23rd December 2009
This is a bit late today as I have spent the morning searching high and low for the cable to transfer photos from my camera to the computer. I finally found it in amongst all the christmas chaos.
The how:
To play along, it’s as easy as writing up your own hot/not list on your blog and then linking back to me here at loobylu.com and then adding your url to the widget below.
Hot
Solstice is hot: – We had lots of guests last night and our Midsummer feast this year consisted of roast chicken and vegetables, pavlova, Paul’s Christmas pud and chocolates. We drank pimms and lemonade, sparkling champagne and sparkling red. After dinner the children made fairy rings and then Phil took them out way past their bedtime to see the christmas lights in the streets nearby (which apparently was the “most awesome thing ever”) followed by a new Tove Jansson book read by Nan for bedtime stories. Everything was a little bit sparkly last night.
Pavlova cooking: – Something that went just right. My first trial pav was you classic pav laden with cream and berries. It was so good. For Solstice I tried Jamie O’s version with some lime juice and coconut stirred through the mixture. I found it just a little too sweet but still successful.
I made a scrap fabric wreath! Inspired completely by Nan and her easy to follow instructions.
Paper snowflakes: – I can’t stop making them. There is that wonderful moment of surprise when you unfold the snowflake and discover what the delicate cuts have made. I use this image as inspiration (via @Maggie) and here are some instructions.
Aunty Cookie’s kind loan of her wizz bang badge making machine: – Don’t slow down near me or I might whip you up and turn you into a badge. It’s too much fun.
Christmas carols on my ipod: – Our little music box in the kitchen is blasting out the christmasy tunes – we have Charlie Brown’s Christmas, Sufjan Stephens, Vintage carols with the likes of Bing Cosby and Doris Day, Christmas in Sweden (from Anna’s kind gift over at Dos Family)
Alma: – (above) the beautiful (but creepy) animated short is available to watch online for a short time this Christmas. It is so hot. She is an exquisite character.
This set of stacking drawers.
Not
Food fail: – Tears and a bashed head while meringue cooking. Failed dips (too much garlic in the beetroot, too much smoke in the baba ghanouj) and a slightly dried out solstice chicken. Argh. never mind. It’s the company & conversation that counts.
Last Monday: – Monday was a bad day. I don’t need to go into it really, but it consisted of tired, tantruming children, tired parents, awkward (awful) social moments and failed culinary plans.
I didn’t take a single photo of our Solstice party! So not hot. I guess we were living in the moment.
So how about you?
9th December 2009
Another Wednesday has sprung on us again. I’m sorry I didn’t get to visit last week if you played along. Solo parenting is to blame! Clearly I need to get more organised.
Here’s how:
To play along, it’s as easy as writing up your own hot/not list on your blog and then linking back to me here at loobylu.com and then adding your url to the widget below.
Hot
Klaus Haapaniemi (above) – I’m late to the party but I am loving the work of this Finnish born, London based illustrator. So good. I have been drooling over his dinnerware in a store while I was doing my Christmas shopping and came home to google him and feel my heart explode as I look at all his amazing work. And look, Christina found this gorgeous flash website he illustrated – just in time for Christmas.
Rainy Tuesday. It was only momentarily a hassle to have to go out shopping in the pouring rain yesterday. While I managed to get quite wet around the ankles, it was still such a delicious novelty.
Chance meeting with Christina – she was stepping out of Minimax having been looking for a trifle bowl, I was zooming past to get to the dollhouse shop to look for little miniatures to incorporate into some last minute decoration making. We spent a pleasant half hour attempting to tick off things on our respective shopping lists.
Vanilla Macaron – I still think my friend Paul makes the best macarons in Melbourne, but I tried a vanilla macaron the other day from a cafe and the vanilla flavour was delicious. Like ice-cream in a macaron.
