Australia is big

My Grandmother is off to a writers' retreat in Crete later this year. On the way she thought she'd drop into a Literary Festival in Darwin (as you do) and, while she was "coming through", visit me in Canberra.

At first she thought she might take the train from Canberra to Darwin. I pointed out that it would take at least 6 days (and rather a lot of cash). So she settled on flying.

Then I made the mistake of mentioning the $15 Murrays bus from Sydney to Canberra, which got her thinking about taking a bus from Canberra to Darwin.

Dear Grandparental Unit (and anyone else thinking of travelling around Australia),

Australia is big.Very big.(Images shamelessly stolen from here)

Thrifty Thursday

Spare money + spare time at lunch = a trip to the local op shop, not more than a block away from work. Sadly, It's been almost a month since I've been able to do any op shopping.

I picked up yet another pair of cropped denim pants. ($5. Do I need them? No. Do they make me happy? Yes)

And a bag containing almost 200g of Studio Mohair and a couple of balls of other fluffy white stuff ($3. Do I need it? No. Especially after a recent delivery of a gift which I now dub Mohair Mountain. Does it make me happy? Yes)And while we're on the subject I found my $30 Witchery voucher a couple of days ago and cashed it in:Leather conditioner for my wonderful, faithful, most favorite EX23 vintage leather satchel ($0 but RRP $12.95. Do I need it? Hell yes!) and a palette of eye shadows to replace random containers that have been banging round for far too many cruise adventures ($0, RRP $19.95 but marked down to $14.95. Do I need it? Not just yet, but maybe sometime soon...)

There's still money left on the card but unless I fancy a set of overpriced hair elastics it'll stay there and slowly rot.

An oddly balanced day

After spending the day at a new-to-me library where I realised I was the only girl-person amongst a staff of boy-people (and thus had to remember to put the seat up after I used the toilet) I wandered off to ANU Film Group to (finally) see The Septemebr Issue this evening.

Planning and playing

Last night: time to do some long term planning (in bed, of course)and play with ideas for my submission to The Story is the Thing:

I spent this morning

Gettingon top

of things

(It was a great feeling having time to finish some stuff off...)

Time to think

Time to notice my surroundings:Time to do some cleaning and tidying.

Time to make some colour and theme links:

Time to seriously consider some possibilities:
Can I create an artist's book by April 26th using this wooden box, left over from a long forgotten miniature project, and the idea I had last year? Using textiles?

On top of everything else that's happening at the moment?

(Is it just me, or do all those colours in that last picture just work?)

Upping the ante

How about a picture book with knitting ON THE COVER? And a story that's all about knitting and sewing and making clothes for friends?

Which, to cap it all off, includes button jars?

Lizzie's List by Nadine Walter and Quentin Greban. Buy it here (five copies only, alas) or (for Canberrans) borrow it here.

Dog tired

13 days straight working
at 3 jobs (1 new) with 10 potential workplaces
which have a total 13 door codes to try and remember.
During which time I posted 1 Swap-Bot swap parcel
published 1 ezine and updated 1 website
took 1 eye test
baked 1 batch of cupcakes, 2 loaves of bread and made 1 batch of hummus.
I also read 1 book
and watched 2 movies.

I have no idea why I'm feeling so exhausted. Do you?

Luckily I now have 2 days off.

(photo: Rooster Collie by Emily Valentine at Craft ACT)

Kinda covers the day...

I got my third pay for the fortnight yesterday. And went grocery shopping with some of it.

Each time I've gone grocery shopping this year I've allowed myself one treat.

This week I chose to finally replace the blow bulb in my bedside lamp, after about a month of being bereft.

Got it home. And while inserting it into the lamp, I shattered it*.

Perhaps I should have spent this week's spare $8 on chocolate?

(Luckily I finally realised I had an identical lamp downstairs that I seldom used. With a working bulb. Which is now upstairs)

*Bloody eco tornado bulbs...

Having a ball

This is what the cast of The Merchants of Bollywood get up to when they're not inside the theatre doing important theatrey (theatry?) things.

