Hip Hop

Here are my first two attempts at making Hilary's Wee Bunnies. It's a great pattern and I'm looking forward to making a few more.

Falling In Love Again

...with the city. Over the last five days I had the chance to get re acquainted with town. With so many events colliding (Next Wave, Comm.Games) the city was humming with colour and things to see. The lane-ways, already crammed with tiny shops, cafes and bars - continue to expand at an amazing rate. I didn't get lost, exactly - but Melbourne has a lovely, dreamy way of spinning you around that leaves you bumping into unexpected places.

Accidentally came across Hedge-Mony at the forecourt of the Melbourne Museum. I love them - women in black dresses walking around with a perfect green sphere covering their heads.

The Beach is a new installation near the Art Centre featuring real sand, water, beach boxes, life-savers and women dressed as ships. So mesmerising to watch - the walked (but seemed to float) over the sand, gently dipping their "masts" towards the breeze.

Next Wave Festival

Going to the opening of The Anti Mascot Project very soon. I love the city on a Friday night.

It's All Your Fault

How am I supposed to get any work done with such amazingingly cute stuff around like this and this? I just want to pack up desk and leave the following message on my work answering machine.

"Hello. You've called Fran. I can't take your call right now because I've just left work to go home and make bunnies and elephants. It's my calling. Thank you for yours. Goodbye."

Fashionista.

This week we're looking after a friends house near town. What a novelty. At work in 15 minutes instead of over an hour. I almost feel like I'm on holidays. I had great plans about using my spare time to catch up on some sewing. Everything was on track until I discovered The TV. I knew my friends had cable but never thought about it much...until I mastered the remote.

Initially I just watched Project Runway which was so much fun.Then it was re-runs of Flipper and Bewitched, then a heap of UK DYI shows about renovations and finally Fashion TV or as I like to call it, the Eating Disorder Channel.

But seriously. This is a TV Station with a 24 hour broadcast of nothing but models and the latest fashion from around the globe. The music is endless euro beat that loops forever.
Scornfully, I kept skimming over FTV and then suddenly I'd been watching it for 30 minutes without really knowing why. The models were wearing all these Nordic inspired clothes the colour of snow, ice and milk. Their hair was all white and blonde and long, their make-up was clearly frost inspired. I know it was bad for me because I started to have an internal dialogue that went like this:

"All my clothes must be cream. Do I have frosted eye-shadow somewhere? I must get myself a dog sleigh, why can't I have cheek-bones like that?, where did I put my vodka and huskie?." This world started to look better and better.

After watching for another hour I almost mastered model speak - that peculiar Eastern Block tone that makes them sound worldly and fascinating when all they are saying is "this shoes are really fabulous".

Sights of the City. Photos by Emma.

Words

I've been neglecting wishthimble lately. Every time I think about posting, I can't think of any words to write and I think I know why.
Words are my job and now that I'm studying part time...more words are needed for assignments and "discussions".
Words, words, words - I think I might be running out of them. I save my good words for work and what's left over goes towards study and the poor old blog gets all the tired, dusty, bruised words.
Last night I dreamt I blogged the most amazing post: funny, timely, memorable and then like an anchor being pulled from the surface, all the words slowly disappeared and suddenly I was wide awake.
I'm going out today to find more words. The city is buzzing with people and arts and athletes (Commonwealth Games) and the river is full of giant fish and at night lights glow from every high point. Think I'll take a walk.

House of Blythe

I'll be honest. I did feel slightly silly sewing tiny clothes for Blythe...until I found out how much it costs to buy them. In the end I quite enjoyed the detailed work. The patterns are from here: a wonderful website dedicated to Blythe. Not mad on hems, but another clever person suggested using No Fray - HELLO! Loving that stuff. Might try the Party Dress next.

Also got some reading done. Enjoying is not the right word...but I'm totally drawn in by Relative Stranger:A Sister's Story by Mary Loudon.

They Drink Horses, Don't They?

Thought I'd take a picture of lovely old Sherrie so popped my glass of wine on the post...obviously she's a horse with impeccable taste...she almost beat me to it, but I managed to grab the glass back just in time. Can you see how determined she looks! Nothing worse than a drunk horse.

Hola!

Tonight Em and I are having dinner with our mate Tony. About six years ago, Em and I were attempting to walk 750kms from St Jean Pied du Port in France to Santiago in Spain - The Camino. It was (my) crazy idea...and I'm still not sure why I wanted to try and do it, given I was a very unfit (still am) smoker (I quit) who had never camped for than two days and had no experience with long distance trekking. However, there is a part of me that likes to have a go at things and see what happens.

In the end, we walked 250ks in three weeks, but ran out of time. It was an amazing trip, even though there were moments of awful frustration. Em could have easily done the whole thing on foot and was incredibly understanding when I transformed into Patsy from Ab Fab, insisting that just one more cigarette and short black will definitely help me climb the next &*$)@_ mountain. What the? Oh. Did I mention that when things got bad I caught a taxi? I've never lived it down...

Accommodation consisted of basic cabins (refugios) specifically to accommodate pilgrims (walkers). Em and I had trudged into a very small town; tired and footsore. We were sitting outside the refugio having a "why didn't we just go to Disney Land?" moment when this guy wandered up for a chat. We all clicked. He was from Brisbane and within in minutes we'd found a pub and started sharing stories over cold, Spanish beer. Over the following days he slowed his pace considerably to walk with us...which led to drinking too much red wine in Pamplona and having a blast.

We've kept in touch with Tony ever since, though he's been travelling around for ages. Tonight we're having dinner at one of the best Spanish places in town (I think)...Movida. Bring on the Sangria!