Cue applause card!

Friday night saw an exodus down the highway to the Bundanoon YHA. (You can clap here if you want to because it's a mega awesome YHA, formerly an Edwardian Guest House. But make sure you save some steam if you chose to clap)

It was M's first visit to a YHA. As you can see we're definitely slumming it:
And if you were to look straight up from where we were sitting you'd see this: Is Bundanoon YHA the only hostel in the world with a chandelier?

And how beautiful is this picture of the hostel?

We all arrived with different agendas. Well, OK , I lie slightly because eating great food and drinking wine was high on all our agendas. We whipped up an eggplant, zucchini, red pepper, brocollini and tomato stew with couscous for Friday dinner after a selection of delectable snacks to give us strength.

Saturday morning, after porridge and fruit, crumpets and lemon ginger lime marmalade (and a whistle stop tour of three local op shops) I waved everyone off on their 4 hour trekand I settled in to finish this:(you can applaud now!)

Yes, 2007's winter jumper is complete! It only took putting myself under house arrest in The Southern Highlands to do so. (If anyone's interested, 40 of us can go under house arrest here for a weekend. Cost: a mere $22 a night. And they can feed us for an extra charge)

The timing was spot on, too as I got a text saying the rest of the gang were out of the National Park and heading for the pub if I wanted to walk into town to join them. Which I did, sporting my fab new hoodie.

By the time I reached town (with a detour through a fascinating secondhand shop) they had decamped from the pub (long and boring story) to the local cafewhere I spotted the perfect frugalling bike:Saturday finished with some wine and a delicious dinner at the Sutton Forest Inn followed by ginger kisses, strawberries and cream and grated chocolate back in front of the fire.

This morning breakfast got even better: leftover cream from last night and brown sugar donated by a fellow hosteller joined our porridge and fruit and we had toasted Italian bread with butter and honey to finish.

Which gave us the strength we needed to not only wander round the local markets but also to do a (comparatively) easy walk to the site of the old Erith coal mine and back.After which it was declared I simply HAD to see the view of the escarpment: After another stop at the cafe, an excellent lunch (we highly recommend the spicy vegetable rissoles with salad, hummus and sweet chili sauce), a bit of watching the Olympics (2008 style):a pit stop and a stop to admire the daffodilswe were on the road home (with a teensy weensy little detour through Collector to pick up more jam provisions for the next couple of months)

Because sometimes having a shopping list just doesn't work...

Bonus day. I made a quick trip into town at lunchtime. I had it all worked out, with a list of everything I wanted to buy today:

So why did I return home having bought a new bed? Perhaps it's just that time of the year - I pulled out the receipt for my old bed to destroy it and noticed this:

Weird. Obviously mid August is the time to buy half price floor stock Sealy Posturepedic Crown Jewel Pillowtops in the land of TSS.

(Oh yes, I did manage to buy the jeans at least before I was so badly distracted:

and celebrated by pulling my last pair of new Converse One Stars out of the top cupboard to wear with them. New and shiny legs at the bottom, grotty old sneakers at the top.

Last night (because I couldn't have put it better myself and because my brainspace is all used up grappling with a 600 word essay. Due tomorrow. 283 words down, 317 to go...)

Eurovision just won't be the same...

It would seem that Terry Wogan has finally decided to step down as commentator of Eurovision. I suppose it had to happen eventually, but will this be the end of Eurovision being a "must see" for anyone outside of the Eastern Block?

Sigh...

Modern Miniatures on Monday: Parade of Houses, Part Eight

And so we move to the newer version of the Brio house, which I bought off German eBay on 2005.

Here's how it arrived:and how it looks now: There are a couple of major differences between the Brio house of the late 60s and the early 70s.

Firstly the outside.

The old version has a shaped wooden top section:The new version has everything printed on:and the old version has straight stairs going across the back while the newer version has a "bent" staircase:This house has the Brio (Jacobsen?) bedroom set:and study shelving:Dad's hard at work in his office upstairs:I think he might be a travel writer.

Downstairs the girls are relaxing on a lounge suite you might recognise (I think Mum's gone grocery shopping):I tried to keep as much as possible original to the house. The girls, the orange lamp on the blue sideboard, and the German flower pot...The kitchen is fitted out with items from the Brio catalogue of the time (some of which you might remember from here):

Saturday night/ Sunday morning

Saturday night:Not sure if the stunned expression is because of the mis-branded bathrobe or having just sat through The Perfect Man. Yes, it's a chick flick with Chris Noth but not the one I expected to be seeing this week...
Sunday morning: In which I develop a green thumb at Lincraft (of all places). Overlocker thread 49 cents each. How could I resist? There was other wonderful bargain shopping. There may or may not be pictures tomorrow (including the most beautiful coffee plunger I've ever seen and now own)

Two days in pictures

Friday:

Either she's desperate and papered every wharf in town or she lives in South Mosman:Big matches outside the Art Gallery of New South Walesand Biennale black and white art inside:Centrepoint sparkles in the sun as I wander past on the way to The Powerhouse Museum...where I drool over the Seidler office recreation in the Modern Times exhibition:Saturday:

Hey hey it's Krispin K!Whose trend forecast radar tells us yellow is the next big thing:He gave us a fab tour, as usual and taught us lots in a very short timealthough it was a little odd as half the exhibits we usually visit weren't there this year. For example, it was most disconcerting to find a completely empty turbine hall and another couple of the galleries dark, empty and closed off...

