Transient Tracy

A Good Vintage

2012-01-27T20:51:00.000+11:00

This weeks theme for Tag Tuesday was vintage, not something I really do, so I took a different approach and made a little mixed media tag of a Green Man who ensures a good crop of grapes to produce "A Good Vintage"

So I sculpted a little face, about 1 1/2" long for my green man and coloured him up a bit with pastel pencils and acrylic paint for the eyes, which are terrible by the way, my eyes just don't cope with tiny detail anymore, should have gone out into the bight daylight and I may have done a better job, sorry no pics, forgot to take any.

I made the grape vine leaves from some hand dyed scrim and Aleene's fabric stiffener. I treated myself to a Joggles order the other week and thought I would try this fabric stiffener as it was also used in an online workshop that I haven't done yet. To be honest I prefer the Powertex I already have, it soaks into the fabric much better and doesn't leave a shiny finish like the Aleenes does, but thats what the tags are all about, trying new techniques and products. I also coiled some strips of fabric around a wooden skewer cover in cling film to make the tendrils.

Then came a frustrating hunt for the purple and red beads I knew I had somewhere! Threaded these onto some fine green wire then just twisted them around till they look a bit like bunches of grapes.

I had a box board (chip board) tag already cut and tested out my new craft mat and blending tool from my Joggles order along with the distress inks and a bit of moon shadow spray to colour up the tag.
Finally I made up the label using inkscape and printed out on the computer, used some rusty hinge and frayed burlap and a gold pen to finish it off.

So there he is. There are some amazing tags over on Tag Tuesday so pop over and have a look at all the lovely tags there .

Tag Tuesday on Friday

2012-01-20T17:37:00.001+11:00

Just a quickie, managed to get my tag done although a bit late. Having great fun with these! Not much else happening here as it's tennis time so a lot of lounge laying and tea drinking going on, trying to cut down on the coffee :0

Can you guess the theme for this week, not my original plan, but it's growing on me.

Snow Games and a Present

2012-01-11T13:43:00.000+11:00

Here is my second tag for Tag Tuesday, the theme was snow games and it was a good excuse to get out to my work room and use my sewing machine for the first time in what seems ages. I am really enjoying the challenge of making a tag each week, it's not a huge project and allows you to have a play with new materials or techniques. I already have next weeks planned and may even start it today!

The last few days I have been waging war with some Indian Myna birds that have been treating the chickens coop like a drive through, or fly through restaurant. It started off with a pair of them, which I could put up with, then, of course they had babies, three! The other morning I walked out there and word must have got around to the aunts, uncles and cousins as there must have been a dozen off them, poor chooks didn't know what way to turn. They were managing to get through nearly a whole feeder full of pellets too. So I dragged out the bird netting I bought for the garden and with a bit of imaginative tying and stringing, think I have defeated them. A couple snuck in, but haven't been back since they realised how difficult it was to leave again, with me hot on their tail shouting and waving my arms around like a mad women. So the poor chooks must feel like they are in Colditz.

The veggie garden has had a bit of a clear out, the cucumbers were just out of control and taking over everything so I've pulled all but one out. Those great big white things are supposed to be German pickling cucumbers! I was expecting something small and GREEN and the green ones are supposed to be lebanese, but there almost definitely your common garden variety, covered in prickles and full of big seeds. Heres just a few jars of pickles, but really how many can you eat! The girls have had a bit more liberation this week and have enjoyed digging up what is left and finishing off the lettuce. I will have to get stuck into it and plant up some more stuff, but not to day, it's too hot!

Finally, my Christmas present from my Mum arrived yesterday, she always sends such lovely things and this year I received two beautiful pendants. Thanks Mum :)

Tag Tuesday - Snow

2012-01-04T08:27:00.000+11:00

Well I managed the first Tag Tuesday, because I had made this tag just before christmas to test out the new cat. The theme was snow so this one was just fine as it is all frosty and snowflakes. I will try and get into my workroom for the next one which is Snow Sports and Games. It's a little hard to get into the real spirit of this one as our weather has finally decided to be summer like, in fact the sun has shone for 3 whole days and it is starting to get HOT. After a very cool start to summer here, the weather people are now saying we are in for a scorcher, can't wait! am not a fan of the heat, particularly as we don't have an air con yet.

Go and have a look at all the wonderful tags at Tag Tuesday, they are all absolutely brilliant.
I'm off to make a birthday cake before it gets too hot to put the oven on.

The End of One and the Beginning of the Next

2012-01-03T10:10:00.000+11:00

A quick update on the last couple of months. We finally got away from the house renovations for a weekend and went to Bungonia National Park and Caves. It was pretty hot and very dry but oh so good to get a way for a few days and have a change of scenery.

I planted up my veggie bed on the 29th October, I only know this as the photo has the date on it, I have a hard job knowing what day of the week it is! I always have a laugh at the back of the seed packets when it says harvest in 4 -6 weeks or whatever. I always think it will take much longer.

But here is the garden today, some of the veggies are nearly done, going to seed in fact. The cucumbers have gone mad and I have them coming out of my ears. Have made some bread and butter cucumbers already and will make some cucumber relish today (maybe).
I have very interesting shaped lettuces as every now and then, I weaken and let the girls out of their end of the garden for a roam. They head straight for the lettuce and give them a severe haircut.

I managed to persuade Steve that a blackcat was a MUST HAVE item so had an early christmas present. Isn't it a splendid looking beast. For christmas day christmas, if you get me, got some big mats and extension tables to add to it's amazing cutting abilities.

I made biscotti for christmas presents again this year, but with the help of the cat, gave them some special wrapping, a bit better than the usual cellophane tied with ribbon.

Yesterday we spent a lovely afternoon up the river. My daughter and partner got themselves a boat this year so now we can all go out together. There were plenty of small bass around to keep us entertained for the afternoon, but it was just nice to be out in such beautiful surroundings.

With the festive season and birthdays all but over, it is now back to some hard graft on the house. My lovely new cat and the printer I had for my birthday will be packed away while we build the office. Hopefully the laundry will be done asap as getting a bit sick of hand washing now, my poor old machine in the garage gave up a few weeks before christmas, and although I have a new machine sitting in its box, it needs a place to go before I can use it. As tempted as I sometimes am to put it in the garage, I will be patient and pretend that hand washing is a pleasing mediative sort of activity, HA.

This year my resolution was to make no resolutions. I have decided not to make grand plans and try and organise so much to be done in a day, but start each day with a general idea of what I might get done and be content with what I achieve, hence the maybe with my relish making.

I have joined Tag Tuesday it will be interesting to see how many tags I manage to achieve in between building but I will give it a go. I have the first one ready so thats got to be a good start!

Wishing those that visit here a wonderful year.

Bread Update and Ink

2011-10-05T15:34:00.000+11:00

Two posts in two days, what is going on? No reno work thats for sure.
Here is an update on the bread as promised. Up until now I have had to add yeast to my sourdough bread to get any rise out of it what so ever, so although I was getting the sourdough flavour, it just wasn't true sourdough. I have been using the kitchen aid to do the initial kneading of the dough, enough to bring it all together, then doing the hard yards myself but still with little success, plus the fact, when kneading the dough the bowl of the kitchen aid gets well and truly stuck in the base, has anyone else had this problem?
I use my bread maker constantly but only to make dough and always have lovely textured wholemeal bread, so thought I would just substitute the sourdough ingredients and do the same thing. The feel of the dough was a vast improvement on any of my earlier attempts and it rose up beautifully while sitting in the kitchen during most of yesterday, my timing was all out to leave it overnight in the fridge, so did it as I normally would with a yeast dough but over a much longer period.
The moment of truth came for me to flip it out onto a hot tray, use the trusty lame to give it a quick slashing and then hope for that "oven spring"

Well it sprung all right, but only at one end? So I ended up with this weird looking loaf and yes the end is missing because I just couldn't resist tasting it piping hot straight from the oven. So if anyone reading this has any idea why this may of happened, please leave me a comment, it's a mystery to me. I thought maybe my oven is a lot hotter one side than the other, very possible as it is an absolute heap of junk and I can't wait to get another but we won't go down that path right now.
It could have been cooked longer and the crumb isn't perfect, but it is slightly chewy with a beautiful crust and tastes just great.

I made my starter and bread using this cookbook

It is one of the best cook books I have come across for a while. The bread making section is brilliant and not too complicated. The starter is simple and straight forward and as long as you use organic flour and filtered water, amazingly quick. I have the happiest, bubbliest starter sitting in my fridge ready for my next attempt.

I used the recipe for the Rustic White Bread with Madre, substituting the white flour for wholemeal and increasing the water content by 50ml.

I put the ingredients into the bread maker in the order I would if making a yeast wholemeal dough and used the dough setting. This is the closest I have come to that perfect sourdough loaf, and by using the bread maker, the one that took the least amount of effort. It has been over two years now since I went out and bought a loaf of bread, so hoping I can get this method to work with consistent results.

On to the Inks and stamps, they arrived yesterday afternoon, too late to do anything with, so this morning I went out the back to play around with them. They are so versatile and I know I am only scratching the surface of what they are capable of but here are a few pages I have started and some "handmade" tags.

A Bevy of Bits

2011-10-04T13:46:00.002+11:00

The reno's are steaming ahead, when the weather allows us and now becoming inside jobs that make living here just that little bit more challenging. However I have still managed to start some stuff and do some stuff so here is a quick rundown of some of the things that have been happening.

I have a table of body parts awaiting stuffing and some wooden disks that were posted today.

I have started this purple and green creation using the Flip La K technique, but now sure where I am going with this now.

Bought some zentangle books, still waiting for one to arrive, as fancy getting back into a bit of tangling.

Here's my practice page.

Re-discovered these, bought them a while back and forgot all about them, have now ordered 12 more colours as have become addicted to them all over again.

Had a play with my limited colours and a few other bits and pieces to make a couple of journal pages and tags.

Finished these

Started these

And nearly finished this.

Planted some seeds.

Managed to keep the herbs alive despite being covered in sawdust at least once a week.

Bought some wicker breadbaskets and a lame.

I bought the baskets from Breadtopia, they were wonderful and quick with the delivery and have great tips and recipes for breadmaking. I'm still trying to make a crusty sourdough. I have another starter going and today tried making the dough in the breadmaker. As you can see, it is now sitting in one of the baskets, and fingers crossed, it's looking and feeling much better than my other attempts.

If it works out I'll let you know. By the way those bread lames are wonderful for giving yourself a quick hair cut! My hairdresser left to have a baby, and has decided not to come back to work, who can blame her really, but I have lost the only person that understands my bizarre hair, so in desperation took too it with the bread lame and gave myself the perfect hair cut. Just don't think too hard about the fact you could possibly scalp yourself in the process and you'll be fine, and yes I do change the blade before it goes back to the kitchen for it's intended purpose.

Lastly the three new girls have settled in beautifully, they are so well behaved and friendly. I emptied the compost bin a few weeks ago, and after lifting off the bin, left them to go through it and break it all down before it went on the garden. Was like the biggest chicken birthday cake for them and kept them busy for days.

And one final thing, I have fallen head over hills for the Blackcat Cougar and am desperately trying to convince Santa that I must absolutely have one for Christmas.

Little Progress, A Tragedy and A Show

2011-08-22T19:40:00.002+10:00

I am not even going to bother to make excuses for not blogging, it just ain't happening right now.

Little Progress

The weather has continued to be awful making the progress of the reno's painfully slow. Hopefully as the evenings become longer and the weather dries up, for surely it must do soon, we can get back into it and make some headway.

A Tragedy

My three lovely girls pictured in the previous post, have, in the words of their former owner, been "kidnapped and assassinated". On a wild and stormy night, when part of our roof got blown sideways and let in lots of rain, a sneaky fox got in and took them. I felt absolutely terrible having been entrusted with their care and couldn't believe that a fox would come into suburbia with so many dogs around, but apparently they are everywhere. Having fenced off the bottom of the yard just for the chickens it seemed a shame not to have them scratching around. So after constructing a very tall side gate and fence, completely re-inforcing the chicken coop and pinning the bottom of the wire fence with very long stakes AND adding indian bells to the fence AND installing a sensor light, we went and got three new chooks.

So meet Lilly, Ruby and Dora, (chickens just have to have names!)

They were completely of the don't touch me variety when we bought them home, but soon learnt where all the treats come from and now when I let them out for their afternoon stroll through the veggie patch, they are quiet happy to come up and try and rip the buttons off my shirt or cuddle up and read a recipe book with me while I decide what to make for dinner. Ruby is even brave enough to follow me into the kitchen, there is something behind my fridge that just fascinates her, strange bird!

So I still have a constant supply of lovely fresh eggs and three new characters to keep me entertained.

A Show

A couple of weekends ago I went up to Dungog for the annual Quiltarama. This year is was held a month earlier and put on in conjunction with Dungog Railway Centenary. It was a busy weekend with lots of people coming through the quilt show. I had made a new workshop banner this year and decorated it with kanzashi flowers and Steve made a stand for it to hang on along with the bird quilt. I had dyed up about 80 new 1/2 meters and some other fabrics and threads so my stall looked especially bright this year.

