completely cactus

bums on seats

2007-08-09T17:18:00.001+08:00

there's all sorts of upheaval here at the moment. I've been talking to gas people, electrical people, wall people, furniture people...

Our old club lounge was slowly sinking to the ground so i advertised it in the paper thinking no-one would want it. Well it sold and i immediately regretted it because i loved that old lounge. Then i bought a new one and i was lucky because they had the exact one i ordered actually in stock so there was no 3mth wait for delivery (which is apparently what happens when you buy a sofa). When it came though it wasn't the one i ordered but a bigger one which has completely scuppered my plans for moving it into the 'sunroom bit' when that's built. So now i don't know whether to send it back and get the size i want made up (3mth wait) or to keep it and learn to live with the size of it (it's fecking huge) or whether i even like it at all - it's so new. And big. And 'contemporary'.

And as you can see from the middle photo the guy who bought the old lounge suite hasn't picked it up so we're in a turmoil furniture.

hello, where've you been?

2007-07-25T10:32:00.001+08:00

Phew, that's another school holidays over with.

We had sleep-overs, friends over, the movies, the museum, swim parties, playdates, the library, shopping expeditions and rollerskating at the Rollerdrome where i almost shattered my kneecaps.

I'm not sure which is harder - making lunches, getting them to school and tackling homework , music practice and the bath every day or trying to stop them from killing each other during the holidays. Of the 13 hours a day they're together they get along really well for about 9, which is great but there's always that other 4 hours. *Shiver*

And my old cat who's about 18, flatly refuses to go outside any more for anything and she's a bit too old to learn new tricks. So she steps into a kitty litter tray but doesn't realise her arse is hanging right off the back and poops and wees all over the floor. Every night. But at least she steps into it now - she used to squat next to it.

Last weekend i was making a stuff for friends who've had a baby and my six year old decided to make one too. She designed and cut out the shapes, stuffed and sewed up the stuffing hole and cut out a face. I sewed on the face and added the hair for her but i think her stuff is a winner.

illness, death and destruction

2007-07-06T09:38:00.000+08:00

it's been a week of mini catastrophes. My little one's just recovered from viral bronchitis and the wind's been a howling gale setting my nerves all a jitter.

A few streets from us lives an old italian couple who, over the last 45 years, have cultivated one of those typical old italian couple gardens. Full of amazing and unusual succulents that grow to triffid sized proportions. I walk past it every day and always stop to marvel. There's the Tractor Seat Plant whose leaves are the size and shape of - yep - a tractor seat and the Kalanchoe Felt Bush with giant stiff velvety leaves. There's a cactus that stands twice as high as the house with a trunk two foot in diameter and branches that weave and curve in all sorts of crazy directions in the sky and directly underneath that is a perfect Dracaena Draco which is one of my all time favourite trees. You can probably see where this is going, especially when i say there were all these wonderful things - on Sunday night the mighty wind ripped the cactus out of the ground and it crashed down crushing everything under it. The beautiful Dragon Tree is decimated and the old man was telling me that last year someone knocked on their door and offered them $10 000 (i'll put that in words - ten thousand dollars!) for it but they weren't interested in selling it.

Anyway, they kindly let me take what i could of the draco because they'd called rubbish removalists and it was all just going to be cleared away. Most of it was underneath the cactus and impossible to get to but i did manage to salvage a few stem cuttings which are about as big as me. I've got no idea if i'll be able to get them to strike, i don't think it's easy - they're prone to rotting. If anyone's got any tips let me know.

And finally this week, we woke up this morning to find our guinea pigs dead and gone. One's dead, the other's gone presumed dead and the big heavy cage had been knocked around and the wire rolled up. The incriminating evidence at the scene suggests a black and white cat (which is often in our garden) but how the fuck a cat can roll up chicken wire and have the strength to move a box that big and heavy i guess we'll never know.

Maisy and Popcorn we'll miss you.

winterblooms

2007-06-27T15:43:00.000+08:00

Not much happening around here lately. I had to go for a brain scan which was a novelty and now i've got one of those amazing sets of images of cross-section shots of my brain which is at least proof i've got one. Nothing else was revealed though so the mysterious visual effects (like an amoeba crawling across my field of view) followed by a two-day headache go unexplained. Most likely a migraine i think but i've never had one before in all my 44 years and hardly ever even get regular headaches. Still i'll happily suffer a migraine if it means i'm not having a stroke.

It's well and truly winter here now and this is when my garden starts flowering. I've had aeoniums for years because they're indestructable and the first time i saw one in flower in someone else's garden i was really
surprised. Who'da thought it? Well after growing them for over ten years one of mine has finally produced its huge yellow conical flowerhead and it's a marvel. They must need to be a respectable age to flower - mine all grew from cuttings but i've noticed they're back in vogue because even the garden centres are stocking (and charging crazy prices for) them. Fashion is a drag but at least it'll mean people will be keen to buy them at the fete.

seastuff

2007-06-14T16:36:00.000+08:00

last weekend i flew an hour and a half north of this winter afflicted town and entered a parallel universe. Same state, different flora, different fauna, different colours. There was turquoise, aqua and a gazillion shades of white. Snorkelling, we saw angel fish, parrot fish, butterfly fish, rays, seasnakes, big coral bombies, sponges, urchins, anemonies, a huge octopus and so much more!

We were out for about an hour in the darkish patches at the back of this photo then we came in for something to eat and a beachcomb. About 5 minutes after this photo was taken this guy below cruised past in about 2 feet of water. And he wasn't a reef shark, he was big! About 2 metres long! And Fast!

After that i was happy to just sit on the beach.

There are more blue and white photos here.

filums

2007-06-07T14:19:00.000+08:00

I was pleasantly surprised by three wild cards from the video store last weekend. First up we watched Tarnation - Jonathan Caouette's doco of spliced together super-8 film, video, short art school movies and other bits of memorabilia stored up from throughout his life. All these remnants come together to paint a bleak picture of dysfunctional family life. This movie's been criticised for being self-indulgent but seriously - what movie isn't, and at least it was made on a budget of a couple of hundred dollars rather than several million. One critic's complaint was that 'the filmmaker makes little attempt to comment or find meaning' and to that i say 'thanks filmmaker - i prefer to find my own meaning (if there is any ultimate meaning to life's labyrinth)'.

I prefer these types of small personal stories anyway. Head On was a German movie about two Turkish immigrants who meet in a mental institution. It's about Turkish culture in German society and the different forms it takes. At first i thought this movie was straying dangerously close to romantic comedy but Fatih Akin the director is likened to R. W. Fassbinder on the jacket and the film accordingly packs a realistic, painful punch.

The third movie we watched was 21 grams and while i didn't like it as much as Amores Perros, the director Iñarritu's earlier film (and one of my favourites), i didn't think it was at all bad. The chopped up timeline is becoming a pretty popular device but i guess this film is 4 years old. Mr M opined that the mangled timeline was used because the story wasn't much chop on its own but i don't think a riveting storyline is necessary to make a good film (Mike Leigh's Naked is another of my all-time favourites and not much happens at all). I don't think movies are about telling stories but about how you tell the story so while this particular story was very uncomfortable viewing for me (a woman loses her husband and two daughters in a car accident) i thought the telling was worth watching.