My brain has exploded after the workout it received yesterday and a day today spent training in my new job. There's only one thing to do: go to bed early and hope it manages to put itself back together by the morning...

Wednesday was...

* Bread baked and taken to work with hummus for quick devouring all round (odd how the simple things are often the most appreciated...)

* A postcard from a friend who is currently in India. I'm most jealous.

* Keeping the theme (India, not jealously) with an exhibition opening invite from CMAG with elephants on it. Elephants walking across Civic Square. Perfect.

* A $30 Witchery gift card which arrived with my marie claire subscription (and which I appear to have lost)

* A fabulously mad storytime (I get paid to do this?!)

* A wonderfully unexpected but much appreciated gift. Which shall, for the time being, remain secret...

* PAY! Not much but the budget for the week is slightly less squeaky.

* Arriving home to find that someone decided that my house just had to have black and white stripes painted on the road in front of it:(obviously the world does revolve around me... But if given the option, I'd have preferred a turning lane as driving across this now breaks the law)

* And my traffic lights are trying to make up for the monochromatic invasion (all three lights at once? How very disco...)* One magazine published. In the end a wise friend reminded me that it didn't have to be perfect as then there'd be nothing to improve on. So I embraced my inner 80/20 rule and pushed the publish button. (Eek! I'm now a Magazine Editor!!)

Today...

...was still pretty crappy. But being the Pollyanna that I am I tell myself it really wasn't that bad:

I have a clean (and almost dry) doona/ duvet. Just in time for the autumn update of the bed.

I finished the book.

And am past the heel on the first sock.

I got given chocolate. Green and Blacks, even.

And (by other people) sushi, more chocolate (Dove) and plum jam, green tomato relish and green tomato sauce.

I saw Mao's Last Dancer and laughed at the Sydney pretending to be Houston bits. (There were also a couple of hand knits:nothing worth getting excited about...)

I caught up with friends (see above)

Who, as well as food, gave me (more) fluffy yarn as well as fabric and dolls house furniture.

I managed to make hummus.

And have bread dough in the fridge rising overnight for early morning baking before work tomorrow.

There's a very good chance the Dolls Houses Past and Present ezine will go live tomorrow morning. I'm just debating how to deal with the missing article: have an empty page in memory of what could have been, or just skip that page.

Tomorrow...

The cat won't puke up the entire contents of his stomach onto my (uncovered) cotton doona/ duvet.

I won't accidentally delete an entire page/ article from the Dolls Houses Past & Present February magazine.

I won't be too busy trying to retrieve said article that I run out of time to make hummus to take to work for a shared lunch with a colleague.

I won't have a customer lodge a formal feedback form complaint because I told her, at 5:20pm, that no I couldn't teach her how to use the internet because we were closing in 10 minutes and I needed to complete our closing procedures.

I might learn that, just because there are 24 hours in a day, I shouldn't expect to schedule every last one of them.

And might get February's mag published. Even though it won't be February anywhere in the world by then...

Before I head off to see Mao's Last Dancer at ANU Film Group (thus continuing the tradition of seeing movies based on books)

I might also get time to do what I really want to do: knit some lounge socks using some beautiful 12 ply Picasso Heirloom gifted to me and finally read a book I've been hearing a lot about which I just happened to find on the shelf today...

Note to self:

It's been pretty quiet round here lately. I know you've been busy learning new website back ends and new jobs but, surely, you've been doing something even vaguely interesting apart from working?

Note from self: Well I was supposed to go see Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs this evening but came home instead to watch Sesame Street Old School

which I just happened to discover on the shelving cart at work yesterday.

That lead me down the road of childhood TV I haven't seen in years: The Bugaloos haven't survived the passing of time but Vision On seems to still be holding it:

(and I may have just worked out where my slight obsession with sign language came from...)

And now, as Zebedee says, it's probably time for bed!

Let's play spot the miniature piece

Another artisan working in miniature who I just discovered this morning:Tada*s Revolution (via See Hear Say)

The Time Traveler's Wife: the perfect movie?

