’m overstating things just a little. MOST times I’m fine, but all it takes is one teeny mistake and I can feel the panic starting to rise. It’s OK for my own projects to be imperfect, but as soon as the first glitch hits someone else’s project I want to throw it in the corner and howl.
After three equally pathetic attempts, I finished. But I’m not happy.
So, yesterday was a write-off. Nothing happened all day. I read. A very good book. Oh, yeah, and then…
…I know it was only last night, but I’d actually forgotten as I sat here in a funk, writing…
… I DID have a win! I have been playing in one of the local Quiz Night teams. The first night was a “warm up”, and my team won. The next week was Round 1, and my team won. Last night was
Round 2, and, guess who won? WE DID! YAY US! We rock! We know more useless information than the other five teams. We know that the safest place to sit in a plane is the tail section and that penguins only have sex once a year. We know how many countries joined the EEC and that Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan had a hit single called, “Especially You”. We also know that some of the other teams are getting pretty tired of us winning every week and we may start receiving hate mail soon (this is a Small Town). We tried to appease them last night by putting our winnings on the bar, but I suspect this magnanimous flourish only rubbed the all-ready-out-of-joint probosces deeper into the sludge. Alas, we of the Superior Intellect are fated to suffer the slings and arrows of lesser mortals! We may need to don chain-mail for next weeks comp. Or maybe hire some heavies. Maybe I should start knitting balaclavas…hmm…

…must dash! A creative surge is building and it could be productive!

Apologies in advance to the poor sad dial-uppers, but everyone else - you must check this guy out! I have NEVER liked jugglers (except Stevie Starr, who I have watched juggling chainsaws that were GOING) but this guy had me entranced. Doesn’t hurt that he’s juggling to Golden Slumbers and when Pete plays that on the piano and sings to me I’m in a puddle on the floor… But my mother’s reading, so back to the juggler…

Go to this site and click on “The Big Finale”
http://www.chrisbliss.com/videopresskit.html

Even if you DON’T like Golden Slumbers (what’s wrong with you???), watch this all the way to the end. It’s extraordinary.

Pete’s laptop has been on all day displaying the most current info on Cyclone Larry from the Bureau of Meteorology. Thank you to everyone who has been thinking of us! We have strong, gusty winds but are completely safe - we are many miles from the cyclone. Townsville has also been spared all but strong winds, so our house is undamaged. I have had the TV on all day, too. There is serious damage in Innisfail, where the cyclone crossed the coast. Some houses have been destroyed, others de-roofed; banana and sugar cane farms are completely destroyed. We can only be grateful that there have been no reported deaths and the cyclone is losing intensity.

We have, in my family, a love of the King James Bible; in part, for the beauty of the language it employs. There are few poems that celebrate romantic love with the eloquence of the Songs of Solomon. But, did you know that Mrs. Solomon was also a poet? I didn’t, until we found the 1913 edition of her book, “The Sayings of Mrs Solomon, being the confessions of the seven hundredth wife”. This afternoon, we are supposed to be sorting books, but the danger is everpresent that one will cease sorting and become ensnared in words. That’s just what happened. We had been chortling for several hours, when Pete said, “You’ll have to blog this!”

“….A perfect husband, who can find one?
For his price is far above gold bonds….
…He worketh willingly with his hands and bringeth
home all his shekels…
…Six days of the week doth he labor for his moneys,
and upon the seventh doeth chores within the house
for relaxation.
With his own hands he runneth the lawn mower
and washeth the dog…
…He hooketh his wife’s dresses up the back, without
mutterings.
He putteth the cat out by night…
His wife is known within the gates, by the fit of her
gowns and her imported hats. He luncheth meagrely
upon a sandwich that he may adorn her with fine jewels.
He openeth his mouth with praises and noteth her new frock. And
the word of flattery is on his tongue.
He perceiveth not the existence of other women…”

“Behold, my daughter, the Lord maketh a man - but the wife maketh a husband.
For Man is but the raw material whereon a woman putteth the finishing touches…
…For the happiest wife is not she that getteth the best husband, but she that maketh the best of what she getteth. Verily, verily, an husband is a work of art which must be executeth by hand; for there is no factory which turneth them out to order.”

Now that I re-read this, somehow it doesn’t seem quite so funny. Sure hope it isn’t one of those “had to be there” things . What makes me squirm just a teeny bit is the out-dated attitudes. It’s amazing how much male/female relationships have changed in the last century (and how much they have NOT changed!). Today I was declared in an accusatory tone by my teenaged son to be a Raving Feminist. I had NO IDEA. OK, that’s a lie. I do know that I have a smattering of feminism lurking in my psyche. It’s just that it so seldom gets an airing. It doesn’t need to. The men in my life (husband, son, father, brother, brothers in law) are all feminists in their own rights.
And each one of them is a work of art of a far higher standard than any person could ever achieve, whether by hand OR machine.