I'm flying up to Exmouth tomorrow for a weekend of sun, surf and snorkelling (gulp) with Mr M, who's already there. It will be the first time i've ever spent more than one night away from the girls. See you when i get back.

the sleep files

2007-06-04T09:55:00.001+08:00

when you have your first baby you think they're a clean slate but you soon realise they come hard-wired with all sorts of likes and dislikes and preferences that have nothing to do with you. My first daughter wouldn't sleep unless she was on me until she was 6 months old. By then she was rolling over and the first time i managed to get her to sleep in her cot she'd flipped onto her belly and i patted her to sleep like that, full of anxiety because of all the sids warnings about putting babies to sleep on their back. She didn't sleep through the night until she was one and even then she woke at 5 o'clock every morning to start her day. She had two twenty minute naps a day, on her belly, until she was 2 and then gave them up all together. I was a wreck and figured it was all my fault somehow.
She's eight now and reads in bed until nine every night and gets up at six. And she still sleeps face down.

My second daughter saved my sanity and self-respect by sleeping like a dream, but at about 6 months she took to hugging a cot sheet when she slept. When she was about one she discovered all the extra pieces of the sheet i'd torn into hugging sizes in case she lost one and started sleeping with all of them. For the last five years she's gone to bed with an enormous bundle of ever disintegrating rags she calls her huggies. This is what excessive hugging can do to a piece of flannelette.

And this one sleeps when and wherever she likes.

another day

2007-05-27T11:40:00.001+08:00

Mr M got all excited last weekend and went out and bought a 2m wide retractable movie screen so that we could watch the FA cup final with a data projector borrowed from work. The game was terrifically boring and became known as the Sweet FA cup. The screen was a great success though, especially with the chillun.

Unfortunately the second time we used it we made a movie choice mistake and ended up sitting through a pile of poo billed on the cover as "the best rock and roll movie ever". Well i guess it could be, if you're 12 and the only other 'rock and roll' movie you've seen is 'Hilary Duff - All Access Pass'. Then again, i hated Amelie so don't take my word for it.

The six year old got her hands on the camera and decided she needed to catalogue every one of her Littlest Pets. Where do they get these ideas from? (She didn't photoshop them into a mosaic though, ehem, i did that)

musings

2007-05-17T10:25:00.000+08:00

well that's sorted - it was just a matter of disconnecting the keyboard from the computer and plugging it back in again. Very technical, and now i'm back where i started with no caps lock.

Running around the lake this morning, relieved to see it finally full of water and birds again instead of doing it's impression of a desert, i randomly chose an album to listen to on the ipod. It was Mermaid Avenue - Billy Bragg and Wilco singing songs written by Woody Guthrie probably in the nineteen forties or fifties. These are the songs that Woody, when he was dying in hospital in the late sixties, offered to Bob Dylan telling him to go and find them in the basement of his house in Coney Island. BD made the trip out there but because he didn't find Woody's wife there only a babysitter he left without searching the basement and forty years later the songs fell into the hands of Billy Bragg. Woody had a way with words and i can't even imagine what beautiful songs Bob would have made of them but still, i like this album and Billy Bragg singing (sans cockney accent) Walt Whitman's Niece and Way Over Yonder in the Minor Key are a couple of my favourites.

When i got home there was a package and it was a prize for my bone picture
for whiplash. Thanks Kath lots of fun stuff to make in there.

OH GREAT!

2007-05-12T17:24:00.000+08:00

MANY MONTHS AGO I SPILT A SPLOSH OF COFFEE ONTO MY KEYBOARD AND KILLED SOME KEYS. SINCE THEN I'VE HAD NO SHIFT OR CONTROL ON THE LEFT HAND SIDE WHICH MADE TYPING FIDDLEY BUT MANAGEABLE BECAUSE THE SAME KEYS EXIST ON THE RIGHT SIDE. I ALSO HAD NO CAPS LOCK WHICH ISN'T ALSO ON THE LEFT BUT WASN'T A BIG DEAL.

BUT... I JUST PRESSED CAPS LOCK FOR SOMETHING - FORGETTING THAT IT DOESN'T WORK AND... IT WORKED! AND NOW I CAN'T GET THE STINKIN' THING TO GO OFF.

LOOKS LIKE I'M GOING TO BE PERMANENTLY SHOUTING OR I'M UP FOR A NEW KEYBOARD.

plodding on

2007-05-12T14:22:00.000+08:00

I've been pretty busy lately with many and varied pursuits. I've been chasing around after a builder or company who'll add a kind of glass/alfresco/conservatory type room to the front of our house extending out into the garden. Didn't realise it was so hard to get people to do stuff but i think i've finally pinned someone down who understands what i'm on about.

I've also decided that i need to learn website design so that i can set up a site to show the graphic/conceptual drawing type work i do. I've been producing lots of scientific/enviromental diagrams for Mark's environmental consultancy and he reckons if other companies and agencies knew i did them, i'd be inundated with work. Not sure if that's right (he's a pretty optimistic guy) but i reckon it's worth finding out and if i don't get that kind of work i can always design websites with my new skills. I'm not sure how i'm going to go about it yet - sign up for a crash course or teach myself - but i've started trying to find my way around Dreamweaver and getting a handle on html. Mark seems to think that the all the technobabble is going to completely bamboozle me (it's not my strong point) so i've got something to prove and it's about time i learnt something new again.

Another of my pastimes at the mo is potting up plants. I've offered to run the garden stall at our school fete this year and although it's still 6 months away! i know if i don't start now the stall will be an embarrassing failure. Last fete the plant stall, which i did a lot of work for but didn't run, made over two grand so i've got a big job to do. I'm pillaging my garden and anyone else's who'll let me.

Today i potted a couple of banana pups which i dug up but i've got no idea if they'll take or not because they came away without any roots at all. I love these kind of experiments though.

browntown

2007-05-07T14:38:00.000+08:00

butternuts!

2007-05-03T14:04:00.000+08:00

Whenever there isn't a lot going on around here like now (well there's a bit going on - home renos and i'm doing some work and getting paid for it woohoo!) i tend to talk about the garden. I'll never get sick of it even though the same events happen year after year. We've finally had some rain here in Perth so everything's looking great in this window between deathly heat and being completely covered in a solid blanket of fallen leaves. This is the one pumpkin i managed to grow this year with seeds saved from a much bigger harvest a few years ago.