Then again, since our tour ran double the length it should have, this may well have been a good thing!

Princess B and I made our own way down to the Student Fashion exhibitionAnd, on a completely unrelated note, I thought this (spotted at the entertainment centre carpark) was brilliant. No yellow bucket needed here!

iWant

I met my first ever iPhone yesterday. Now have a severe case of iWantitis. Sigh...

Cute (but kinda sad)

Spotted last night at Circular Quay ferry wharf in Sydney:

Stuff

I discovered, on closer investigation, that the Target Converse One Stars are canvas, not suede. I should have suspected something was up with prices that cheap. But all is not lost, I still have the option of heading over to Converse.com and creating my very own custom-designed-but-identical-to-yer-standard-One-Star-shoes with a friend's US credit card (since Converse won't accept credit cards from outside of the USA). Yeah, it's on my list but all so complicated (use friend's card, bounce through V Post, pay postage twice) that just thinking of it gives me a headache.

Continuing the disappointment: the daisy hoodie, which I'd hoped would be finished for my trip to Sydney this weekend, won't be. For two reasons:
1. I have to leave 1 and a half days earlier than planned for a last minute work meeting.
2. Last Saturday morning I admitted that the hood cast on was too tight and no, I couldn't just live with it so it was frogged and I spent most of Saturday re knitting the hood rather than finishing the jacket. Oh well, it'll probably be too hot to wear it in Sydney anyway... (she says stoically).

Catching up on my magazine reading last night I discovered this on the last page of Spring 2008's Modernism magazine:With quotes from Mini Modern. How exciting! You can read the full piece here but you'll need to create a free log in: well worth it as you get to read the rest of that issue of Modernism plus the next one (and, possibly, future issues) absolutely free. How good is that??

Speaking of Mini Modern, she recently had a link to an Apartment Therapy tour of this excellent dolls house:

Happy Monday

Yesterday was a good day. A good day indeed.

First thing in the morning I got an email from Jesse saying I'd won her giveaway for a copy of her book, I don't like chocolate. I'm so happy, as I loved seeing some of the comic strips she published on her blog as she created them and it'll be great seeing the final product!

Then, in the afternoon, a liitle something (in a large box) arrived from my Lundby distributor. Behold the first Lundby Gotland cottage in Australia. And it's sitting onmy deskright now. Mwahahahaha!

And, finally, in the weird twist of fate category, I was pulling the packing out of the carton my Caroline's Home house came in last week and sorting it into recycling and rubbish when I noticed that the papers had dollar amounts printed on them. Which was odd since the parcel had come from England. At first I thought that maybe they had been added as extra packing with Australian Quarantine opened the box but then I realised I was staring at American junk mail. From England.

And one of those pages had a Target logo on it, and as I'm a sucker for Target, I unscrunched it to have a closer look. And I saw this:OMG! When did Target US start stocking Converse One Stars?! Why didn't anyone tell me?!!! I have to get my grubby little hands on a supply (especially as I fit the largest $19.99 kids style size thus saving $10 off the adult price).

Of course, neither Target.com nor Amazon will ship them out of the USA. Is it time to finally try VPost?

(It's kind of tempting to use the news as a justification for a trip to the US with an empty suitcase. I can see it now: "Anything to declare, M'am?" "Just 25 pairs of kids' Converse One Stars...")

Modern Miniatures on Monday: Parade of Houses, Part Seven

Helsinki, Finland. May 24th 2003. I visit a small miniature shop called PienenPieni and spy a tiny vintage Arne Jacobsen Egg Chair in a display cabinet. I'm intrigued. The chair is not for sale. I'm told they picked it up at a market.

Copenhagen, Denmark. May 28th 2003. I travel to a seaside village called Klampenborg on an Arne Jacobsen pilgrimage. At Restaurant Jacobsen I order coffee. And spy these on display:Also not for sale. Also picked up at a market. No markings. The plot thickens.

Later, after I arrive home, I do some detective work and (finally!) discover all the pieces are by Brio. A company you might be more familiar with today as producers of wooden children's train sets.

This is my first of two Brio houses, bought in early 2004 off US eBay:It spent 18 months in my friend Nancy's basement in Philadelphia until I could pick it up in May 2006, due to USPS rules about the size of parcels they would accept for international delivery (you might remember meeting it here) It was unfurnished apart from the (Brio) bathroom set.