I met lots of lovely people and hope to see some of them at workshops next year. I also met some lovely ladies that organise the Stroud Quilt and Craft Interlude, which I am going to visit later in September.

I have just bought some e patterns and have an online workshop I haven't had the time to start, so have plenty of new projects lined up, now I just have to find the time to do them.

Till next time, which will be - who knows when!

A Change of View and New Boots

2011-04-21T14:00:00.000+10:00

The view from the back deck has changed, I have adopted three very cheeky birds that deliver three beautiful brown wholesome eggs every morning.

They have the bottom of my garden to scratch around in and a pumpkin plant to hide in. They came with their lovely coop, which they continued to lay in for the first week, but have decided a quiet spot under the pumpkins and beside the compost bin is much more to their liking. It's only a little space and they are queued up in the mornings waiting their turn to lay their eggs.

I tried to encourage them back to their nesting box, but they seem so much more content with their chosen spot, that in the end I relented and rather than have muddy eggs each morning, lined the spot with straw. They have just about cleared out the old veggie patch of weeds and are doing a wonderful job of it too. They spend hours digging looking for anything that dares move. I'm amazed at how fast they have adapted to their new surroundings and have a daily routine and their own preferred spots for a afternoon siesta or a good old dust bath.

I have become a fan of the old Ugg boots, and mine were old beyond a joke, well they have been a joke with my family for years as I have a curly toe, one they like to point skyward and puts holes in all my socks and some of my shoes, the Ugg boots did not take long to surrender to the unruly toe and for years I have walked around with a grey tufty bit sticking out of my right boot, yes I tried to patch it and only had grey sheepskin to work with. They are beyond doubt one of the comfiest things I have ever worn and live in mine during, well most of the year. This year I did admit it was time for a new pair, they have changed the design slightly with a bit of reinforcement around the toe, so who knows, these ones might withstand the toe! My old ones are well battle scarred, stained with indigo and god knows what, but they are now my chicken boots, they can stay outside and I don't have to worry about chicken poop following me in the house. The chickens just happen to love that tufty bit, I sometimes find myself with a chicken attached to it as they are determined to relieve me of it.

The Old and the New

The holidays are nearly over, I haven't done anything like the amount of things I planed to do and for the next 5 days Steve will be home so we will be working on the house, trying to make headway in the never ending reno. No Easter holiday here, but hopefully some progress.

Chairs and Stamping

2011-03-29T11:47:00.000+11:00

Now that our house renovations have finally started, I can look forward to them being finished and start thinking about what will go into the newly renovated house. While flicking through some junk mail the other morning, I came across this lovely chair.

While I was working on the little quilt in the previous post, I had it thrown over one of my lounge chairs, how good would a chair look upholstered in my mini quilt! Ok lots of scraps need and hours of machining, but the end result would look amazing, sitting next to my planned little wood burner. Thinking about chairs, I remembered another long, long ago project I had in mind, we have here two very old leather chairs that sat in my mother in laws hall way, they come apart and the seat wraps around them so they can be moved around. I have no idea where she got them, but they always reminded me of something that would be taken on an african safari. A quick image search for old safari chairs came up with this image, which are very much like the two chairs I have, stashed away - somewhere......

The ones I have are actually nicer than these with a bit of wood turning on the legs and a second rail that goes all around the bottom. I had always intended to renew the leather seats, backs and arms and do some fanciful leather carvings on them. They would look so good on my lovely new back deck.

Ok back to reality, I have been playing around with stamps over the past few weeks, trying out lino, rubber blocks and sticky backed foam sheets to make them from. I really wanted a nice horse stamp of a certain breed for my next little quilt. I tried the rubber block first as it was the easiest to carve, but didn't like the result, even with a new sharp lino cutting tool, I got crumbly edges and not very neat corners, so next tried the lino. Better image, but harder to print as was getting lots of lines from the background so my horse looked like he was standing in long grass, admittedly, I haven't mounted the lino onto a wooden block yet, which does help to get a cleaner print but I wasn't happy with the original image anyway. After a few tweaks to the horse, I cut it from the foam sheets and got a lovely clean print.

Here are the three block and yes the horse is facing the other was in the foam block, which seemed to make a huge difference to the finished print.

Here are some experimental prints, you can see what I mean about the long grass effect. I also did another little lino but wanted all those lines so this block worked well.

Here are a few of the blocks I have been making. the stripes and checks are really effective. I used the small check in the previous quilt.

And here are my final two border pieces printed and ready to go. The background for this one is a piece of indigo and I'm hoping all the hand dyed fabrics will really jump out from it. I have to wait for an order of paint sticks to arrive before I can go any further with this one. School holidays are coming up soon so hopefully I will have time to get it finished.

First of Hopefully Three

2011-03-23T15:47:00.000+11:00

I have started making some small, half meter-ish sized mixed media quilts. Why? well to try out some new stuff. I have ideas for three and here is the first.

This one sprang from the scrap box obsession I have at the moment. After cutting up all those hundreds of squares in my last post, hang on, I think I'm repeating myself here ....... Yes indeed, I have shown you this picture of my background fabric and scrap pieces last time. So on the next pic ............

I have laid out all those bits in a geometric sort of design. I tried to use the scraps just as they were, haven't done any trimming, just shortened a few longer bits and added a couple of hand dyed cotton tapes to bring it all together.

Next I wanted to experiment with a couple of lino blocks I had cut last year and some other texture plates I have used for other things, but never printed with. I used lumiere paints mixed with a little textile medium and applied the paint with a piece of sponge.

I also wanted to try using some heavy threads through the machine, so bought some 12 cotton perle and 30 wt Cebelia, well I think that's what it's called. It says made in France and that sounds pretty French to me so I'll go with that. The 30 wt was a little heavier than the 12 perle, I would rather have got the 40 wt, but of course didn't have it in white. As it happens the 30 runs through the machine fine and I think I now prefer it.

So I got out the dye pots and without much thought, dyed up some bobbin length skeins. Then decided I would like some lighter colours so dyed up another lots in bigger quantities this time.

After a bit of playing around with tension on the machine and working out which stitches would work and which wouldn't, I started stitching madly all over the place.

I knew at some stage I would use gold thread on this piece, so used gold as my bobbin thread for all the stitching. If the bobbin thread did show through, which it did at times, it just added to the gold anyway.

I finished off the stitching by adding some gold squares, particularly in the negative areas to bring the whole thing together.

I wasn't sure what I was going to do with this piece when it was finished but once it got to this stage it was just screaming out for some coloured tabs along the top.

I then bagged the top with a piece of stripy Indian cotton, I know I took a picture of this but it seems to have disappeared.

I finished the edge of with a row of heavy gold stitching.

And tied it to the backing with a few random gold diamonds

So here it is, another awful photo I'm sorry. I set out to:-

use my scraps
try out some printing blocks
experiment with some hand dyed threads
not use any satin stitch in an appliqued piece

It's now hanging in the door way between my two work rooms where I hung it to take it's picture, think I might just leave it there for a while :)

Love your Scrap Box

2011-03-18T16:34:00.003+11:00

With the price of fabric and dye stuff set to rise in price, I have been looking at ways to use up all the scraps of hand dyed fabrics I have accumulated. Luckily I keep a scrap box and all my odds and ends get chucked straight in there. My friend Helen made a lovely quilt using all her bits of hand dyes, so I had to give it a go. I did dye up my light background fabric which I then printed with a wood block as I am trying to keep this a completely hand dyed quilt again. Once I started cutting, I found I had enough for a second quilt so kept going till I had a pile of some 800 + squares. Here are the first lot, chained together with their light background fabric, and some binding strips already cut from the left overs of the left overs. The plastic bag contains the coloured squares for a second quilt.

You can see the finished quilt here at Main Creek you will have to go right to the bottom of the page to the quilt named Garden Lattice. This is Helens quilt, I am making mine a little larger as I had 2 meters of background fabric to use. I have to be in the right frame of mind for piecing, so leave the piles sat by the machine and go and do a half hour or so when the mood takes me, not the most productive way to work I'm sure.
After I had finished cutting all those squares, I was left with yet even more smaller pieces. I have been making some new stamps and playing around with these and wanted a project to try some more ideas out on, so after selecting a 1/2 meter piece as a background, I have started a small wall quilt which will have some stamping and lots of stitching done in heavy threads.

More scraps on the chosen background fabric.

The Japanese are very good at using old fabrics and kimonos. There is a very interesting you tube video that talks about Boro or rags used in Japanese textiles. I think we will all be doing more recycling of our resources in the future. Colouricious have just made a short video called Recycled Reborn. You will see the same idea of using strips of recycled fabric or rags to make a new piece of fabric here also. I have a small weaving loom out the back, so will have to give this a try with my really skinny bits of scrap. With a bit of thought nothing need go to waste :)

Back on board and stuff.

2011-03-14T13:03:00.000+11:00

I am back, I think, can't make any promises, but after the usual Christmas chaos and a mouse infestation, I have got my room back in working order. I spent five whole days, yes FIVE getting rid of the remnants of mouse and filled 25 archive boxes with stuff to have a tidy, workable area again. I have reclaimed the book shelves that have sat covered in unread books for nearly 10 years, moved a few things around and hey presto, can even use that back room now.

The wall of boxes.

The reclaimed book shelves. I can actually use the toaster oven for my clay work there without having to dig it out from a cupboard. There is a 'to do' box there, it would be the one with the lid fighting it's way off :)

I can now actually see my dyed 1/2 meters.

And I have made a dyeing spot. Although it's limited, not like the big old rusty room I once had, it does the job. Yes I was dyeing some stuff, but that's for another post.

I am working on a couple of things at the moment, work allowing and will show you soon.

On the house front, the reno's are plodding along. The weather has been very unkind but we are getting there. While we are working on the outside of the house the inside stays much as is apart from the continual dust. We have just had to replace both the dishwasher and fridge, something we would rather have done after we had finished the kitchen, but both packed it in so had no choice, well I did try and do without the dishwasher but what a waste of time standing at the kitchen sink!! when I could be out in my tidy room doing 'stuff'.

A Colourful Weekend.

2010-11-29T12:04:00.000+11:00

Just a few quick pictures from the weekend. Main Creek is looking stunning after all the rain we have had. The bird life both wild and domesticated are enjoying the abundance of feed and on this particular weekend, good weather. The dawn chorus must be an English phrase as there is nothing harmonious or serene about the awakening of Australian birds. They celebrate the arriving of the new day with shrieks and screams, hoots and ear piercing whistles, cackling laughter and whoops of delight, this is no gentle awakening but a get out of bed NOW.
There were lots of brightly coloured fabrics flapping in the breeze and I think the peacock thought he had to compete with all this unexpected colour, so he put on a fine display for us.

Blog Reader rather than a Blogger

2010-11-23T09:17:00.002+11:00

I thought I had better explain why I have gone AWOL yet again. Back in my March post you will see the statement "for when we do the big renovations, yeah like that's going to happen any time in the next decade".

Well I have to eat my word here as the back of the house has changed from this - where I am showing my crow bar swinging friend Karen in a very technical architectural kind of way, the grand plan. Well the house wasn't exactly like that to begin with. My lovely rusty dyeing room, toilet, laundry and a vast expanse of more rusty roofing have been removed at this stage.

To this -

It's actually starting to look like a proper house !! We are doing most of the work ourselves, so every spare (dry) moment is spent adding weather boards, new windows and doors and all the other paraphernalia that goes with a big reno job. My back yard looks like a building site and my workroom is full of stuff that shouldn't be there. I am staining windows and doors rather than dyeing lovely fabrics and any painting involves a very large brush and a huge bucket of undercoat. I know more about different woods, types of windows, hanging doors and styles of weather boards than I ever wanted to know, can set and up load numerous types of nail guns and have become quiet comfortable using large electric saws and tools that I would normally approach like a dangerous wild beast capable of ripping your arms off.
So all normal activity has ceased here for an indefinite period of time. I shall have a lovely new house when it's all finished, which is already much more pleasant to live in, or out of as we spend a lot of time on the new back deck. The only downside to all this reorganisation and newness is that I have lost my work spots. I can no longer throw dye around with gay abandon and have old tables and twin tubs on hand to dye up a storm.
But as I speak, there is meters and meters of white cotton in the washing machine, (which at present resides in the garage with meter and meters of wood) being prepared for the last workshop of the year up at Main Creek. I have a weekend off :) no sawdust and noise for two whole days, just two days of blissful colour and sewing, well the ladies will be blissfully dyeing and sewing while I help them along the way but I will be a talking a language I am more familiar with and handling dye pots and fabric rather than drop saws and nail guns.
So I have become a Blog reader rather than a Blogg - er. I still visit your blogs, drool over your creative endeavours, then slink away back to the world of chaos and dust. Of course, one day - in the hopefully not too distant future, things will return to normal and I will find new spots to dye in, my workroom will again become my own and used for it's intended purpose with the added bonus of a proper house!!