Back then i had a lot more space to sew pumps but now i've planted most of the garden out so this plant is winding its way between the trees and shrubs. I can watch the progress of the pumpkin through my kitchen window but i know when the time comes i'll hardly be able to bring myself to eat such a beautiful thing. As you can see they're a gigantic variety of butternut and even taste great too.

we are returned

2007-04-23T16:09:00.000+08:00

actually Dunsborough isn't glorious at all. In fact it's a dump - the town planning is all over the shop and overdevelopment's rampant. And if you're silly or desperate enough to wander into town all you'll find is Coles and carparks as this sleepy surf hamlet grows to accommodate city millionaires who use their holiday mansions a few weeks a year. Even the endless luxury resort apartments seemed mostly to be empty and it's not really surprising - there's absolutely nowhere to eat out in town. What self - respecting millionaire wants to cook on holiday?

The old part of the town still has its charm though - this is the cottage we stay in and the view from the front room - we saw dolphins from the lounge room a couple of times. The bay is shallow and perfect for kids and the natural beauty is beautiful (naturally).

but this is very close and getting closer every year.
This is one of the beaches you pass on a walk along the headland. I walked a 10 kilometre round trip most days through blackboy scrub and banksia groves and i'll never get over how nature can produce such spectacular masterpieces that aren't even for our benefit.

The highlight or our week though, apart from dinners with friends were the caves. This one below was fully lit and boardwalked and like walking into a natural shrine or temple. I couldn't stop thinking about the guy who discovered it a hundred years ago and first entered with ropes and candles. The main chamber (they called the amphitheatre) 35 metres below ground was enough to make you believe in a god.

The other cave was a completely different experience. It was a self-guided, unlit, un boardwalked adventure. We went in alone carrying our own torches (and the kids got to wear headlamps) and descended 83 metres into the ground down rocky steps and over rocks steadying ourselves with ropes and chains. At times we had to climb ladders into tiny chambers then use other ladders to climb out of them into new spaces. At one point in an enormous cavity they call the ballroom we all switched off our torches. The light faded for a millisecond before Romany quickly turned hers back on. I don't blame her. The cave covered 800 metres underground and we were all sweating when we finally scrambled up the last boulders to the surface. It was a blast.

We came back Saturday and got ourselves organised for Rom's 6th birthday party on Sunday which we all survived. Today it was back to school and because it's my birthday i'm neglecting all my usual monday chores - food shopping, washing, putting away and just taking it easy. Back to the millstone tomorrow.

chesty bonds

2007-04-12T09:07:00.000+08:00

i drew these little figures for toy shapes and when i came back to them later i found my daughter had added some extra features. Those cute little faces have just got to find their way onto something.

i've been jazzing up some of my old t shirts lately by stitching silhouettes on them of things i fancy - bullsheads and cactuses mainly - and now i think each one of those critters is going to end up on my chest too.

we're off down south tomorrow to glorious Dunsborough for a week in a beach shack (a very comfortable, cozy beach shack). I'm worried about the cat and the garden and the guinea pigs and the fish and the drive but i'm sure i'll manage to enjoy myself somehow.

happy feaster

2007-04-08T08:12:00.000+08:00

I've been spending a lot of time awake lately in the small hours stressing and fretting about my shortcomings. I know i'm not the most useless person to walk the planet, i have some minor talents and a few learned skills but i can't help feeling there's so much more i should be doing. I'm struggling a bit under a weight of guilt and underachievement.

I know i should organise lot more physical activities with my girls, bike riding, rollerskating, swimming, scootering, and then there's educational games - board games, cards, maths websites instead of barbie websites - should i be a lot more active in that too?

There are things i would like to be doing for myself too - mastering guitar, drawing more, learning to surf, playing chess, using my languages, finding more work - and although i've never subscribed to the 'you can be whatever you want to be' school of thought (the human psyche is complex and less under our control than we realise) - i would at least like to do the things i like to do.

Yesterday, i found an old horoscope i'd torn out of the West Australian a few months ago because it obviously resonated with me. It still does and it's strangely cheering:

"There is a chasm between what you desire and whether you can achieve it. In principle you have some good ideas but in practice they might be rather wishy-washy. Be creative but not overly ambitious."

I find it rather comforting to be told to accept lack of achievement - it's almost buddhist, i think this might become my mantra.
Happy Choc Fest all!

blooming bromeliads!

2007-04-01T16:31:00.000+08:00

This beautiful plant is a species of aechmea - i don't know its full name but it's also known as the Torch Bromeliad. I bought my first one about a decade ago at a Swap Meet and i think it was my first bromeliad, i didn't even know what i'd bought at the time i just liked the foliage for a couple of dollars. Then it sat neglected for a few years not doing much until one day it decided to stun us with its spectacular flowers.

Each plant only flowers once then slowly dies, but while it's going it produces new plants called pups so that eventually the whole pot becomes full and you can start to pot them up into new pots. It's a never-ending supply. The pups take a few years to flower but because i've got so many now there are plants flowering every year. A few months ago i potted up 3 fully grown pups - you just cut them off the parent plant without roots or anything and stick them in a new pot. One flowered a month later and i brought it into the house to enjoy the flower. The flowers don't last long - a couple of weeks - but when it had finished the next one went into flower so i brought that inside. Then after that one, the last one obligingly flowered so i've had the flowers in the house for a month and a half. I have various clumps around the garden too which are also flowering - all from that one original plant. That's why i love bromeliads.

Cactus Salvage Inc.

2007-03-26T20:08:00.000+08:00

Things have been pretty interesting around here for the last couple of weeks because the Great Six Monthly Council Verge Collection has just wound up. Fondly referred to by locals as 'bring out yer dead', it's a great time of year to meet your neighbours and rummage through their junk. It's also a good time to get rid of stuff you've been too lazy to give to charity because you can be sure anything you leave out that's not complete rubbish will be picked up by somebody who can use it. I think it's a great tradition.

I found old cases and bags, vintage fabric, antique scales and pressed wildflowers and i'm still trying to find places to put everything. As much as i get a thrill out of this treasure hunting sometimes i wonder what's going to happen to all this crap i collect when i'm gorn. I suppose it'll all end up in one massive pile on the verge and hopefully give someone else a thrill.

time out

2007-03-21T13:14:00.000+09:00

on saturday night Mr M and I were invited to a couple of parties so we arranged for the girls to have a sleepover at the grandies. A perfect opportunity to drink too much, stay out 'til all hours and sleep in as long as we wanted, i thought. Mr M had a different idea though, he thought it was the perfect opportunity to get up early on Sunday, drive north for two hours to Lancelin - the land of the long white dune - and spend several hours in the surf trying to stand up on a plank (or in his case, effortlessly standing up on a plank).

and these pictures tell the story really. What a great morning, perfect surf rolling in in three tiers - beginners waves up the front for the likes of me, another line behind and big waves right out the back for the real surfers. Sand dunes like snow fields, kangaroos and a crazy half hour drive on a pure white corrugated twisted sand track to reach the beach - not something you do every day.

This time i stood up at least a dozen times and once i even managed to stay on my feet for a whole 2 seconds! whoohoo get me back there.

on the beach

2007-03-14T11:36:00.000+09:00

on sunday we headed down to the beach to check out the sculpture exhibition. In some ways i think art on the beach is a redundant concept, especially in Perth where the beaches are dazzling and enough stimulation for body and soul on their own, but on the other hand you couldn't have a more stunning backdrop for some of these things. And sometimes the work becomes art because it's placed on the beach. A few years ago there was a huge stack of old suitcases that wouldn't have looked out of place in a warehouse or airport but looked spectacular half buried in the sand at the beach (but then, i am an old suitcase nut).

