Most restrained

Today's Lifeline Bookfair haul:Not bad for a total of $65.

I'm particularly excited about this (brand new, unopened, with a retail sticker of $45 and on my Amazon wishlist for quite some time):which I picked up for $6.

Yes, I may have done an internship and made a merino hoodie but I'm still not confident...

The cast of Complexions came home with me the other night

No, not real in-the-flesh dancers but the banner advertising the show:How could I resist when it was free and I've been admiring bags like these?

Now I need to find the time (and guts) to see if my machine can cope with billboard plastic...

What is it with me and being the victim of ridiculous crimes*?

Today started very well. Time to do the accounts and make a yummy breakfast before driving to work, where I was rostered on for a split shift.

1:15 pm came and with it my three hour "lunch break". I had cash in my wallet. There was only one thing to do: see how many op shops I could visit before I was due back at work at 4:15pm.

I headed to Queanbeyan and found a wonderful old sewing box full of vintage sewing treasure for $6. Then I noticed I had a message on my mobile.

It was ACT policing, saying there'd been a drive off reported at a petrol station with my registration. Except the vehicle was a large grey 4WD and they knew Miss Daisy was, well Miss Daisy and quite unable to eat as much fuel as the large grey 4WD had done. Perhaps I'd like to check my plates?

And wouldn't you know it, my front plate had gone walkies! So we had to give up on the op shopping and go drivies back to Dickson Canberra Connect and get new plates, noticing that suddenly the roads seemed to be heaving with large grey 4WDs.

Being the total girl I am I didn't have any suitable screwdrivers handy to get the remaining plate off so popped into see my mechanics, who are just round the corner and they were fabulous, removing the plate for me, letting me leave Miss Daisy with them while I walked across to Canberra Connect and then not only screwing the new plates back on but using whiz bang new anti theft screws. DMB Automotive, thank you. I owe you a large cake.So now Miss Daisy is no longer a Yellow Banana Pants but a Yellow Gargling Walrus. With silly coloured bits celebrating Canberra's 100th anniversary. And I'm $33 poorer and a lot wiser. People steal rego plates. Who knew?!

(*See also The Burglary)

And break to a giveaway...

If you just happen to be Old School enough to use a paper based diary...

And live in Australia (or have a hankering to know what's going on in Australia) then the Poco Profile diary is for you. Sized to fit a standard Filofax-like personal diary (or perhaps a Poco Profile Australian version), it includes lots of things that are happening in Australia and comes in non recycled and fully recycled versions.

Feel like giving it a whirl for 2011? Well, you're in luck as I just happen to have a spare 2011 non recycled insert (worth $16) to give away to one lucky reader, thanks to the lovely Victoria at Poco Profile. You know the drill: leave a comment and I'll draw a winner next Wednesday morning...

The past few days

Can best be encapsulated by a photo of this morning's attempt at bread baking:(Even the unexpected arrival of the 2011 IKEA didn't help much.)

A twelve minute creation

A thirty minute lunch can be broken down as follows if one is focused:

Seven minutes to reheat frozen soup

Ten minutes to eat said soup and accompanying muffin

One minute to walk across the square to Canberra Museum and Gallery

Twelve minutes to spend at the children's activity table for Something in the Air making this:

And one minute to walk back to work...

Unexpected pleasures

* Cleaning out my wallet and discovering a $10 note hiding in amongst the receipts: enough to buy coffee with a friend at Tosolinis and a bottle of wine.
* Being given a heart-shaped lollipop by the staff at Tosolinis
* Unexpected mail #1: a tiny book of poetry from my Grandmother (Poetry scares me. I will try to change this. Soon.)
* Unexpected mail #2: A $30 gift card from HP. Cashback which I'd completely forgotten about. Now I have to decide: do I use it to post out goodness to other people or buy something decadently unnecessary for myself?
* Unexpected mail #3: Fabulous postcard with hand stitching highlights from a friend in Melbourne: part of our current creative challenge.

I've been banging on about dolls houses. Again.

An interview with me by Angela Owens from ABC Central West radio aired this morning. You can listen to it over here.