Taph and I went to see The Time Traveler's Wife last night at ANU Film Group. I'd already seen most of it on my flight back from New Zealand but it's not the same on the small screen.

And how did we love it? Let me count the ways:

* It's based on a book (always a good start)
* The main character is a Librarian
* A hot Librarian who gets naked in the stacks.
* There's knitting (points off for the fact it pretty much looked like commercially made knitting and for not having anyone actually knitting during the movie. Except Taph, in the seat next to me, that is...)
* And op/ thrift shopping: but alas, only implied (a Salvation Army van is seen delivering some furniture to their apartment)

But that made us think: we have the Yarn-o-meter rating system for films. But what about adding a Thrift-o-meter?

Not feeling very bright eyed and bushy tailed right now

First morning at my new job = lots to learn and retain = sore head.

On top of a couple of weeks full-on learning the back end of the site I just took over stewardship of, and a few issues that popped up. (Yes, that's why it's been a bit quiet round here lately).

And the sort of sleep where you spend the night dreaming of such big things that you wake up exhausted.

To add the cherry on the cake, I took the opportunity to visit the optometrist this afternoon for the first eye test I've had in almost 20 years. There was much peering through little holes with different lenses on deciding if the left or the right looked brighter or the horizontal or vertical lines were clearer. Which left me with a sore head AND tired eyes.

The good news is that I'm only 2.5% under normal vision, even with my dodgy eye so glasses not required yet:

(but maybe, just maybe, I should consider turning the light on if I'm trying to read 4 point text on the back of my CDs in dim conditions...)

Is it terribly bad to be seriously considering being in bed by 6pm tonight?

What's my secret?

for light, fluffy gluten-free baking (without being ripped off by expensive packet mixes)? This.

Really: take any recipe that calls for normal flour (the cupcakes above were a random recipe ripped from an old issue of Madison magazine), use White Wings gluten-free flour instead of normal flour and make as usual. Just be aware the final product won't be quite as browned as normal flour so use the skewer test not the colour test for doneness.

Or just visit Deeks.

(If you use soy milk and margarine instead of butter the end result will also be dairy free.)

Baking: real and virtual

Tomorrow is one of the Craft ACT crew's birthdays so this morning there was a flurry of baking in my kitchen before I headed in which produced these:Crafty gluten free cupcakes with buttony tops. Because cupcakes are a bit of a tradition for Craft ACT celebrations and I'm very late with the end of the year ones I promised...

Then tonight, when I got home I found this in my inbox thanks to a designer friend:

Mirror mirror on the, err, table...

Let's pick a winner if we're able!püppilottchen, email me your address and I'll get your new mirror in the post on Friday.

Small (spielen*) stuff on Sunday

In August 2008 I stumbled across this on eBay:but didn't manage to win it.

This morning I stumbled across this on FLICKR.

Man I love the internet sometimes...

(*German for play)

Testing times

It's been an interesting couple of days and I've very happy to have a 2 day weekend to recover. After spending all day today doing domestics and worrying that there was no sign of any creative stirring, I suddenly had the urge to take this, add a bit of this using this, shake it together and see what happened.

This happened:Now I'm dying to repeat the experiment with some other miniatures from my collection, photographing them on an A4 sheet of paper to get the scale correct. Fingers crossed for good light tomorrow...

And the apron goes to...

Emma: your pleas to the random number generator thingy obviously worked. Email me your address and I'll get it in the mail to you next week...

Bren book draw

M1K1, the Bren exhibition catalogue is heading your way. (Hope you can wait til I get paid next Friday...)

If you missed out, remember you can Email the HBMAG shop manager and arrange to buy your own copy ($NZ 8 + postage) and/ or the fridge magnet set ($NZ22 + postage)

A day in the life of an Intern

(Two days late. Which may feel a little like a Hot or Not post. One day early...)

I can tell daylight saving is drawing to a close as the leaf blower at Dickson shops didn't wake me this morning until 6:30am : half an hour later than I'm used to. No worries, though, it's a Tuesday and I'm not due at Craft ACT until 10am.

