jealousy is proceeding....

jealousy is coming

winter leaves

within the penumbra of the winter solstice

ummmm - racism IS illegal

but you would never know it....

see here

and here

and here

and that's just this week.

apparently if you racially vilify someone it can be called a gaffe or a faux pas and it certainly doesn't mean you're a racist.

excuse me, it does - we live in a society that is deeply ingrained with racism, founded upon the racist assumption that Aboriginal people didn't exist in the same way that Europeans exist - that they didn't have any sort of connection to their land, that they were and are a lesser people because of the colour of their skin and that they can be patronised when they succeed because sheesh you just wouldn't expect it. someone needs to invoke the racial vilification act and what's left of the eviscerated racial discrimination act.

this happens all the time and it makes me writhe with shame

southern lands

i last posted about southern lands when i was in a frenzy of label and hanging sleeve making. well now the exhibition is up and dijanne cevaal has posted some photos and visitor feedback her on her blog musings of a textile itinerant.

see the exhibition online here at the southern lands website or if you're in the south of france go and see it here at the Centre Europeen du Patchwork.

long weekend in 5 minutes - go!

friday - umm 4 days ago so hard to remember....

• took em shopping to get the rest of her birthday clothes
• played a wee bit on the sewing machine but pootling around mainly so nothing worth taking a photo of
• i cleaned out my handbag (remember that magazine ad series from the '70s 'you can tell a lot about X from X's glomesh bag'? well mine wasn't anything so glamorous. i don't remember any of those ladies having 5 handkerchiefs in their bags)
  
• cheese club in the evening

saturday - feels even longer ago than friday...

• ack! really can't remember anything apart from painting my nails lairy turquoise green (well i only paint my nails once a year so it's worth doing them a lairy colour (that's some of my friday pootling in the background)
• um hang on it's coming back - we took bags of stuff to the charity bins and bought a bale of straw for the chooks
• went to the local spice shop to buy kolonji and found these serendipitously wonderful balls of some kind of fibre spun into some kind of yarn. i couldn't resist the colour and it goes so well with my nail polish :)
  

yesterday - a bit clearer in the memory

• it was damply freezing and gloomily grey all day.
• i blocked the freeform knitting component of my next alice quilt
• the scrumpster, w and i went for a every rugged-up walk down to the new bakery/cafe/bookshop that has opened in high st in the space where the aquarium used to be and we have bought x number of now deceased fish in the past. we bought some lovely fruit heavy fruit bread and a rather fluffy miche loaf
• we finally mixed up and baked the christmas cake (the fruit had been sitting in various drenches of booze for 6 months - a record even for us)

today i remember quite clearly :)

• we did the next stage of out long term project of walking along the merri creek path. today's section is between st georges' road and high street. mercifully it wasn't quite so cold and the sun was out. (more photos on flickr)
• then we had coffee and cake at the new bakery - and it was good if a bit noisy
• i finally made w his honey ant dreaming pillowcase from fabrics bought in alice springs last year. he helped with the pins...

i thought i hadn't done much this weekend but seem to be quite a few dot points :)

poison tree

here is the next stage of the envy quilt (hanging on the door and in very bad light - sorry)
this one was inspired by this photo on my friend susan's blog (sorry for the direct link to the photo - blogger wouldn't let me link to that particular post)- love the twisted forms of the trees which reminded me of the awful inner writhings of envy.

i used black linen as the backing, purple velvet, the hand dyed fabric previously shown, a light layer of synthetics, and bile green and black organza. stitched then heat gunned and slashed with a craft knife. then i went over the whole things with black ink, fabric paints, artists oil pastels and paintstick. the next stage is to go back over the slashed bits with a soldering iron to open them out so you can see the gouts of purple velvet underneath.

and the title? this morning i suddenly remembered blake's poison tree (one of my favourites)

A Poison Tree

I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow. And I watered it in fears, Night and morning with my tears; And I sunned it with smiles, And with soft deceitful wiles. And it grew both day and night, Till it bore an apple bright. And my foe beheld it shine. And he knew that it was mine, And into my garden stole When the night had veiled the pole; In the morning glad I see My foe outstretched beneath the tree. William Blake

getting better all the time

this week has been a distinct improvement on the last few

• zer back is getting better (i had a whole day yesterday without painkillers)
• i think i might have cracked the jealousy quilt design thanks to everyone's creative input on what jealousy looks like to them
  