This puzzle, book and snakes and ladder board must be between seventy and eighty years old. The squares on the snakes and ladders are a real crack-up. Those who practice self-denial, pity and penitence are rewarded with ladders. But woe betide the Quarrelsome or (heaven forbid!) The Depraved (illustrated with an image of smokers), for they shall slide the full length of some nasty looking pythons; all the way back to square one, in the case of the Slanderous! Even the Frivolous get a slippery ride to Square 11 - that’s me taken care of. I live to Frivol. I never did like snakes and ladders. Or, in fact, any game where one had to rely on luck. Give me a game that rewards natural cunning and I’m there!

Peter and I once had a conversation about competitiveness. He is one of those annoying people who can make a fair fist of just about any sport that they care to try (EXCEPT water-skiing. Now that was ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS! Laugh?! Did I!). I, on the other hand, excel at NO sport. I can’t even claim competence at a sport, let alone ability. So, I stated that, while Peter is by nature competitive, I am not even slightly so. Well, did he let rip. “HAH!” he cried, “You? Have you never watched yourself play Scrabble? Not competitive? HAH!” …and so on…and so on…

I stand corrected. There is a competitive spirit in most all of us. Maybe my own competitiveness is what rose to the surface this afternoon as I watched the New Zealand triathlete, Bevan Docherty, fighting Australian, Peter Robertson, for the silver medal. It was so exciting! Robertson kept pushing forward, trying to break free of Docherty, who consistently kept up with him. For a split second I was almost inspired to take up running. It didn’t last. By the time they crossed the finish line, I was exhausted. It’s a good thing I can spell.

Not much quilting been happening around here lately. But I did have some time on the weekend scrapbooking. I have some big family albums that I work on periodically, but I also have a little album that is just for me. I put my favourite photos or just really personal photos in this album.
These two of Jamie are long time favourites. It cracks me up that when Peter and the kids look at old baby photos, they sometimes aren’t sure which baby they are looking at! Clancy thought that was him in the sailor suit and Pete just didn’t know which boy it was. Ah, but Mummys ALWAYS remember. How could anybody forget that downy hair and cheeks that your lips sink into? And someone really should figure out a way to bottle baby smell. What a fortune to be made! Eau de bebe. Although, my mum said that James never did smell like baby - he smelt of Chanel No.5 !

Speaking of Mama, here she is partaking of her favourite activity, baby kissing. The nonchalant recipient of all that grandma adoration is my exquisite niece.
Babies truly are the most heavenly creations.

The cockatoos are back. Over summer they left. I don’t know where they went nor what made them return. There are probably a thousand or more and every morning they congregate on the vacant land behind our house for an hour or so. They have all been off on their own somewhere and slowly return to re-form the group, arriving in ones and twos, shouting greetings to each other as they arrive. At some point it is decided (I can’t work out how or by whom) that everyone is back and it’s time to leave en masse for somewhere else. These birds are extraordinary. Watching them, I realise how intricate their social structure is and how cruel it is to keep one of them in isolation. They constantly communicate with each other (it can get pretty loud!).
We also get very large groups of galahs and, being parrots also, they behave in very similar ways to the cockatoos. One day I saw the saddest thing. A galah had been hit by a car and was dead on the road (that happens all the time - we’ve hit our share) and, walking around it in circles was it’s mate. These little birds mate for life. I cried the whole way home.

Today is “Clean Up Australia Day”. All over the country people are gathering any garbage that is littering their neighbourhoods, parks and wild areas. Peter and I have contributed in a more private way. An elderly friend of ours passed on at the end of last year and we have been clearing her house to prepare it for sale.
It’s a strange thing to ferret your way through every corner of someone else’s home. This is the second time that I’ve done it and, even though I know I have permission (and, in fact, am being helpful), it still feels w.r.o.n.g. It still feels like an inappropriate invasion of privacy. I suppose, being a very private person myself, I imagine how I would feel having someone (ANYone) else touching and looking at EVERYTHING I own.
And the worst part of it is how meaningless and insignificant all this Stuff is, when we are no longer here to value it. Or maybe that’s the best part? Maybe we should all learn this lesson? That it’s really just a pile of junk when we no longer have need of it.
I took this photo to show you the wonderful old wooden cotton reels I found. Aren’t they amazing? Some have silk thread still wound on them; others have cotton or linen; and there are a couple with Terylene Super Strong! I’d love to know why some of them are coloured black and others are natural wood. I remember cotton reels still being made of wood when I was very little. Plastic ones just don’t have any charm at all, in comparison.

And just to prove that one person’s treasure truly is another’s junk, my daughter looked at what I’m doing and asked, incredulously, “Why did you take a photo of COTTON REELS?????!!!!!”