Here are some snaps of my first journal...
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
I stumbled onto Mary Ann Moss's Remains of the Day site via Poppytalk - it's a online course about making journals using paper and fabric. Mary Ann has made a series of step-by-step videos so making the journal is really straight forward with loads of room to be creative. I'm one of those people who collects postcards, tickets, vintage papers and other paper ephemera, so this is the perfect way for me to use everything I already have.
Here are some snaps of my first journal...
Here are some snaps of my first journal...
Monday, January 24, 2011
Monday, January 17, 2011
The mornings were lazy and full of coffee and good food thanks to The Duchess of Spotswood. The nights were made up of The Red Shoes, circus folk and dinner by the water. Sunday was snoozy again. The dogs ran in the park, inside the fans whirred and Sunday night? Me in the studio absorbed by making until after 11pm. Let's do again next week, please.
Monday, January 03, 2011
Brand New Year
Ring Out, Wild Bells
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1849)
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
New Year's Eve was hot, especially on my sister's farm but the light on dusk was beautiful. We went for a walk but I forgot my camera so it looked a little like this: poplar trees blowing in the breeze, the sky was a dark blue shot with patches of warm light, the odd locust, making that papery sound, crunched here and there. The road was dusty and although I couldn't see them, I could hear horses in a near-by paddock coughing in that horsy way. That night, we skyped another sister in Rome and my brother in law held the computer out over the balcony so we could see some real Romans walking around their stunning city.
No idea what this year will bring but when our dollar reached parity with the US, I bought Lovely Design's gorgeous AtoZ file but now that it's here, like the New Year, I'm not too what to do with it. It's so new and pretty and I'm worried I'll use it for the wrong thing. Still. I'm planning to stick my neck out more often this year...
... so maybe it will all make sense by the end of 2011 - or maybe it won't - and maybe that's just fine.
Happy New Year.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1849)
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
New Year's Eve was hot, especially on my sister's farm but the light on dusk was beautiful. We went for a walk but I forgot my camera so it looked a little like this: poplar trees blowing in the breeze, the sky was a dark blue shot with patches of warm light, the odd locust, making that papery sound, crunched here and there. The road was dusty and although I couldn't see them, I could hear horses in a near-by paddock coughing in that horsy way. That night, we skyped another sister in Rome and my brother in law held the computer out over the balcony so we could see some real Romans walking around their stunning city.
No idea what this year will bring but when our dollar reached parity with the US, I bought Lovely Design's gorgeous AtoZ file but now that it's here, like the New Year, I'm not too what to do with it. It's so new and pretty and I'm worried I'll use it for the wrong thing. Still. I'm planning to stick my neck out more often this year...
... so maybe it will all make sense by the end of 2011 - or maybe it won't - and maybe that's just fine.
Happy New Year.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
A Week of Christmas
Listening to carols by Bing, Puppini Sisters, Glee and Eartha Kitt and a choir at St. Paul's cathedral.
Seeing Myer windows, little kids going mad with wonder at Mary Poppins flying across the stage, pretty christmas wreaths on small front doors and big fancy buildings.
Eating fruit mince pies, rocky road and drinking red wine.
Watching Love Actually, The Holiday and Die Hard.
Making treatlys for friends and thinking, I love this crazy time of year.
Happy Holidays!
Seeing Myer windows, little kids going mad with wonder at Mary Poppins flying across the stage, pretty christmas wreaths on small front doors and big fancy buildings.
Eating fruit mince pies, rocky road and drinking red wine.
Watching Love Actually, The Holiday and Die Hard.
Making treatlys for friends and thinking, I love this crazy time of year.
Happy Holidays!
Thursday, December 02, 2010
Monday, November 29, 2010
Book Crush
Book crush.
Yes. I have been known to fall a little bit in love with certain books. Once I get drawn in I can’t stand to be parted from it so it goes in every bag. Sometimes I carry it just to keep it close because you never know when you’ll have a moment to pick it up again - waiting for the train, on the train, waiting for my coffee. Right now that book is: Let the Great World Spin by Column McCann. It’s not especially new but it didn’t appear on my radar until a friend from work started raving about it (it also one the National Book Award).
Set in New York in the 70s, it begins with a crowd of onlookers spotting Frenchman Philippe Petit walking on air as he walked across a tightrope between the towers of the World Trade Centre.
Those ordinary people have witnessed something extraordinary and Irish novelist McCann isolates some of those characters and lets their stories unfold, overlap and collide. It’s such an evocative read and New York is treated with as much respect and complexity as one of McCann’s characters. It’s one of those books you read with a pencil, just so you can underline the perfect line.
Here’s just a couple: ‘‘It was a look that suggested she was part of a mystery she wouldn’t let go of’’.