A Productive Couple of Weeks

2010-04-06T13:03:00.000+10:00

Another long absence from my blog :( but I have actually managed to get out into my work room and accomplish something.
I have just been checking back through my posts, looking for this, thinking it was only a few months ago and it was a WHOLE YEAR!! where does the time go?
Anyway the Shall I - Shan't I has become a shall, mainly because a couple of ladies want to make this pattern at a weekend retreat next month so it HAD to be made.
I must admit, I haven't made a quilt for a long time and I really enjoyed it, so much so, I have the colours picked out for the next one, with a little help from my colour expert Jenny S.

I have called this quilt Hatley Garden, as it reminds me of - yes - the garden we had in the first house I can remember which was at number 1 Hatley Garden.

Not a great picture but I've got nowhere to hang a quilt to photograph, especially one this big!!

close up

I am really happy with the way it has turned out, particularly getting the colours so close to the ones in the original design. I couldn't dye that piece of blue again, must have been a random dye colour I picked up somewhere, so used a piece of batik fabric Mum sent over in her Surprise Parcel. Now I just have to sit and write up all the direction so it can be added to the projects over at Main Creek.

I have another group coming up to Main Creek at the beginning of May. They will be dyeing on the first day, then using their fabrics to make a satchel type bag and / or a book sleeve on the second day. So using my hand dyes again I have finally got around to covering my diary and making another bag, this time noting down what I was actually doing so it can be taught at the workshop.

I love making these book sleeves, I get to use all those functions on my machine that I usually forget about. I love the braiding foot to couch down threads and actually use some of those decorative stitches. This time I used my alphabet card and the program function to put the days of the week along the inside cover and the months of the year on the spine. This one also has some stamping and fabric weaving. The embellishment on the front is an ugly piece of lace stuff that I bought at the quilt show a few weeks ago which I have then covered in layers of paint, gel medium and garnet granules, looks so much better than the black and gold it was originally.

Front

Back

Bit blurry but they are the days of the week.

During all this productivity I also managed to wash up another hundred meters of fabric, here is half of it.

Thankfully no dust storms to contend with, just the occasional shower. It is now all neatly piled in 8 meter lengths or rolled back onto its tubes ready to be dyed, thanks to the help of Jenny S and Kim this morning.

I have also been re-vamping the Main Creek Blog. Now that blogger has pages, I can organise the site much better and have all the brochures available to download, another time consuming job, but it's getting there. - so back to it :)

A Day of Domesticity.

2010-03-10T13:58:00.002+11:00

Finally it feels like Autumn!! We have had weeks and weeks of hot and humid weather and I have done nothing, that's what it feels like anyway. This morning, with a fresh breeze blowing, and a much needed day off, I decided to get the garden sorted out, something I have been planning to do for weeks but weather and the lack of a wheel barrow has stopped me. The veggie garden is very bare at the moment with all the summer stuff finished and my poor soil in much need of a boost. I have plenty of compost but no way to move it from the end of the garden to the veggie bed. Steve has been promising to get a wheel barrow for weeks - but - it's got to be just the right barrow, a proper builders barrow for when we do the big renovations, yeah like that's going to happen any time in the next decade. I know I shouldn't be so cynical, but........
Anyway back to the garden and I made myself a nice little compost mover, a grape box, very waxy inside so would stand a bit of damp and dirt, and a length of old whipper snipper cord for a handle and I could drag it box load by box load, remembering not to be too ambitious as to how much it could hold as I would have to pick it up to empty it at the other end - worked a treat and the compost bin is now empty of good stuff and the garden bed revitalised

I must admit I don't know much about this gardening lark and just do what I think needs doing, but I'm sure my compost wasn't supposed to have quiet as much wildlife living in it, particularly the ants nests and remembered reading somewhere that not enough moisture was the cause of ants - so while I was dragging my box loads up the garden, I rigged up a sprayer to get it well watered while I was adding it to the bed.

Yes I did get a bit damp when emptying my box, but it's still warm here :) You can just see one of my erosion bundles tied to the pole there, it was completely surrounded by tomatoes plants when I first put it up, but is now a bit exposed. As you can see though, this must be one of the turquoise ones as the colour is showing through it's wrapping, wonder what else is happening in there?

I have finally found myself a lemon tree on a dwarf root stock that will be happy in a pot and it seems to be doing OK along with the red peppers and rhubarb which has given us one delicious crumble already this year.

I am lucky enough to have as my main 'weed' problem, nasturtiums, which I let grow indiscriminately throughout the garden and they in fact help to control the unwanted weeds.

Under this old chair there is a hole in the concrete, which, of course always has weeds growing out of it, but once a nasturtium finds it's way in there, it's left to it's own devises and I think looks quite lovely and gives mad Mango a treat as he love a nasturtium or five.

I have also planted up the three pots with some asian greens and other things that are totally out of season, but interested to see what will grow in an Aussie autumn as it is exactly the same if not warmer than an English summer. So the garden is all neat and tidy, the pumpkin patch has had a bit of a weeding and the compost bins cleaned up a bit.

I have also recycled an old TV unit into a small coffee table by removing the glass door and touching up the bare bits with black paint, (a real Better Homes and Garden sort of project this one). It's an ugly thing but much smaller and more practical than the huge ugly thing we were using before.

The morning started off cool and sunny but the clouds slowly built as the morning went by.

And now it is pouring with rain so the garden is getting a good soaking and the house is filled with the smell of just baked hot cross buns, the first batch this year, so I'm off for a coffee and at least two warm buns covered in butter, I think I've earned them :) Oh I do love a day at home.

Erosion Bundle Project.

2010-01-07T17:58:00.000+11:00

I heard about this project on LOVE STITCHING RED and couldn't resist giving it a go. Here is the link to the Erosion Blog where you can find out more.
I should have put more thought into what was going into my bundles, but sometimes I tend to think too much and never get anything done, so I just scouted around my very untidy workroom and put together some bundles, mostly fabric and threads of course :) I did follow a couple of links and looked at other bundle projects and got the idea to add a bit more organic matter, so grabbed my herb and spice jars on they way out to the workroom. I've put mustard seeds in one of them, might end up with with a big bundle of mustard plants LOL.

This one has the mustard seeds along with some scrim a letter from my mum, a mixed media piece that I didn't really like and other bits and pieces that I can't remember.

Paper bark, a polymer clay head, silk thread and black pepper corns with other bits and bobs.

This one has a big piece of harem cloth wrapped around another piece of paper bark, cinnamon sticks and paper pieces.

And lastly some dyed muslin, thread, a little metal spade, gum leaves and nuts.

There are other things in the bundles too, even now I can't remember exactly what I put in so they will be a real surprise when I open them.

Having a very small yard it was going to a challenge to find places to put them. One went into the wood pile which is under the ever growing pumpkin plant at the bottom of the garden, one is tied to the pole at the back of my veggie garden, another tied into the bush under our bedroom window, this is at the front of the house an open to anyone walking past but is well hidden I think and the last is buried just inside the back gate. I'm so glad I took photo's and posted this as I'm sure I'm going to forget where they are !!

sorry the pics are a bit like find Wally pictures, see if you can find my parcels LOL.

I think there is a set date to reveal the bundles, but being in the southern hemisphere and summer time, I think I will have to leave mine longer, although it did rain a little while I was stowing them away, just have to wait and see what happens over the next few months. Should be interesting !!

Tomatoes - Tomatoes - Tomatoes

2009-12-28T15:35:00.000+11:00

The weather this Christmas has been very unseasonable, rain, rain and rain. Christmas Eve was hot and beautifully sunny. The picture below is my little gathering from the garden, but after lunch on Christmas day, the weather changed and it had been very damp ever since.

I only planted three tomatoes plants this year as I don't have much space and didn't want to end up with tons of tomatoes, good plan you may think, but with all the rain we have had this year year, those three plants have gone berserk, swamping all the other plants and tried to escape next door.

With all the rain the last few days, I haven't been able to get out and pick them, and they are now literally bursting out of their skins, so this morning with my trusty brolly and I spent half an hour picking off the best of what I could find in this jungle. There are three variety's here, little golden cherry toms, and red berry tom and a large beef tomato. The golden ones have grown right through the rest and are now heading North to the bottom of the garden. As you can see, not much else is getting much chance to grow!!

Here are the cherry toms ready to be sun dried in the oven, seems bizarre I know, I usually do them in the sun, but have not seen hide nor hair of it for days.

And here are the big fat beefy toms ready to be made into tomato and chilly jam.

A few hours later the jams nearly done and the toms semi dried with a little tyme and rosemary.

Now I have some little bags of sunshine ready for the freezer to go into pasta and breads and what ever else I can think of. The tomato jam has a really intense flavour, I've never made this before but think it's going to be a winner.

Before I go, remember my little painted pieces I showed you in the last post? they have been made into little needles cases and given as presents at our pre christmas afternoon tea. I think the recipients were happy with them .

Christmas Sewing in November!!

2009-11-15T16:06:00.000+11:00

This has got to be a first for me, I'm never an organised person, but this year have entered a swap and a competition both at the Quilting Gallery.

Firstly the swap is for christmas inchies, I've made a couple of these a while ago, actually a long time ago but thought it would be fun to enter a christmas swap. Here are my finished inchies.

I have put my little christmas wall hanging in the Holiday Traditions Quilt Contest, this is the first time I have ever put anything like this in a competition, don't know what came over me LOL. This is decided by public votes, so if you have a minute and would like to vote for me, that would be lovely :)

Here are the links for both the swap and competition. If you haven't been to the Quilting Gallery site before, you may be there a while, lots of good stuff to see.

Able Mable the Painting Table came out after her long winter rest, I used one of the textures pieces I made on Saturday in my inchies. If your wondering who on earth Able Mable is, go back and read this.
As you can see I've also been doing a bit of clearing up in the back yard.

It was good to get out the modelling paste and paint and have a play. Here are the little pieces I ended up with after spending a pleasant hour or so with paintbrush and lots of coffee, I do love weekends when I can enjoy at least 3 leisurely cups in the morning.

Lastly today here are a couple of pictures of a doll I was working on for the Dungog Quilt Show, also done in Christmas Colours, she will be my new christmas ornament for this year, I try and make something for the house each year. She was much admired at the show, which was great and I have a class all signed up for next year which is terrific. She is a wall hanging doll and I have made moulds for her hands and face so that she can be made in a weekend.

I wonder if by mid December I'm still feeling so organised and on top of the whole Christmas thing - very unlikely :)

Stashing Up in the Wind

2009-10-15T12:18:00.000+11:00

I have finally got around to doing some dyeing for myself :) After watching all the beautiful colours appear in this years workshops, I have been itching to stock up my own stash of fabrics. I have bought some new colours this year too and have been dying to try them. Monday dawned sunny and only a little breezy, so I rang Helen to change our dyeing day as this looked like the only decent day we would get before the winds returned.

The first day I tried a new blue and an old red in this two colour gradation, lovely combinations but still no real purples.

The some purples using two old colours and some new greens, which work very nicely together. I left these in the pots over night as I thought I might continue dyeing the next day.

Just as the weather man predicted, about 9.30, after I had set myself up for another day of mixing and rinsing, the wind came back with a vengeance, but with the roof vibrating and things flapping and banging, I kept going, only ducking back into the house when I thought I might be in mortal danger.

The previous day Helen had dyed up a 21 colour wheel and got some lovely results. I haven't dyed up one of these for a long time and thought it would be a good idea to try out some of the new colours. I then remembered I hadn't dyed up any threads for a long time either, so a hunt out in the back room also found some muslin, scrim / cheesecloth and a nice cotton bamboo thread I had bought ages ago and forgotten all about. All these went into my 21 yogurt pots along with my 1/2 meters. What I really like about this particular colour wheel is that it gives you some tertiary colours too. Here you can see my three primaries, secondaries and tertiaries.

And here with the extra bits of muslin and scrim.

Here's the whole lot with the threads. Amazing to think all that came out of 21 yogurt pots.

Here's a close up of the bamboo, cotton thread, the colours are more vibrant than shown here, I'm a hopeless photographer!!

Wednesday morning and the wind was still howling, but I wanted to try some multi coloured pieces using black and two primaries and in the new colour ways to go with those above.

Here is just a piece from each fabric, I love ironing these up as each one is so unique and contains little pictures, some tell a whole story :)

So three days of dyeing and my stash is well and truly re-stocked along with some other fabrics and threads. I have work right up until christmas and the school holidays are often too hot to dye so this was my last chance to get some good dyeing days in, the wind was a bit of a pain in the rear, but great for drying, took at least 4 minutes!!

Before and After and a Bit of Wind

2009-10-09T13:08:00.001+11:00

The school holidays are flying by and I haven't done a thing on my very long TO DO list.

I took some photo's of my workspace a few days ago to try and shame myself into tidying up. What with the quilt show, workshops and work, it had become a dumping ground, nothing unusual there, just a bigger dump than usual. I started on Wednesday morning, then went out for a very long and relaxing lunch, and of course, couldn't face it again when I got home - but this morning finally got it finished. I even dragged the vacum cleaner out there so I could see my hideously ugly green carpet in all it's glory. Here are some before and after pictures, it never look tidy and the back - back room is storage more than anything as the lighting is none existent so impossible to work in. One day I'll have a nice organised space with lots of posh storage and not a mishmash of old bits I've acquired from here there and everywhere. I bet everyone dreams of their ideal studio, workspace - one day - maybe :)

The weather has been absolutely horrible all holidays, I was supposed to have a day dyeing with one of the ladies that couldn't make our last weekend, but, not a chance, when it's not pouring with rain, it's blowing an absolute gale. Here is a pic looking out of the dinning room window yesterday, I really thought I might loose some serious roofing, but only a few bits of the sun room disappeared.

It was so cold too, more like winter, so I decided to put on the oven and have a good baking session. Here's some biscuits, in last years christmas tin and some cheese and fresh basil scrolls and some rather brown tea cakes, I knew I should have kept the oven at 180 and not 200 as the book said, always go with your gut :)

Earlier in the week I made my first lemon meringue pie from scratch. In the uk they have these nifty little packets that are so easy, but never seen them here. Must admit it was rather delicious. I also harvested all the spinach out of the garden and made some cannelloni with half and froze the other half. I also made Steve's favourite cabbage pie with one from the garden, my brother calls it windy pie, but still wants the recipe, maybe for a bit of revenge LOL.

That's all for now, think I'll go and have a coffee and a biscuit.

A Colourful Weekend.

2009-10-02T12:56:00.003+10:00

We had a wonderful weekend up at Main Creek, although the weather continued to be a bit difficult as the wind blew all weekend, as you can see it kicked up another nice dust storm and drove us inside to dye.

With dust masks in place, everyone got their dye stocks mixed up ready to begin.

Then we had a break for morning tea. You will notice that I never get any pictures of the fabulous food Marion makes as I am too busy stuffing my face, next time I promise. After indulging in scones, vanilla slice and biscuits, all lovingly hand made, the dye pots come out and all that white fabric is transformed into a myriad of colour.

Here's the white fabric being ripped ready for the dye pots.

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OK I did get a quick picture of the table set for lunch, but as soon as the food arrived, the camera was forgotten.

After lunch, the rinsing began, we found a relatively sheltered spot and set up the rinsing table. Even the buckets and gloves added to the brightness of the weekend.

And then the fabrics were hung to dry, which took all of about 4 minutes. Amazingly, none came loose to disappear over the paddock, although a few buckets and pots did make an escape and had to be run down.

A few found a nice sunny spot and enjoyed an afternoon champagne,

just to keep the energy levels up you understand.

Day two, and although the wind continued to blow, the dust had gone, leaving a beautiful sunny day.

On the second day, the stamps and shibori poles etc. come out and the fun continues making multi coloured fabrics and over dyeing some of the previous days. As you can see, you can never have enough pots and jugs and general paraphernalia when dyeing.

Here we are at the end of the weekend, very well fed, and with that weary but contented feeling that a lot has been achieved for all your hard work. You can see the piles of fabric stacked ready to take home for their final washing and then to be made into unique and treasured quilts, bags and goodness knows what else.

Getting Ready

2009-09-23T21:59:00.003+10:00

I have been busily getting ready for a weekend of dyeing up at Main Creek. Here is a picture of 100 meters of crispy white cotton that will be transformed into a virtual rainbow over the weekend. Little did I know that the elements would be against me when I started washing all this in preparation, first rain, then gale force winds, I know what your thinking - winds good for drying right - but not 10 meter lengths that just get them selves into knots and wrap around anything slightly grubby, and to be honest I think I would have been hunting the neighbourhood for them. This was followed by a once in a life time dust storm, yes just what you want on pure white cotton, red dust! So my house has been drapped like a shroud all week trying to get it dry and folded, what a relief, it is finally done.

We were listening to the news this morning, wake up alarm :( about a terrible dust storm in Sydney and when I opened my eyes enough to have a squint at the window, this was the eerie sight that greeted us.

The rest of the day remained pretty much like this, which did very strange things to the street lights ect, making them look either green or blueish. This isn't uncommon in outback Australia, but apparently is a first for both Sydney and Newcastle. Made for a very strange day.

I will take plenty of photo's over the weekend and show you the results of a colour filled workshop. Lets hope the weather is kind to us.

Dungog Quilt Show

2009-09-14T18:22:00.003+10:00

I have just spent a lovely weekend up at the Dungog Quilt Show, meeting up with some now familiar faces and meeting lots of new ones. It's nice to know that people are coming back to stock up on their hand dyed fabrics and threads. It was a beautiful, sunny weekend with lots to see and do in Dungog, with a travelling quilt exhibition and art show in town too. It was also good to meet with the winner of last years raffle prize, a $200 voucher for a weekend retreat, she will be attending the new Doll making workshop next March which I am really looking forward too.

Here are a couple of pictures of my very bright stall.

Main Creek is looking absolutely beautiful, with all the usual spring happening, Marions wisteria is stunning and full of blue bees which I had never seen before. The chickens have outdone themselves this year and there are little fluff balls all over the place. Unfortunately I didn't have the chance to take any photo's, but lucky ol me will be back up there in two weeks time for a dyeing workshop and hopefully it will be just as lovely and I will make sure I take some pictures. I have also got to remember to take appropriate clothing for cow pooh collecting for my garden. I did come home with two bags of premium chook pooh in the back of the ute, ready for the veggie patch.

I don't think my gourd seeds are going to germinate, I have put some on wet paper towel in a plastic bag to form a mini greenhouse, but they show no sign of doing anything, I think they are just too old, luckily I can buy some new seeds locally if these don't work.

Back from Beyond

2009-09-01T17:21:00.002+10:00

Well I am back from a wonderful trip, refreshed, rejuvenated and more importantly back out in my studio, with a hundred and one ideas flowing through my brain which will hopefully soon to come to fruition.

I am starting here where I left off last time, back in the garden. Today is the first day of spring, so gardening is going to take up some of my time over the next few weeks. I have made a spot for my big black tub and planted the gourd seeds that I saved from that beautifully shaped gourd I used for Pandora, in the hope that the seeds will produce the same beautifully shaped gourds. Very boring picture I know, but I'm hoping that by the end of the summer I will be able to show you garden shed covered in amazingly "beautiful gourds". Fingers crossed.

My spinach and cabbages done there thing while we were away, we've had some delicious spinach inspired dinners already with plenty more to come, how much spinach can a person eat before they get sick of it? I think I'm about to find out LOL, and I have finally got some good stuff into the other end of the garden ready for my summer veg, which I hope to get this weekend.

While we were out trying to find Organoil for our outdoor furniture, I came across a lovely little shop selling "collectables". Everything was half price and I couldn't resist this old shopping basket, a steal at $14 I think. I'm imaging this full of my home grown veggies, ideal for collecting dinner in. It's sitting on my nice new table, as now the weather is warming up, on those mornings when I don't have to rush off to work, I can sit with my morning coffee and toast and watch everything grow.

That's it for now, holiday pics to follow but my alarms gone off and I have two heads and two sets of hands in the oven. If they work out as I'm hoping, I might actually get to post pictures of what this blog was originally about - textile stuff - but variety is the spice of life:)

The Domestic Demon Has Struck

2009-07-07T16:39:00.006+10:00

Apologies for my bad blogging, or lack thereof, but I have not had anything to blog about. My Creative Muse has taken an extended holiday and I have been bitten by the Domestic Demon.

After recovering from another bout of "bad back" after my gardening exploits, I had a rush of cleaning madness and to my horror found a small deceased furry thing in my kitchen. This lead to another long winded discussion about kitchen units and how eight years was a long time to have odd cupboards with no doors. A trip to the dreaded Bunnings saw us armed with boxes of flat packed kitchen units and doors. One weekend saw the replacement of one half on the kitchen, and then to my amazement Steve actually suggested that we keep going and get rid of the totally useless pantry I had and put in more deep draws and wall cupboards and a new bench top. Here is a picture of my much improved kitchen. Ok I still have gyprock walls and no cornice and the cupboards still need their handles, but I do have DOORS!! This is a huge improvement so you can only imagine what it was like before.

Knowing that we are going on holiday, I haven't gone mad planting in the veggie garden but have put in a few cabbages, spinach and shallots. They are all going along nicely and I am making a barrier around them with my coffee grinds to keep the slugs and snails away, rather than use bait.

I am currently doing a three week block at school teaching Art and Photography, which has made me spend some time experimenting with photoshop. Here is something I made from my gourd photo while teaching myself some of the functions that I needed to show the students. The possibilities are endless with this program and such fun, when it does what you want LOL.

We are driving up to Darwin next week for some fishing and relaxing, so this will be my last post until we get back. Hopefully my muse will return with me and that demon can stay up North as I have so much to catch up on.

Day 3 and a Compromise

2009-06-15T08:41:00.010+10:00

As you may have guessed, our building work did not continue on Friday, I had a call on Thursday evening to go into work. Had I known how bad my back was going to be when I got up on Friday morning I probably would have declined, by the end of the first period I could hardly move and spent the rest of the day sloshing around the school with a hot water bottle stuffed up the back of my jacket. I just about managed to drive myself home to collapse on the lounge with my own hot water bottle and wonder how I could have such a short memory and not remember that only a short time ago I had spent weeks incapacitated with my stuffed up back. My poor attempt at regular back exercises and the walks I have been doing must have had some benefit as although it is extremely sore, I can still actually move, albeit slowly.

Steve had come to realise I was going to have my veggie garden, even if it meant doing myself some damage on the way, so rather than have to cook and look after me for weeks again, went and bought some new sleepers, cement and bolts and finished it off his way.

I stood in the garden in my very attractive pink PJ's and Ugg boots fetching small tools and offering my opinion when it obviously wasn't wanted. If I tried to lift something or do anything slightly strenuous, I got "the look" so made lots of cups of tea and tried to keep my mouth shut.

Here is the first new sleeper going on with the 2 foot long bolts, well maybe not THAT long and showing the obligatory bit of builders bum crack in the process.

One compromise I did have to make was loosing my new long pole as it was needed to attach the other end of the sleepers. Aesthetically it does look better with long poles just along the back but I had envisaged sweet peas growing up between those two poles.

So here is my finished veggie garden :) Not quiet as satisfying as if Karen and I had done it all ourselves but it does look good. The soil is shocking and needs lots of compost and things added to it, but as you can see, there is plenty of room to add more. I have bought some staples so I can have strings between the poles to grow beans and peas when spring arrives. At the moment I have a couple of variety's of cabbage, some spinach and shallots to go in. Time has become a factor to get this all done as I start a three week block at school next Monday that takes up to the school holidays and Steve had just booked 3 maybe 4 weeks holiday so we will be heading up North with the boat and loosing ourselves in the quiet contemplation of fishing for a while. By the time we come back, it will be close to spring planting time then I can get lots of new veggies into my new garden.

Here is a before and after pic, it's amazing what a bit of hard graft and bloody minded-ness can achieve.

Women's Business

2009-06-11T15:21:00.004+10:00

Well I foolishly told Steve about my days work in the garden and we immediately got into the same argument about it being a waste of time and it wouldn't work and it would all fall down. Luckily it is dark by the time he comes home from work and he hasn't bothered to go and have a look at my feeble efforts before he goes off to work in the mornings, so today as soon as 7.30 am had come and gone and I knew I'd have no work and have the day to myself, I got Steve out the door then rang my friend Karen. After asking that loaded question "what are you up to today" and getting the hoped for response of "nothing really" put to her the idea of spending a day digging holes and pouring quick set cement and sweetened the whole thing with a promised trip to Bunnings, she was hooked :)

We spent a good hour or so wandering in circles in Bunnings as they have moved EVERYTHING and hidden the things we were looking for. Finally we had the car loaded up with poles, cement, brackets, screws, nails, a big planter, grow your own mushrooms and a few veggie plants. We surveyed our work area and formed a plan of action then had a bit of a sit in the sun with a good cup of coffee.

First came hole digging which proved to be a real task as the soil here isn't really soil at all after the first 5 - 6 inches, it's bright red thick clay, you can literally see a line where the top soil ends and the clay begins. Another hazard were tree roots as the holes were right next to an old stump. Now being girls we dug the easier of the two holes first, the one away from the wall, slightly in the wrong place but that was easily rectified. You can see the 6ft plus crow bar we are using smash our way through tree roots and clay. I must admit Karen did most of the crow bar swinging, but she seemed to be enjoying it :)

Then we started on the second hole and realised our mistake when I nearly fell down the first one, but we're smart cookies and won't make the same mistake again. This hole was almost impossible to dig out as it was more tree root than anything else, but we persevered and got a hole deep enough for the pole and a goodly amount of cement. A good belting with a sledge hammer helped drive it that bit deeper and we were confident we had done enough, so in went the cement then we left it to set while we had a late and much needed lunch.
The cement in the back hole wasn't setting real fast as there was a bit too much water in there, so we used the brackets and screws to start attaching the second lot of front logs. This was were I thought my original plan might have a flaw and wasn't sure if I could get them attached securely enough, but the brackets worked a treat and their as strong as they need to be, no stronger than necessary, capable of holding together a veggie garden without having to endure earthquakes and other natural disasters as required by your average (or not) engineer.

By 3 we had the first two front logs on but decided the cement would need to be left over night before we started driving in the nails to hold the ends on so we called it a day. I've sat my veggie plants on top of the earth pile so they are in situ. Hopefully the phone won't ring tomorrow and we can spend another day and get it finished. Tonight I have got to try and get some straps out of Steve's 4WD without him knowing as I'm not going through the whole it won't work speech again until I've proved him wrong - so we can buy a few more logs for the front as a couple are a bit dodgy
So end of day two and I am confident it will all work, sorry bad pic but late afternoon shadows. Having bought two lovely new poles, I am going to keep them long and have something hanging from them, not sure what yet, but I'm sure I'll find just the right thing. During all this hard work, I even managed to knock up a batch of Chelsea buns, with the help of the bread maker of course, which we had with a cuppa after lunch. Karen always works better if fed at regular intervals:) You can bet your bottom dollar that the phone will ring tomorow as I would love to get this finished before the weekend and Steve will see it in daylight, how good will it be if it's all done and standing with my cabbages all planted out. Ok better go and get out of these muddy jeans before my days exploits are exposed to the doubting one.

Piles of Dirt

2009-06-09T12:33:00.005+10:00

A few months ago I had a discussion with Steve about starting a veggie patch, which turned into a long debate about what I could and couldn't do and how none of my ideas would work. We took several trips to Bunnings to price up sleepers and metal plates and god knows what else to hold it all together Now I just wanted a regular, slightly built up veggie patch but Steve was determined to build something that would be around for the next 150 years and strong enough to house a powerful and extremely dangerous small animal should the need arise. What is it with engineers!! Well the final cost came out at about $300, so we thought we would do it in two halves and see how it went, so I moved my herbs out of their garden, which is where the veggie patch is going, and waited.............................................

As you can see the herbs are well established - and I'm still waiting

This I took this morning of my now abandoned and neglected herb garden. What a sorry sight, so I took matters into my own hands and decided I would just make the garden half the height and twice as long and ta-dah a veggie garden. As soon as Steve was gone I got stuck into pulling weeds and tunnelling for those wretched roots of that horrible grass stuff that goes everywhere. Australian readers can probably tell me what it is, I just know it as a pain in the rear end. I'm not an early eater so by 9.30 I stopped for a much needed coffee and some toast and had got this far.

You can see now what I am aiming to do. I had to move my compost bin out of the way first so the compost is now on a tarp with I can drag around the garden until I'm ready to add it to the bed. The little tree that has grown up by that post will have to go, just one more job to make life a bit more difficult, and I have taken down half of the end wall.

Fortified with toast and honey, I thought about digging up the tall pole at the back and moving it to the "new end" of the garden, but as you can see, that mound of earth just kept growing and the concrete holding it in seemed to go on for ever, so I gave up on the idea. I thought the two poles might come in handy for growing tall things anyway.

By just after 12 I was stuffed and my back wasn't taking too kindly to all this digging and shifting. I need to get a couple of new end poles and some quick dry cement to hold them in. Then I have to find a way of holding the front poles together, my plans always have one major flaw and I think this might be it, but it is beginning to take shape.

Unlike someone I wont mention, I put away all the tools I had used and lined up the barrow and compost neatly against the wall ready for my next effort. The compost bin has a bit of a lean to it, but I think it will survive :)

Surprise Parcel, Dragon Head and a Dyeing Retreat

2009-05-14T15:47:00.009+10:00

I can't believe nearly two weeks have gone by since my last post, or it could be longer!!

I have now got the new DSL2 internet connection and WOW how much quicker do the pictures download to the blog. I used to walk away and make a coffee, now there there within seconds.

I seem to have had a busy couple of weeks, but very little to show for it, well I did work a full week so I suppose that could be classed as productive :)

I came home yesterday to find an unexpected parcel sitting on my door step, I love parcels and unexpected ones are better still. This one was from my Mum and just look at all the lovely things she sent me. The earrings are from a jewellers in Truro which my daughter has fallen in love with while she has been visiting over there, and apparently has spent some of her hard earned cash there. The stones in them don't show up in the photo, but are just beautiful. The lovely square topaz ring is one of Mum's that she has passed on, I remember it so well from when I was younger. There is also a glasses case for my new, never to leave the house glasses, which have had to have the frames replaced by the way!! and an assortment of fabrics, beads ribbons and wire and some belated Easter chocolate oh and a lovely polymer clay plaque. The piece of fabric at the front is silk that Mum batiked at a workshop she went to recently, the colours are so vibrant.

While I was at school last week I managed to put some nice under-glazes and shiny clear glaze on my little dragon head. I still haven't started the sculpture that I intend to use him in, still collecting fabrics and bits and pieces, but getting closer to actually doing something.

In my last post I mentioned I was off to Main Creek with the Patch Happy Quilters to do a Dye and Quilt workshop. Here are a few pictures from the weekend. The weather was perfect for dyeing and the results were stunning. All the ladies done a wonderful job as this was the first time they had done any hand dyeing.

Preparing the Dyes

Dyed pieces in the afternoon sun

Trimming ready to quilt

Some of the finished quilts.

To see more pictures and quilts visit the new Main Creek blog.

Lots of Dyeing and Tyvek Beads

2009-04-29T09:57:00.006+10:00

In my last post I mentioned those two big rolls of cotton fabric. Well I washed and measured and ripped and packed ready for the workshop this weekend, then couldn't resist dyeing some up. Below are my two colour way dyes in oranges, greens and purples, well these particular two primaries don't really produce true purples but a lovely array of brick reds, chestnut and wine colours. I used the photo stitch program on the first pic as I have a rotary clothes line.

Here are all those 1/2 meters washed and ironed, I even remembered to dye up numbered sample pieces so I have reference charts for future dyeing.

I have recently been following a lovely blog Love Stitching Red in St Ives Cornwall, my former home land, Cornwall that is not St Ives, but only up the road from there. Carolyn posted a really good tutorial on making tyvek beads. I have meters of the not so nice tyvek that has small dots all over it and lots of acrylic paints and metallic threads so spent Sunday afternoon playing. Be warned if you haven't tried this before, you wont want to stop once you start!! Here are the beads I have made - so far, I still have lots of painted up tyvek just waiting to be made into these little delights.

This weekend I will be up at Main Creek with a wonderful group of Ladies, dyeing up a storm. I will post some pics next week, fingers crossed for good weather, dyeing is so much more fun when the sun shines.

Shall I - Shan't I

2009-04-18T08:51:00.003+10:00

I have just received a delivery of two big rolls of crisp white cotton fabric to get ready for some up coming workshops. It is just screaming out to be dyed LOL. I haven't made a quilt in a long time and have been toying with the idea, so went through some quilt designs I have tucked away. This one I like being bold and quite geometrical. I pulled out my fabrics and put these together as I know I can reproduce these colours successfully, well as close to as is possible with hand dyes. Can't make up my mind, shall I , shan't I - what do you think?

I am frantically washing all this fabric to get the kits ready, but there are big black clouds looming, they did say showers developing, I hope they meant like 3 this afternoon, not 9 this morning :( think I'm going to have a lot of wet fabric hanging around as the rains going to last for days!! My leaky roof will curtail all dyeing activities until the sun decides to shine again.

Names and Beach Bits

2009-04-09T16:41:00.002+10:00

You may, or may not, have noticed that the name of my blog has changed. Recently Paula from The Beauty of Life referred to my blog in a list of blogs she had been visiting recently. All the blogs she listed sounded fascinating, with lovely imaginative names until I came to Tracy's Blog, how uninspiring LOL. I remember back to when I started this blog and it asked what I would call it, nothing came to mind, hadn't really given it any thought, so to fill the space put in Tracy's Blog. I'm not sure Transient Tracy will stay long either, but it's how I'm feeling at the moment, changes are in the wind, for good or bad I don't know, but I feel a change is coming. Also all the pieces I am working on at the moment are very different, I have several on the go and am constantly changing from painting to machining to sculpting. These pieces are gifts for people that read this blog, so I can't show you, or I'll ruin the surprise:)

In my last post I talked about my drying rack that has become a very sophisticated work place, well a name has popped into my head and like one of those bad songs that just won't go away, it's stuck there. I've waited all week hoping it will go, but it wont, so, and I'll hear your groan it's "Able Mable the Painting Table" and yes I talk to it when I pass by.

With Steve getting back into the surf, I have been going with him for some lovely long walks on the beach. This weekend, the surf was pretty big and heavy so we went to a sheltered corner where the surf wasn't too bad. He took off in one direction, board under arm and I strode off in the other, looking for treasure. I was absolutely appalled at the amount of plastic on the beach! There has been big swells and strong onshore winds for a few days, so the expected weed and wood and coconuts were there, but the other rubbish just blew me away. Having been a stranger to the beach for more years than I'd like to remember, it was a real shock to realise the beaches have got in such a state. If I could ignore the rubbish, the walk reminded me of the wild weather and long beaches back in Cornwall, minus the biting cold wind.

We met back at the car, and I was met with the remark "I've never known anyone go down the beach and come back with so much crap!", yes he was referring to my treasures LOL. I'm not really a shell person, but found the piece below which reminds me of a type of fungi. Later that day we went for a second walk on a different beach which had far less plastic but some nice bits of wood. Now I do try and restrict myself to one piece of crap per walk, but seeing as this was the second walk of the day, did bring home two pieces of wood, the second was so small it shouldn't count really :)

Finally, my roof monster has not made another appearance, I get a very sceptical look from Steve whenever I mention it. It's still a mystery as it was definitely too big for possums and there are no drop bears around here as suggested by Paula. I'm rather hoping it does come back so I can see what it is.

Table Mods. Eyes and Things that go Bump in the Night

2009-04-04T14:09:00.005+11:00

Back in January I told you about the cloths stand that I had adapted as a work / paint table while I was doing Carol Mcfee and Lynda Monk "s online workshop. The table seems to have a permanent position in the garage and I use it all the time, so today it has had some modifications/improvements in the form of another trusty herb rack, a yogurt pot and an old dolls head, all attached with cable ties. I now have a pot for my brushes etc, a rack for scissors and other bits and pieces that I happen to be using at the time and a pin cushion so I don't keep losing my anchoring pins. It's starting to develop a bit of a personality, I might find myself giving it a name soon, you know how people name their cars, or those shopping trolley's with wheels, I can see myself going down this not so sane path.

Eyes have been on my mind the past few days, for two reasons, one being my own have been scanned and inspected and photographed until I thought I would have permanent dots swimming in front of my eyes, and the other because I have been trying to make some decent, realistic looking eyes for my sculptures seeing as my own don't see as well as they used to and I'm finding it really frustrating trying to paint them on a finished face. I think I have found a technique that will work for me, just got to refine it a bit and try some smaller eyes.

Last night I spent another evening alone, while Steve had to work late yet again, was totally bored, telly usual rubbish, couldn't work on anything as my pupils were still as big as saucers so couldn't focus. I wandered out into the garden on dusk and saw just how huge the random pumpkin plant had got and how wild the lawn had become with all the rain we have been getting. The evenings have still been so mild and the garden was a cacophony of noise, so many different cricket and things all competing with each other. I wish I could have recorded it for those of you that have not heard an Australian garden at dusk

Later that night there was an almighty row of a different kind, the screen door slamming lots of banging and clattering, I thought Steve had come home and I hadn't heard the car, but looking out the window, there was nothing there, another few minutes went by and it sounded like an elephant charging around on my roof, which is tin by the way. It was so loud it bought my neighbour out to investigate, being home alone this was a bit unnerving to say the least and the neighbour and I ended up out in the street inspecting the roof line, looking for some unearthly creature up there. Hopefully Steve will be home tonight, so if it comes back I might be brave enough to go looking with a torch.

I'm not convinced having a tin roof is a good thing, it's very australian, and with the hail storms we get, very sensible, but oh so noisy. We also have the big old telly aerial still up, from the days when you had to get your signal from way over the hill somewhere. This is a constant source of amusement for the cockies who sit up there and slowly dismantle it, dropping the bits down to bounce on the roof.

Well that's enough rambling for today :) It's wet and windy and nothing is drying very fast so time on my hands, if you hadn't guessed, better have another coffee.