My only beef about the exhibition was with the over application of do not touch signs. I'm sorry but if you're going to take over such a public space then you can't expect people not to touch - surely that's the nature of sculpture. And the beach is not the place for anything too precious or fragile for kids to explore so lay off with the grumpy signage.

After the beach we made banana muffins and banana fritters and hardly made a dent in the banana bunch.

bananarama

2007-03-09T11:14:00.000+09:00

the verdict is in on our home grown bananas. We've waited 5 and a half months since the first enormous purple bract peeled up and revealed a row of tiny fruit and we thought they'd never ripen. We cut one hand off while it was still green and ripened them in a bag with an already ripe banana and i can happily report that they're riquisimas!

Not knowing what type of banana it was i thought they could have been the tasteless cooking variety but no, they're sweet with a nice tang. We had six or seven hands of 10 bananas each in the bunch and now they're starting to yellow up on the plant.

the lime tree is also burgeoning so it could be banana splits and cuban cocktails this weekend. (but probably not)

charity case

2007-03-04T09:01:00.000+09:00

A few years ago a mum at school i'd never actually spoken to asked me out of the blue if i had a sewing machine and if so would i like a bunch of fabric she was clearing out of her recently departed grandmother's house. Of course i said yep and yep and when she gave it to me it was an amazing collection of 50s and 60s vintage (and that awesome bag that you can see in this picture). This sort of thing happens to me a lot and i like to think it's because people realise that i'm going to appreciate their old stuff more than anybody else. Mr M reckons it's just because people feel sorry for me.

Anyway this is what i made this week, my favourite style skirt and a matching stuff.

big day out

2007-02-26T14:10:00.000+09:00

It's just taken me over an hour to log in to the new version of blogger and i've got no idea how i finally got through. Sheesh

Anyway, compared with our usual pretty predictable weekends, yesterday was a sensory overload. We've had a friend staying with us for the week so we took advantage of the live in babysitting and left Mr Moon with the girls (to play the straight guy for 500 knock knock jokes) and Mr M dragged me down to the beach for a surfing lesson on his new mal. I'm still floundering in the wash but did manage to get on my feet for a millisecond a couple of times.

Then after lunch we headed off en familia to see Circus Oz down on the foreshore. Their anarchic, punk, tattooed butch dyke antics were spectacular and reminded me of my years spent living in Sydney. We don't have too many of them types here in Perth, sadly. They're funny, and political in the personal kind of way and really, really athletic. We all loved it - from the grandies to the smallies.

After that we went to our local food court for dinner where i had Tom Yum Soup, Mr M had a curry, Rom had sushi and Bonny a chicken bento box. And with all tastes satisfied we went home and ate our first home-grown mango. It was one of only four that the tree produced but it was a whopper!

Then after that, my sister came to babysit and us three adults went to see A BAND! The Handsome Family, from Alberquerque, played their slightly eccentric, gothic country folk for a couple of hours on the outdoor stage of Beck's Verandah and were really, really great. Then a local band Schvendes took over the set and were really, really, really great.

All in all a day of wonderful experiences and i even slept well.

dem bones, dem bones

2007-02-08T12:09:00.000+09:00

i've long been keen on bones. I used to make myself jewellery from little whitewashed bones i found on the beach and bone mobiles from bushwalks. Femurs, hips and jawbones complete with teeth dangle all over our garden and the bookshelves are loaded with bird, quokka and turtle skulls.

When i discovered osso buco a few years ago, it became one of our winter staples and i amassed a huge supply of those fantastic chunks of smooth white bone because i'm also notorious for not chucking anything away (well chicken carcases and chop bones usually find their way to the bin if the girls don't salvage bits first).

Anyway what i'm getting at is that whiplash has inspired me to get all those bones off the kitchen bench and on to the wall.

Haven't decided where to hang it yet but i think it has to go somewhere near this congan mask.

I'm not sure whether this would be considered a normal use of weird household waste or a creative use of normal household waste but i think i'll plug for the weirdest waste category.

out, out damn concrete!

2007-02-07T17:29:00.000+09:00

When we moved into our house nearly four years ago the garden was basically four or five hundred square metres of concrete. It was built in the '60s by an italian grano worker who needed somewhere to park a truck. Hence this industrial size driveway that extended all the way to the back fence.

It was a labour of love and pure bloody-mindedness, but now it looks like this..

and this..

and this!

The most recent owner had covered the entire front yard with slabs leaving three trees floundering in a sea of concrete. We ripped the lot up (not the trees) and now it looks like this...

and at the right time of day, like this.

It's really flourished, all except for the ivy which i'm trying to get to cover the ugly house and which hasn't grown a leaf in two years! (And there were the mysterious deaths of several natives but we don't talk about them).

what we did

2007-02-06T13:11:00.000+09:00

went to a rugby match for the first time ever this weekend (complimentary tickets) and after watching the Western Force bungle their way to a 7-8 loss by doing absolutely nothing, i don't think rugby will be taking up a lot of my time. Luckily the beautiful sky held my rapt attention for the 90 minutes and the misery of the Force supporters was quite touching so it was time well spent.

On Sunday we spent more pleasant hours at the Freo Arts Centre while John Bannister sang and played his trumpet. And during the rest of the weekend i made these Valentines Day cards to enter into the Craftzine recycled Valentines Day Card Contest.

Why is it so?

2007-02-01T16:14:00.000+09:00

kids 'ey...
what planet are they from?

Uranus, i suppose, given the hillarity invoked by bums, poos and farts in our house. But that doesn't explain how my two Uranians can be so different. One would live her entire life eating nothing but white bread, yellow cheese and the fat off chops. The other wants chick pea salad please mummy with tomatoes, celery, cucumber and don't forget the red capsicum. And can i have some rye bread with hommous too? Weird. They cannot agree on one single foodstuff - whatever one loves sends the other into a paroxysm. Want some icecream? NO! You know i hate icecream i want a bowl of gherkins! huh?

And why is it that one cannot be at home and within minutes of waking up wants to know where we're going and what we're doing that day and who we're doing it with and here's the phone mum, ring someone up. Then revels cheerfully in the outing while the other one is mightilly pissed off at being dragged away from happy solitary playing in imaginary worlds at home - i hate the beach! Don't ever bring me here again!

What can you do hey? We're completely stuffed really and if it weren't so funny (as black comedy of course) it'd have us weeping into our beer.

Hmm beer ... there's a thought.

plasticland

2007-01-16T21:29:00.000+09:00

it's been, what, three weeks now since christmas and our lounge room still looks like this.

even with a bedroom each and a playroom (which all look like this too), the lounge room STILL LOOKS LIKE THIS.

can't think straight.... can't write...

guinea pigs are cute

2007-01-07T16:54:00.000+09:00

and funny and incredibly dumb. They forget who you are the second the celery or carrot drops from your hand. And do they not have the most comical bottom lip you've ever seen on an animal?