‘‘A bridge lay between us, composed almost entirely of my brother’’.
Anyway. This the book I’m loving right now. More are on the way, I’m sure, but right now - it’s this one.
Photograph: Leonard Freed/Magnum
PS: If you get the chance, read the book first then watch Man On Wire - the fantastic documentary about Petit's 1974 wire-walking feat. Amazing.
Yes. I have been known to fall a little bit in love with certain books. Once I get drawn in I can’t stand to be parted from it so it goes in every bag. Sometimes I carry it just to keep it close because you never know when you’ll have a moment to pick it up again - waiting for the train, on the train, waiting for my coffee. Right now that book is: Let the Great World Spin by Column McCann. It’s not especially new but it didn’t appear on my radar until a friend from work started raving about it (it also one the National Book Award).
Set in New York in the 70s, it begins with a crowd of onlookers spotting Frenchman Philippe Petit walking on air as he walked across a tightrope between the towers of the World Trade Centre.
Those ordinary people have witnessed something extraordinary and Irish novelist McCann isolates some of those characters and lets their stories unfold, overlap and collide. It’s such an evocative read and New York is treated with as much respect and complexity as one of McCann’s characters. It’s one of those books you read with a pencil, just so you can underline the perfect line.
Here’s just a couple: ‘‘It was a look that suggested she was part of a mystery she wouldn’t let go of’’.
‘‘A bridge lay between us, composed almost entirely of my brother’’.
Anyway. This the book I’m loving right now. More are on the way, I’m sure, but right now - it’s this one.
Photograph: Leonard Freed/Magnum
PS: If you get the chance, read the book first then watch Man On Wire - the fantastic documentary about Petit's 1974 wire-walking feat. Amazing.
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Softie for Mirabel.
Finished my softie for Mirabel organised by Meet Me At Mikes. I hope he brings a smile to a little.
The pattern is from this Softies book, a great place to start for new sewers, page after page of very cute, straight forward patterns.
The pattern is from this Softies book, a great place to start for new sewers, page after page of very cute, straight forward patterns.
Recent Reads
I've read some fantastic Young Adult books lately so I thought I'd post about a few of my favourites:
Dash and Lily's Book of Dares
by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn.
He hates Christmas. She loves Christmas. He finds a mysterious note book in his favourite bookshop, she dares him to come looking for her - the mysterious, goofy Lily. A book about falling in love, or maybe not falling in love. So good.
Burnt Snow
by Van Badham
You might think you've read this story before; girl reluctantly moves to small town and meets the bad boy but trust me, there's much more to this solid, paranormal story set right here in Australia.
Six Impossible Things
by Fiona Wood
One of the best YA books I've read all year. Fourteen year-old Dan Cereill is such a good character; he's a little like Woody Allen (but more loveable). A great story about longing, fitting in and realising fitting in is overrated.
And here are two titles I'm hoping to get to very soon:
Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters
by Natalie Standiford
"The Sullivan sisters have a big problem. On Christmas Day their rich and imperious grand-mother gathers the family and announces that she will soon die... and has cut the entire family out of her will."
and
Matched by Ally Condie
''On her seventeenth birthday, Cassia meets her match. Society dictates he is her perfect partner for life. Except he's not.
Dash and Lily's Book of Dares
by David Levithan and Rachel Cohn.
He hates Christmas. She loves Christmas. He finds a mysterious note book in his favourite bookshop, she dares him to come looking for her - the mysterious, goofy Lily. A book about falling in love, or maybe not falling in love. So good.
Burnt Snow
by Van Badham
You might think you've read this story before; girl reluctantly moves to small town and meets the bad boy but trust me, there's much more to this solid, paranormal story set right here in Australia.
Six Impossible Things
by Fiona Wood
One of the best YA books I've read all year. Fourteen year-old Dan Cereill is such a good character; he's a little like Woody Allen (but more loveable). A great story about longing, fitting in and realising fitting in is overrated.
And here are two titles I'm hoping to get to very soon:
Confessions of the Sullivan Sisters
by Natalie Standiford
"The Sullivan sisters have a big problem. On Christmas Day their rich and imperious grand-mother gathers the family and announces that she will soon die... and has cut the entire family out of her will."
and
Matched by Ally Condie
''On her seventeenth birthday, Cassia meets her match. Society dictates he is her perfect partner for life. Except he's not.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Sew La Tea Do
Got my crafty little hands on a copy of Pip Lincoln's new book Sew La Tea Do. And yes, one look and it's made me want to do,do,do!
So many great projects from a simple bib for a babe to a pair of lazy day pants.