Journalising / Diaries

2009-03-31T14:30:00.005+11:00

I had to do it at Uni and we make the students at school do it, so why did I stop?

I'm talking about keeping a record of the things that emerge from my work room. Time might be an excuse, but it is so frustrating to go back to a piece and wonder "how did I do that". so I am going to try and start keeping a visual/process diary of some sort again. Inspired by Ro Bruhn's wonderful journal pages, I dug out an old lino cut I made years ago of blackberries, very convenient as my latest piece was inspired by this delicious berry, then stamped and water colour washed some pages.

Now these are no comparison to the beautiful and colourful pages created by Ro, but they gave me a base on which to record my materials and some of the new techniques I tried, Oh I wish I had lovely handwriting! but at least I have something I can look back on when the grey matter refuses to remember.

Today is wet and windy, autumn has finally arrived so I am spending the afternoon making Cornish pasties, and my favourite and nearly healthy carrot and date cake.

12 Month Project Finally Finished

2009-03-29T16:55:00.005+11:00

Remember way back when, I told you about a Wendy Froud inspired doll I was making as a group challenge, ........no.......... well here's a reminder

Well she is finally finished. Steve had to work all weekend so I had two whole uninterrupted days to work on her. She will be dancing when I get her stand made, the one she is on is only temporary and doesn't support her too well, hopefully it won't take me another 12 months to get it done. It is so good to be able to finally spend some time back out in my work room, the weather has been glorious so everything dried nice and quick so I could get her finished ........ ummmmmmm what to make next :)

MIA

2009-03-11T15:13:00.005+11:00

I have just realised it has been nearly a month since my last post. There is a very good reason for this, the inability to sit down. An old back injury has been giving me a very hard time and I have spent the past few weeks much like this.

I have watched far more daytime telly than can be good for anyone, all sorts of old dvd's and done a lot of ceiling staring.

The two things I could really have done with, my itouch and microwave were both being replaced or repaired, well the microwave, which I needed to heat my wheat bag, was repaired, worked three times then broke again. It was brand new used about a dozen times then sat in a dusty workshop for two weeks waiting to be fixed. When it was finally ready, Steve picked it up on his way home to find it covered in dust, glue and scratches. When he mentioned this to the lady, she gave him one of those stainless cleaning cloths!!. The glue obviously didn't work, so it's got to go back again. I wonder what state it will come back in this time.

My itouch would have saved my sanity a little, at least I could have written the odd e mail, checked my favorite blogs and generally kept in touch with what is going on, but, alas, that too decided to pack it in. There was no trouble having it replaced, but they didn't have any in stock so have had to wait three weeks for one to come in. As is always the way, there is a replacement waiting for me, well Steve, to pick up, now I am able to sit at the computer again, all be it for short periods of time.

Talking of sitting at the computer, this has been blamed for my bad back, which I try to deny adamantly, but lost the argument, so the computer chair has been banned and I now sit on a very large red ball. I don't care how good it is supposed to be for my back, it is impossible to sit still on, the urge to roll about is just too much :) and very uncomfortable after a short time, which I think is the whole idea to dissuade me from spending so much time here.

So nothing creative has happened, hopefully very soon I will be able to get back to some sort of normality, but I have a feeling I am going to be doing a lot more moving around and back strengthening for some time to come yet

Valentines Give Away Winner

2009-02-14T15:55:00.003+11:00

I hope you are all having a wonderful Valentines Day. Well the time has come to announce my winner. The choosing of the winner was a technical process, putting names in a glass and as I was home alone apart from Mango the bird, who was very unhelpful, I shut my eyes tight and pulled out...................................................

Paula Hewitt - The Beauty of life

Congratulations Paula :) With the weather the way it is I'll be sure to put these in a waterproof bag!!

Japanese Treasures

2009-02-07T12:08:00.008+11:00

A dear friend of mine, Ruth offered to take me along when she went to visit one of her favourite places "Edo Arts".

This place is an Aladdin's cave of anything Japanese, including a vast array of kimono's, textiles, papers, books and old photographs.

There are beautiful wooden chests and cabinets whose draws are filled with exotic textiles. Here are a few pieces of Kimono fabric that I bought, the pattern and textures in these are just wonderful, and yes there's plenty of scope for the addition of dye if I feel the need.

Part of the Seven Sins workshop I started last year included using text as part of the work, so when I spotted this old book, I couldn't resist adding it my collection for future use. It seems a shame that I will dismantle this. As you can see it is hand bound using stab stitch which is a technique recently featured in Cloth, Paper Scissors.

The inside cover has these cute little birds on it, will be wonderful for something.

And the writing just flows down the page.

My other great find was this brush, it has been used for applying dye of some sort as the brush is still full of it. The head of the brush is about 7cms across and it stands about 15cms high. I am going to use this to apply dye and see what happens. If anyone knows exactly what this is or how it is used, I'd love to hear from you.

I don't know how long we stayed and browsed around Edo Arts, but before we knew it, our day out was over and we had to hit the highway and head back home.

Over Dyes

2009-02-04T07:49:00.006+11:00

I finally got around to doing the Indigo over dyes, with mixed results. It was just too hot to be hanging around in the back yard so the fabric was in and out of the vat much too quickly, so although some came out with a nice over dyed pattern, others are a bit nondescript and will have to go back for another dip on a cooler day. The chemicals in the indigo vat do alter the original procion dye to a degree, but the indigo definitely adds a new dimension to the fabric.

The weather looks to stay hot for at least another week and I still haven't got to clean up my work room. I'll try and keep the indigo vat active for a while longer and have another go. The shibori pieces on the pole can come out looking very dramatic, if I leave them in long enough LOL

More dyeing

2009-01-30T08:43:00.008+11:00

I had to get my indigo vat going again to finish off a quilt kit, so once it was fired up and dyeing beautifully, I thought I would try the soy wax in the vat. Again my concerns were that the wax would disintegrate in the vat being water soluble, but the piece below was dipped three times with on effect on the wax at all. I am going to have to work on my skills with the tjanting and I think cooler weather will absolutely be a bonus.

It's a messy business dyeing in the wind, it does come off ...................eventually LOL

I have also been playing around with some different folding techniques for the Chaos Theory Quilt and here are some of the results. I am keen to try some of these on bigger pieces of fabric and then design a new quilt that incorporates some of these lovely patterns, as these are only 13 inch squares. I love the colour combination you get with this method of dyeing and the unpredictability of it. The Indigo vat is still looking good this morning so I am going to over dye some of my pricions and see what happens. I'll show you tomorrow if they work out OK

Valentines giveaway

2009-01-27T08:49:00.008+11:00

Well I have found out the reason why I cannot join in the fun of the OWOH event, my emails are being blocked as spam :( I'll have to try again next year, so for those of you that manage to find your way here, this is my gift to you on that special day, just leave a comment on this post and please make sure there is some way of me contacting you and this little packet of brightness could be winging it's way to you :)

Sunday Afternoon on the River

2009-01-19T08:27:00.006+11:00

Just a quick post today and a couple of photographs of our relaxing afternoon spent on the river. Now the weather has settled and we are not getting heavy rains, the rivers have slowed and we have been doing some canoeing. Might sound a bit energetic, but believe me, with our little electric motor, we glide silently and effortlessly up the river. I even managed to stuff myself with a packet of chips (crisps) and half a packet of jammy dodgers while fishing, much to Steve's amusement, so much for the healthy great outdoors LOL

Here we are rigging up ready to go, doesn't it look so peaceful.

The young cattle always give us an inquisitive stare as we glide by.

Thought there was more heads and less bums in the picture.

If you look up on the bank, you will see the fence covered in debris from the last flood.

A little birds nest blown down in the last storm.

A large freshwater muscle, these are about as big as my hand and we have actually caught these on small plastic lures.

More wax and a Birthday Present

2009-01-16T02:03:00.006+11:00

Earlier this week I got the soy wax and procions out for another bit of experimentation. I am still playing around with this wax to see what exactly it will do. Last time I used it I made up a print paste as the wax is water soluble, and didn't think it would take too much wetting out, however is proved to be a lot more resilient than I expected, so this time used just straight dye. The pieces you can see below are just experimental bits, trying out different stamps, rollers, etc. and trying to get the wax just the right temperature to use with a tjanting to keep a good flow. As whole pieces they are pretty out there and a bit of a confusion, but when they are cut into smaller pieces they are quite gorgeous. I have cropped some bits so you can see. Further down the page, you can see how I used one of the earlier pieces in a project, a little pocket book in the latest Cloth, Paper, Scissors magazine. These multi coloured fabrics are ideal for this project.

As you can see they are full of texture and colour.

But the small pieces are terrific, and there's so much variety in just one fat 1/4.

Here are the pockets made for the book, took only a fat 1/8th

The pockets in the book

This little pocket book and itouch cover where Birthday presents for Louise, it's very hard finding presents that are light and portable as she is travelling OS at the moment. Her itouch goes everywhere with her, and the little pockets will be ideal to store her treasures. Apparently Green is her favourite colour at the moment, so the itouch cover and book cover are made from textured calico with golden acrylics and mica powder.

As I have mentioned the pocket book was a project in Cloth, Paper Scissors. I have only recently subscribed to this mag, having subscribed to Quilting Arts in the past. Now these wonderful magazines are available in digital form and I get both mags for the price of one in this format. It's terrific, I can't loose them, don't have to find storage for them, can print pages with templates etc. straight from the computer, no scanner needed and the ads are linked directly to the relevant web site for easy browsing. If you haven't had a look at these magazines before, or the new format, then you can see them here.

Sausages and Bread

2009-01-14T19:47:00.000+11:00

Well santa didn't come up with the goods, despite my pleading letter which included pictures so there would be no confusion, but his last minute shopping expedition on Christmas Eve yielded socks, which, yes, I need as I have a thing about cold feet so squirrel pairs away all over the place, just in case. All the cars have a pair in the glove box and there must be at least two pairs in the boat. I also got a lovely array of fishing lures, which someone else has been trying out!! and some other very useful bits and pieces. Luckily it is my Birthday a week later so I got my whiz bang food mixer then. To be fair Steve did go looking at Christmas and was totally overwhelmed by the choices, so it was better we went together, and I ended up getting a fantastic Kitchenaid stand mixer, in "Black", well when your shopping with a man and the assistant who is helping you make this monumental decision to spend so much on a mixer is also male, I didn't get much say, but to be honest, it looks good in my half renovated kitchen, very....... manly .

Then I realised it had all these attachments you could get!! Couldn't help myself, had to get the grinder and sausage stuffer, and these are the results.

A trip to my butcher got me some natural sausage skins and some pork necks to play with. See how well Black fits in with the gyp rock and plaster wall.

Here it is, mincing up all that lovely pork

And ta da - my first batch of sausages

There was a lot of pork there, so the next day I made some more. The darker ones at the back are Italian with red wine, garlic and lots of spices and the front apple and sage .

Last night we had home made bangers, salad and rosemary and sea salt foccacia. I haven't bought a loaf of bread this year!! sounds very impressive but it's only the 14th Jan LOL. So I have been keeping my promise to myself to cook more, have made plenty of bread but this is the first photo I have managed without a great hunk missing of the end - no one can resist fresh, hot bread. My creativeness has just been channeled in a different direction the past week, one which Steve finds much more appealing I'm sure, but today I'm sitting here with green hands, which has got nothing to do with any food product and a lot to do with Procion Dye ;)

Studio Spaces and Work Places

2009-01-08T23:09:00.002+11:00

Well I don't know about you, but my studio / workroom becomes a dumping ground over the Christmas holidays, all that stuff you have to remove to put up decorations, make the house look tidy etc. all goes into your precious space because you know you just won't get to play out there anyway. Now the decorations are down, the house returning to is' t usual state of chaos, it's time to go and clean up that mess and get you space back in order. With that in mind I thought I would share with you a couple of cheap household objects that I have found very useful to store and create with. Beware there's a couple of ugly photo's here, not for the tidy sort of person !!

The first is one of those wire herb holder thingys you can get from the dollar shop, they make excellent scissor storage units. This one is screwed onto the wall right next to my work table so I know where my scissors are at all times, well not all times, because in one of those creative frenzies they get spread out all over the place, but at least they have a home to go to when I have a tidy up. If you are anything like me, you will have numerous pairs of scissors, your fabric ONLY ones - those that are fabric but can be used on other things - ones for paper only - ones that are for paper and all sorts of things, Embroidery scissors, your newest sharpest embroidery scissors, pliers, needle nosed pliers, haemostat, the list could go on and on but you get my drift. Don't try and use the rack the other way up, it just doesn't work.

My next little gem of wisdom is to make one of those clothes drying racks into a paint table. I started using this when I was doing the Textured Surfaces workshop. I have put one of my printing boards on top, which is just a piece of MDF covered in sweatshirt material, this gives you a good surface for applying modelling paste ect. and allows you to pin the piece down if need be. Ok it's not the steadiest of things, but you're only applying paint and such so don't need a really firm surface, but as you can see, it's very light and portable so you can move it around easily to get out of the sun, wind rain or whatever is plaguing you while you work, it's the perfect height to work on and you can peg up you pieces to dry as you go.

