One of the things that saddens me

is that over the past week or so my What I wore today sketches have become more, um, sketchy. And have, once again, stopped. I'm hoping that, once the very overdue issue of the Dolls Houses Past and Present ezine is published, I'll have the time and energy to return to the challenge of making my two uniform shirts look interesting day after day (after day!)...

What's on my camera?

All my photos over the past few days have been work related.

Sort of.

On Sunday, on my break, I noticed how well my knitting, my tea mug and the table top went together. In a very 70s way.

Actually, that's probably when my op-shopped wool was produced...And today I just had to capture my reply to a note I was left by a friend and colleague:(And, in case you're worried, I did weed)

"But have you washed your shirt?"

I was about to turn in for the night, after a few phone calls, an unexpected visitor and a lot of time trying to load photos to the pages of the May ezine, now almost a month overdue.

But then there was that niggly voice. And suddenly bedtime is at least 20 more minutes away as I wait for the washing machine to finish doing it's thing...

The sum of it...

I was easing into the closest thing I have to a weekend these days. Work was 9:15 - 5:06 today (with an early start for a wander round Jamison Trash and Treasure on the way)

Tomorrow I have a morning free before starting work at 12:45 pm.

And Tuesday? Tuesday was completely and totally empty.

What luxury. Do I do housework tomorrow morning and spend Tuesday (finally) publishing the May issue of the Dolls Houses Past and Present ezine/ op shopping/ visiting exhibitions I've been meaning to see/ mowing the lawns/ working on The Call of the Small To Do list?

Then I got home. And checked my email.

Work? On Tuesday? At the library with the 42 second commute? As Officer in Charge?

Well that saves the $860 new clutch Miss Daisy has just received from hitting my badly depleted emergency fund too badly.

And I still, at this stage, have Tuesday 6 July off to try and catch up with my life (such as it is these days...)

A party (with paper planes)

Last night I went to M's 50th birthday party. It was a terribly grown up affair:(That is, the paper we were using to make paper planes was posh...)

The long walk home

The buses were on strike today.

Miss Daisy was at the mechanics' today.

My push bikes had flat tyres today (and I had no suitable rainwear anyway)

So I walked to work today (and got randomly picked up by one of my bosses half way there. Yay!)Tonight I wasn't quite so lucky. So I had a 45 minute walk home. In the rain. With this song going round and round in my head. (Which was a total pain as I don't like it at all and the only time I've voluntarily played it was at Radio Active in the late 80s when I was doing a Musical chains show* about rain.)

(*Each song has to link to the one before and after in some way. We once did a Death to Dawn** musical chains show about food: 7 hours playing nothing but food and drink related songs. Most excellent.)

(** Midnight to 7am straight through. I'm not sure anyone does these live anymore as I believe you can programme them into the computer in advance and go home and sleep instead...)

Bloglines is scaring me...

It was a bad day today. Even Miss Pollyanna had left the building.

It wasn't helped at all by the fact I found some time to finally approach my overgrown Bloglines feeds.

Luckily, after almost 6 weeks without regular access I've become rather detached and seem to have gained the ability to just hit the unsubscribe button when it all gets too much.

And today's image? From a postcard due to hit the mail tomorrow heading Melbourne-wards...

Meh! (and miniatures)

This morning, within the space of 15 minutes, I dropped Miss Daisy off at the mechanics' to deal with a little matter of her deciding, on the trip back from Bega, that changing gears wasn't high on her list of priorities. Then I checked my Post Box and picked up the rejection letter for the latest job I applied for...

On a more positive note, with a new scanner I can now share this picture of a vintage miniature Herman Miller showcase, with furniture by Gilbert Rohde, which was published in the Winter 2009/ 2010 issue of Modernism magazine:
In the following issue of the magazine issue I spotted a letter to the editor about the model by Maryann Roy. And a little googling led me here:
I was about to say "pity it's not 1/12th scale" but miniatures are miniatures and her work is superb...

Viewing binge

I may or may not have just inhaled the whole of Ugly Betty season 2 in less than 24 hours.