Holiday posts from the Kiddley archives. We were so lucky to have a huge group of talented guest bloggers with amazing tutorials for holiday crafts and activities on our Kiddley site around this time in 2006. Scroll back through the pages for good things from the likes of Amy from Angry Chicken, Amanda from Soulemama, Sarah from the Small Object, Heather Bailey, Christina Gordon, Lyn from Molly Chicken, Carly from Moopy and Me, Kathreen from Whip Up, Alicia from Posy Gets Cozy, Asha from Parent Hacks, Andrea from Hula Seventy, Alison from Six and Half Stitches, Fiona from Hop Skip Jump, Heidi from My Paper Crane, Stephanie from Little Birds Handmade, Amber from Kids Craft Weekly, Myra from My Little Mochi and Blair from Wise Craft. Even as I type up that list I am stunned by the amount of cool people who helped us out with Kiddley in the December of 2006!
10 Years of Loobylu and all the kind comments, tweets and emails I received.
Tiny knitting – for some last minute decoration making.
Not
Phil is away in California. That makes me a bit sad. Things which are usually his domain keep going wrong – batteries going flat in the smoke detector in the middle of the night, the oven going up to full temperature and refusing to turn off, internet connection stops working, heater stops working… and I still can’t make a good coffee. Now I am just waiting for a plague of spiders and cockroaches to attack. On the bright side, I am proving to myself that I really can cope with all these “Phil” things. Apart from missing him, of course.
Sore tippy-toe muscles. “What?!” I hear you say… Changing smoke detector batteries in the middle of the night required standing on a chair with my eyes half closed. And the ceiling seemed suddenly very high up so I had to strain and stand on the tippiest of my tippy-toes. I woke up the next morning with excruciatingly sore feet and calf muscles and realised I had given my rarely used tippy-toe muscles a work out. Agony!
Colds, headlice, pot belly, not enough sleep – all the usual suspects.
How about you?
2nd December 2009
Back for another run down of the good and the bad around here.
And don’t forget the game plan:
To play along, it’s as easy as writing up your own hot/not list on your blog and then linking back to me here at loobylu.com and then adding your url to the widget below.
Hot
The Dover Design Sampler: Free royalty free images to download for your personal use every week. I am slowly building up a folder of great and highly diverse images including this great samurai guy.
Christmas tree decorating day! It all started with croissants and high excitement. I did lots of deep breathing and letting go of my control-freak nature and let the kids decorate the tree in the way they saw fit. It has big empty patches and highly intense clusters but the kids had a lot of fun. Ok… so I might do a bit of sneaking about at night and rearranging… I just can’t help myself.
Finishing Nanowrimo and starting new work. My manuscript got very earnest by the last week so as a antidote to earnestness I am writing a zombie book … for now. Because, well, why not?
Sloppy Joes – this is my all time favourite “can’t be bothered” dinner. It’s pretty yum – Phil calls it Candied Meat because there’s a lot of sugar in it and it’s sweet as sweet. We use red capsicum instead of green and I use my mum’s totally delicious tomato sauce so it’s kind of “healthy” and a dash of worcestershire sauce is mandatory.
Hanging art work. Oh my goodness. Phil hung our Timba piece and any guilt about buying art has been completely overpowered by how flipping good the artwork looks hanging in our rather odd lounge room. It makes us feel a lot happier about where we live.
Dan Zanes and friends – always pretty hot, but they’ve made a little resurgence in our house this week. They make me happy and the kids are doing a lot of dancing. Oh look, you can follow Dan Zanes on twitter.
Christina’s prints: I know they were on my Hot list last week, but after dropping in to visit on Saturday afternoon and scoring a couple of my very own prints, I am so impressed with how they came out. The printer and the paper she is using seem to bring out the oil paint quality so well. She’s put even more up this week. So many good ones to choose from.
Cleaning the studio: I am pulling fabric out of cupboards and folding, sorting and purging. My paper recycling bin is stacked full. Dust bunnies have been captured and tamed. My big goal is to get the room ready for a new year of work. I think it may take the rest of December to get there. Studio inspiration at share some candy.
Not
Head lice – blerg.