2007!

2007-01-01T18:58:00.000+09:00

Some years i design a family christmas card, like this one, to give to all and sundry and lazer print them out in bulk. But other years i'm just too idle.

This year i hadn't done anything but decided we needed a few cards to give out to the grandmas and distant aunts. Earlier this year my daughter was given a flower pressing gizmo for her birthday and i've been gleefully flattening anything that bloomed in the garden. I love unusual plants and flowers so here are my cards featuring strange and exotic hybrids that i would love to see growing in my back yard.

I'm going to enter these in Whiplash in the decoration category (or should they be gifts? - dunno) but i'm having trouble with the whiplash badge which is not appearing. Aah well, never mind, happy new year to yerall.

Ah there it is - but i had to cut and paste from one of my old posts. Hmm another of life's mysyeries.

bullshirt

2006-12-27T16:13:00.000+09:00

In the last few months i haven't been up to much making but lately i've had a minor productive flurry. I made a new toy for stuffaduck which should appeal to anyone who's been looking for a surfin' hammerhead bear...

...and designed a bunch of promotional christmas stubby holders for Mark's company who are ocean environment specialists, because it's impossible to separate beer and the environment...

and finally i added a fluffy bull's head to one of my old bond's t shirts (why not? - i'm in a bovine mood)

isla de encanta

2006-12-18T16:54:00.000+09:00

On Friday we went to magical Penguin Island for a christmas party. It surely must be the enchanting island that the pixies sang about. Bird life nesting under your nose, foot-long king's skinks trying to nick your turkey and of all things ... penguins!

garden update

2006-11-29T16:52:00.000+08:00

such beautiful things are unfolding in the garden at the moment. Even though we are in the throes of a 'thousand year drought' and only allowed to water every three days the succulents, natives and bromeliads are laughing.

And that's your blooming lot.

cow neck

2006-11-16T17:49:00.000+08:00

I've been thinking over the last few days about something to post for this month's Whiplash comp. The 'alt craft' theme is tricky because really what qualifies as alternative these days when you can buy 'Ugly Dolls' in K Mart and fab eyeball marbles in a gift shop in Snape in the uk and then you pop over to Walberswick for some hag stones...(sorry, can't stop going on about my holiday).

So yeh, the boundaries are pretty blurred and for me the word 'alternative' was forever tainted in the early eighties when a bloke i shared a house with liked to refer to his trendy New Wave mates as 'my alternative friends'. I used to imagine they were his spare set in case the original ones couldn't come out to play.

But i have decided to post something and as this is the only thing i've made this month, this is it.

Thanks to the girls for letting me plunder their toy boxes and now the question is not whether it's alternative but whether it's craft. And as there's no 'Silly Idea' category and no skill involved this is entered in the design section.

high heel hell

2006-11-15T13:11:00.000+08:00

Having your chillun both at full-time school is a bit like being back at school yourself. All those hundreds of other parents to negotiate means there are the same gossips and bullies and cool crowd that you're never quite part of as there were at high school. Sometimes it freaks me out to be honest, although one on one, they're all good folk so on Friday night we fronted up for the School Dance.

The theme 'Op Shop Glam' was great. Normally i don't like theme parties but this one was made for me - well, apart from the glam bit. I already had plenty of op shop frocks to choose from though and bought a pair of platform boots from St Vinnies for a buck. I hadn't worn this dress since before i had kids.

It was a lot of fun, the band was great and the sea of froufy taffeta frocks was a sight to behold.

My feet took four days to recover - now i know why the boots were in St Vinnies.

recuerdos

2006-11-07T14:04:00.000+08:00

Great Yarmouth is one of the Great Bastions of Tack in the uk. A seaside town with a bingo hall on the pier, a never ending mall of tacky souvenir shops down the middle and dozens of money-sucking games parlours all along the sea front. We were agog at the wonder of it.

So now we have this Great Box of 'funny teeth' to remind us of all the fantastic things we saw and did in England.

In the north of Spain, though, it was different, i couldn't find any of the great kitch junk that fills the souvenir shops of Madrid. Eventually i realised why there were no 3D flamenco postcards or fans or fake castanets - the Basque don't consider themselves to be Spanish.

Unfortunately the basque souvenirs were a bit ordinary but these chocolate sardines cheered me up. And finally, at the airport duty free as we left, i found this fab bum-pouring bull bottle which - even better - is full of sangria.

back

2006-10-31T16:52:00.000+08:00

oh it's hard to be back in the real world even after a mere month of floating free. We've stayed in seven different towns, visited another nine and seen 40 odd family and friends including 19 kids. Here are just some of the place names we passed driving around England.

In England we ran the gamut of the class system and were shocked by wealthy boarding schools and the young age kids are shipped off to them, CHAVS (council house and violent), people smoking in restaurants, speeding drivers, gangs of L plate motorbike riders racing each other in traffic and nettles!
And we were awed and thrilled by thatched cottages, 1000 year old castles and accidentally spotting stonehenge in the middle of a paddock as we hacked along the M5.

In Spain we were shocked to discover that even an international company like Europcar shuts from 1 to 4 in the afternoon for siesta and if you want to drop off a car at 1.15 you just can't. You have to park illegally and hang out in bars and cafes for 3 hours until they open.
Also we found that the Guggenheim is great and the playground outside it is even better.

anxious

2006-09-17T14:48:00.001+08:00

It's only a week until we put our lives in the hands of the pilot of flight QF 71 to London. I never used to think about flying like that but there you go, becoming a mum has made me fearful and irrational.
A few of my other fears (some with very solid foundation) are:

a) that we're leaving the house flea ridden for our house-sitter. We treated the cat recently so the fleas have taken up residency in every part of the house that isn't the cat

b) that when we arrive in the uk it'll be 5am but 1pm for us. For their usual bedtime of 8pm the kids will have to go to bed around 12 noon. I can't see it happening

c) that we've all got worms

d) that we'll get stuffed nicked (never travelled with so many gadgets before) and

e) that we'll forget something vital we already own and have to buy another one (don't like unneccessary consumption).

And as proof (as if i need it) of how set in my ways i've become i'm taking a packet of my favourite coffee in my luggage - organic fairtrade decaf ( i know i'm a wanker but it's the only stuff i can handle these days).

So, off we go - see yers when we get back.

In the meantime here are some shots through our windows.

flat blooms

2006-09-06T14:07:00.000+08:00

One of the presents Bon got for her birthday was a microwave flower pressing contraption which i've been having a ball with. This is her composition of a bunch of flowers we flattened. Ain't it pretty.

buncha bananas

2006-08-31T13:53:00.000+08:00

I always get a thrill when something new happens in the garden but this is a highlight. We've got bananas!!
And at 15 bucks a kilo in the shops at the moment (courtesy of cyclone Someone), we'll be RICH.
yaah ha ha haaa.

deprived child

2006-08-28T07:31:00.000+08:00

This weekend we celebrated Bon's birthday with dinner out on Friday night, a big family lunch at home on Saturday and by taking 12 kids to Scitech and the Panetarium on Sunday. Man, i'm glad that's over - those family lunches can be so unruly...