Looking forward to picking a project to start. It's not only full of clever patterns but crowded with lovely photographs, too. And you know what's especially nice? Pip is made in Melbourne!
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
I've been stumbling across this book for years but have never actually read it. Now's my chance.
Jane-Emily by Patricia Clapp is said to be genuinely frightening and not for the faint-hearted. Excellent news.
Here's the first paragraph:
There are times when the midsummer sun strikes cold, and when the leaping flames of a hearthfire give no heat. Times when the chill within us comes not from fears we know, but from fears unknown - and forever unknowable...
Monday, October 18, 2010
The recent wild weather, rain, wind, hail has got me in the mood for some seasonal reading and what better book to read than a ghost story?
Susan Hill's latest (she also wrote The Woman in Black) The Small Hand has all the makings of a spine tingling read: a crumbling mansion, the ghostly figure of a small child, the bleak English countryside. I started it on the train this morning...
It was little before nine o'clock, the sun was setting into a bank of smoky-violet clouod and I had lost my way. I reversed the car in the gateway and drove back half a mile to the fingerpost. I had spent the past twenty-four hours with a client near the coast and was returning to London, but it had clearly been foolish to leave the main route and head across country.
It's a slim book (166 pages) so plan to knock it off quickly and get back to Franzen's Freedom.
Tommorrow: Jane-Emily by Patricia Clapp.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Finding at Finders and Keepers
Dropped into Finders Keepers market on Saturday. Wow. What a fantastic gathering of great hand-made things - gorgeous, well-made and original, things. We had a jammed packed day so we could only spend one, tiny hour but I think I managed to see every stall. There was so many delightful things, a couple of hours more would have been ideal.
Here's a few snaps of the haul. Only downside was lack of caffeine. The poor bloke had set up but didn't have any power - no coffee. Melbourne. Shopping. No coffee? Not good. We got there at 10am and it was comfortably busy...I imagine things got a whole lot more crowded later on. Hope it did.
Love love love: this painted plate by Storybook Rabbit
& this very cute and functional make-up purse.
& this wee pot holder made by Pip from Meet Me At Mkes:
I picked up a lot of lovely business cards from loads of makers: here's just a few from my favourites:
frankie mag had a groovy little lounge all set up with a dj playing chilled out tunes. Really hope it was a success for all.
So glad I got there. If you live in Melbourne, hope you did, too.
Here's a few snaps of the haul. Only downside was lack of caffeine. The poor bloke had set up but didn't have any power - no coffee. Melbourne. Shopping. No coffee? Not good. We got there at 10am and it was comfortably busy...I imagine things got a whole lot more crowded later on. Hope it did.
Love love love: this painted plate by Storybook Rabbit
& this very cute and functional make-up purse.
& this wee pot holder made by Pip from Meet Me At Mkes:
I picked up a lot of lovely business cards from loads of makers: here's just a few from my favourites:
frankie mag had a groovy little lounge all set up with a dj playing chilled out tunes. Really hope it was a success for all.
So glad I got there. If you live in Melbourne, hope you did, too.
Friday, October 08, 2010
Friday Round-Up
Weekend's almost here but this is what's been catching my eye today:
Anna Walker's blog - illustrator of All Through the Year and Little Cat and the Big Red Bus. If you haven't read her books (with Jane Godwin), you're missing something really lovely.
Sweet Paul's visually delicious online cooking magazine. Great styling. I can't wait to try the apple muffins.
Really looking forward to Finders Keepers Market on this Saturday and Sunday. Meet Me At Mikes will be there and Lark, too.
Tomorrow after the market:
*lunch by the sea with the out-laws
*a movie at The Sun
*dog walk
*reading
*making apple muffins
*crochet
It's going to be a good one. I hope yours is too.
Anna Walker's blog - illustrator of All Through the Year and Little Cat and the Big Red Bus. If you haven't read her books (with Jane Godwin), you're missing something really lovely.
Sweet Paul's visually delicious online cooking magazine. Great styling. I can't wait to try the apple muffins.
Really looking forward to Finders Keepers Market on this Saturday and Sunday. Meet Me At Mikes will be there and Lark, too.
Tomorrow after the market:
*lunch by the sea with the out-laws
*a movie at The Sun
*dog walk
*reading
*making apple muffins
*crochet
It's going to be a good one. I hope yours is too.
Wednesday, October 06, 2010
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Footage of Nathalie Lete painting in Melbourne.
Such a treat to see Nathalie Lete painting a store window at Blue Illusion today in Malvern. After following her work for so long, I was really excited to meet her in person and stand there (along with lots of other people) and watch her work. Jam Fancy was there, too. A lovely gathering of crafty bloggers and people who admire Lete's work. So lucky to see Lete dip her brush and just...create something so beautiful.
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