Lily’s asthma – but getting better again. There haven’t been so many nights of lying awake listening to her cough this time around.
And that’s it! What’s happening with you?
25th November 2009
Still writing like crazy at the NaNoWriMo game. I have around 4000 words left, so unless I am suddenly struck with overpowering, debilitating ennui, I should be fine. Blog posts are taking a bit of a back seat but here’s what’s been going on around here since last Wednesday.
(Here’s the game plan:
To play along, it’s as easy as writing up your own hot/not list on your blog and then linking back to me here at loobylu.com and then adding your url to the widget below.)
Hot
Delicious roast chicken and then cold roast potatoes the next day.
Hello Kitty Stamps – - Thank you to Miss Pilgrim! I spied a package of hers that she linked to from Twitter and I thought… Hmmm… there’s no harm in asking if she’s going to keep those stamps because I know Amelia has a little penchant for Hello Kitty and has also got into stamp collecting this last year (in a funny kind of way)… so I offered to do a swap… and what a nice girl she is. They were so pretty soaking in their bowl.
Christina’s new blog and her etsy shop - – so, so good! Lots of gorgeous reproductions for sale, and Christina always finds such good things on her adventures around the web that I am looking forward to keeping up with her interesting obsessions on her blog.
Pip’s blog anniversary – - Pip’s been blogging for three years this week, and is celebrating with a week of happy things over at Meet me at Mikes. Pip has had such a big impact on the Australian Craft Blogging world (oh yes! it’s a niche within a niche within a niche!) and it’s no secret that I am a huge fan of her site and her daily good spirit, her tireless work, and her passion for life. If you haven’t got Mikes in your life yet, then now might be a very good time to start. I am looking forward to checking in over there for the next three years and beyond!
Angry Chicken’s cardboard puppet theatre – - When I was small I inherited a wooden theatre from my Mum which my Grandpa had made for her when she was small. It was a funny old thing – a simple wooden frame made from plywood, with wings and bits and pieces to hang hand drawn scenery and move cardboard cutout actors about the stage. It was called the Eclipse Theatre, the name mum had given it when she was little, and it absorbed me for hours and hours. I think it’s long gone now, probably warped or split with age, but seeing Amy’s beautiful cardboard theatre reminded me of how much fun we used to have with ours. I think I have found a summer holiday project.
Karen O and the Kids “All is Love” from the Where the Wild Things Are soundtrack – - This song blasts from our iPod about… hmm… 60 times a day.
Melbourne Museum – - we’ve been twice in the last couple of weeks and the kids love it so much. The new Wild exhibition is a cool way of displaying all the old taxidermed animals along with some nice touch screen technology… but it’s busy in there on a rainy day.
Not so hot
Not much this week, which is good. I’m cranky… and my children seem to have ears that repel all requests to tidy up their unbelievable messes. It’s driving me nuts. But then, I’m always cranky so that’s not really anything unusual.
Besides the crank, there’s studio dust – - unbelievable fluffy dust bunnies gone wild. The studio is slowly but surely getting whipped into order, but the resulting allergy attacks are crazy.
See you next week!
18th November 2009
Hello Wednesday! My hot + not blog entries are measuring the speed of time for me right now. Obviously NaNoWriMo is swallowing huge globs of my free time so everything else has come to a grinding halt (Including a notion that I might have made entirely homemade christmas presents -Pah! Ridiculous!).
Here’s the game plan:
To play along, it’s as easy as writing up your own hot/not list on your blog and then linking back to me here at loobylu.com and then adding your url to the widget below.
Hot
The umbrella plant in the kitchen (above).
Writing break through: So hot! 35000 words and still going. I have had a bit of a fraidy-cat block about the 30k mark as that was my bomb-out point back when I tried NaNoWriMo in 2001… I blasted past that point on Monday morning in a furious 2 hour writing session. And suddenly my book is a YA (middle reader) Fantasy book. I don’t know how that happened. My spunky little heroine literally took a wrong turn in a tunnel and all of a sudden there’s time travel and talking foxes and ancient shape-shifting Scandanavian mountain trolls… oh well. At least the words are flowing thick and fast even if I do have to edit out around 40k in December.
