Happy Holidays

 It's that time of year again (hurrah!).

 

 

And so the tradition of the cardboard Christmas tree continues.... 

 

This year, the girleen broke away from standard flat-tree format and went all 3-D.  She also (making use of a feature in the recycled ballot box that we were using as base material) incorporated a secret door in the design....

 

We fashioned a secret shelf in the middle of the tree, making it a cupboard...

 

...in which to hide the handmade Christmas crackers (another emerging tradition of ours, it seems).

 

 

The last week of downtime makes all the madness of the previous few weeks seem like a million miles away, as it should. 

 

(Here's a bit of design college humour from the last few weeks at work.)

 

 

It has been a time of winding down, going to craft markets and kicking back with my girl and with friends. It's a time of al fresco dining and drinking and talking.

 

 

Sometimes, we've even managed an accidentally-colour-coordinated theme for the evening.

 

 

The garden is rewarding us with harvests of spuds and salads and vegetables. There have been apricots (and there is now a larder full of apricot jam).

 

 

My Christmas surprise this year was the arrival of a copy of The Better Bagmaker in French!

 

 

To celebrate both birthday and Christmas this year, I broke with tradition and bought some fun red shoes... because a girl sometimes needs to step outside the practicality of functional black sandals for summer.   

 

I wish you all a very happy holiday season, whatever you may be doing to celebrate or relax.  See you in 2015.

 

Bush Medicine

On the weekend, it was great to get back up to my friend Bella's place in the middle of the bush in Central Victoria. 

 

 

 For just over 24 hours I was surrounded only by bushland, sculpture, good friends, food and wine.  My car-pool buddies and I arrived mid-afternoon, which was the perfect time to take photos.

 

It was a gorgeous day and I absolutely love this place. 

 

(If it looks familiar, you might remember I saw the New Year in here.)

 

 

I love how unexpected things crop up in the landscape... and how good Bella is at creating beautiful things from rustic materials, and installing them casually around the house and grounds.

 

 

 She's also a whizz with cutesy colourful $2 shop finds.  This was the (outdoor) cocktail bar for the party on Saturday night. 

 

 

Kevin the (movement-sensor activated) Kick-boxer would sporadically show off his stuff and have a little rant.

 

The band room was previously a shed full of farm junk.  Bella transformed it into a nightclub!

 

The party did indeed go off.. with a live band, cocktails, fantastic food, a fire and a whole lot of laughs.  Nothing looked as tidy in the morning as it looks here.

 

Sunday morning saw us enjoying a breakfast that lingered into the afternoon, with some people swimming in the dam, some siesta-ing, some knitting ( I wasn't the only one, for a change!), some yabbying, dogs fetching a limitless supply of sticks... a bunch of city-folk soaking up as much bush-serenity as possible before the 2-hour drive back to real life.

 

And yes.... in case you were wondering, I continued my tradition of wearing wildly inappropriate  bush holiday footwear.

 

 

And as my head hit my own pillow at 9pm on Sunday night (and ...ahem...slept until 10am Monday morning...), I had this wonderful image of a peaceful, dry landscape, the scent of eucalyptus, and warm memories of good times and great people.

 

A tonic.

To Market, to Markit ...and a whirlwind through life.

It was a big weekend. The Australian Quilt Market was on in Melbourne.

There was almost unbearable cuteness to be seen (and lots of me stopping to chat) around the Creative Abundance stand.  RicRac and Mellie&Me side by side, and surrounded by all the other talented CA crew.

I wasn't exhibiting, so it was fab to be able to wander about and meet lots of other designers, reps and distributors.  Lots of inspiration, collaboration and opportunities were shared.  And there was lots of fabric.... lovely fabric.

This is part of the Riley Blake stand, which was singing with fresh colour.

Best of all was the fabulous company. 'Twas great to catch up with Lisa, Pauline and Jodie (over what was supposed to be a quick lunch) and still feel the bonds that were made in those early Stitches and Craft Show days. 

 

I also popped into Markit@FedSquare on my way through to the AQM on Sunday.

I must admit I was a tad overwhelmed by the crowds (as I was trying to negotiate my way through with the unweildy bundle of my helmet and the basket off my bike).  I didn't stay as long as I'd planned and I appear to have missed seeing a few friends who were there. 

