just popping my head around the door

to say hi - is there some sort of facebook/blogger interface thing? i often feel like writing something that's more than a facebook update but not quite so solemn an undertaking as a blog post. i always feel an obligation to put photos in a blog post but blogger makes such heavy weather of it that it takes the post more burdensome than a quick 'hiya'

this week i went back to work and lost the holiday bloom in the first 20 minutes :( a couple of days of acks and pharks and the increasing panic to finish the first bundle of southern lands quilts means i have been a bit strung out.

not helped by my incompetence at making hanging sleeves where i end up with carefully sewn and pressed 9 cm deep sleeves instead of 10cm - what happens??? i measure and cut carefully and somewhere along the line some gremlin comes along and neatly shears off a centimetre of sleeve.

on the other hand i found i can sew a most of a sleeve on a small quilt on the tram between here and work - much to the bemusement and edging away of my fellow commuters - you would think on the 86 line they would have seen worse than a frenzied woman with catawampus hair (thanks to the humidity) wielding scissor, needle and thread on a piece of clearly distressed fabric.... how could that be worse than the usual assortment of junkies, drunks and serious young insects?

after a week of cloying humidity and heat there were some spectacular thunderstorm yesterday leading to flash flooding in the city and some brave souls decided to swim down one of the main streets

w has been ambivalent about school - mainly about being left there with no adult company. but he is enjoying after-care and will start archery lessons this afternoon - i am trying not to think too much about this....

and here is a photo of some of op shop haul from last friday - my lovely sister and i went on an op shop crawl and found a very superior one just down the road. and look look look what lurked in a basket underneath some manky 80s shoulder pads

and the cream bakelite one fits perfectly! i love thimbles and keep misplacing mine at crucial times

well better depart to the hairdressers as i look like the wild man of borneo unsuccessfully merged with farrah fawcett

this year, last year

last february 7 it was 47 degrees with a hellish fury of a wind and the first news of the bushfires was trickling in. it was clear that the fires were bad (we had been saying all day that it was terrible bushfire weather) but it wasn't clear for a couple of days just how bad.

february 7 2010 it's 34 degrees and it's strangely calm. even for someone who lives safely in the city the 40 degree, north wind days we had in november were gut churningly frightening. god knows what they were like for the people who survived black saturday. of all the media this weekend one of the "best" (and i hesitate to use that word - no one person's story is better than another's) was by gary hughes - a journalist for the australian who survived the bushfires at st andrew's. read his story here

in october we went to lake mountain which is just above marysville - right in the heart of the fire. seven months after black saturday the bush still looked stunned - there were no birds, just eerie silence and remnants of snow. with just the beginnings of life stirring.

my spot in the inferno

that's right - i can't sleep so do an internet quiz to see how i would rate with dante. perhaps this will make more sense in daylight

The Dante's Inferno Test has sent you to Purgatory!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very High
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	High
Level 2 (Lustful)	Moderate
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Low
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Very Low
Level 7 (Violent)	High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Low
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test

all ruint???

hmmm either i had improved creator spirit or it is completely ruint.

this piece has always been too scarlet for my taste which is why it was thrust into the ufo pile a couple of years ago to be resurrected for a part in the southern lands exhibition.

i thought stitching with rust and ochre threads would help tone down the red but not enough.
sooooo today i decided to attack it with ochre pigment powder mixed with cold wax medium. unfortunately on the first pass there was too much raw sienna and not enough iron oxide in the mix and it looked as if billthedog had used it as a lavatory wiping aid. so i went over it with a rag and more iron oxide and then washed some fabric paint over it with a wide brush.
it's now drying morosely on the kitchen table and i hope hope hopei haven't completely stuffed it up

comments

i just read this article on make and meaning about bloggers' attitudes to commenters.

sometimes i wonder if anyone is reading my blog - the map tells me i have people from all sorts of places who have at least found it but i'm not sure whether they reel back in horror (or boredom) as i don't get that many comments.

comments can easily become trophies and the lack thereof a cause for anxiety - i like getting comments, of course i do. but it's not the whole story - for me, the point of keeping a blog is not to collect comments but to document what i do, to keep myself up to the mark, to vent (hopefully not too often) and to connect with like-minded others. i'm usually reluctant to blog if there are no photos to accompany my post as slabs of text are not so inviting (and i'm trying to think of a photo i can put in this post - so far no luck)

i have made some great friendships through blogs - we comment on each others' posts, we ask for and receive advice, we share techniques, we vent and offer sympathy in hard or frustrating times and we celebrate good news.

so this post is probably really a big thank you to everyone who reads this blog whether or not you comment - you are not taken for granted at all

zweite fruhstuck

toast is admirable but can only take you so far
bisy backson

school and sewjourn

well, we survived the first day of school (for w) and high school (for e). w and i cried about equally, i think, and i felt anxious all day until we picked him up at 3.30 and i could see that he was ok.

this morning he was firmly against having the traditional first day of school photo and even em couldn't persuade him to face the camera
in creative terms much has been accomplished. i was lucky enough to win a day at sewjourn as part of jan's blog giveaway and yesterday was the day. my lovely sister came with me for a day's pampering (in the form of cups of tea, deliriously light scones with home made jam, lemon slice and a gorgeous lunch) and space and time to do whatever we wanted - sewing, knitting, whatever rocks your creative socks.
i was determined to crack 'creator spirit' and decided that a few strong verticals were needed. after an hour or so of contour stitching and three broken needles, the muse muscled in and took over. she obviously had firm views on the central panel which is now full of sinuous lines of stitching that echo roots of tendrils. once that was out of her system the muse was content and i spent the rest of the afternoon meekly stitching spinifex circles and ended up progressing the sock.
and just to finish here are a couple of gratuitous cat photos with my favourite gratuitous cats