no one does wrist slitty like pink floyd

So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell,
blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?
How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have you found? The same old fears.
Wish you were here.


http://www.pinkfloyd.com/x/default.html

44

i was going to write a bit of a spiel about turning 44 and the significance of this and the fact that i like being an even number and how solid a number 44 looks and what i had learned from the first half and hoped for the second half of my life.

and then i was going to write about the birthday i wished i had had (one without sick kids and driving 2 hours each way to ballarat for a meeting and not having lunch until 3 o'clock and not getting back to the city until after 6 and getting weepy in the work carpark because i couldn't work out how the security card system worked and then getting weepier at the station because i just missed the train by a bee's whisker and there wasn't another one for 15 minutes.........)

and then i thought how glad i am that i have kids to cuddle when they're sick (and at other times of course), that i have a girly who sat up last night handstitching an apron for me and who bought me the best birthday card (i'll scan it tomorrow or the next day), that i have inlaws who will drop everything to look after the sick kids for me, that i have a job that i love and really believe in, a colleague i like being with and was sad to leave behind in ballarat, that i have an ex husband who will say 'just get in a cab and i'll pay for it' (after having put off a minister or two so he can take aforementioned sick kids to the dr), again the inlaws who make me birthday dinner and buy me a fabulous birthday cake, and special family who send me cards and emails and a sister and brother inlaw who when i say i need a hug will come over with flowers and chockies, a blog to write and again kids to tuck in and say i love you.

which all adds up to i like being me - and 44 is looking pretty good. and wasn't i a cutie back in the sixties?

which jane austen heroine are you?

Take the Quiz here!

i didn't even cheat to get elizabeth :) i thought i was more likely to be elinor dashwood... silly but fun

consultation socks

here are my latest pair of socks knitted as my manager, gil, and i drove around the state from ballarat to morwell, swan hill, shepparton, thornbury, dandenong and croydon as part of the community consultation for the Victorian Charter of Safety and Wellbeing for Aboriginal Children and Young People (the consultants went to many more places than we did i should add - they covered the state)

i used the usual patons sock recipe and some gorgeous buttery soft wendy dennis polwarth wool (pilling already but just so soft and warm) in my favourite alice springs colours (they were going to be called my alice socks but they were so much part of the consultation it seemed churlish to call them anything else.

my second pair of socks this year and knitted in a record 5 weeks... this sounds all the more pathetic when you see how susan spent her weekend.......

my space

until a couple of months ago i used to sew on the kitchen table - leading to a greater degree of chaos than was necessary. then my lovely inlaws gave me their old kitchen table and installed it under the window so now i have a dedicated space for sewing. i do share it with big bird and a few other pals hanging around.....

not quite a studio but my own space.

of course the table is much more crowded than when i took these photos as different projects ebb and flow and leave their flotsam of threads, needles and half finished pieces

trees challenge quilt

after many setbacks (mainly computer related) i have finally started my around the world in 20 quilts challenge quilt. the theme for this first quilt is trees: which is fine until you get to the horizontal format which had me stumped as the insistence of trees is on verticality.....

so i cheated

i took this photo of the bunya pine at buda in castlemaine back in june - it is a tree that reeks of antiquity and has an amazingly sculptural shape - almost shocking in a way. but i knew it would be my tree quilt. after much mooshing around i decided to use a warholesque composition and printed the image onto silk - habotai and organza. these pieces were too floppy and flimsy so i ironed them onto vilesofix to give them some body and sandwiched a piece of habotai onto a piece of organza for the middle panel.


then i fused each panel onto a background of greeny grey peach silk and a gorgeous piece of hand dyed silk chiffon by spiral dyed that i snaffled at the bendigo wool show. i then put a layer of black silk chiffon over the top. but it was still too floppy so cut a piece of black handspun and a a piece out of a felted green jumper bequeathed by my Mother. ( a bottle green pringle sweater that used to belong my aunty peggy)

this is the assembled piece.

and now i have to turn my mind to the quilting - i want sinuous but not to curvy. it should echo the shape of the trees but not slavishly copy.

off to do some thinking.... (btw sorry for the quality of the photos - the light is shocking in here today)

cross posted at around the world in 20 quilts

my place

the website for dijanne cevaal's contemporary art quilt exhibition 'my place' is now up and running - go have a look. there are some amazing pieces there.

i still can't believe i had a quilt accepted - it is 'interior alice' - one of my alice springs pieces. i don't think i'll ever get 'it' out of my system - which means a lot more quilts :)