...and of the five thousand presents bon received, this was her favourite.

happy bird day

2006-08-25T17:26:00.000+08:00

I don't know, you leave a five year old alone for five minutes with some sticky tape and some toothpicks and some (ever abundant) wine corks and look what mischief she gets up to!
Too cute really

And today is big birthday number 8 for Beautiful Bonny B.B. Yes eight! How did that happen?
This weekend is all hers.

But last weekend we did all the dumb things. We drank, we smoked and we partied like it was 1979.

proof the letterbox works

2006-08-18T16:12:00.000+08:00

phwoah check it out wouldyer! I won a prize - something real that came out of cyberspace and landed in my letterbox.
And here it is. I'm chuffed.

and the other thing that's got me excited is this chair that i found on someone's verge. The base had colapsed and it sat at a precarious angle but i'm a sucker for that pearly green vinyl so i dragged it home hoping we would find another base to sit the chair on. Then Mr M had the genius notion of straightening it and filling the base with cement so now it's in the study getting cosy with the computer and the sewing machine - but not really getting moved around too much 'cause it weighs a ton.

earthly delights

2006-08-14T16:21:00.000+08:00

I love the things that flower in winter

conventional coat hat

2006-08-10T11:15:00.000+08:00

The Whiplash project this month is wardrobe surgery which is how most of my clothes come about so i thought i'd better get involved. I bought this old jacket from my local St Vinnies for the princely sum of two bucks but it was longer than i wanted so i cut a chunk off the bottom, hemmed it and added darts. It's been freezing here in Perth and i feel the cold more than most so i decided to use the leftovers to make a fluffy hat.

When i explained to M (the Man) the deconstruction/reconstruction theme he said that making a hat out of a coat was too predictable and conventional and what i should be doing was i don't know, fibreglassing an old shirt and turning it into a suitcase or something. Which apart from the fact that i've got enough suitcases isn't a bad idea.
In the meantime though, i'll be out sweltering in my new fluffy hat because - yep the sun's out and it's warm!

looking down and out

2006-08-06T18:46:00.000+08:00

Planning our upcoming Big Trip has set me thinking about past journeys. Here are some scribbles i made looking out of windows in Spain, Morrocco and India. Thankfully i'll be taking a camera with me next time. All that doodling in sketchbooks is really for those non parental types

my favourite people

2006-08-03T10:39:00.000+08:00

and of course there's Mr M too but he doesn't take such a pretty picture

phwash foosh blam aaaah!

2006-07-26T14:26:00.001+08:00

Ugghh i hate cleaning. I've wasted valuable hours today cleaning the bathroom and bedrooms - with the girls back at school i didn't have an excuse for the squalor. But what gets me is i've scrubbed, slopped, vacced and mopped and i'm just going to have to do it all over again in three months time! It's cruel.

Someone gave me a Batman comic when i was living in Spain and i've carted it around for over 10 years (an easier and jollier read than Freud's 'Paranoia and Obsessive Neurosis' which i also have in Spanish) But a couple of weeks ago i saw something on the interweb about making bags out of woven magazine pages and was inspired to do this with it.

Yes i know i have enough bags, thank you for pointing that out.

serious craft committed

2006-07-20T16:11:00.000+08:00

This week i've been involved in all sorts of crazy stuff.
I mean no beany kid should be expected to get about without a pair of crutches and a nice pair of earrings according to my girls...

and there's been button bouquets...

more silly hats and fun with our best friend the sticky tape...

the craft which always has to be produced after watching Playschool, in this case a 'lightbox'...

for which, thankfully, we have a ready supply of empty beer cartons...

and the silliest of all...

the mouse cozy.

holiday cheer

2006-07-15T10:13:00.000+08:00

The first week of school holidays has been action packed. We've made about a dozen silly hats, been to the museum, produced nearly 3 kilometres of fingerknitting, shopped, visited, been swimming, backed the car into someone else's and spilt coffee on the keyboard resulting in three dead keys (i was responsible for the last two).
I'm expecting more of the same next week.

Happily, the garden is still there despite the dryest winter on record.

chaos theory

2006-07-09T10:25:00.000+08:00

Before (natural state)

Two hours later (aaah...)

Five minutes later (natural order resumed)

flamenco satchel

2006-07-02T11:50:00.000+08:00

I've been wanting to make a bag out all my left over bits of vinyl for a while and after successfully reupholstering my sofa cushions i thought i was up to it. When i noticed the Whiplash comp was all about bags this month i figured i had no excuse. But man, i'll never do it again! My poor 50 yr old (beautiful) Elna Supermatic really struggled with the multiple layers of vinyl and much swearing and sweating was required.
But, anyway, here it is, it's big, sturdy, red and blue and really comfortable to wear, so i'm happy. I've sewn a couple of my favourite 3D spanish postcards on to the flap and covered them with clear plastic and lined it with a hawaiian print.

As far as a category choice goes, tutorial and skill don't really apply so i guess i'm going fancy.

wow

2006-06-30T13:02:00.000+08:00

oh my god i love this

and i also love this picture that bonny did of me because she's drawn me as i am this time and not in pink flowers and high heels. I dig that orange and brown ensemble and i'm now scouring the op shops for an orange jumper and a pair of flat blue shoes. They've gotta be out there somewhere.

stuffs for all

2006-06-26T16:08:00.000+08:00

When i was making this sock chick Romany came into the study and said "I want to make a stuffed toy too mummy".

I was wondering how to keep her amused when i noticed the toe i'd cut off the woolly sock i was using, sitting upright on my table. Guess what it reminded me of.

Toys for everyone!

big spender

2006-06-25T05:54:00.000+08:00

We spent two grand yesterday people, TWO GRAND!! Which seems irresponsible to me considering we're going on a holiday to the uk in september that's going to cost a fecking fortune! But apparently money is for earning and spending, earning and spending like that in a happy little cycle - there's no need to squirrel away every cent like i've done for my entire existence. I've even managed to save money while only earning the poverty line student allowance (thrifty is the kind word for my condition - there are others.)
Luckily Mr M has more of a spending inclination than me otherwise we'd be living in a tent and only eating ground nuts and fallen fruit. Which i actually did once. I was staying at a campsite for a few months in New Zealand that had a walnut tree and a feijoa tree and i managed to live for three days on walnut and feijoa salad. I felt tough and resourceful - my tent mates just felt hungry. Eventually we went back to our diet of weetbix and mars bars.
Which reminiscence reminds me of a bloke i met once in Cairns who in a previous life had been an art director for a big advertising agency but had gotten sick of his shallow and meaningless life and decided to renounce all worldly goods and scavenge for a living. He used to paddle his dugout canoe to remote beaches to plant fruit bearing trees and take willing tourists into the steamy daintree to teach them survival skills but his real talent was scavenging food out of bins in town. He taught me and my travel companions some of his tricks and we shared many meals of left over pizza, pies and even icecreams without spending a cent. Aaah happy days.
So yes two grand - we bought a new bed, two new rugs and new paint for bon's bedroom. And that's all my news for now.

can't be stuffed

2006-06-22T12:11:00.000+08:00

After a couple of months of wallowing i was suddenly inspired and produced these two stuffs in an afternoon. My girls thought Chica and Chico were hilarious and are keen to take them to school to show all their friends.

normal day

2006-06-18T09:09:00.000+08:00

This week, apart from being woken at 3am by a harrowing dream in which a girl sunk two handfuls of fingernails into either side of a guy's jaw and tried to rip off his face so that when we finally managed to tear her away his face looked like it was being peeled like an orange only bloodier, nothing much has happened.