From what I saw, the quality of the work was extraordinarily high and I hope that all the stallholders had a fab day.  It looked stunning.

So many ideas swam about in this little ol' head of mine this past weekend.  Life's big questions danced beside frippery, colour and design, while I relished the ability to ride a bicycle in glorious Melbourne sunshine and eat Japanese food for 3 of the weekend's meals. 

 

There was hope and opportunity, exasperation and desperation, unstoppable giggles and cathartic tears, newborn-baby-cuddling and an education in boutique-beer drinking. There were surprises and uncertainty and there was the comfort of time spent with old and very dear friends. There was a sense of being bouyed up with love and support, and there was hair that did something different every three minutes (must get a haircut or new styling product).

This weekend was one big jumbled mash up.  Life, in concentrated form.  Ain't it grand...?

 

Now, it's home-again, home-again... and I have laundry to wash, a book to write and a kid to get to school each day.

And I'm listening to KT Tunstall.

 



Multi-faceted weekend

This past weekend was full of many things, including yarny faces... but more of that later.  Lets go chronologically.

 There was the big decision to crochet the last precious skein of the hand-painted linen yarn into something wearable for summer.  There was the use of a swift (and almost eight hours less untangling than last time) and the winding of a big, beautiful ball... which I think I'll just look at for a bit longer, before working with it.

The rest of Friday evening was spent unpicking dodgey seams, ripping out knitting and re-winding the blue dress into many small balls of yarn (from whence it came).  The dress was so very nearly right, but far from perfect.  I'm going to rework it, and hope that this time I get it closer to just right.

Saturday was hat-making day, which is always fun.  Thanks ladies for a lovely day. (And I hope that you three interstate gals made it back safe and sound.)

Saturday night was party night  - two birthday do's in two separate parts of town.  Lots of friends from different parts of life and lots of discovering the 3 degrees of separation that seem to divide all of us.

 

And despite getting home at a reasonable (read: embarrassingly early) hour, I still managed to have a fantastically long sleep in on Sunday.

 

 
Melbourne turned on one of those glorious spring days that it does so very well.  Blue, blue, blue sky..... perfect cycling weather. 

It was also perfect yarn-bombing weather.

The spirit of the crafting community, and the community of Brunswick shone as brightly as the beautiful yarny blooms.... It's a beautiful memorial for a beautiful young life cut tragically short.

 

 (Ahem... and yes, that would be the Irish tricolour that my girl  and I machine-knitted, up there with the flowers).

Then the afternon slid into a full appreciation of the world's most livable city and old, much-loved friends.  Walks in the sunshine and long, lingering, late lunchy sort of beer-garden behaviour...

 ..which crusied into an evening with different old and much-loved friends and another beer garden...

 

And in between all this, I kept coming back to the blue dress.... Mark II.

 

 New and improved, I hope.

I woke to a Monday morning of things going horribly pear-shaped and inconvenient and generally, pretty annoying.  I'm trying to think of all the lovely weekend memories to help me sail on through the week.

Ever So Famous... well, a little teensy tiny bit.

Many thanks to the lovely people who let me know about the little mention of my Fedora pattern in The Good Weekend section of The Age on Saturday, and for sharing the Facebook love (before I even got home from teaching at Kimono House).

Special thanks to Nic from Yardage Design for sending me hard copy AND a fat quarter of her beautiful handprinted fabric.

I feel a teensy bit famous and VERY VERY blessed with good friends and a wonderful community of crafty people around me.  

Now.... where was I?

I've finally emerged from too many flu-hazed days and nights in bed.

Everything is where I dropped it last week, when I gave in and collapsed into fevered delirium.  Now I'm back and there appears to be a new layer of stuff on top of the the debris from what feels like a previous life (one where I was a functioning, working person).  I'm trying to make sense of it all. 

Please excuse me if you were expecting a call or email from me in the last week that hasn't been forthcoming.  I'm slowly getting to grips with the task of catching up, although I'm still not 100% (probably not even 30%.... but that's a great impovement) and the wee girl is still wan and listless and breaking my heart. 

Many thanks to the pattern-testers who have been helping with the development of the new pattern.   We're seeing lots of light at the end of that particular tunnel.