And it's Monday, so time for the Collectors magazine giveaway. Congratulations Pubdoll, you won the draw! Send me your snail mail address and I'll get the mag in the mail to you.

(Photo above is Angela Owens (on right) with her childhood dolls house)

Not quite what I expected

My horoscope late last week was convinced there would be moving or relocation in my near future.

I was a little concerned as I have no plans to vacate Chez TSS especially as I know I can't afford to rent anywhere else in the ACT in the present market (especially with a cat in tow)

But it all because clear when I turned on my computer on Saturday morning to read that Bloglines, the RSS aggregator I've been using forever to read blogs, will be closing down at the end of the month.

So instead of spending my weekend publishing the August issue of the Dolls Houses Past & Present ezine, planning things for my November challenge and mowing the lawns I spent it moving and cleaning up all my feeds.

(With the occasional knitting and crafting, and baking to feed visiting knitters. And seeing Swan Lake on Ice with Cycling S)

Teeny tiny

Something I've had hanging round for years, finally cut out. Now I just need to find my craft glue stick (or realise I used them all up and go buy another one...)

Some experiments are doomed to failure...

A friend bought some eyelash yarn from The Reject Shop and I said I'd knit it up and see how it went as a dolls house sized rug.

It goes fine, assuming you wanted a rug that in real life would be 30 cm deep:

I'll send it to her anyway: perhaps she can shear it?

IKEA fun

I saw these fabulous ads for the IKEA assembly service a while back on the mogg blog and forgot to mention them:Until this morning when a friend had this on Facebook:

Final destination

Remember these booties?

Here they are at their new home, all styled up: And in use (note suitably 1970s Polaroid-style photo!)

I'm hoping to create something less woolly for Issue 8 of Uppercase magazine. Watch this space!

You what?

At the opening of Call of the Small, I was told I needed to read the book On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection, which I went home and bought from Book Depository that very night.

Fast forward a couple of weeks, and what do you know? The room essay for the exhibition quotes from the very same book. Which suddenly leapfrogged to the top of my To be read right now, if not sooner pile.

There's only one problem: lots of big words I don't know the meanings of. I've started copying them into a notebook to look up when I'm in front of my dictionary, And feeling very Nick Cave-like in the process.

Actually, there's another problem: entire paragraphs in French with no translation. Which means I resemble that Larson cartoon:

"the little paper vignette is something when the something (is that lentil?!) of door pen souvenir (that can't be right, surely?), when the something of the bottle of Evian is a something something"

Crap: maybe I need to start a new page of my notebook for French words I don't know for when I can access Google languages...

The rainbow connection

I saw the most beautiful rainbow from the bus this evening. But by the time I got my camera out it had faded away.

Luckily I had another rainbow in my bag:My Spoonflower free swatch colo(u)r chart arrived this morning. If I didn't need to keep it for reference, I'd cut it up and turn it into modern miniature cushions...

Tag: Why the hell didn't I think of that?

Thanks to a comment this morning's My creative space post, may I now present the much smaller, self covered button version of my original model?(Thanks Sheep Rustler, I owe you!)

Going round in circles

I seem to have become a little obsessed with grey circles since last week.This is a project I've been wanting to try for months, and have been stockpiling old doilies from op shops until I had time to play. If you look closely there are some casualties. But that's what happens when you experiment.

(This is the perfect song to go with this post, by the way.)

"...a sensitive, engaging and amusing installation"

Call of the Small* now has its own page on the Craft ACT website, with an essay on the exhibition by Kate Murphy. Go. Read.

(*Name used with permission of the real Call of the Small)

Give it your best shot

I figured a very serious camera requires a very silly camera case...

The September issue of Collectors magazine

Is full of good things for miniaturists.

Posters to nick:Plates to modge podge (or decal) A five page article on miniatures:And me:Want a copy? Leave a comment on this post and I'll draw a winner next Monday. (As usual I'll post anywhere in the world) GIVEAWAY CLOSED

Circles and sketches

After a big sleep in, a fabulously wonderful lazy morning spent in my PJs doing things I love: blog reading and ironing being two examples, I finally got dressed. And creative. Then I went to meet a friend at NGA where I collected my freebie ticket to their two latest exhibitions and we giggled our way through the Robert Dowling exhibition, probably pissing off the woman in the purple fleece who seemed to always be just where we were (sorry, woman in purple fleece).

