Rummage

Not that I'm not attached to this one. I'm going to miss the bouganvillea with it's splashy pink orangeness and the garden fairies (one can't uproot fairies from their garden of choice). I'll be away in Canberra looking for a new backyard for the rest of the week. Hope the rest of your week is gorgeous!

xx
PS. Didn't have time for a 'beautiful books' post but I think I've got a few more in me. Fairy tales next, thanks again Abby.
See ya next week.

Man, I'm tired, I have a consummate ability to be completely and pathologically tired. That's tired with a capital T.

I suspect I'm not alone here. All the rest of you Mothers and Papas and let's face it even the childless amongst us are very often tired, tired people. What really cheeses me off about tiredness more than anything else is the impact it has on my reading.

I can't remember the last time I was able to make it through a chapter without nodding off. Stringing a cohesive narrative together from your average novel that is read in soundbites of three minutes a-piece doesn't work. My solution has been a shift to the short story and I've got to tell you it has been a bit of a revelation.

There are some fantastic short stories out there, do a bit of research on your favourite author and often you will find a collection of stories that your tired brain can more readily absorb. Here are some of my current favourites. x

 

I like Shaun Tan because his books let children experience sadness. Many parents, including myself, would like to shield their children from such emotions but in doing so we fundamentally underestimate their capacity as human beings. We can't spare them the darker emotions forever. Perhaps normalising these feelings, as Tan does allows children to better deal with them.

In 'The Red Tree', Tan takes us on a journey through a very depressing day for a little girl. The exquisite illustrations are dark and melancholic except for a small red leaf - the symbol of hope - on each page. My eldest daughter loves searching for the red leaf as we read. I hate to spoil a good ending so I wont. You can find his books here and here.
Have a fantastic weekend! x

Childcraft played a major role in my childhood. Whether it was the surreptitious peeps at the nudie pictures in the 'About Me' volume in the school library or pouring over the 'Stories and Fables'. Actually one of my favourite parts was the new words section at the back with definitions and pronunciation: cooperative farm (koh AHP ruh tihv fahrm). Man, I developed quite the Texan drawl reading Childcraft and have been known to refer to 'suh KAY duhs' and 'KAHS moh nawts' on occasion.

My sister found this 16 volume set in pristine condition in an oppie for small change. It's even more fantastic second time around as an adult not accounting for gender stereotypes and the historical changes that spelled the end of the koh AHP ruh tihv fahrm. Buy a set for the graphics alone or the 'Make and Do' volume, after all doesn't every child need to make herself a public telephone stool?

Hope you're having a fabulous (FAB ya lus) day!

xx

Yes, indeedy, I've leapt onto Abby's bandwagon with gusto, verve and insouciant aplomb (yeah, in yer dreams baby!). It's all about beautiful book recommendations here for the next week. In deference to Abby's inspired leadership I thought I would also kick off with an interiors book.

Shannon Fricke's book Sense of Style: Colour is a rippa. Not being a great one for many interiors books, I was surprised to find myself at the counter handing over the money for it. Actually, it was impossible not to buy it - her take on interiors is relaxed, eclectic and fearless. There is gorgeous, gorgeous photography from Prue Ruscoe and a lot of commonsense advice. She throws in the odd colour quote too, my favourite being from Alice Walker's Color Purple:

" I think it pisses God off if you walk past the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it."

I hear you.

I like an interiors book that doesn't take itself to seriously. Text and pictures come together well in a laid-back, conversational take on what real homes should be about: warmth, quirkiness, and joy.

You can find it here.

Love to you, xx

Firing off a post at breakneck speed before a Certain Member of the Household Who Shall Remain Nameless wakes up for her bazillionth feed. Teething is the name of the game here folks.

Down to business: a couple of people asked about the fabric on my washing line. It's from the fabric designer Julie Paterson of 'Cloth' in Surry Hills, Sydney. You can buy offcuts from her shop for wee projects. I am free-forming a quilt in fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants mode, the only way to craft as far as I'm concerned. All suggestions welcome. The piccies below are from Julie's latest collection, my fav's being the banksia and kangaroo-paw prints.

 

I've also been mooching around in a local auction house, one of my most favourite past-times. I have a serious crush on bentwood chairs of the non-wicker variety and I managed to score three rickety numbers. They make my heart skip a beat while they make the frenchman roll his eyes (not anuzzer of zese broken chairs!).

