plastic free november

melbourne greenista-sista jorth has declared november plastic free and invited all to join her. i have been getting more and more appalled at the volume of plastic coming into palazzo seahorse and (after disgorging contents) going straight into the bin or nesting in the cupboard under the kitchen sink.

so i am going to try hard to make november plastic free. jorth's commitment is:
1 - I shall refrain from purchasing anything that is made of or is packaged in plastic for a month;
2 - I shall try to minimise all waste created for the month, and only purchase products in packaging that can be recycled;
3 - I shall crap on about it here, in the hope of inspiring others.

i can certainly do #3 and #2 -my main worry with #1 is milk - my lot drink gallons of it and it only seems to come in plastic jugs or plastic coated cardboard cartons. so i might have to get a milk exemption.

just checked the pantry and the non plastic packaged items were Milo, jam vegemite, jelly crystals, tea, coffee, vanilla, flour, sugar, tamarind paste, all the sauces (fish, hoi sin etc) rosewater, cocoa, tinned tomatoes, tinned tuna and olive oil. the stand out tricky items are pasta and rice - traditional staples chez seahorse.

eek! bread is tricky too. even at the bakery they tend to put it in plastic bags. i can see some lateral thinking is called for.

thanks jorth! who else is going to take up the challenge of living plastic free?

what the?

ok where are you? put your hands up who visited my blog yesterday?

my stats went from a steady 9 to 12 visits a day (i prefer to think of you as a small select band of loyal followers rather than my mum and a couple of friends checking in to see if i'm still alive) to a jaw dropping 57 yesterday or possibly the day before - i haven't quite figured out the algo-logorhythmy thing for this counter)

sorry if that didn't sound very welcoming - do feel free to come back, have a cup of tea (from a clean cup, i promise) and feel the width...

:)

off to bed - i have had the kind of day that results in a twitching eye and the surge of rising blood pressure - in my next life i think i will either be childless or stop at one. a quiet and meek one. quiet, meek and adoring perhaps. and i certainly won't be having a dog who feels the need to supplement his diet with choice items from the cats' litter tray.

i think i just lost the 50 new friends. and possibly the 7 old ones.....

today's other project

i have been thinking of playing more with paper for a while so i made my first collage today. last night i made some paper beads - the first lot were of pages torn from an ancient falling apart book called old and new london. then i moved onto making some from strips of japanese silk paper - which gave me the idea for the bogong moth cocoons...

anyway back to the collage - i had stashed one of those cheap stretched canvas box jobs you can buy at places like the warehouse so hauled it out and covered it with black gesso. while that dried i made my beads and set them to dry on some old double pointed knitting needles that make my hands hurt if i knit with them.

this morning i played with a few ideas and ended up tearing a couple of pages into small squares and just pasting them onto the canvas with mod podge. the vaguely heart shaped piece is made of torn scarps of japanese silk paper.

now i am handstitching with perle 8 cotton run through my beautiful lump of beeswax to ease it through the layers. it's fun reading the words as i stitch. i see more of these in my future :)

as i write i am listening to beth orton accompanied by the dulcet tones of the new dishwasher manfully installed by urbane scrumping this morning. so far so good - my mozz on cleaning appliances hasn't kicked in yet although when i returned from a foraging trip to psarakos and a much needed cruise through the carwash (where i carelessly left my front number plate - see, i am just not meant to clean things...) then was a mysterious feline wailing to be heard.

toby was stuck somewhere - i checked every cupboard (even the one above the stove - he is that sort of cat) and inside the oven. i had to lie on the floor and home in on the direction of the shrieks and yep he was stuck behind the dishwasher.... i pulled it out and he ricocheted out like a black streak and was indignant for some time.

here are a couple of gratuitous billthedog photos (all taken by w)



and the errant number plate has been retrieved....

bogong moths quilt stage 2 - cocoons

getting closer - i made some beads from green japanese silk paper and painted them with sepia - voila - cocoons!

