New book: sneaky peek

 

Mia, all tucked up

It’s been a long slow week in our household as we all (IT, me and the cat) spent a lot of time sleeping. IT and I have been trying to recover from our colds and Mia, well she’s usually happy to join us in amongst the blankets whenever she gets the chance.

I was quite pleased with myself for just accepting the situation, not fighting and pushing myself, despite the fact that the deadline for sending our Book Art Object books off to Ronnie is this week.

If you’ve read Michael Nobb’s blog,  Sustainably Creative, you might know his approach to slowly moving creative projects forward, with tiny work periods each day (e.g. 20 minutes). I’ve been keeping this in mind this week and amazingly the book is actually getting there!

 

So below is the first sneaky peek to give you a hint about my book for round 2 of Book Art Object. When the whole edition is finished (I’m planning 10-12) I’ll write some posts about each step of the process.

 

But for now, this is all!

(drypoint on archival inkjet background)

Radical Craft!

This is the sort of unexpected juxtaposition that I love to think about.

Sunday before last, ABC2 aired the documentary Making It Handmade. Four Melbourne crafters feature, showing how they’ve “upcycled” the once daggy ladies sewing circle into something with a much more feminist flavour. (I suspect there may always have been a hint of the female power in the old sewing circle).

 

Image wantonly stolen from this website: http://www.grrrlzines.net/interviews/hoopla.htm

No malice intended – if you would like it removed, just ask.

 

Each young woman has employed the crafters’ circle in a different way, from a gentle space for young women to gather, share their skills and be creative, to night-time raids to cross-stitch political messages onto wire fences (above). There’s also the crafter who makes decorative “female parts” with her friends and then flings them up high onto the electricity wires in the street, so if this offends, it’s probably wise to avoid this particular movie.

On the other hand, if you’re interested, the documentary is still available via iView for another 6 days. The link is below:

http://www.abc.net.au/iview/#/view/812234

If you’re visiting here too late to catch iView, this interview with one of the crafters, Rayna

might fill you in a little.

 

Now back to bed to rest. I’ve caught the annual lurgee that sweeps into Brisbane on the westerlies every August and I’m not going to fight it. Keep warm!

Changing houses hits Hawthorne

 

Edit 16/08/11: The title of this picture should have been “This Is Not My Home” because it isn’t. Sorry to anyone who I inadvertently misled. It was meant to be a generic house, but I can see why you would think otherwise. I don’t feel that our home is particularly photogenic, but I felt I sort of “owed” you all a pic, so you can now find one right at the bottom of the post (heavily processed to improve its appeal).

No, no, we’re not going to be on TV (thank heavens!) but we are finally going to be making some changes to our home and hopefully putting our own mark on the place.

We bought here (a three bedroom ground floor unit built in 1994) back in 2003, just before moving to Melbourne for two years. It was sort of our safety net. A way to say yes, we are heading south to live and hopefully have some adventures in a “real city”, while knowing we have a home back near our families, where we can return.

When we moved back two years later because the family needed us, there wasn’t really time or money (or energy) to do much other than move in and get on with life. But many years later, the time finally seems right(ish).

At the start of this year, we made grand plans for a renovation that would fine-tune the space we have to our (somewhat unusual) needs and lifestyle. Our “forever home” as Kirsti of Location, Location is so fond of saying.

Then we spent a month in Paris and we realized a few things. We saw that part of the reason we both become a bit disenchanted with the world is that Brisbane doesn’t actually offer us much of the things we love. High on this list for us is a sense of a long, long history and culture (with the appropriate buildings, layers of time, and yes, dirt & grime). On a bad day, I could go on and on about the things that Brisbane doesn’t offer and what it has replaced those things with, but it seems much more reasonable just to say, I’m sure some people love it, but it’s not for me!

 

At the moment we have “family things” that we want to do, but they won’t take forever, and then we will look to move elsewhere (exactly where is still undecided). In the meantime, it changes the way we think about this unit and the work we will do. Yes, now it’s 17 years old it’s definitely time for a refurb but if it’s a given that we don’t intend to stay here forever, the changes we make need to take that into account.

So you can see that there’s been a lot of thinking, discussing and heart-searching going on here, in this little unit, as well as practical decisions about a new kitchen and new floorboards to replace the horrible carpet. And of course, quite a lot of work in the studio towards the BAO edition with its approaching deadline (which I promise I will post about just as soon as I have time.

EDIT: 16/08/11

                                                                      Our Home

We live on the ground floor behind the high fence. I may be a city girl and unit dweller, but I still like to have my feet on the ground.