And The Winner Of The Give~Away Is...

...balkan style bloggers.
Congratulations! Can you please email your address to me at inkberryblue AT gmail DOT com and I'll start putting together your package of goodies. Thanks to everybody who participated ~ I really enjoyed receiving your feedback.

On the subject of blogging and give~aways, the talented Peta at createcraft is running a competition where she's giving away a knitted scarf (her work is fabulous) and asking readers to post about the inspiration behind their blog's name and then leave a comment on her site.
Here is my story, of sorts...

I don't have any really well defined reasons for calling this blog inkberryblue
but ink berry has nice associations for me.
I've played with the words before ~
I once, unexpectedly, won a copywriting competition with them

in my very first year at Uni,

which was a bright and affirming moment

in a year that was full of self doubt.
I remember that,

as a reward,
my usually grumpy and critical head lecturer

presented me with a beaming smile
and a small tube of bright pink gouache,

that he'd wrapped up with a matching ribbon.
(I treasured the moment.)

And I like to think that inkberryblue has a sort of poetry to it.
I like the cadence of the words
~ the play of berry and blue ~ ink and art and creative juiciness...

So there you have it. If you decide to join in too please tell Peta I sent you!

I hope everyone, who celebrated yesterday, had a happy Mothers' Day. I planned on giving my mother the pouch that I started making for her birthday in (ahem) October, and blogged about here, but the buttons I crocheted looked ridiculously big and I didn't get time to buy anymore.
Here's a detail of the work that's still in progress:

Instead, I gave Mum a little affirmation stone and one of the geraniums that I propagated late last year,
which is much like this one:



She loved it.

Mum, Dad, my youngest sister and I also went out to lunch, and visited the Art Gallery of Western Australia where we saw the Year 12 Perspectives Exhibition, a display of the best work that's been produced by students in their final year of school. It runs every year, I always enjoy the exhibition and this year's works are particularly good. If you're in Perth I think it's well worth a look. Work's very busy right now but, if I get time, I'd like to go back to the exhibition before it closes on May 25th.

I hope you all have a wonderful, juicily creative week.

Consolation

For the next month I am going to be spending a significant part of my weekends doing paperwork. Sigh. This Saturday and Sunday I am consoling myself with Unbelievably Easy Fudge, which actually is unbelievably easy to make.


I am also planning on breaking this weekend's work by going to the Margaret Woodward exhibition at the Gomboc Gallery. I went last weekend and the drawings were so delicious I want to see them again.
...and if any Perth readers plan on going too, you'll need to be quick. It closes on the 18th of November.

Trace

Last week was a full week. I spent the evenings:

• in rehearsal for an up and coming concert my choir is performing,


• at after hours work meetings,


• receiving bowen therapy and jin shin jyutsu massage (which was blissful)


• and drinking champagne, with my mother and father, at Cedric Baxter's exhibition opening at the Linton and Kay Gallery in Subiaco. Cedric is a fabulous artist who produces elegant, figurative art work. If you live in Perth, his exhibition is well worth a look.

...so I was very happy to spend the weekend simply. For the most part, I crocheted on the couch, kept company by my cat and my graceful goldfish Trace. Here are some photographs of my little fish. They don't really capture her prettiness (it's hard to take good shots of a subject who's in perpetual motion and who lives in a hexagonal tank) but hopefully they give some indication of how sweet she is.

Photos of crochet to follow...