The kids ever changing breakfast cereal mix: Cocopops (very small amount mainly for the excitement factor), cornflakes, puffed rice, shreaded coconut, cut up dried fruit, almonds… it changes every few days as I stir through new things to top up the container.
Kirsty’s beautiful new house… and my mate Lizzie’s awesome new kitchen. Suffering from serious nice house envy, girls!
Good people making good stuff for Christmas:
Ward’s fantastic rubber stamps , Amber’s Kids Craft Weekly Christmas Craft and Card books and Cookies new wall decals.
Lily’s Kinder orientation. She was such a star – all confidence and cheer. I was quite taken aback (and impressed) when she was the child on the mat needing to be gently reminded that this was “listening time” as she tried to share all her stories right away.
NaNoWriMo Pep talks – they arrive in my inbox when I need them most.
Amazing enormous wall decals - my kids are keen on the little guy falling down the stairs with the broken skateboard by Darcel.
Not
Finally getting off my butt and doing some baking – made a banana cake and didn’t realise I had used salt instead of sugar until I was putting it into the oven and happened to lick my finger to get rid of a tiny blob of batter. Argh.
Taking dad (and his station wagon) all the way down to Ikea to pick up two chairs for $99 each. Bargain! And with acorns… can you spot my mistake? Apart from not being as cute as I hoped in person and a little more like camouflage material, as my dad pointed out… they were also not $99.
Home organisation meltdown… my system needs work. The main flaw with my home organisation system is that it’s not just about a pretty set of index cards. It’s also about doing what the little cards say – like housework – and cooking! Never mind. I’ll get to that after I hit 50k.
My blog! December will be all about a redesign for my poor neglected blog which is terribly neglected and literally falling apart at the seams.
And you?
28th October 2009
Hello! It’s What’s hot + What’s not time *again*! Luckily my interests are so fleeting and fickle I have enough stuff to manage to get these lists together weekly. Are you taking part with your own list this week? If so, don’t forget to leave you link in the widget below. I will come and say hello!
HOT
Zinc – my favourite store this side of my parent’s house. While sometimes I feel a little like I am living in a shopper’s desert, a quick visit to Zinc in Toorak Road, Burwood (or is it Glen Iris around there?) to use a gift certificate and to dream of Christmases to come always restores my faith in the Eastern suburbs. Yesterday I finally replaced my (exploding sunscreen filled) wallet with a gorgeous thing from Elk. Very nice.
Halloween! This year we have a cindy-lauper-style rockstar and a bottom-of-the-dress-up-basket fairy princess.
Count down to NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month. Are you taking part this year? The first year I signed up was 2000 and it was a complete failure. I look back and think to myself… what was my problem? I had all that TIME! This year time *will* be my biggest problem, but I want to get back into my daily writing again and this is as good an excuse as any. I have a new book to start so it seems like perfect timing.
Related – The NaNoWriMo Young Writer’s Program. Just like NaNoWriMo but for kids under 17 years and with the opportunity to set reasonable word count goals. The word count recommended for Amelia’s age group is 300-3000 words. Hmm. Wonder if she’d be into it too.
Related – the Office of Light and Letters is hot. I loved reading the history of NaNoWriMo and am so impressed with the vision and the energy and the passion of the people involved in running it and their charitable organisation, the Office of Light and Letters. Donate to a great cause, or if that’s a stretch, use GoodSearch for all your NaNoWriMo searching and choose the Office of Light and Letters as your charity – GoodSearch is a brilliant idea – 50% of the company’s revenue is donated to designated charities.
What I wore today in drawings – the blog and the flickr pool. Gemma Correll is one of my favourite illustrators and she has started such a great meme. I think I might have to get in on the action. Also, just for fun – today is an All Gemma Correll day in my etsy faves over there in my sidebar.
NOT
My energy levels are not hot. My immune system is not hot. It’s boring, and annoying.