I don't know whether to be proud or embarrassed at this achievement, but at least I can say it's (almost) a tradition. Right?

Photos from my trip to Bega

Can be found over here...

Out of control

Looks like I arrived in the nick of time...

Remember how Wendy went off on holiday to visit Sharon Cornthwaite in April?

I drove down to Bega to pick her up yesterday and arrived to find this scene:

I forgot to eat the blue cheese

Canberra Museum and Gallery has great openings. The blue cheese on the cheese platters seems to be particularly popular with people, as I have discovered by many an overheard conversation across the food table ("Look! Someone hid the blue cheese under the crackers." "There's more blue cheese on the next platter" or (my favourite) "Damn! They're out of blue cheese: it must be time to leave...")

Tonight I didn't make it to the blue cheese at all. My friend and I "just" popped in to have a look at the new exhibition Something in the Air: Collage and assemblage in Canberra region art and staggered out a long time later, impressed, overwhelmed and buzzing with ideas.

It helped a lot that there were miniature buildings. No pictures from tonight online yet but here are some other pieces by the artist, Alex Asch:

(From kyrresu) (From rikrak)(From superciliousness)


*Sigh* I have a big crush and I haven't even clapped eyes on the chap...

(Something in the Air: Collage and assemblage in Canberra region art runs through to October 10 so you could pop in and drool on the buildings while you're in the area for my exhibition opening in August)

Call of the Small studio visit: Linda Davy

This morning I had the pleasure of visiting Linda Davy to see what she's been working on for the Call of the Small* exhibition at Craft ACT in August.Linda has come up with with a number of ranges:

Platters in green (various sizes from 1 1/2 inches across):
brown with knitting and tapestry patterns on them (two sizes):red with reindeer, also two sizes (no photos), and some beautiful quirky candelabra centrepieces complete with working candles which stand around 3 inches high:One of the great things about Linda's work for the exhibition is that the pieces would be just as home as large platters and candelabras in 1/12th scale as they would be as smaller pieces in 1/6th scale.

Watching over us as we talked were these chaps: and this one in particular, who seemed quite keep to come home with me...(Thanks, as usual to the real Call of the Small for use of her name for the occassion)

A fabulously fun night...

and a crap photo to prove it!*

Last night I had tickets to see Ennio Marchetto at Canberra Theatre. I haven't laughed so much in ages and would now be urging you to go see him tonight. Except it was one night only in Canberra.

Comedy. Music. And, most importantly origami/ paper sculpture/ whatever you call it:

Based on that last criteria I dragged Ampersand Duck along. Who laughed just as much as me and bought the DVD (with the promise that I'd be invited over to watch it)

*except my new laptop doesn't seem to want to upload photos. Yet another thing to add to the ever growing list of things to do to get things back to normal round here)

A nightmare

I had my first nightmare about the Craft ACT Call of the Small* exhibition last night. I always take the arrival of these as a good sign: certainly, in the past nightmares about coming cruises have correlated exactly with the having of a fabulous time at the actual event.

Things have been chugging along in the background regarding the exhibition. I've arranged a couple more studio visits over the next week or so and recently visited M1K1: (not that I knew it at the time).

This week I spent some time in the Crucible showcases, checking on the lighting situation and if "skylights" would work or if I had to sort out some secondary lighting source.

And last night I sat next to Genevieve Jacobs at Pecha Kucha: when we weren't talking knitting I told her about the exhibition and she's keen to do another interview with me later in the year.

Which makes me realise I've completely forgotten to mention there'll be an article on my houses in the September issue of The Collectors magazine. Assuming it will actually be published...

(Thanks, as usual to the real Call of the Small for use of her name for the occassion)

I'm back (sort of...)

I have internet access at home. I don't even want to think about the extras I paid for to sort this out but here I am. Live and dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

The fact that I can't work out how to get Outlook working for me yet/ sync my iPod to iTunes on a new computer/ use Windows 7 is something I'm sure I'll work out (all a learning experience, right?)