Talk soon! x

There's nothing like having one's smalls scrutinised by the entire flickr community. I've just discovered the flickr clothes line group and I cannot tell you how addictive it is. Clothesline after clothesline I am completely enthralled, be it underpants or aprons I am glued to my screen.

This has reignited my own slightly fetishistic tendency to peer over people's backfences for a view of their line.  Between ourselves, I don't think I am alone here, maybe it is not washing lines for you but shopping baskets or handbag contents. We all like to have a good gawk at things belonging to other people which tell us more about them. Call it voyeurism or ethnographic research, we are all guilty of it, aren't we? To me there is something intensely optimistic about this kind of behaviour and our desire as human beings to create stories and connections with others. Does this just sound like high falutin' self-justification? Don't answer that question.

My own encounters with foreign washing lines began at a very young age. I would examine them carefully and then screw up my eyes to get a picture of the people who owned the clothes. Sometimes I would even hover around to try and get a look at the people to see if they somehow fit with the imagined version of themselves. I just read that last sentence and I can't believe what a little weirdo I was/am.

Of course it wasn't long before I, like the members of the flickr clothes line group, starting photographing washing lines. Traveling the world in my twenties, I have innumerable forgettable shots of burkha-draped washing lines in Turkey, crisp linen smocks in the south of France and ornately patterned bed sheets in Portugal.

I no longer engage in this practice and whilst I would like to attribute this to therapy, it was more due to a stern reprimand from a woman in the highlands of Scotland whose line carried a startling array of hectically-coloured, gargantuan bloomers. With a spray of unintelligible gaelic expletives she let me know in no uncertain terms that my camera was not welcome . So I stopped. A brilliant career as a photojournalist specialising in washing lines of the world brutally cut short.

Oh, and the photo at the top of the page is my own clothes line. The stuff on it, I hear you ask? Fabric drying for a patchwork quilt experiment, eek! More about that later.

Hope your weekend was ace. x

I know what you are thinking. She makes a frock for the kiddies and suddenly she thinks she's the next Largerfield.

I don't mind telling you, I fancy myself sporting one of these at a ladies-who-lunch function. Preferably one where I could get hold of one of those soda siphons (see top left).

Truth be known, I would even vote for John Howard before sewing one of these. Real sewing scares the pants off me, I'm a repetitive rectangle kinda gal. Give me a pillowcase pattern and I'm away. Best I can do with these is to put them on display here for some of you clever clogs to copy. After you've finished making yours you can make me the long sleeved Molyneux in a limegreen. Ta!

Have a super weekend! x

Okay, so I lied..it wasn't the last winsome, mildly ironic vignette. We are positively rancid with property valuers, termite inspectors and the like. Hence the spruced up mantlepiece. Heaven knows why I feel that I have to impress them. They are certainly not out to impress me, in light of the startling amount of body odour and nostril hair exhibited by one them.

I've been online looking at potential houses in the big ol' ACT. Not a huge amount in the way of character-filled, rococo  ironworked, renovators' dreams - at least not in our price bracket.

Just a little note on the bits and bobs in the photo. The wee shoes were my husband's when he was little in France. The framed photo of a Rotary International Conference of the 76th District, 1946 was picked up at auction. The frenchman worries visitors may mistake us for passionate rotarians when it's really a memento to remind us of our wedding - we were married on that balcony. The boomerang appeared mysteriously one morning in our backyard. It looks to be hand-whittled and has a great patina from innumerable dings - it's previous owner having as good a throwing arm as me.

Off the subject, does anyone else have problems filling in those little codes required to post a comment on someone else's blog. Today, I tried 3 times before I could feel a nervous tick starting in my left temple. I had to retire for a quiet moment with a cup of tea!

That's all the news here, how about you?
xx

Aloha. I have a sister a little older than me. People say we sound the same on the phone. She lives in my street, we see her every day. Our kids play together. I will miss her.

Sorry about the maudlin tone, it was looking at these pictures that did it. Like with most things, she supported me through the making of this little number, offering advice & trouble-shooting where required.

The frock comes from this little book and has had a slight modification in the collar department. Fabric by Karen Walker, fashion designer extraordinaire  and child by me.

Hope it's well with you. x