• the weather has been lovely and wintry, enabling much woolly wrapping up
• it's a long weekend for the queen's birthday (thanks, your maj) and i'm right at the beginning :)
  

i know there are other things too but i haven't had coffee yet so the brain is still in first gear. back later after encaffeination

some good news

i have only needed one lot of painkillers today and i didn't them until after lunch :) thanks for all your kind words - i think if i'm careful things should continue to get better and we won't need any further discussions about cortisone injections

it has been another weekend of high on the hog living -

• friday - dinner out with the kids on the newly returned from europe inlaws at pizza meine liebe (and the less said about that experience the better - the review giving it a big thumbs down is over here)
• saturday -roast chicken followed by a dessert of my own devising - a combination of lemon syllabub and edinburgh fog which em and i dubbed thornbury fog partly as a tribute to the recent weather...
• sunday - w and i made triple ginger biscuits this morning

• and m and i had dinner at the uber wonderful anada in fitzroy tonight (review will shortly appear at our food blog) it was just fabbo

i even did some creative things - i had a go at another envy quilt and am getting closer to the effect that i want. here's a detail
thank for all your concepts of what jealousy looks like - fascinating to see how similar yet varied people's impressions are. i think when i make the final jealousy i will need to make really big, bold marks to try and avoid the slide into decorative.

and i decided to try and rescue an abject failure which had been evolving quite nicely until i decided to cloque it and the red velveteen ran likely crazy and turned the whole thing a blotchy pink. it's now brushed with diluted gesso and sprayed with black quink and we shall see what we shall see.

my week

well the past week has been mixed, to put it charitably... i went back to work on monday which was good because i was starting to worry about the mounting pile of stuff not done - but not so good because sitting makes the Back worse. I am loving my job by the way - i'm up to week 8 of the not so new now job - i'm the policy and research manager for SNAICC which is the national advocacy body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and families. I'm still in the vertically steep learning curve, feet not always touching the bottom phase but i have some great people to work with and i'm learning so much i feel like i need at least one more head.

so on the good side of the ledger is

• enjoying work
• having lots of ideas for the festival of quilts piece and the wool quilt entry that both have to be made in the next 6 weeks (eek)
• i have a diagnosis (see that black sticking out bit down towards the curve - it shouldn't be sticking out) and lots of drugs to accompany said diagnosis
• the drugs (brufen and tramal) seem to cancel each other out in the deleterious effects on gizzrd so no crummies in tummies
  
• i am forbidden to do any housework
  
• w and i made a fabbo chocolate cheesecake slice (sadly no photos but trust me it was yum to the nth degree)
• it's cold enough to wear layers and woollies
• w can read most of the lorax
  

and on the not so good side

• my back still hurts like b@#$rry despite the drugs
• because i can't sit for long i can't sew :(
• there was a work unpleasantness that i won't go into but was upsetting
• i don't like housework but also don't like not contributing (too many negatives??) i'm used to just doing stuff so it's very frustrating not to be able to put on a load of washing or drain the pasta. i'm happy to shun the vacuum cleaner though :)
  
• i can't crack the jealousy quilt - i have ideas but none of them are savage enough

on the last dot point i think i have worked out that whatever i do has to be big - so long slashes. i tried doing a felted sample that just came out looking pretty :(

i am going to practise slashing with charcoal on butcher's paper this afternoon which happily i can do standing up and hopefully come up with a cartoon or the design. my problem continues to be working out the shapes - the colours are fine but the shapes and design aren't gelling.

i asked on facebook what were people's ideas on the shapes of jealousy and got some interesting answers - diamond, slashes, claws, knotted curves, crowding, jagged, bumpy, spiky... all of which fits with my ideas so far. it's fitting that into a coherent design that i'm finding tricky - it seems to easily slide into decorative curves that don't convey the hardness i'm after.

i'll leave you with a photo of w taking oh&s very seriously indeed