What bothered me more today was that someone decided to park an empty shopping trolley next to the dead tree that's been gracing my front lawn for 12 years. Perhaps it really is time to spray paint it (the tree, not the lawn) gold and call it art...

Why I carry my camera in my bag

So I can take pictures like this when I wander past on the way to the Post Office:

Miniatures from Melbourne

I finally pulled out the "miniatures" I bought in Melbourne and took some photos, trying out the macro setting on my new camera. The quote marks are because none of these items were designed as dolls' house miniatures:A hand magnet from the NGV gift shop ($7.95), a metal jewellery hanger from corky saint clair ($20) and a necklace piece from The Cat's Meow, chain removed ($10).

Laser cut tree from corky saint clair ($12), display shelf from Savers ($3.99: I plan to refinish it) and business card/ dolls' house poster from Sticky Institute (free).

If you've used something in your miniature scene that wasn't originally designed for miniature use, I'd love to hear about it...

Offline and feeling fine...

It's been just over a month since I was burgled. A month where I've had very limited access to the internet: usually an hour or less a day at the library or the occasional use of a friend's netbook and dongle at home.

When I have managed to get online it's been a mad rush to check (and reply to) the important emails, upload my What I wore today photos and blog.

There's not been much blog reading, but a lot more reading of books. One of which was The winter of our disconnect : how three totally wired teenagers (and a mother who slept with her iphone) pulled the plug on their technology and lived to tell the tale which, ironically, I came to the top of the waiting list at the library while in the middle of a similar (but not as lengthy or encompassing) "rest" from technology.

It's a fascinating and thought provoking read which, I suspect, will be affecting how I approach the use of my new laptop when it arrives. Having been pretty much absent from my Bloglines account for a month I'm not looking forward to the mess that will await my return. But I think that will cause me to reassess my ability to keep up with the huge number of blogs that have crept onto my "must read list".

Or maybe things will just return to how they were before the burglary...

Librarians do Gaga

Saturday with Cycling S

I had a busy day off yesterday, with lots of housework in the morning, a visit from Taph and The Old Flame and then out with Cycling S in the afternoon.

We headed to Strathnairn to see an exhibition which had unfortunately closed last week so we went for a walk instead and I got to play with one of my new cameras: The Strathnairn cafe was out of cake so we decided Tilley's was the only solution to our late afternoon munchies. Sitting outside is mandatory at this time of year, as we realise there will be less and less chances to do so over the next few months.Wearing a lovely fluffy mohair jumper helps, as does a serve of hot salt and pepper squid.

Also mandatory is a wander through Booklore next door. Buying books is not. But this doesn't usually stop me adding to my piles...

A little night cap

Friend Kerry recently lost her favorite hat and described it to me while I was in Melbourne, hoping I'd be able to recreate it for her.

It sounded a lot like a Jo Sharp pattern I had, so I dug it out yesterday before work. Checked my stash, which unearthed no suitable charcoal coloured wool.

At the bus stop I bumped into Olivia and randomly asked if Lincraft carried Jo Sharp wool (suspecting the answer was no but having to asking anyway.) She mentioned that she might have something that would do if I wanted to pop past after work.

Which I did. And she showed me some leftover Jo Sharp Aran Tweed in just the colour I was looking for. But we both doubted, at 63g it was enough for a pattern that stated that it required 2 x 50g balls of the stuff.

But I remembered Taph saying pattern companies write patterns to make us buy as much wool as possible from them and suspected that 63g might just be enough. Just to make sure I balanced it on my head to see if it felt like the weight of a hat:It did.

I got home, had dinner, created yesterday's What I wore today page and then had one of those moments and decided to cast on and see what it knitted like.

Three and a half hours later I had this:A 35g hat. And leftovers to return to Olivia.

Don't drink and tink!

While waiting for the city of design talkfest to start at Craft ACT on Tuesday night I pulled out my hoodscarf to work on. And noticed a mistake about 3 inches down.

After ripping back to the mistake I looked down and saw this:
Wet wool. Yum...