Although Brio dolls houses, as a whole, remain a bit of a mystery, it's easy to identify one. Turn it round and the back probably looks like this:
Oh, and (of course!) I also managed to track down my own pieces of Arne Jacobsen designed Brio furniture, mainly from Tradera in the days when it was more English-friendly and my budget was without extra rent,car payments, rego and insurance and so could cope with some slightly scary (or so it seemed at the time) prices.(for more information on individual items, please pop over to my Flickr set)I'm loving this teal vessel collection...

Today I:

- Finally went here to see this: And giggle over this:and this: (thought bubble added by me)

- Saw a couple of fine exhibitions here (alas no separate web pages for either so sucks yaboo no links!)

Had lunch here next to this:

And refrained from buying this here.

- Then I went here and saw this and this (of course!) and (finally) these, in a Gallery I didn't know existed until very recently (silly silly me)

I also ate far too many of these

And spent a lot of time staring at this (and it's sister) deciding how they were going to share furniture and what their stories are...

On being a grown up

If you'd been lurking outside my cubicle at work yesterday you might have overheard this discussion...

Me: "Is it home time yet? My new dolls house arrived this morning and is sitting, unopened, in the hallway waiting for me to get home. I can't wait to get home and have a play!"

My cubicle mate: "My Housemate is picking up my new Play Station 3 game from the Post Office today and once I get home I plan to spend all evening playing it. "

Me: "Isn't it great to be a grown up? We get to do whatever we want on Friday nights..."

My cubicle mate: "Yeah! And the best thing? We can get drunk while we play if we want to!"

So, as my cubicle mate (and, no doubt, his Housemate) got drunk and played PS 3 I played with my new dolls house while supping wine.
And had a round of Lundby lucky dip with a box of childhood Lundby furniture gifted to me by my distributor, which arrived yesterday as well.

I like being a grown up...

Amazed it's August already...

July passed in a bit of a jumble. I've been very slack with ANU Film Group, missing all three movies I planned to see (2 Days in Paris, Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian and Hey Hey it's Esther Blueburger) but making it to Lars and the real girl as Semester Two began. Cost per view as at the end of July: $4.62.

Still reading voraciously (to quote my Form 6 report for English): eight travel books read, two lent on to friends and the rest waiting to go to the second-hand bookshop. It was great! I hardly noticed I didn't go anywhere last month as my head was wandering the world while stuck in one book or another. I particularly enjoyed the ones set in places I've visited as I could vividly picture exactly where the writer was...

I made it to Quantum Leap's My Brother my Sister last night, which was fabulous as always. I was in Row B: the closest I've ever been to the stage at The Playhouse and it was entrancing although a bit weird not seeing all the stage at once like I usually can. And I made the fatal mistake of reading in the programme beforehand that the costumes were made by the Certificate IV Clothing Production students from CIT which, unfortunately, distracted me more than it should have as I often found myself studying the intricacies of the costume manufacture rather than the dancing...

I didn't make it to any part of Vivid but it's high on the agenda for this weekend.

Also high on the agenda for this weekend is buying a zip and finishing the daisy hoodie. Fingers crossed...

Other plans for August include (in vague order of appearance):

* Massive amounts of movies at ANU Film Group. I doubt I'll make it to them all but they're in my diary and I'll do my best: Brick Lane, Sex & the city (hurrah! we have evil plans to take thermoses of Cosmopolitans in with us...), Miss Pettigrew lives for the day, Be kind rewind and It happened one night, In the shadow of the moon, and (finally!) Hard candy.

* Plus a movie at National Library showing "the construction of the National Library of Australia, from the first stage to its opening by the then Prime Minister, John Gorton. Special features include the stained windows of Leonard French, the copper panels of sculptor Tom Bass and tapestries by French artist Mathieu Mategot."

* If that wasn't enough in the way of cultural outings, I'm also seeing Philippe Genty's Land's end at Canberra Theatre this month.

* And there's a trip to Sydney for the opening weekend of Sydney Design. Of course. The Modern Times Symposium. The Krispin K tour of The Power House exhibitions. And, as if I didn't have enough things to fill my weekend I'm kind of hoping to get over to The Art Gallery of NSW for the Harold Cazneaux: Artist in photography exhibition. But I'm not to worried about that as I can always look at the online exhibition of his work on National Library's website. And since my chances of also making it to The Museum of Sydney for the flying boat history exhibition are pretty much non existent I'll give up on that idea now. Especially as it costs $10 entry...

* If I manage to get any time to read (apart from 6 and a half hours on the bus to and from Sydney) I'll be reading about Architecture this month.

* Speaking of architecture (in small scale) the Parade of Houses will continue our European journey through Sweden (my two Brio houses), Denmark (Lisa) and Germany (Vero). I also have an essay to write and a few other things to sort out this month in the lead up to the exhibition being mounted next month.

* There are plans for a weekend knitty retreat later in the month. And I've just been invited to a weekend in The Southern Highlands if I can cope with three weekends away...

* Finally, the 2009 IKEA catalogue and Poco Profile diary refills are due to be released this month.

Erk! Just reading this makes me want to take to my bed for a good long sleep...