Happily, less brutal events are unfolding in the garden - the kalanchoes and aechmeas are producing their beautiful and strange flowers.

makin'... bakin'...

2006-06-08T10:41:00.000+08:00

I did some baking and decorating with the girls this week and they took the opportunity to indulge their biscuit fantasies with every bit of artificial colouring in the cupboard. Nothing makes a five year old happier than creating something edible and calling it 'the Double Dinosaur'.

I also made this fluffy vest and got so carried away i made a hat to match but do not fear, i will not be wearing the hat and jacket together. Hoh no.

right up my alley

2006-05-31T13:47:00.000+08:00

Last weekend we went to a couple of barbeques despite the chill. The park on saturday was in autumn leaf glory so we drank enough to keep warm and farewelled a mate who's off east.

On sunday we went to a friend's place in Freo that has the best back laneway i've seen in town. There are artsy types in the houses that back onto that alley so there are all sorts of wondrous things to see including a whole row of skateboard masks hung on a fence and many other curiosities. Oh Freo - i love you.

(i don't know what happened to that picture when i uploaded it - the colours have inversed, you can click on the image to see what they really look like).

a bit prickly

2006-05-26T13:42:00.000+08:00

I've just been reading a post by Christi Nielsen at I'm Just About to Get Skinny (wow i made a link) and i, like her am agog at what has become the latest exercise craze. Pole dancing has become mainstream - our local free rag carries ads and runs articles about it, 'studios' are opening up all over town and i for one am embarrassed for women. I can't see how striving to be a sex object or a male fantasy is liberating. How is it 'empowering' or let's face it, even dignified, to pretend to have sex with a pole?
And don't get me started on g-strings, holy christ!
Sheesh, back to the garden. It's Autum!

the garden's drowning in leaves
- and the cactuses are flowering.

arty farty party

2006-05-17T14:40:00.000+08:00

I've just been posting over at my other blog about some of the thrillingly cheap pictures we have on our walls and it reminded me of a party we went to a few years ago where everybody had to turn up with a piece of 'art' that they'd made, which was duly hung and exhibited for the night. It was a great idea and there was some really funny stuff - no one was what you'd call an artist, mainly scientists and engineers. My 'piece' was inspired by my nut and shell souvenirs that i like so much and was made out of boab nuts, carob and eucalypt pods, sea sponges and pipecleaners and mounted on a mat that i'd woven from a flax which had died in the garden. A flurry of pompoms and voila. And....it lit up!
Mr M produced a very elegant work consisting of little numbers that he'd pulled off lamp posts at a redundant lamp post depot. Who'd have known there was such a thing.
I think my favourite of the night though, was Ice Stallion which consisted of a small picture of a rearing horse carved out of ice standing next to a bowl of melting ice blocks.

new stuff

2006-05-14T17:57:00.000+08:00

Here is the latest addition to the stuffs family. This one was for my older nephew who after seeing his brother's asked if i could make him one based on one of his drawings. I think they like the idea of designing their own toys and have big plans for a huge collection of them. Ehem, not sure what i've started here.

more green goodness

2006-05-07T14:23:00.000+08:00

It's a gorgeous sunny autum sunday but the girls don't want to get out of their pyjamas so we won't be going anywhere. I'm just spending a lazy day wandering around the garden.

tin mule

2006-04-27T21:10:00.000+08:00

I've long admired those little metal plaques that people used to put on the front of their houses in the 50s and 60s of say a mexican asleep under a palm tree or a donkey wearing a sombrero (i know, i need help) but when we moved into our own 60s cream brick monster i decided we needed one too. I knew i'd never turn anything up at a garage sale so when i noticed a nice example on a nearby house i snapped a little pic. With a bit of photoshop and illustrator i scaled up a template which i drew onto a piece of tin and then spent three days tinsnipping out and painting. It's now screwed to the front wall of the house, not noticed by anyone but me. Ahhh the things you do.

hippy birdy to you

2006-04-25T13:46:00.000+08:00

Between us this weekend Romany and i racked up 48 years. Her party was a raucous affair with wild dancing, revelry and broken heirlooms (a tasteful boab nut and shell ensemble), and mine was a gentle soiree at the river with champagne, stacks of kids, ball games, dolphins passing at sunset and sadly, no wild dancing.

down to dunny

2006-04-10T17:18:00.000+08:00

We've just spent the last week in Dunsborough in one of the last remaining original beach shacks. Every time we go down, there are more 3 storey glass and steel resort villas along the beach which are embarrassingly ostentatious and charmless but probably a feck of a lot more comfortable than where we stayed. I was smitten with the 1950s kitchen decor and gorgeous green bathroom but not so crazy about the 1950s sheet of lead covering the bathroom floor and the fact that there were no sofas! Call me old but on holiday i like to have a bit of a lounge on a lounge.

Luckily there were other attractions like beautiful bush and coastal walks, caves, lots of wine and the church op shop open on fridays where i was delighted to score six badmington bats and two shuttlecocks for three bucks.

flores

2006-03-28T15:48:00.000+08:00

Here are some amazing flowers, that i've put under a piece of glass, that Mark picked off a bush last time he was in Exmouth. He thinks it was some kind of native and reckons the flowers looked just like little birds even when they were hanging on the plant. I've got no idea what the plant is but i'd love to find out. And on the same theme, here are a couple of things that are flowering in the garden at the moment.

sun, sea, surf and beached cattle

2006-03-20T16:12:00.000+08:00

I had a surfing lesson yesterday. Something i wasn't too thrilled about especially since we had to head off to the beach at 8:30am and we'd been drinking merrily the night before bidding farewell to Mr Moon who's gone to live in Melbourne. Due to having to organise the girls and general bumbleheadedness we didn't take the camera so there's no proof that i did actually manage to get my feet underneath me a couple of times. The rest of the time my legs got tangled in a heap and i'd end up riding my board sidesaddle like i was the queen mum, until i was dumped face-first in 2cm of water. For some reason i never got the hang of jumping off the board before i bit the sand but it sure was fun - i'm ready to do it again.