Somewhere before the full force of the flu-daze hit, Addicted To Fabric organised to fly me up to Canberra again before the year is out.  We've locked in the 13th and 14th October.  I think the waiting lists were getting a bit silly (thanks for making me feel so wanted, folks!!), so it now means that if you missed out on the zipper workshop, you'll get another chance to do that one.  We haven't settled on the second class for that weekend, but I'll keep you posted about it (or you can enquire at A2F).

Oh, and in sock news.... ( I just remembered and took these photos under glaring daylight lamp, for want of actual daylight.  Hmmm... it's just not the same, is it?)

It turns out that this lace chart-reading business is not as difficult as I imagined.  The whole thing was going great-guns until the flu bugs brought out the VERY BIG GUNS INDEED and knocked all plans for a sock finish back by about 5 days. 

In non-craft-related news...
If you're at all familar with the author Wendy Orr's wonderful children's books, you may also know that the film of Nim's Island is about to be followed up with a sequel (this time with Bindi Irwin in the lead role as Nim).

What you may not know is that Wendy has just put together a Nim's Island-themed eBook of activities for kids.  Amazon's blurb captures it better than I can, so I've copied and pasted it -

Inspired by a ‘Nim’s Island Coconut Cookbook’ sent to her by a classroom of young fans, Wendy Orr has collected recipes, activities and teaching notes from Nim’s friends around the world.

This is an Australian National Year of Reading 2012 project, with all proceeds going to the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. “The Indigenous Literacy Foundation (ILF) advocates and raises funds for Indigenous literacy, to improve the lives and opportunities of Indigenous Australians living in remote and isolated regions.”

I reckon that at $3.50, it's a very affordable way to contribute to something VERY important and (it being school holidays here) will help those of us with primary-school-age kids inject new ideas into the holiday-entertainment repertoire. Win-win.

Wendy was my next-door neighbour when I was a teenager.  She was a young mum then, who had left Canada and the glamour of international travel to follow her heart ...  all the way to a small farm in country Victoria.  (Being a dreamy teenager who was desperate to LEAVE that particular part of country Victoria, I thought she must have loved that husband of hers an awful lot!)*   Wendy was interesting and generous with her time (and she liked sewing), and I loved spending time with her and her kids.  I thought she was fantastic (and I still do), so it's always a thrill to see one of her books in a store (especially this one) and I hope that the new eBook is a great success and raises much-needed funding for a great cause.
 
*And for want of a better picture to finish things off, here's one to explain that line about where I grew up.  I dreamed of art and fashion and nightclubs and people and theatre... and this was pretty-much the 360-degree vista and all the excitement that it offered to an imaginative young mind. 


I think that's where I'm up to on the news front... for now, at least. It's taken hours to write this, for some reason.

Next job is focusing on being well enough to teach in Adelaide on the weekend, and trying to turn this feeling around...
 

I'm off to make myself a hot whiskey, find that book I was about to start reading (pre-flu) and have an early night.

A weekend at home.... the other one, I mean.

Ah... Sewjourn....

Each time we go to Sewjourn, it feels more like home. 

It's a haven where time and routine don't exist.  Or... at least not until about 2pm on Sunday, when the buzz of sewing machines takes on a somewhat desperate pitch as we all silently begin to realise that it's nearly time to go back to real life (... but not yet....I just want to finish this...).

Despite Lara's husband's advice, it was actually perfectly alright to stay up too late. 

And it was also perfectly normal to be up at the crack of dawn, sewing in pj's.  (Some of us were up quite a bit later, having been sewing until ridiculously close to the crack of dawn.)

 And it was absolutely bloomin' marvellous to be able to sew all day! 

There were loads of finished garments and lots of sharing of ideas and knowledge.

Lara's scrap box was the scrap box that kept on giving.....

Annie was quilting up a storm ...and a rather fetching grey knit top (not from the scrap box).

Megan was paper-piecing an amazing shades-of-red piece, which I failed to photograph adequately.

 And I somehow found myself slipping to the dark (and scrappy) side.

Oops.

Thank you - once again - to Kathryn, Rachel, Annie, Lara, Megan, Karen and Tanya - for being the remarkable women that you are.  I can't wait until November so we can do it all over again.

Lara has some lovely photos of the weekend here.