My favourite, most used piece of equipment I have has got to be my Horn craft table. I only have a small work room so use it with just one flap up, but, when I need more table space I can swing it around and open it right up, these things are just brilliant. while I was looking for the link to the craft table I found this storage cabinet, going to put this on my wish list, look very useful.

I would love to hear about your favourite thing in you Studio/ Workroom and if you have any clever storage ideas to share .

Chaos Theory Quilt

2009-01-07T10:44:00.003+11:00

For those of you attending a Dye and Quilt Workshop, here is a picture of the Chaos Theory Quilt in the country colours set, with the olive sashing option. As you can see it is still just a quilt top, haven't got around to quilting it yet, and I'm still lacking a large wall where I can hang the quilts to get a decent picture, luckily today there was very little wind so the cloths line had to serffice.

Natures Beads and a Bit of Fishing

2008-12-30T22:38:00.001+11:00

Well Steve had four days off work so inevitably we would have to go fishing. On boxing day we went up to the williams river for a late afternoon fish, there has been plenty of rain recently and lots of trees have come down in the flooding waters. One of these, and I think it might be a silky oak, was covered in these lovely little nutty, coney things so I made Steve get the boat close enough to acquire a few branches loaded with them . He wasn't too happy having all this herbage in the boat along with plenty of resident spiders, but I promised to clean up the mess and he got over it . Today I striped all the seeds off and gave them a spray to get rid of any lingering wildlife and now have a bowl full of these lovely textured beads, I'm sure I'll find something wonderful to do with them LOL.

We fishing into the dark, didn't get a bite, but it was a beautiful evening as you can see from these photo's

On Sunday we drove up to Glenbawn Dam for the day, left the coast that was hot and humid and drove into some cloud around the ranges. There was no wind on the dam for a change, I hate the wind!! and some big black clouds looming. The dam is well up now and looks like a completely different place since the last time we were there. The fishing was great, a lot more predictable than the weather, which was sunny one moment, pouring the next and breezy intermittently. This was one of the best fish for the day, a nice 37cm, we didn't find any big fish, but all those we got were fat and healthy, so much better condition than they have been recently . As you can see, I'm my usual tidy self, hair all over the place, shirt buttoned up to a fashion,but boy did I get burnt, even with plenty of sunscreen and a more sensible hat than the one in the pic, I've even got dots on my feet where the sun went through the holes in my crocs', looks absolutely ridiculous :)

Christmas Kisses and a Recipe

2008-12-21T07:21:00.002+11:00

Christmas is Oh so close and I haven't put up a decoration or done any cooking!! But now I have finished work and today is a lovely cool day so the dreaded housework must begin ( once I've posted to my blog of course).

Each year I usually buy a new Christmas ornament, but this year decided to make one, so here is the Mistletoe Kiss. She is an old Crone who just might sneak up on you and demand a kiss under the mistletoe, so you better keep an eye out over your shoulder :)

Here are a few photo's of her, I've even got a few of her progress this time. She is made on a cloth stump body, her head, hands and mistletoe are polymer clay, I used apoxy sculpt to attach her head to the cloth and for her wooden staff . Her clothes are made from hand dyed cotton and cotton scrim. The green skirt has been rust dyed too and the waist coat is calico with a layer of textured modelling paste and acrylic paints. As you can see she is all puckered up ready for that kiss.

I have been out for dinner a few time's recently and been very disappointed with the food, I hate going out and spending money on a meal when you come out thinking you could have eaten better at home. This got me to thinking that I just don't do the cooking that I used to and have those great evenings of entertaining friends. So my new years resolution this year, is to do just that, I know I know we never keep new years resolutions, but I will try. To give me some motivation I'm going to ask Santa for one of those great food mixers, I've only got a little hand beater that was a wedding present 28 years ago, that now only has one beater and really struggles sometimes to get going. I suppose to have any appliance that is that old and still going is a miracle in it's self. So I am going to share with you one of my favourite Christmas recipes, I made this cake about 8 years ago and now make it every year, it's become one of our Christmas traditions. Louise will miss out this year as she is in the UK and there is only Steve and myself to get through two big cakes, I'm sure we'll manage :). It is a really rich cake and a bit tricky to do and you really do need a bundt or ring tin or it wont cook in the middle, but well worth the effort. Let me know if you give it a try, you might be like me and end up doing one every year.

Rich Chocolate Fruit Cake

220g dried figs, sliced

140g pitted prunes, halved

180 dried apricots, diced

125g pitted dates, halved

½ cup O.P. rum or Grand marnier

1 ½ tablespoons finely chopped orange zest

3 cups plain flour

¾ cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 ½ teaspoons baking powder

1 ½ teaspoons bicarb-soda

¾ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

90g good quality dark chocolate

2 cups packed brown sugar

125g butter, room temp

4 eggs

1 cup good quality fruit mince

300g pecan or walnuts

Thoroughly combine the first six ingredients in a bowl, cover tightly and set aside for at least one hour or overnight.

Pre heat oven to 150c. Butter and flour a 12 cup capacity 28cm bundt tin or a very deep ring tin.

Sift the flour, cocoa, baking powder, bicarb, salt and cinnamon together and set aside.

Place the chocolate in a food processor and process until finely chopped. Add the sugar and grind together, set aside.

Cream butter with an electric mixer until light and fluffy. Beat in sugar mixture in three additions (mixture will be grainy). Add eggs one at a time beating well with each addition.

Stir in one third of the dry and half the fruit mince. Then add the half of the remaining dry ingredients and the rest of the mince.

Stir the remaining dry ingredients and pecans into the fruit mixture, add this to the batter and mix well.

Spoon batter into prepared tin and bake for 1 ½ hours or until a fine skewer inserted in the middle comes out with just a few crumbs attached.

Cover loosely with foil if the cake browns too quickly.

Remove from oven an allow to cool in the tin for 20mins. Invert onto a rack and leave for a few minutes then gently lift off the tin. Allow cake to cool completely then brush over with more O.P or grand marnier.

Store in a cool place for up to 3 months

Can be decorated with icing sugar, drizzled with chocolate and choc coated almonds or glace orange slices.

Wax, Rust and a Sneak Peek

2008-11-26T09:48:00.004+11:00

Well I have plenty of time at home at the moment, but don't seem to be getting an awful lot done, but her are a few pictures of what has been happening the last week or so.

The soy wax flakes arrived a few weeks ago and I have been eager to see what they will do. Karen came round on Monday, so we made up some print paste with the procions, got out some old pieces of very pale fabric and had a play. I love this wax, so easy to use and has great potential. Here are a couple of samples.

Karen tried out a tjanting and this is the wonderful result

Simple block print

I also spent a day trying out the rusting technique from the textured surfaces online workshop I have been doing. This is a totally addictive technique and I could have dyed everything in sight rusty. Here are a couple of samples, the last piece is tyvek that has been ironed lightly, I find I do not have enough control with a heat gun so use the iron and a light touch.

Ok, poor Pandora has been completely neglected while I have been trying new dyeing and painting techniques, so here is a sneak peek of her. She still has a long way to go, but as I have changed some of the materials from the original workshop, it's going to take a bit of experimentation to get her right. I have a few Christmas projects on the go at the moment, but once they are done, I must get back to poor Pandora .

Something Old Something New

2008-11-14T07:05:00.007+11:00

A while ago, I made this box from hand dyed fabrics, threads, silk paper and all sorts of braids ect. I have always intended to make a book to go in the box, at the moment it contains two of my favourite novels. The textured surfaces workshop has given me all sorts of new ideas for pages for the book. With the holidays coming up, who know's I might actually get this done.

My Golden paints arrived early this week and I have had a chance to try them out on two canvases I had prepared for the workshop. I bought three interference paints in green, violet and red and just had to try them all out on these. The red has given them a lovely purple glow. I'm quite happy with the way they turned out, but need to do a lot more experimenting with these new paints to get the best out of them I think.

Coloured Samples

2008-11-10T16:31:00.007+11:00

This weekend was a strange sort of couple of days, the weather didn't know what to do with it's self and neither did I. So I pottered about, picking up some of the samples I had made for the Textured Surfaces lessons I am currently doing. Added a bit of this and a bit of that and ended up with the pieces below.

I have bought some lovely golden heavy body acrylics on line, which arrived today :) so can started adding more colour to the other pieces very soon.

Senior Art Supplies carry an extensive range of these paints and are wonderful to deal with.

So here are a few samples, love the way they are turning out and having all sorts of wonderful ideas how to use these techniques.

Seed Pods and Samples

2008-11-03T17:56:00.003+11:00

While we were away in Queensland I collected these lovely seed pods. I plan to use the jacaranda seeds in place of the shells in my Pandora piece, and maybe the lovely little flowery looking ones. I was told the names of the trees I collected them from, but for the life of me can't remember what they are. I will be covering them in the powertex which I have been using on my FME pieces which should preserve them.

Jenny, my friend from work collected this lovely paper bark, I'm hoping to use this for Pandora's skirt.

I have also signed up for another on-line workshop Textures Surfaces run by two amazing textile artist Carol McFee and Lynda Monk.

Here are a few of the samples I have made so far. I have been out in my studio finding "stuff" I have had stashed away for years, just waiting for a workshop just like this one. The trouble is I seem to spend as much time looking for "stuff" as I do making the samples. It's amazing how you can put something away, never to be found again!!

Tyvek pieces waiting to be incorporated into a sample piece.

Moulding paste used with texture plate, stencil, and bubble wrap.

Hand and machine couching, mulberry bark and expandaprint

Latest Queensland Trip

2008-10-29T16:59:00.013+11:00

Back from our two week trip up North, fishing and generally relaxing. This year we drove up the coast as we called into Brisbane to catch up with an old friend. It has been years since we have driven that way and made a nice change. We stopped at Ballina for breakfast, had the best eggs benedict I've had in years, the cafe we chose was right on the waterfront, where we found these wonderful sculptures.

The first dam we fished was Peter Faust in Proserpine, just north of Mackay. The south easterly blew every day we were there, shutting down the fish, and as you can see from the photographs, we had a few showers, not good fishing, but made for some great photo's.

From Proserpine, we drove back south to Awoonga and spent three days fishing the back of the dam and bush camping. The wind still blew, the fishing was terrible and we were hit by a big storm one evening which made for a wet and interesting night!!

From there we went to Cania Gorge and stayed at the cottage for a week, luxury after camping in the back of the 4 WD. The weather improved and we finally started to catch some fish.

We took a day off from fishing to drive up to Kroombit Tops National Park to visit the crash site of a WWII bomber the "Beautiful Betsy"

Bottle brush trees by the river

The drive took us through several cattle stations, with numerous gates to be opened and closed, and of course no two latches were the same LOL.

We stopped at these cattle yards for a coffee, they have been here since the 1800's

If you look carefully at the lean to by the gate, you will see that the stumps are actually a table and stools, I thought of this as one of the oldest out door settings in Australia.

Here you can see how two trees have been utilised and a ramp made for loading the cattle.

This little guy was very obliging and sat perfectly still for this photo.

Finally reached the top and got these pictures from the look out. There was some burning off going on lower down so the view was a bit hazy.

Still a good bit of 4 Wheel driving to go to get to the Beautiful Betsy.

It took a good half a day to drive to the site, but was well worth it. Although it is a very sad place as eight airman lost their lives here, it was also fascinating to see the wreckage that was not discovered for nearly 50 years. Looking at the wreckage, it was hard to believe it had been there for five let alone fifty plus.
We decided to take a different route back, didn't connect with the road we had planned to meet and ended up doing some pretty extreme 4W Driving. This photograph was taken after the hairy stuff when we are nearly back to the main road. Looks quite lovely, but you should have seen what we had to climb to get there!!

Our last camping spot before we headed home was at Wuruma Dam. There were no other boats there and only two other campers so was very peaceful. Sleeping in the back of the 4WD made it very quick to pack up and get on the water, so we managed to squeeze in just one more fishing session before heading home. This proved to be the best session of the trip.

A brown dragon fly on a brown stick in brown water, but see how the sun has made the wings look like cut crystal.

View of Wuruma Dam

Our last camp with the early morning mist on the water - paradise!!

Ok had to include some fish photo's, it was a fishing trip after all

Steve with a nice Wuruma bass.

Another nice bass safely returned to the water.

A pair of 42cms on a double hook up.