Sleepless nights – so, when do kids start sleeping through the night? I was hoping 7 would be the magic number but it seems not.
Forgetting to take snaps for my “life long project” of dinner photography. I missed every dinner while we were away and then there was the gastro so now am out of the habit enough to only keep up sporadically.
21st October 2009
It’s time again for this week’s What Hot + What’s Not. It comes around quickly – take part if you feel compelled and leave your url link in the little widget at the end of my post so we can come and see you hots and nots.
What’s Hot
Around the World with Mouk
by Marc Boutavant. Recently translated from the French is this fabulous children’s book which is totally hot in our house this week. Every page is a huge explosion of colour, activity and cute characters. Mouk travels from Lapland to Africa, from Australia (Kangaroo Island specifically) to Japan. The whimsical characters are a little Moomin-like (and spot the character reading a Moomin book in Lapland!) and the huge spreads with so much to explore remind me of some of Richard Scarry’s big books
from when I was a kid. According to the Chronicle Books blog, the American version will be released in the Fall… so… now-ish? If you have a child in the right age group for this which is probably 3 – 10 (or a illustration freak of any age) — this book would be an AWESOME christmas gift as it is big and glossy and has a slightly puffy cover and has removable stickers in the back. So good. You can preorder it at Amazon, or get it at Readings.
Pimm’s: We went to Byron Bay with a UK lad who introduced us to the joys of Pimm’s and lemonade. I gained several kilos from sipping on these. So our new celebratory cocktail is Pimm’s on ice, with a top up with lemonade, with slices of orange, lemon, thin slivers of cucumber and a sprig of mint. So pretty and so delicious.
Holztiger wooden animals: I bought a shark and a dolfin back from Byron for my girls – because not only are they absolutely gorgeous but can go in the bath! Lily’s shark has become a bathtime terror. “Holztiger toys are all handmade using maple, oak, beech and birch and make use of water-based acrylic paints.” We got ours from the beautiful My Toy Shop in Byron Bay. The fox is sitting on my bedside table.
Trop Jr: “The Worlds Largest Short Film Festival for Kids! By Kids! A recent addition to the Tropfest program is a short filmmaking competition open to kids aged 15 years and younger. 2008 was the first ever Trop Jr, 8 Finalists premiered their films to a live audience at the Crescent Precinct, across from Sydney’s Domain, before big Tropfest.” — this year’s signature item (a theme or something that needs to be included somehow) is “DOT”. It’s time to put all those video cameras.
Also: Teddy’s new nose, blue playdough, our new avocado and lemon trees, Flash Forward and Hydralyte Liquid.
What’s Not
Gastro! First Lily, then my parents, now me… who will be next?
Coming home from our holiday to an exhausted and sick family – and all the associated stress and guilt. Not hot at all.
My Mum looking after Lily as I vomited etc. on her birthday – NOT HOT! Happy birthday Mum. 
Blergh. Hopefully next week’s not hot will not be about vomit.
14th October 2009
Hello – There is a phantom publishing this post, as I am some miles away hopefully lying on a beach or sipping a cocktail. What – no internet for 5 days? CRAZY. But here’s my What’s Hot + What’s Not Wednesday – it was great to hop about the place last week and find out what’s hot and what’s not elsewhere, so please feel free to post the link to your url below if you take part.
HOT
Fake tan! I got a fake tan – oh so funny. Amelia couldn’t look at me without saying “I want the real you back!”. I have never, ever had a tan in my whole life so it was really very novel. I was surprised at how good all my clothes looked. Now I get why people like to look brown. The actual spray tan process was not nearly as humiliating as I imagined and I am not even orange. Amazing! It’s too bad I discovered this in an era when it is completely dangerous to get out in the sun and get the natural version of this.
