Cactus Salvage Inc.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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?

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

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

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!

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

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)