Best fish of the trip, a whopping fat 53cm, my best yet and probably the best

I will see for a long time

FME Lace

2008-10-09T14:39:00.005+11:00

I have been wondering for a while if I could make lace using Free motion, and well, yes you can as long as you don't want it to look like mass produced lace, which would be silly really, cos you can just go down the road and buy it!! I wanted something to go around the inside edge of my gourd so made up a length of solvy about 80 cms long and four layers thick to give it a bit of substance. I used a couple of the pre - programmed embroidery stitches on my machine to make the top part, then hand drew the leaves hanging down underneath. I'm happy with this piece, it has a lace type look about it, but is very irregular and more organic sort of looking. It will do just great for it's intended purpose. I'm sure you can make perfect looking lace with a proper embroidery machine, but it was not what I was trying to achieve, so all good :)

I was having a look on Louise's, face book the other day and came across this photo, it is a project she had to do when doing her Graphic's Diploma. This page set up was done by her friend, but I love this picture of her, and miss her while she is on her travels. She was my colour advisor, now I have to get her on skype and hold the bits up to the camera for her to see, not quite the same, but will have to do:)

This will be my last post for a while as about to embark on another fishing trip up North, hopefully have lots of photo's when we return.

A Hot and Windy Day

2008-10-03T16:14:00.004+10:00

I really don't like this hot windy weather!! Don't seem to get much done :( , but I did manage to spend an hour or so on the sewing machine making more leaves for my Seven Sins piece. Put away the fabric mover and went back to a hoop, so much easier and really felt like I was painting with threads, was actually quite relaxing.

So here is another picture showing a wider variety of colours, getting there, but still more to do, these haven't had the powertex on them yet, I will wait until they are all made and do them together.

My sage has gone to flower, looks lovely, but no doubt this is the sign of it's end, will have to get some more so I have plenty for the Christmas sausage rolls. My leeks and beans are going really well, looks like beans for dinner tomorrow as there are some ready for the picking.

My new book, James Christensen's, "The Journey on the Imagination" came the other day and I have only had a quick glance through it, but it has sparked my imagination all right, and my next sculpt has been born :) I bought this little gourd at Morpeth a month or so ago, and the little clay dragon head is what is left of a relief tile I made with year 7's. The poor thing didn't make it through firing so I broke off the head and threw the rest. I have big plans for these two little piece's.

Today's Play

2008-10-02T16:45:00.003+10:00

Since the beginnings of the school holiday's I have been working on the Seven Sins workshop piece, which is coming along slowly, you'll just have to be patient and wait until she is finished.

Today I got out my fabric mover, I have a love hate relationship with this thing, love it when it does what I want, hate it when it doesn't live up to my expectations. Today it played nicely and I made a few leaves and little flower like forms that will go onto the Seven sins piece. Here they are, only a couple, I have a lot more to do and with other colours too. I have coated them in the powertex which I haven't used before and they are wonderfully hard. I will be using these on the base of my piece instead of the buttons, for those of you that have checked out this fabulous artwork by Marilyn, you will see what I mean.

Really need to work on my photography skill :(

Finished Phone and itouch covers

2008-09-23T19:28:00.002+10:00

Have finally got around to finishing the covers for my new phone and itouch that I started on that stormy Sunday afternoon, weeks ago now. I made some polymer beads to hang from them just to finish them off. I must admit, it's much easier to find my phone in my handbag when it starts ringing now it is in a nice bright cover!! We all know how annoying it is to go delving into your bag, looking for a ringing phone, only to have it stop the minute you find it. I also have to admit that I just love my itouch, not only does my music and all my contacts go everywhere with me, the world clock is great when you have children travelling over seas and the timer is always there for baking your clay, timing your dye pots and all sorts of things.

Arthur Rackham Inspirations

2008-09-18T16:16:00.004+10:00

I have always admire the work of Arthur Rackham, my Mum bought me a lovely book for my birthday "Arthur Rackham, A life with Illustration". The witches sitting in a tree with their black cat has always been a favourite. Now I know about polymer and apoxy sculpt and all the other wonderful materials available, I am thinking of doing a piece based on this work, once I have completed all the other pieces I have going, and get some time off school to do it, in other words some time in the distant future.

Here are a couple of pictures showing these amazing little witches sitting in twisted trees with their very scary looking cats. One day I might just surprise myself and see this idea actually accomplished

"The Gourd"

2008-08-16T13:32:00.006+10:00

Now you may wonder why I am so excited about a gourd! There are a couple of reasons, one being that I have never worked with a gourd before and the second that I have signed up for the Seven Deadly Sins workshop by Marilyn Radzat.

Years ago a friend gave me a gourd that was sitting idle on his garage roof drying out, I think I mentioned that in the UK I had never managed to get one to dry properly because of all the rain, so he gave me this one. I am not saying here it can't be done in the UK, just that I had never managed it, and Cornwall is renowned for being on the damp side. As I mentioned this was a long time ago and it sat out the back of the house drying and doing it's thing then going all those weird and wonderful colours that they do when the mould gets to them.

When I saw the Seven Deadly Sins workshop I just knew that "the gourd" was meant just for this purpose.

Now what do you do with them once you have them dried out and mouldy?, apparently clean them. Having no idea how to do this I did a google search and came up with this great youtube video that shows you exactly what to do. It really is easy and there's some strange satisfaction watching all that gunk come off to reveal a thing of beauty.

So here it is "The gourd"

The workshop starts in September and I can't wait to start transforming this into, hopefully a work of art. I will be trying to grow some of these beauties in the back yard when spring finally arrives.

Something from Nothing

2008-08-13T19:06:00.005+10:00

Sunday Afternoon Ramblings.

Sunday afternoon and still cold and windy, and I should be working on a quilt, but got the urge to get out some of the paints and angelina I bought for Christmas and haven't had a chance to play with yet. I have finally got myself a mobile phone and itouch, so fancy making some nice covers for them both. During the week I squared up the Chaos Theory quilt squares and ended up with a pile of scrapes that were just too nice to throw away. I used these scraps as the base of my mixed media piece fusing them to some timtex with vlisofix. I have a large tile on my worktable that I use for my clay work, but it also make a wonderful surface to take mono prints from. I used some lumiere paints and mica powders on the tile then took a print using a nappy liner. After patting down the liner I noticed I had a lovely glittery hand that look so nice. I rushed in to get the camera, noticing that there was a bit of a storm coming and the washing was out of course. Took me a while to work out how to take a picture of my own hand, need two for this, but then remembered the timer on the camera, all the while the sky is getting darker. After finally getting a picture of my hand, I laid a piece of calico on the tile and cleaned it up keeping my hand nice and flat, and like magic had a great print of my hand in all the lovely glittery blue paint.

Approaching weather, doesn't look much, but did it rain!! and just managed to get the photos taken of my dirty hand before it started

The camera doesn't pick up all the lovely colours.

Love this print and sure I'll use it in some future project

The mono print that started it all. didn't even use it for the piece I was planning to do. Again the camera hasn't picked up the colours very well.

The fabric strips have been stamped, covered with angelina and some shapes cut from silk rods added to the surface.

More angelina has been added and machine stitching done all over the surface. Photos to follow of the finished phone and itouch covers.

Christmas in July Workshop

2008-08-13T18:09:00.020+10:00

A few weeks ago the ladies came up to Main Creek for their annual Christmas in July Quilting Weekend. As you can see the weather was crisp and clear, with a lovely morning fog and the hint of a frost.

The resident ducks soon came out to enjoy a bit of morning sunshine.

And the girls were quickly sewing away on their quilting projects.

Some take it more seriously than others !

And here I am in my role as teacher, do you honestly think they listen too me!!

After a hard day of sewing, the girls come up for their Christmas dinner, dressed for the occasion and anticipating the arrival of Santa

Who never fails to arrive, growing slightly larger and this year a bit squarer round the middle.

Everyone is delighted with their gifts, and already planning for next years weekend of eating sewing and complete hilarity.

To book your own weekend retreat e mail for a brochure and visit Retreat2Maincreek to check for available dates

Sorry but Santa not supplied, you have to bring your own!!

WF Project

2008-08-13T17:53:00.004+10:00

I have joined a group project to complete a Wendy Froud inspired fairy. This will be my first attempt at a sculpture that is more realistic and I'm sure will be a challenge. After much thought, the character I would like this doll to take has become quite clear to me, I have collected some lovely silk fabric which I will hand dye and lots of beads and other embellishments, now i just have to find the time to complete her!!

After many many attempts, far more than I care to remember I finally have a head and torso done. The facial expression is very close to what I envisioned for this character, so hopefully she won't take off in a completely different direction. The neck is a bit long, but looking at the armature, so are her arm and legs, so hopefully this will give her a long and graceful figure

. t

Indigo Blues

2008-08-12T20:46:00.011+10:00

Karen and I have been dyeing with natural indigo for just over two years now. After many trials and tribulations, we have finally found a recipe and process that works for us and produces some lovely indigo fabrics which we have developed into quilt kits. We use a wide range of techniques to produce a variety of patterns and textures, using paste resist, traditional tying and shibori and clamping.

Applying paste in a hand drawn design

Applying paste with original batik wood blocks

Stitch resist, takes a lot of time and patients but produces lovely results, unfortunately I can't find the picture of this piece when it has been dyed. This picture does show you the stitching with the diagram.

A closer view of the stitches, the order and direction of the stitching is important to allow the fabric to be drawn up to create the resist.

This is a picture of 'the flower' that forms on the top of a healthy vat. This is our favourite vat and contains about 200 liters of indigo. The flower is removed before dyeing and the reduced indigo below is the colour of a good English larger.

Here you can see our very complex dipping devices!

The first shows fabric clamped between squares, only the edges are exposed to the dye giving a bold chequered finish. If you look closely at the second picture, you can just make out the hand drawn pattern beneath the dye.

And here are two quilts that have been completed at Main Creek Retreats, using our range of hand dyed indigo cottons

Play Day Canes

2008-08-01T19:18:00.009+10:00

Recently I went to a "Play Day" hosted by Wilma Simmons, our local accredited clay tutor. These are wonderful days where we all get to play with Wilma's extensive array of tools and resources and benefit from her expertise. I made these blue and white canes, being just a bit partial to blue. They were too large for jewellery and I'm not much of a jewellery wearer any way, so I decided to cover a box using the canes like mosaic tiles. I didn't want too many colours competing with the blue and white so used just gold clay to compliment them. I'm quite happy with the way the box turned out, and will get around to lining it soon with a piece of indigo shibori fabric. Wilma has a wonderful Etsy store.

Fishing Trip

2008-08-01T17:21:00.008+10:00

Last school holidays we headed north for a fishing trip to Lake Awonga and Cania Gorge Dam. With the recent rains both dams had risen and we were hoping for some good fishing. This trip turned out to be the best one yet, with fish feeding right in the shallows of the rising water. We fished surface poppers and fly for a whole week, right through the day and would go back to the cottage leaving fish still on the chew. The weather was perfect, and the fishing unbelievable, was very hard to pack up and go home.

Steve's big bass from Cania

The drive from Awonga to Cania through Many Peaks.

Another nice Bass from Cania

Fly fishing in perfect conditions at Cania

Yes, another Cania bass

Saratoga caught on Steve's own fly pattern

View of Cania from the lookout.

Looking over the dam wall.

Looking through the quarry, the water hasn't been this high for years!!

Evening on Lake Awonga

Perfect conditions at Lake Awonga

An amazing sky on the drive home.

Clay Beginnings

2008-08-01T16:30:00.003+10:00

After attending a demonstration at my doll club on Polymer clay, I have become fascinated with this product, and bought myself some clay and books in my xmas goodie package. I then got myself a copy of Mareen Carlsons book Fairies, Gnomes & Trolls: Create a Fantasy World in Polymer Clay and just had to try a troll. This was a huge learning experience for me and like most things, I couldn't stick to the directions in the book and he took off in a slightly different direction. We were having lots of very wet weather at the time and I think this influenced me greatly in the end result. He went through a hard time, getting a burnt belly and breaking his legs off more times than I like to remember, but I'm very happy with the way he turned out. The finishing touch will be some lovely fat raindrops sliding down his umbrella. I was extremely proud and honoured when he was featured on the home page of my favourite yahoo group Beginners Polymer Clay Art Group

A good start to the year.

2008-07-23T08:18:00.000+10:00

Only half way through January and I have actually finished something!! well I did promise it as a birthday present for a friend, so had to get it done. This is the first time I have used doe suede type fabric, part of my xmas goodie parcel, along with the CD to make this little darling. It's so lovely to work with and sculpts really well. I used teddy bear eyes for this one, the ones with the loops on the back as they can be pulled nice and tight through the head to really set the eyes into the face. The lovely green hair is a piece I bought in the fly fishing section at the local fishing shop and she has lovely matching earring and anklet made from bits of jewellery I have collected over the years.

With all the new 'stuff' I now have, finding room for it was nightmare. I have had a good clean up and bought some nifty little plastic draws and boxes in bright colours to store everything away. I just know that for the next few weeks I will be looking for 'stuff' I have tided up and have no idea where it's new spot is.

Well after all the waiting, here is the contents of my parcel that I received in mid December and put away until Christmas morning, how good am I!!!

With all these new goodies, I should have a very productive holiday. Let's see how many of the ideas I have swimming around in my head will actually come to fruition.