Migaloo: (above) An albino humpback whale. He was sighted off Byron Bay on the 28th of September. He’s probably well and truly gone by now, but I hope to see some whales (and maybe their calves) on their way home from their migration south. I am also packing binoculars because imagine how many new birds there will be to add to my list! The place we are staying even has a downloadable bird walk brochure. Awesome. (Tag: bird nerd)
Paul’s chocolates. Our good friend Paul did a chocolate making class last week and he gave us a box of his beautiful goodies. I am so impressed with how beautiful and interesting they are, and how good they taste. We spent quite a lot of time trying to convince Paul to try out for Master Chef for next season… but then we all wondered if there is anyone who needs that amount of stress in life.
Upgrading iTunes and sharing all Phil’s music. So much good listening going on around here.
NOT
Pale people (but not pale whales – ha ha!)
The little barky dog next door, right outside our bedroom window. We had a peek at him over the fence and he’s insanely cute but he does have a tendency to need to express himself at all the wrong times.
A small child with post-viral asthma: Phil and I were running on stress for two days. She’s getting better but I am no good at sleeping while wondering if we are going to be leaping into an ambulance at any moment.
Survivor Samoa. I dunno. We watched the first episode and there a couple of characters who are so mean I didn’t feel compelled to tune in again. I *know* they are probably actors, I *know* they need bad guys… but it left me with such a bad taste in my mouth.
Hot or Not? Alexander McQueen’s 10 inch stiletto pod shoes — I can’t stop looking at these. Surely influenced by the Alien films – but amazing and creepy and dangerous! What do you think?
7th October 2009
Another Wednesday, another rundown of what’s hot and what’s not at Chez McCluskey-Robbo. This week I’m trying something new. If you feel like doing your own What’s Hot + What’s Not, add your post’s url to the little widget at the bottom of this post so that we can all pop by and see what’s hot and what isn’t at your place. I hope it works!
What’s HOT
Being home again: After two weeks in the country it’s nice to be back in the ‘burbs. I spent a lot of time while we were away thinking about ways we could possibly move to an old farmhouse in the country, but coming home to our cosy house and a garden green and running rampant from the rain, I find myself feeling pleased and settled.
Holiday reading: Phil and I are off to Byron Bay next week for our long-planned *escape from reality* and these are the three books (above) I am packing… well… we are only going for four nights so I might have to choose just one, but I am excited about all three. The Time Traveler’s Wife was my favourite book from last year’s reading so Audrey Niffenegger’s new one
is exciting. I love Nick Hornby and I love the premise of Juliet, Naked: a novel
. I am still enjoying A Fraction of the Whole
in all its wandering craziness.
Light evenings: Summer’s a coming, and the time change is already making the evenings seem longer. The hour missing from the morning is a little harder to come to terms with.
One of my favourite clients ever has a gift/stationery company with a new online shop selling fabulous products – how CUTE are these pop-up activity place mats!?
Photos of homes on Dos Family and The Selby. A little like online Paumes books: lovely inspiration from the homes of real and interesting people.
Permablitz – “Eating the Suburbs, Once Backyard at a Time”: What a great idea – sign up to take part in overhauling backyards into permaculture paradises and after you have helped out in at least two other working-bees, you are eligible for a permablitz at your house. So good – Why have a water-sucking lawn when you can produce your own organic food?
Kirsty’s X Marks the Spot tutorial – and I just bought the kit.
What’s NOT
A virus from the country : Amelia, Lily and I are all sick sick sick. It’s a nasty virus which has meant we have had 3am trips to the country hospital to treat croup, a trip to the doctor to get antibiotics for ear infections and many sleepless nights. While I love little children, the one thing I am looking forward to about them growing a little older is the idea that we might not spend the months of March to October fighting off every single virus that comes our way.
Related: giving eye drops to a three year old. NOT hot at all. Takes two of us to do it and it’s awful.
Gourmet and Cookie Magazines closing down: Oh so sad! Am I choosing the worst time in recent history to be considering getting my freelance illustration business up and going again?
