phwash foosh blam aaaah!

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

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

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

Before (natural state)


Two hours later (aaah...)


Five minutes later (natural order resumed)

flamenco satchel

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

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

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

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

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

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'...

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

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

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

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

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

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.