Afterwards we wandered down to Cottesloe for the Sculpture by the Sea exhibition and ate lunch admiring three bleached, bloated cow carcasses which appeared to have washed up onto the beach from a passing livestock ship. Lots of fun there too, pity we didn't have the camera! In fact because there's no photographic evidence of any of these events here's a picture of a packet of prawn crackers. I love that box.

increases jeers around the street

2006-03-17T13:10:00.001+08:00

Since my girls both started school full time six weeks ago i've been busier than i even was when i had them at home. I was expecting to be lazing around doing cryptic crosswords at my leisure but there's been no time for that. I've played tennis, been to my doctor, been to a wedding and put up at least eight shelves including these ones.

I ordered security screen doors which took weeks of organising, made an arm pouch to carry the ipod and noticed that our old lounge suite needed a revamp which, because i'm too miserly to pay anyone to do anything for me, i decided to do myself. Behold before and after.

Hopefully, once i'm over the novelty of being able to do what i want, i'll stop wanting to change and fix everything and just chill out (or do some housework... or get a job). Who knows?

the best mum in the whole university

2006-03-03T11:02:00.000+08:00

Just so i remember to appreciate how lucky i am these days with my two beautiful girls here's something i found that i wrote down a couple of years ago when they were two and four.
"Today wasn't as bad as yesterday but it was pretty awful. I wonder if all this yelling and swearing is going to have any harmful long-term effect on me. Not to mention the girls.
Romany dropped a full bowl of weeties and milk all over the red shag rug (I didn't shout about that). They fought and yelled about who'd have the doll pram and Romany poured water all over the bench (a full kilo tub of honey yesterday). Bonny didn't want to eat what i made for lunch (french toast), so we went to King's Park in desperation to get out of the house. It was freezing but we stayed for two hours and a couple of times i lost Bonny and had to search around in a panic til i found her. When we got home i was exhausted and tried to read the paper while they went upstairs. I told Bon "let me know if Romany does anything naughty, i don't want her in the dressing room". After half an hour of blissful silence i found them covered in my moisturisers, mascara, makeup and lip balms with great chunks cut out of their hair and gunk smeared all over the walls, windows and Mark's clothes. All the teddies and dolls were wearing sanitary napkins. I was mad. They cried and complained until dinner and as i was making it Romany pulled a whole bowl of peas onto the kitchen floor."

greens are good for you

2006-03-02T14:19:00.000+08:00

Some of the things i love in my garden

socks and stuffs

2006-02-28T14:46:00.000+08:00

Just before christmas i ordered a copy of John Murphy's Stupid Sock Creatures from amazon and these guys are my first attempt. They are both, let's say, based on patterns in the book but the instructions were so detailed and lengthy and i'm so lazy that i found shortcuts and fudging was neccessary. I was surprised how tricky they were to make requiring lots of cursing so i think i'll be sticking to my own simple designs like these from now on.

This last critter is a toy i made for my nephew based on one of his drawings. Might do a whole series of these, i've got a great collection of beautiful kids' drawings stashed away.

This page looks a bit clunky but I might eventually sort out this formatting lark.

un ojo

2006-02-26T09:53:00.000+08:00

When i met my aunty Mary twenty years ago she told me about a dream she'd had that an old boyfriend had given her a kitten as a present which had three eyes. She said for her it was a very special present and that it was typical of that particular person to give her something so exotic and unusual. I thought at the time that if it had been my dream, a kitten with three eyes would have horrified me and not been the least bit enchanting. Almost ten years later i had my own version of the dream but the kittens had eyes all over their bodies. One had two rows down its belly like teats and there were spare eyes scattered all over the floor. In the chaotic frustration of my dream i even managed to tread on a couple on the kitchen floor. A few years later i was walking throught a food market in Madrid and i felt something dollop up against the side of my boot. I looked down and saw an enormous eyeball skittering across the floor. The look on my face sure gave the butcher a good laugh.

dream archive #1

2006-02-26T09:28:00.000+08:00

I recently found this dream that i'd written down years ago -

Mum had opened a really expensive and exclusive restaurant and i went along one night to check it out. She was flitting around and talking to customers and i watch one guy order and entre that costs $800. When it arrives it's four boiled chicken drumsticks standing upright in a white cup. He starts eating and when he's not looking i pinch one to see if it's worth the money. It's stuffed with little bits of broccoli but just tastes like boiled chicken. When he's finished he complains about the size of the serving for the price. My (then) two year old is with me and she falls asleep on a bed that's there. I decide to leave her and go and see mum who's gone home to fix up a piece of furniture she wants to sell. She lives just down the street so i walk. She's stripping an old art deco cupboard so i leave her and go back to the restaurant. When i get back they're clearing up and talking about going for a drink and a smoke. I'm invited but my nephews have turned and i need to do something with them so i ask the staff if they have my sister's number and a girl says here i'll phone Wendy (not my sister) so i say what's the use of that, where's mum's or sister's numbers? I can't find them on a list by the phone, then Wendy answers but she cant hear me. They tell me i need a token but by the time i get one she's hung up. I'm starting to become furious and really start abusing them for being so disorganised. I take my daughter and the boys out into the street still yelling at the restaurant staff (gawd). We head over to my car but when i get there i notice my doors are open, the radio's gone, the battery's gone and there's an electrical cord running from the ignition into the house in front. Through the window i can see some girls and i pull out the cord. There's yelling from inside the house and someone comes to the door and starts threatening me. I run telling the kids to follow me but when i look back my baby's run the other way and gone inside the house. I turn back and run into the house to get her. As i pick her up a short guy with huge arms starts making gestures to hit me and is chasing me around the kitchen. The others in the house are laughing at me and how terrified i am and i wake up. It's a normal day

big pumpkin

2006-02-19T15:25:00.000+08:00

Along with all the prickly things in the garden we sometimes manage to grow edible stuff. We picked this butternut yesterday and Bonny took it to school in the stroller for news.

about me

2006-02-18T13:21:00.000+08:00

I'm 43 (what!?) and over the last 20 odd years I've:
lived in five different cities in four countries;
visited or travelled in around ten other countries;
graduated from three universities;
failed to start a career;
had at least twenty different jobs including graphic design, language teaching, chalkboard illustration, casino work, tutoring and fruit pickin’;
lived at about thirty addresses including around twenty shared households;
made most of my own clothes;
kept a diary of my long, lucid and vividly violent nightmares;
ridden a motorbike for two years;
hitched 3000km in three days;
learnt two new languages;
moved back to the place I grew up, settled down and had two gorgeous daughters.
So now I spend all my time:
debating with my partner in this latest adventure the best way to bring up a couple of civilised humans;
cutting bread into tiny triangles (or big squares depending on the latest preference);
refusing people nutella for breakfast;
feeling guilty for feeding people nutella for breakfast;
moderating my alcohol intake to the recommended number of 'units' per day;
realising I've consumed double the recommended number of alcohol units;
growing bromeliads;
jogging;
making my own clothes
and putting dinner on the table EVERY SINGLE NIGHT OF THE WEEK!