STUFF: We’ve got too much of it. Coming home to a house full of messy rooms; cheap plastic toys strewn about the place, piles of washing needing folding and sorting, and a studio full of out-of-control rubbish waiting to be turned into projects was a little depressing. While we were away the kids seemed to do just fine with very limited amounts of play-stuff. A box of old blocks, cotton reels and wooden pegs went a long way. I have been sulking around the house, crunching lost and forgotten items underfoot, saying “how much of this *crap* do we really need?”. Anyway, it’s got me thinking and I can feel one of those massive purge projects coming on. That might be followed by one of my evangelical “no spend” projects which may (or may not) coincide with Christmas. If it does coincide, that can only be a good thing, as I would say that 90% of the lost and forgotten and broken junk lying around comes from the stockings of Christmas Past.
What’s hot and not at your place?
30th September 2009
Two weeks ago I did a personal What’s Hot and What’s Not. It was fun and I think I might try it every Wednesday or so. Join me if you like. A few folks did last time and it was fun to click around to get a little snapshot-glimpse into lives around the world. Leave me a comment if you do so I can come and visit.
HOT
Sitting by the fire in the evening – whether it’s to watch 30Rock, roast marshmallows or to read Harry Potter out loud to a gathered, enthused crowd. I look forward to our nights by the open fire all day.
A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz. I finished Chris Tsiolkas’ The Slap and went into Yass to find something else to fill the void. I found A Fraction of the Whole and am devouring it. It’s great. I also found a nice bookshop – The Little Dog Bookshop – 155 Comur Street, Yass. It’s Carbon Neutral! How about that.
Whittaker’s coconut chocolate – we have been having two little pieces of this deliciousness every evening after the children go to bed. I had some Rum and Raisin last night but far prefer the coconut. There are 24 different varieties in block form and it seems like one of the nearby supermarkets stocks quite a few of those. Mum is keen to try Kiwifruit just for the bizarreness factor.
The Quilt Project viewing at the Abbotsford Convent – October 23rd! Can’t wait to see it. Kirsty’s pretty darn cool.
Open Studios Event from Studio Magazine: “Crafters and artists around the world are invited to participate in this global open studios event – deadline for participation is Friday, October 2. Door Prizes available.” I can’t take part because I am here and a million miles away from my studio but this looks like fun. (thanks Kylie for the tip-off)
NOT Hot
Writing paralysis – I have gotten up a couple of mornings to write while we’ve been here. I huddle under a smelly old rug covered in dog hair in the sitting room, imagining (and only imagining) that the coals from the last night’s fire are warming the room. Unfortunately the writing has been nothing but stilted and silly. I’m not sure why. Usually I find this place is a kind of creative hot-spot. Right before a fierce thunderstorm here in 2004, when the air was crackling with creative electricity and inspiration, I came up with the sketches for my favourite pictures ever which went on to be the body of the work for an exhibition. I know two years ago I was having an awful shower in the awfullest shower in NSW (which is now happily fixed) and as it swung from searing hot to piercingly cold every two minutes as the pump kicked in and out, I had the idea for my novel about the girl moving home to the country and blah blah blah (the one I have been working on but is momentarily on hold). I guess it’s a case of taking your brain out of your every day commitments and routines and let it go into a vacuum for a while. But not so this time. You know? I think I blame The Slap. It totally occupied all my mind and imagination while I was reading it. It was worth it though.
‘Tis the season for swooping magpies. Maybe all those owl signs Phil saw the other day were actually the angry eyes of the kamikaze magpies which have started up around here.
A full meat diet. The butcher near here is so good. Great sausages, delicious chops and steaks and roasts… it’s an easy way to cook up here, as the kitchen is a little prehistoric and the bbq is often so much easier. Don’t get me wrong, it’s tasty – but I am starting to feel *ridiculously* full all the time. It’s enough to make me turn vegetarian on our return to Melbourne. Hilariously, as I typed this Mum asked “who wants bacon for breakfast? There’s a lot here! We can have bacon… with um… bacon!”. It’s a good thing I forgot to take photos of several of the dinners up here, because it would have been downright embarrassing to record the full-meat diet for all to see.