But we enjoyed checking out the number of paintings he did in the early days where the hands were tucked behind things. Or in things. Or just out of the frame...

We bandied about words like foreshortening. I tried to explain what a Pre-Raphaelite was. We attempted to work out if there was some hidden message in the fact two paintings, not far from each other, both had subjects who were pointing a finger downwards. And my friend explained to me that Moses was not wandering in the wilderness for 40 years because he was male and refused to stop and ask for directions.

Speaking of being expelled for 40 years, I felt like Moses as I entered the downstairs cafe, having not renewed any memberships this year which gave me access to the Members' Lounge upstairs. But the strawberry eclair I ate cheered me up no end and I decided being a pleb wasn't too bad.

Next stop was the Life, Death & Magic exhibition where I made lots of sketches, reminding me of my visit to the New Caledonian museum last year*:

The final shot of the day was of the shadow cast by The Big Round Thing which usually hangs next to the gallery but is temporarily grounded...(*which I now realise I never shared the sketches I did on my blog)

A wet and wild weekend

demanded a morning spent baking and cooking, and a friend for lunch to help with the eating.

A trip through wind and rain to The Drill Hall Gallery to see Wendy Fairclough's exhibition Commonalities
(and an encounter with a snotty Gallery Assistant: terribly sorry we didn't know the intricacies of glass making but there was no need to make us feel like complete morons...)

This work, Shelf Life, reminded me of Jude Rae 's paintings...Since I was heading to work yesterday afternoon we wandered over to Canberra Museum and Gallery for yet another visit to Something in the Air (making the seventh visit for me) where I discovered a new assemblage:(and realised what was missing from my own version, something I should rectify in an artistic way asap)

Coffee tucked away in the back corner of Tosolinis left me just enough time for a lightening visit to the Craft ACT shop where there's a new display of overflow items from the Call of the Small galleries, available on a cash and carry basis:Then there was work, followed by the second half of Bangarra's Of earth and sky and bed, where I was lulled to sleep by the gentle sound of water dripping...

A reminder

from Jane Brocket that I really should make the effort to visit Cockington Green again.

The shame! I have a whole miniature wonderland just up the road which I haven't visited in ten years...

Gone to pot

Remember our visit to the ANU School of Art Open Day last weekend and the pot I made?

When I went in to collect it on Monday I was told they'd decided to fire it and that it would probably be ready to collect on Friday, but they would let me know.

I was most happy as that wasn't originally mentioned when we made our pieces.

But this evening I returned home to an email which said:

"...we just unpacked the bisque kiln yesterday afternoon and unfortunately your pot was included in the casualties. I'm so sorry to bring you this news..."

Bum.

The good news is they say I can have another go if I want to...

My creative space: a study in grey

Because just buying a camera case is far too easy. As is using a pattern...

Wednesday wanderings

I had a day off today and M1K1 and I decided it was the perfect time for her to make a belated trip down to see the exhibition,making sure to wear the famous rosemarie cardigan for the photo shoot (even though it really was too hot for such things today)

Then there was a visit to Shop Handmade, lunch at Gus' Cafe, followed by a visit to the Alex Asch works at Something in the Air CMAG exhibition.

And a visit to Jazz Apple Cafe for a little something to keep the energy levels up:(Mmmmmm.... red velvet. With a daisy...)

Next stop was Toyhaus in Fyshwick, which I've been meaning to visit for months. Mainly because I knew they had a Villa Sibi in stock and I wanted to go stroke it...

While I was there Louise told me they're working on getting The Emerson in stock.

I wasn't taking much notice as I'd spied this:which followed me home to be added to the caravan collection.

The day finished with a visit to Plastic Creations where we dreamed of what could be done in miniature with all their lovely plasticy bits.

And then, alas, it was time for M1K1 to hit the road.