Which gives me time to put the bread I mixed last night on to bake, drop Miss Daisy off for her service then walk home to do some dishes and clean some toilets.

I need to return a call from Canberra Theatre at 9am, which causes me to head into Civic early and results in this:
Man, I'm such a Civic Square slut. But the promise of free shows is too good to pass up...

On to Craft ACT where I get sent to deliver some stuff to the ANU School of Art Gallery. Updating our Facebook page and printing contracts for Call of the Small* takes me until lunch while I cover both our shop and gallery.

Lunch is, as usual, at CMAG Members' Lounge, where I finish adding the ANU Film Group dates to my diary: I went last night, saw New Moon (for free, thank goodness!), and joined for the year...

The afternoon involved a trip to the Post Office (I love the Post Office...) to send off my contracts, after a stop to visit Al:Afternoon tea involved colour coordinated fruity things (because your snack, shirt and shop should always match!) Then, after some more Facebooking and Excel spreadsheeting it was time to go pick Miss Daisy up from the mechanics.(After walking past a typically Canberran sign on the way there from the bus stop)

She cost significantly less than I expected (especially after this time last year) At this rate I may just be able to spring for a bath for her. Anyone have a spare Entertainment book voucher for Waves Car Wash in Gungahlin I can steal?

(*Thanks, as always for the real Call of the Small's permission to use her blog title for the duration...)

-insert witty pun using the words tea and draw here-

And the winner of the strawberry tea cosy is...MTB girl (or her Mum, to be more precise!). Email me your address and I'll get it off to you in the next day or so.

I started knitting a pear tea cosy last night, using leftovers from my nest and loosely based on the strawberry design. But I ran out of wool. So it's hitting the frog pond :(

Of mice ant (wo)men

(Two terrible frights by Jim Aylesworth. Illustration by Eileen Chrstelow)

(Antics by Cathi Hepworth)

(Mary had a little lamb by Sarah Josepha Hale and Salley Mavor: who has a blog which I've now subscribed to)

Blogiversary giveaway #4

Four years, four giveaways. Sounds fair, doesn't it?

The final giveaway is this cute vintage handbag mirror:
Leave a comment on this post and I'll draw a winner next Sunday morning (21 Feb). As usual, I'll post anywhere in the world...

Man, sheep in picture books are clever!

Not only can they knit while on the potty, they can also answer telephones:(Hello, is this Grandma? by Ian Whybrow)

Been gone too long...

(Reprinted from I op therefore I am - ACT)

It's been a hard year so far, op-shopping wise. According to my accounts I spent nothing op shopping in January and, until this week, $4 in February (a copy of the classic Enchanted Broccoli Forest from Vinnies Phillip)

But the combination of pay and an area rich with independent op shops had me off exploring during lunchtime in the last day or two. And this is what I scored (for a total of $17): * Very large button jar: $2 (Another Chance, Scullin: if you're out that way and see a metal daisy on the path, it's Miss Daisy's much missed key ring thingy...)

* Alison Holst's Meals without Meat: $2 (Hand to Hand, Kippax) My #1 cookbook: whenever I find a copy second hand, I buy it as it always finds a new home pretty quickly. I think this is the ninth copy I've bought...

*Lovely coloured vintage Patonyle: $1.50 for 3x25g balls (Re Runs op shop, Charnwood). Much as I'd love to keep this, it's heading here.

It came in a very cute plastic bag:
Not sure if I'm nice enough to pass it on or not...

* Two Tupperware plates: $1 each (Another Chance, Scullin). Another gift...

* 4 balls "New" Caressa: $5 total (Hand to Hand, Kippax) I have a friend who deserves a pair of lounge socks and likes purple...
* Vintage Queen sized cotton sheet: $2 (Hand to Hand, Kippax). This find made me very very happy.

* And, finally, bag of vintage ric rac: $2.50 (Hand to Hand, Kippax).

This is the smallest ric rac I've ever seen. I suspect it will end up living elsewhere...