i couldn't find any images on google of bogong moth cocoons so i used some poetic licence....

the piece is now sewn onto a japanese silk paper background. stage 3 will be more hand sewing and i think some more washing with sepia or walnut ink and then something sturdy to support it. this is one piece that i think might need framing of some sort

well - on with the motley, as my Mother says. chicken caesar for dinner....

today i

• got up at an indecent hour to feed indignant cats who were clearly starving
  
• went back to bed and listened to my yoga nidra cd
• then went back to sleep
• got up and post breakfast did a minor mrs tittlemouse on the bathroom (done wearing only knickers and pink rubber gloves while the cats averted their eyes and billthedog lay down with a cold compress on his head)
  
• took billthedog for a walk down to high st (2 blocks from the seahorse palazzo)

we had a lovely time visiting cass at the environment shop where she bonded with bill and i bought these

then a stroll across the road to the indian grocers to buy some long felt want spices

then further north past the diana supermarket, various cafes, the charcoal rooster ( a takeaway not an actual beast), the bizz buzz hardware store that has a wonderful neon hammer sign on the roof, the fabbo smelling butchers that promised fresh goat meat in the window and had some plumply enticing weisswurst on display. bill and i slavered briefly and then continued up to pippa may cook - my favourite cafe.

i had a fresh, zingy salad of spinach, grapefruit and avocado followed by a latte and bill had a bowl of water. no photos of salad or the bowl of water i'm afraid - both were disposed of fairly quickly. i did buy dinner, some roasted seeds for snacking purposes and a jar of the honey dijon dressing that subtly graced my salad. (the photo incoudes their card as they are websiteless - too busy making good food)

the chicken was yum - i just ate it during the great sloughs of time it takes blogger to meditatively upload photos....

but the highlight of the walk was strolling back down high st to see what new shops had opened when i walked past the real estate agent from whom we bought our house in 2002. and in the window was a notice with a sold sticker across it and a photo of

our house.

it had been there since being passed in at auction in december 2001! it had the usual generous description - i was especially impressed with the poetic licence it took to describe the gas heating (an old wall heater) and air conditioning (an ancient shuddering brown box). i alerted urbane scrumping at once and he will hopefully post a photo.

his urbanity and i then went with young w to inspect new dishwashers, carefully avoiding any of the brand beginning with b and containing vowels. the recently deceased dishwasher has been a bad egg (worse than the reluctant vacuum cleaner and the puddle mop) and has cost more than $500 in repairs in the last 12 months. and it is only a few years old - grrrrrr. i will accept that it just have been a bad example of a good brand but am not willing risk it again - the next dishwasher will be a much plainer brand

and now having envittled i am thinking of going to see a fillum - i have't been to the cinema for a long time and urbane scrumping recommended that new one with george clooney (yum) and brad pitt (meh but okish) whose title escapes me at the moment.

off to the magic lantern show in carlton i think....

must be doing something right

this evening at creche pick up w's kinder teacher told me that he had recognised the Aboriginal flag and told everyone that the flag belonged to "mummy's friends" :)

although i still feel deeply uncomfortable about unwittingly going to a men's site at emily gap near alice springs earlier this year. i had no idea that it was a men's site and taboo for women until i watched the fourth episode of the brilliant Aboriginal history first australians tonight. i wonder how many blasphemies we commit as we lumber over a sacred land that we can't read and haven't had the wit to ask.....

this evening

photographic evidence and a couple of Mystery Pictures

voluptuously yummo - potatoes, red onion, capsicum, cherry tomatoes, basil, oregano, rosemary, garlic, olive oil and a couple of ladelsful of chicken stock baked on the oven and served with kanga bangers (kangaroo sausages - sorry vegos but they're really good) and mint peas.

then a mango each (sorry no photo they went too quickly)

and in fifteen minutes we will each have a slice of this - pear, cinnamon and ginger cake...


then the third instalment of the excellent first australians - i don't think you should be allowed to vote unless you have seen this series.

and two mystery objects: