Ms Textual

Please Pick the Flowers

and paint them!

I belong to two book groups. Interesting at times, when for some reason the meetings occur on consecutive days. Interesting also for the variety of books we read. This month's Friday Ladies Literary Luncheon book choice was mine. I'd seen Leonie Norton's Women of Flowers:Botanical Art in Australia from the 1830s to the 1960s on the Abbey's website, and thought that it would be interesting to delve into.

It encompassed some of my interests: Australian native vegetation, women, and Australian Colonial history. Fortunately the rest of the group concurred. The National Library of Australia publishes this work and sells them through its online book store.

Apparently one of the subjects thought suitable for a girl's education in the nineteenth century was drawing. Drawing the sexual parts of plants was risque, but many of the featured artists were married to or daughters of, scientists of one kind or another so not only did they have the opportunity to roam, their work was needed in the illustration of botannical specimens.

The book is a mere introduction structured by placing a page of autobiographical data as an introduction to the artist's work. There are a wonderful range of color plates dedicated to the work of each artist. The original colour paintings are held by the libraries of NSW and Australia so it is possible to arrange to see the original plates in all their intensity.

The clever people at the National Library of Australia Bookshop thoughtfully placed a copy of a biography of Ellis  Rowan's botannical life, beside the Norton display. As Rowan was one of the very prolific featured artists, I had to get a copy of that as well!

Exchanging bookmarks as gifts from our travels, whether to Katmandu or Katoomba, is one of the charming aspects of book club membership, and once again those thoughtful people at the National Library had a range of inexpensive bookmarks for sale featuring Ellis Rowan's paintings, which were perfect for me to bring along as a wee present.

Unlike a novel, both books reward frequent dipping into and browsing through and strewing on the coffee table for others to discover. They are also sources of inspiration for art work ready to be translated into tea cosies or streetknit or embroidery of some kind.

It's interesting to consider the place of botannical art in capturing the essential scientific detail in referencing plants. I enjoy this photograph of mine taken for daughter's Master's assignment, as a screensaver, but the problems inherent in taking enough detail for her to get an accurate identification, were quite, quite tricky. It helped me really appreciate the work of these women.

On Being Quite, Quite...Wrong

In my immense, and wholey self-righteous wisdom, I  recently decided that I didn't need blogging in my life. If I couldn't work out the purpose of it apart from the received 'wisdom' that implies that a paid occupation validates the blogging imperative, I had decided that I didn't really want to play the game; that I was taking my bat and ball and going home!That my life was infinitely rich enough just trying to get through the day.

Trialing a new migraine drug (ssshhhh, it seems to be working-only one tiny migraine in 3 1/2 weeks)  and seeing a chiropractor twice a week was enough to cope with. Giving due hommage to spouse, small dogs, children, family, suddenly sick 94 year old father-in-law, and working hard at keeping in contact with non-blogging friends took what little energy I had left. And I had started playing Scrabble on FaceBook with a friend.

I'd been helping out darling Canberra-based daughter, tramping around a  reserve near Orange, where she's elected to do this particular assignment, slogging after the vet, dragging my aching, orthotically challenged feet and taking yet more photographs for tree indentification for her Masters in Wildlife Management.

She needs to identify the gums growing in the area, so there's moi, trying to get the close-up function on both cameras to work perfectly.

And, I'd finally finished my fish platter.

It was soooooooo exciting waiting for the platter to come out of the kiln after its final glaze.

I can't choose which fish I love the most!

True, I'd just signed up for another year with TypePad, but that could be written off to bad management, and ignored. After all, no one was forcing me to blog. 

And writing about books compulsively was starting to take the joy out of reading them. It was like work all over again: read rapidly with pen in hand pausing frequently to take down short pithy insightful notes supported by appropriate quotes whilst looking for deep meaningful themes and scratching around trying to throw in an original viewpoint. I've read heaps, but suddenly I found myself looking for long, escapist, very thick books with strong plots and interesting subject matter, and no pretensions to broadcasting new discoveries about the meaning of life.

And I have about 6 knitting projects on the go, but I haven't felt moved to blog about any of them.

I hadn't even been checking into my Google Reader subs.

But then I clicked on to Google Reader, and I read all your posts and I realised that I had missed you,  missed you very dearly without even knowing it. You may not know me, but I really love sharing your life through your blog.

So, without bothering to delve any further into the 'whys' and 'wherefores' of the non-commercial blogging imperative...I'mmmmmmmmmmmm back!

Looking for Inspiration in all the RIGHT places

- is soooooo easy, and fruitful, on the net. What an entirely accessible, knowledge vault ! Such an egalitarian education concept. I soooooo LOVE discovering new ideas on new blogs. Not that the blogs are new. Some are really 'old' in internet time, but they're new to me.

Looking for design ideas/inspiration for bear fashionistas (yep, that's what I wrote; yep, that's what I was doing), I stumbled on a vibrant, frequently posted blog originating in the UK from Susie Bubble called Style Bubble. Posting frequently is a desirable blogging habit when one discovers an enjoyable blog, and Susie seems to find and post from an endless source of inspirational places. Here she is all decked out in a recent blog post.

I just adore her youthful take on style. And her shoes are to die for.

My orthotically-challenged feet would stumble at these, but I can still lust after them.

The ones below are probably more my style except that a search revealed that (a) they don't make them in a US 10, and  (b) they're not available in Australia anyway. Sob. They're Clark's desert boots and were issued as part of their anniversary celebrations. Limited edition, I'm betting.

I sent the Style Bubble link to an especially favourite, young,ex-student, now dear friend of mine.  I think that she displays the Susie Spirit. She's a veritable bubblicious Style Princess herself and I'm not sure whether this is innate or inherited. Or perhaps, both? Here she is, the university student, walking  to High Tea on a sunny Sunday Sydney CBD afternoon in October. The front of her dress is a series of narrow horizontal pleat-like bands that drape in a slight fall, but are architecturally structured to stay sending out the pleat bleat as Susie might say. And that handbag!!! Just luuuuurve it!

 

The goats? No idea!

Aren't these lines, squiggles and curls just so sexy? Nineteenth century type, apparently.

I put 'design blogs' into the Google Engine and it trawled the universe blogosphere and came up with this site. Who'da thought? Typography!

Until then I hadn't really thought much about fonts, except for when using Photoshop Elements to come up with an individual look for my blog banners. The thought that one could actually design one's own font had never occurred to me.Exploring this site, I came up with this link.

Then the Power House Museum put out a call for Young Blood. Pity mine's so old. Fresh young ideas. Fresh young blood. Long may it flow!

Not sure where the universe will lead me next, but isn't it fun???!!!

...is the Mother of Intention

The daffodils have now faded and died away. Such is the impermanence of things, and the absolute certainty of change. And, 'yes' Dear Reader, I am glad that I took and archived this photograph. Such is the sheer pleasure of this visual medium that you can revisit the joy that was gracing one's back yard, many times.

I've been needle felting small bears and I tender this photograph as 'Witness for the Prosecution'. This is my Arctic Bear mid-creation.

And this is a further little piece of evidence as proof of the fact that small canines with sharp, needle-like canines, can trot up to one at the computer with a mouthful of white fluff, puzzling yours truly for just a mere minute.

It seems that needle-felted objects are not necessarily a permanent art feature, and can be artlessly and artfully rearranged at small canine will and to much canine joy.

These following images are also tendered to the Prosecution as trials and tribulations that Michelangelo, da Vinci and van Gogh are not recorded as having to cope with amidst their creative endeavours.

The Vet lauds the quest for mental stimulation. I, on the other hand, keep muttering sotto voce..."Mea culpa. Mea culpa". If one absent-mindedly leaves craft materials unguarded, what else can one expect?

Still reading, but blogging about it much, much less as discussing books compulsively makes me feel too much like I'm still teaching, and that's definitely not a space I want to be in. I still enjoy reading the book blogs of others. Enjoying Larsson's The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest; hating the book on brain plasticity due to the very cruel animal experimentation documented to support the argument. The extensive use of monkeys in this kind of research is very distressing to contemplate.

Obviously still enjoying crafty creativity.

It's been a year since I committed to TypePad and I've been very pleased with the service. I've learned so much and really evolved as a blogger.

Just learned today, that Cafergot, my only ever effective form of migraine relief (apart from Pethidine), is ceasing production! Now that particular challenge is one that causes me enormous angst. (:

Dragonfly 'Summer' Bear

Sooooo much of the fun in my latest textual manifestation and evolution as a retiree, is value-adding text to small felted calico bears. The Medium is indeedy the message!

I made this for my friend Lisa who lives in Canberra and with whom we're spending the October long weekend. She loves blue-reds and blue-blues. And dragonflies. So I crafted Lisa's personality into this bear that I call 'Summer', as in 'Dragonfly Summer' And took her (the bear) on a photo shoot at a friend's place.

She showed off the back of her jacket

and the little bit of frivolity on her head for which I have no precise name,

and she had simply the best time tramping all over the paddocks taking picturesque shots and would have gone further only a very large Brahman bull had staked his claim to that particular side of the hill so you won't see beautiful Orange in the background anywhere here.

but Lisa's bear does seem to have found a new friend!

Waxing lyrical - again -

as one does. I went to ceramics today. Can't you tell?

This great big fish platter that you've seen evolving has had the fish waxed so that when it has its final coat of cobalt blue, the fish will emerge triumphantly in all their lovely fishy patterny, colourfulness. It has also been sponged with cobalt blue ready for me to cast a net, which I did - on the back - today. Decided I couldn't cope with curly swirls as I couldn't seem to control them enough so I'm making me a fishing net instead.

Oh, do go on! I know you love close-ups as much as me.

And what has this platter got to do with the felting of small bears and the reading of books? Not a lot, I confess. But they all come from the same peripatetic source.

I'm extending my own RIP Challenge reading into October. I am still reading, but I keep hearing the siren call of small bears.

And October is the month of Stieg Larrson. That one I'm going to savour slowly. If only I can!

Hmmmnnnnnn. 'Neoteny'

was suggested by the Vet as the term I sought when pondering the significance of the wide appeal of big eyed, button-nosed, sumptuously-soft, small felted bears.

Basically, according to the good folks at Wikipedia, neoteny describes the state of possessing baby-like features in an adult state.Reading around the topic, it appears that big appealing eyes in a small head trigger some kind of ancient parental-type response in a viewer, that may be an evolutionary advantage in the care and preservation of the possessor of such attributes.

Thus the appeal for many people of small baby-faced dogs with imploring big eyes that fix you in their gaze willing you to shower them in attention and affection, thus ensuring their health and welfare...

or felted calico bears of various sizes

and dispositions

and mood swings (yes, even in small anthropomorphic inanimate toys for grownups)!

I gave this little ( notice how I can't help myself semantically-speaking, I simply have to use that word 'little' with an affectionate tone) bear a face-lift! Oooooh, that it could be as easy as stabbing some more wool on to a face. Amazing how taking a photograph in different light conditions alters the colour saturation! I pine for a great online photography course...

Soooooooo, that's neoteny for you. If you follow the Wiki link to the Japanese cultural experience of cute, you can learn more. As for me, I'm working on another bear

or two...the trim on this one is a blend of superfine merino, silk and alpaca. The silk is shedding itself merrily all over my house!!!

Baring all...

and feeding the Inner Child. At dovegreyreader this involves revisiting the books from one's long ago childhood past. A laudable thing it is indeed.

Here, at Ms Textual, feeding the Inner Child also involves Bears for Grownups and revisiting that small child who needed comforting sometime in the past. And still does.

I'm just rambling ambling verbosely here trying to justify why I might be happy leaving behind the noble profession of shaping of young minds through exposure to the world's great literature, and needle felting small bears instead, and why the Australian government may wonder about it's investment in my academic qualifications.

Part of me allows The Severe Critic to perch on my shoulder and mutter in my ear, screeching that small bears don't contribute towards solving the crisis of global warming, or help penguins cope with a diminishing ice shelf, or solve problems of hunger and poverty brought on by a totally rampant world human birth rate. And that is all undoubtedly and entirely true.

But this is comfort feeding. In a non-fattening way. Like knitted cupcakes.

There's a bear in there. In my linen cupboard room. And it's decided to come out of the closet !

My lovely tutor, Lynne Sutherland, who taught me the basics of needle felting bears at the Spun Out workshop in August, told me that bears take on personalities of their own. It's soooo true. I choose the basic bear wool and as I  needle felt, the bear reveals it's personality. It's true I tellya.

I used a Corriedale natural coloured fleece for this bear and because of the dark brown, it took me awhile to do the rest. Then I felted the white Merino wool for a vest and sewed an earring into his ear.

Yes, before you ask, I DO seem to spend an inordinate amount of time playing with Photoshop. Sometimes I get lazy and leave the margins slightly wobbly because that steady hand is sometimes a trial too far. Half the fun in felting the bears is taking the photographs and playing with images and language then blogging. An end in itself really. Creative expression for a new millennium.

Now where was I? Getting as Diva-ish as my darling Diva.

I do have a name to go with her 'Diva' family appellation. She's my Kezz Bear. Inspired by a deliciously divine clothing boutique in Orange- Kezz Brett's.

As soon as I saw the superfine Merino wool tops 'Mumbai' colour blend from Treetops Colours, I knew instinctively who this bear wanted to be :)

The colours are to die (sic) for!

Soooo, I'm off to make me another little friend.

Call me old-fashioned but

the generation gulf gapes into an impassable abyss when confronted with the rapidly evolving social reality of Facebook and the notion of 'Friend'.

This is not 'Friend' as I have experienced it over half a century. And my experience of being a friend and the small rituals and careful courtesies that this involves has been severely tested by my past year as an active new (middle-aged) user of Facebook.

Or perhaps the notions of intimacy and solitude have melted and reshaped themselves into a contemporary reality with the face of mobile status updates, and the very public displays of digitally captured images projecting Gen Y's experimentation with social masks? Once was we could evolve into the adults we've become only having to cope with the small eddies of gossip swirling behind us. Now, with 509 friends listed on one's social currency stock exchange, Facebook provides a very public, very open playing field on which to display, and weather, the same changes that people have been going through for millennia as they move past adolescence. A veritable tidal wave of gossip!

On Facebook there is a helpfully placed guide as to what a friend might be:

"We'd like to help you find your friends

Your friends on Facebook are the same friends, acquaintances and family members that you communicate with in the real world. You can use any of the tools on this page to find more friends."

It is the phrase "that you communicate with in the real world" that has proved most troublesome to me. If you are my Facebook Friend does that mean I'm just another number on your wall, or is it because you really want to get to know me better despite our geographical abyss? I suspect that it depends on your age. Be careful what you wish for.

It is precisely because I was a country town high school teacher with a wide circle of ex-students accumulated over many years of teaching that this notion of 'friend' has become suddenly so confronting.

Young people inevitably move away from small(ish) country towns. One of my ex-students suggested that if I wanted to see the baby pictures that I really should sign up. So I did. And I have loved seeing the photographs. And when other young students saw me there I accepted their friend requests. And their mother's friend requests. Because I had had positive dealings with them. And then there were the very dear friends we'd known in Indonesia during our three year sojourn there in the eighties. And new friends made in retirement with shared interests. The number over the past year rapidly added up to about 206!

But communicating on FaceBook can be so unlike the real world.

There is a courteous caring reciprocity in my friendships in the real world. We have a number of things in common. We keep in touch regularly by texting, emailing, sending cards and gifts, putting messages on Facebook,  learning to chat on MSN, video calling, Skyping, telephoning and meeting for coffee. We express our caring in many small ways and keep commitments. We exchange viewpoints developed in detail. We exchange birthday greetings. We thank each other for comments. We respond. We acknowledge each others humanity. We share similar interests rather than just the idea of workplace. We share cares and small triumphs knowing that our friends will help us work through the problem and share the joy.

This is what friendship and intimacy is all about. To this Cranky Old Woman anyway.

If we blog, they generally try to understand what it is we spend our days doing. If we read and analyse books and make small felted bears with elaborate hats and knit cupcakes and spin and adore hobby ceramics, it is who we are and they adjust. Just as we appreciate and listen to who they are. 

They understand all the nuances in the word 'respect'.

They don't mock. They do acknowledge a comment. They respond appropriately and in a (reasonable, relatively) timely fashion, given their busy wage slave lives, and their family circumstances, which one understands because one's been caught up in the rat race once ones' self. And one does indeed understand the need for food and shelter.

Or we decide that that particular friendship or friendship category is not fertile ground, that it is like a toxic waste dump, or at best a desolate landscape, and we put the gloves on and clean up our act.

"Ewe Wot????"

The Spinning Fates have been gracious lately and blessed me with a brave new world of fibre and spinning wheel networks and meetings with Fibreholics bearing blogs. I envisage these three Spinning Fates (there are always three - it's the rule don't ya know), as being somewhat similar to the fairies in Neil Gaimon's divine Blueberry Girl, except these ones are carting a drop spindle, a pointy 'Sleeping Beauty Wheel' and perhaps a very big pair of shears, whilst trailing tendrils of locks of fleece, and surrounded - not by fluffy white clouds - but by a bleating baa-ing chorus of fluffy white, lock-heavily-laden ewes all in soprano, with one vibrant deep contralto.

Clearly, I am getting carried away. So I will hasten to the point.

Our spinning group went on an excursion on Thursday and spent a wonderful day at Braeside Alpacas courtesy of the warmth, hospitality and willingness to share skills and to impart knowledge, of our hostess Heather Dunn. If she was a Spinning Fate, she'd be the one holding the shears!

These are some of her alpacas. Aren't they temptingly laden with deep woolly fur?! It was impressive to meet a supplier of spinning supplies who also breeds her own sheep and alpacas, and so was really able to impart impressive genetic knowledge and other technical details.

She taught us how to go to a supplier and choose the best fleece for spinning, without getting fleeced in the process!

Why didn't I take notes???!! Oh well, I'll just have to go back again ;)

And then there was the drum carder.

It was such a magical process it made me think of falling stars, not pickpocketing as the captions suggest!!!!Heaven for-fend! Instead, I gazed glaze-eyed on the fibre-candy spread out on the table...

and at all the tiny little packages

and at the inspirational profusion oozing creativity all over the room...

until it was time to choose...

and thankfully I don't have the kind of partner who says "You what??????"

Here's looking forward to following lots more of these fascinating learning paths with my new spinning group friends.

And, of course, you too, can go on the Braeside website and order some stash as well.

Brown Paper Packages Tied Up With

...really,really heavy duty strapping, masses of tape, and bearing a custom's declaration finally arrived on my doorstep from Majacraft in New Zealand on Wednesday!

And the universe chimed in with synchronicity, and lo and behold two of my three ordered books on spinning lore also arrived :) I no longer attend teacher-education courses. I design my own Lessons in Retirement, and these books are set texts.

But now thanks to my new spinners' group I also seem to have a great resource in their accumulated spinning wisdom to consult as well.

But what a wheel!!!! It came with it's own bag, and organisational pockets thoughtfully provided.

  Tempted to await the Vet's return from Perth in WA, I girded my loins and invoked the spirit of Helen Reddy...I was Woman. I AM woman. I could do this. I could read a series of instructions indicating complicated bits. I could assemble my wheel.

Actually, very easy as it came beautifully prepared anyway. And it treadles like an absolute dream! It joined its sisters in the family. I feel so much like Rip Van Winkle. The world of spinning as I knew it 25 years ago has changed in Australia. THEN-Ashford traditional wheels were the only ones you saw and wool was spun raw and only washed in hanks after you'd plyed it. And dyes??? Only the gum leaf variety seemed common. And onion skins. NOW-I'm bedazzled and bewildered and befuddled by the range of spinning wheels, variety of fleeces and dyed fibres available. I'm GLAD I'm still alive!!!

The Power of 15

No, I didn't get it wrong. I didn't mean to type 1. I meant 15. Although it's the same basic principle really. Something I've been  trying to get right, practising, forgetting and paying for, flirting with, for most of my adult life.

15=15 minutes of focused attention.

Although you can do your own maths. It's entirely a flexible thing, but the principle is a constant.

Whatever you pay attention to growS OR conversely, whatever you ignore, withers.

Simple really.

Heard it all before in various versions, no doubt.

But have you applied it to your life?

I look forward all year to the blooming of this wattle but it only lasts for about two weeks! All year of waiting for two glorious weeks of intense colour! If I don't pay attention to its blooming loveliness it turns brown around the edges and withdraws in a huff, just like the dying daffodil flowers at the moment as well. What a lesson in life!

Watch me, or watch me disappear!

I used to notice the principle minus the specified time factor when I taught. My metaphor used to be that of harnessing the sun and turning its glow on one young person in the form of your total and utter attention despite whether the rest of the class was turning cartwheels. If you applied the light of exclusive attention in regular small doses, said little person seemed to thrive. Obvious, I know. With 25+ in a 50 minute class it was sometimes hard and I can't say I ever managed to get through the whole class although I did try.

Now this profound principle can be applied to anything really-

• it works really well on relationships, especially if you perceive it as money in the relationship bank, relationship currency- a 15 minute phone call to a treasured person in your life, or take the time to email or snail mail
• it's brill on gardens, but watch that you don't step squishiliy into the dog poo as cleaning your shoes isn't necessarily what I meant about the best way to spend 15 mins
• 15 mins of ironing is better than no ironing at all, if you're in to that sort of thing
• 15 mins of concentrated reading means progress: easier to do on Radcliffe's the Romance of the Forest and Tracey Chevalier's latest about fossils and Darwin; really beneficial when reading Doidge's book on brain plasticity
• 15 minutes of tidying up my craft chaos means an exponential increase in energy released-a tidy environment is just what the doctor ordered to quiet the palpitations in my head
• etc
• etc
• etc

You get my drift I'm sure. It's the sheer simplicity of the principle of the thing.

Almost, but not quite, Cinderella

September is the month of Gothic horror fiction reading, a quest I embarked on with some scepticism, but one I've embraced with enthusiastic repulsion.My choice of that eighteenth century Grand Mistress of the Gothic and the Romantics, Mrs Radcliffe, was taken a tad virtuously, pursuing the Classics in highbrow-ed determination and eschewing anything remotely connected with Stephen King (although I allow that I may eventually wander into King territory).

I experienced a pleasingly compulsive thrill of terror in reading Ann Radcliffe's  A Sicilian Romance, first published in 1790. To my surprise, I could not put it down. I wanted Julia to escape the evil clutches of her father and of the lech he'd 'sold' her to in marriage. I hated the evil stepmother. And loved the sublime setting. Castles. Cliffs.Dungeons. Moaning and thumping at midnight. Mountains. Ocean views. Gardens. Music. The novel has IT all. Brave, honourable, gentle lovers. The plot was convoluted enough to keep me guessing most of the time. The setting was suitably designed to evoke terror and fear.

BUT, I experienced an even greater terror upon reading Alison Milbank's critical essay (Oxford World Classics series) on the novel. It made me tremor to realise the gaping gulf between the usual slightly critical language one sees on most general book blogs, and the deeply resonating language of literary criticism employed by academics. I could feel my brain attempting to ratchet itself up a few notches to again (post-academia) cope with the concepts embedded in the language! And I did wonder if the two dialect communities could ever hope to communicate satisfactorily?

Milbank's analysis is guided by both Feminist and Psychoanalytic criticism. She has some fascinating points to make. But I beg to differ with her contention that A Sicilian Romance is based on Shakespeare's Hamlet just because Radcliffe writes "I could a tale unfold..." and unveils a plot where one parent 'murders'/confines another one to marry yet another.This framed narrative device, a fairly common one, is reminiscent of Coleridge's "The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner" and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Shakespeare uses it himself in The Taming of the Shrew. Undoubtedly Milbank knows all this.

In fact I could see Coleridge's debt to Radcliffe in many facets of this novel, least of all in its endless repetition of the word 'sublime'. I wonder if the Romantics ever got sick of the word 'sublime', merely as a well-worn item of vocabulary? I grant them the terrible awe-inspiring beauty of rugged mountain land-and-sea-scapes, but one starts looking eagerly forward to synonyms for the word 'sublime'. Search the thesaurus, I moan.

Ann Radcliffe's A Sicilian Romance, has almost all the elements of Cinderella in a strangely Postmodern twist:

• Wicked,licentious, jealous stepmother; disinterested in new husband,but determined to preserve her material status at all costs
• Contained castle setting; relatively isolated both physically and socially; used to better days
• Absent father, both physically and definitely emotionally, led ignorantly and insensitively astray by his testosterone, in an age-old representation of the ways in which second marriages can break and/or test old alliances and loyalties
• Gorgeous young daughters; intellectual;cultured;spirited;neglected; one daughter, dark-haired, dark-eyed and vivacious; one blonde and blue-eyed.

No wonder the Psychoanalytic reading is such a useful one to employ here.

However, I did worry that although both daughters were equally virtuous, equally cultivated in the highest of cultural arts and practices, equally deserving of finding life-long happiness; yet only one gets her man and gets to live happily ever after. Perhaps Radcliffe would have found the plot too complex to allow both daughters to escape a life of drudgery? Emilia gets to spend her life vicariously as the spinster aunt to Julia's brood!! In fact, Hippolitus gets to spend his married life surrounded by unattached women-his mother-in-law, her best friend, and his unmarried sister-in-law; all content to live happily under the same roof raising his children with his wife. As if only women can ensure the innocence of the next generation.

Despite this plot conundrum, I was impressed with the depth and strength of issues raised: strong and proactive, resourceful female resistance to the forced marriages of virginal young women to cement political and commercial alliances; the corruption of the Catholic Church; the venality of men.

And it's also interesting to note the strong similarities between Radcliffe's fiction and that of the monthly historical 3-in-1 series of Harlequin-Mills and Boon. It's obvious that many contemporary category romance writers either draw on such classics for atmosphere and issues, or explore issues of resistance to male control. It's a script that keeps on making meaning. Apparently.

Now, Emilia's fate. That indeed is the truly scary one!

After RETIREMENT...what next (apart from the obvious!)?

I don't want to scare you, but have you really thought about your retirement?

The day I announced my retirement plans this man got worried.

Apparently he'd never envisaged being retired at the same time as his children! It just wasn't done in his day! And my parents were worried for me. How would I handle the transition from Grand Pooh Bah to ________?

But people seem to be living longer and some of the generational life stages are being shared. Like retirement. And that's a big PLUS because you can discuss the meaning of it all instead of just try and remember when it happened for them, and acknowledge that you never thought to ask how they felt because you were so myopically enmeshed in whatever comes before. Such is life.

At least a long series of unrelated illnesses gave me the excuse I'd been looking for for years. It wasn't in the natural order of things. It was certainly unplanned. But at least I had attained the magical age of 55 and could therefore access my superannuation. Such as it was after resigning to have children then re-entering the workforce years later.

'Retirement' is such a misnomer, as well as being such a complex subject.To many, it's a sanctioned, blessed escape from a dreary life of dancing to some other person's/corporations/factory's... tune. To others, the decision is momentous because their profession arises out of a passion for something like rocks, or bridges, or innards, or clothes or food or... , and they have never envisaged any other form of expression of that passion other than fulfilling some other person's objective.

Retirement means that there's certainly time to do this...to take photographs of the wattle in it's annual bloom and celebrate it's short appearance by taking the time to really notice it.

A lot.

And talk to the neighbours...

People say that I shouldn't feel guilty about purposely withdrawing my skills and experience from the market place. And I do know I've probably paid my dues, returned a fair return on the overall investment in me, BUT I still feel twinges of guilt that I'm out of the paid workforce.What does it all mean in terms of karma and the universe????

I was highly trained for my job. Lots of dollars went into my training. Family made sacrifices, especially since I undertook university studies at the ages of 20, 40 and 50. So that was a sacrifice made by parents, by husband, by offspring, and by in-laws: sacrificial money, irregular meal times, unwashed clothes, tired and irritable partner and mother...the list goes on. Soooooo, what is the finite time for return investment by society on the education dollar? How is it measured? Quantified?

It's funny but for other life stages there are lots of books, courses and suggestions. Mother's groups. Marriage preparation classes. For Retirement there only seems to be endless discussions about the best superannuation fund, and how long their estimate of your life expectancy is, and whether you'll have enough money to live on.

A Western luxury, I know.

But retirement is a much BIGGER question than this. And it represents big changes.

1. When you're not the boss and not calling the shots anymore, who will you boss around?
2. Will anyone still respect you and recognise that you are a Very Important Person?
3. What are your work hours?
4. Do you still employ a house cleaner?
5. Does anyone care what you do anymore?
6. Is there still a Happy Hour?
7. Who will you talk to?

Retired people I know:

• babysit grandchildren and great grandchildren a few days a week
• do their doctorate in English literature
• breed new salvias
• blog about books
• tell their children that they're only available for limited babysitting
• blog about fibre in all its glorious manifestations
• teach ceramics
• look after elderly parents
• go around the state teaching spinning
• knit trauma teddies
• look after vulnerable offspring
• travel

etc...

Thankfully I've found ways to measure my time quite, quite satisfyingly and not at all, sacrificially. I do do volunteer work, just not work where I have to show up somewhere on time and do things. My migraine status prevents this.

I make things.

And give them away.

You know that I blog.

Older friends are still in the workforce. At 65 they either need the money, or love the lifestyle.

My husband points out that I'm still mentoring lots of young people, but this time through FaceBook. But many of these young people worry me. Their work is all. It's their life. Somehow Society has given them the message that they study hard for a career, and that's it. I worry about their inner sterility. They don't seem to have any passions. Especially not passions that will sustain them into a long retirement.

All they have is work.

Creativity Takes Many Forms

Once was that words were my primary source of expression but colours seem to have subsumed them in this second half of my life. Or, at least, colours and forms are seriously challenging my previously wordy existential outlook. And the more I lap up such delicious colours, the more I discover to explore...

I completed my fish designs today so that next week I can paint them in wax.

The lead pencil will burn off or be covered in paint.

It took me ages to do this design, but I do like the eventual effect made by the sharp-tipped stylus scritchings.

 

And there's more...

The left-hand sidebar on my blog leads you to discover some interesting blogs for yourself, but today I seem to be gaining inspiration from all over the place. Take a blogtrip with me on this post to only a very few of my best virtual play places for inspiration and sharing...

I'm trying not to start yet another creative form of expression, but Sammi's cards are delightful and I find myself wondering what it would be like to venture her way.

Then there is the sublime magic of photography. I'm inspired by Mary's photographs. They simply take my breath away. And they lead you to her other two blogs, equally as inspiring. especially now that she's undertaking a course in portrait photography.

I got lost in the colours here today on the West Australian Treetops website , quite, quite dazzled by the colour range of their superfine merino wool tops amongst other fibres.

And felting...aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh in The Felted Garden.

I love the way that blog-hopping on the blogrolls of other bloggers leads you on such mysterious, richly rewarding journeys.

Maddie's Cupcakes

I used to be Maddie's Extension 2 English teacher. That means that I mentored Maddie's independent creative writing project. A very successful piece of composition from a very sweet-natured, very clever, very impressive young swimmer and athlete. And now friend.

How times have changed!

I am bemused that this particular post is one featuring knitted cupcakes that I'm now giving her to give to the school she is associated with as a budding young teacher-in-training. I've sent her a note on FaceBook. The cupcakes are 'baked' and ready for pickup.

 But before they went I thought I'd record that they were here once.

They're for the littlest school people who are into imaginary play.

 Baking cupcakes.

 And icing them.

I'm happy to gift them. I didn't want payment.

 

These days I'm so anti-the wage-slave-thing that I do stuff because I want to. I don't take commissions. I don't want commitments.

I just cancelled out of the Tamworth Spinners and Weavers Keepit Dam weekend because my migraines are troubling me and a 6-7 hour drive by myself plus lugging bedding and wheels and stuff and sharing a dorm, are all the delightful potential migraine triggers I might wish for.

I'm facing reality instead. Sighhhhhhhhhhh. Perhaps when Hubby retires he can chauffeur me around and we'll share the driving.

Until then, thank God for the Information Highway and dear blogging friends.

Rad! Radcliffe arrived in a bundle...

Herein begins the 2009 RIP IV Challenge !

I haven't read Radcliffe before and I'm looking forward to making her acquaintance given that she is the Mother of the Gothic genre, surely?!? It's at times like this that I severely miss/pine for/yearn for, ready access to online databases full of deliciously academic analyses of Radcliffe embedded deeply in university contexts and dripping with validated  intellectual legitimacy. Having abandoned my doctorate I was forced to also relinquish my access to the databases full of critical responses. Not fair. 6 years at one uni and 3 at another and I still don't qualify for lifetime access anywhere. Oh the pain!

Perhaps I'll have to settle for the acknowledged joy of snuggling up to these two whilst I read...

Or indulge in some Bill's Beans De Russie coffee blended for French press, in this case brewed in my brand new indulgence from Peter's of Kensington, a teeny tiny one person Avanti 250 ml double wall coffee press. This was taken about 3-4 hours ago and I can still feel the buuuzzzzzzzzzz!

Karin Alvtegen's 'Shadow'

Hmmmmmmmmm.

Reading this novel is a departure from the strung-out intensity and unravelling tension of the previous two Alvtegen novels that I've read and reviewed on this blog. The skilled buildup of tension has been replaced by an elaborately over-complex psychological plot. This is fine for a novel in general, but problematic for crime fiction.

It's nowhere near as scary. I don't think I've become inured to such scenarios. Far from it. I just don't think it's quite as satisfying. At least, I wasn't that scared. And I usually am by Alvtegen. More than half the' fun' of reading crime fiction is the invocation of horror through the power of language. This time,small bumps in the night and the sudden still watchful alertness of two small dogs, didn't phase me at all.

Karin Alvtegen constructs highly original, fascinatingly enthralling plots based on the psychological damage that humans inflict on each other. She seems particularly interested in the damage done to emerging young psyches and in following the destructive paths these damaged young individuals wreak as they stumble throughout their own adult lives. Obviously Swedish society is a veritable minefield of plots and themes for her. Not that Australian society couldn't replicate them and add a few more twists in for good measure.

In this novel a very small boy is abandoned at the fair and it is a long, long time before we find his mother.

I can only guess that this little boy, in the cover photograph of the small boy with the angst-ridden face on my copy of 'The Text Publishing Company' 2009 edition of the novel, is either a particularly good young actor, or was having a very sad existential moment in the photographic snapshot of reality.It is a particularly poignant shot, and whilst the predicament of the little boy is pivotal to the plot, it is almost a subplot, in the wider context of the novel.

This plot was original, and extremely complex. Exceedingly so I suspect. At one point as I held the book in my hands I realised that I was almost halfway through, page 136 in fact, and there hadn't been any thing odd to remark on other than the dysfunctional marital affairs of a couple of married couples, and the tragic collateral damage that they can inflict on tiny human beings.

This expectation of 'something', some obvious crime, a plot development consistent within the genre of psychological crime fiction, is the expectation that wasn't met. After all, this is genre fiction. Our expectations of the genre are that it should be fresh and original whilst still having recognisable generic boundaries and sign posts. This is why we gravitate to genre fiction.

With writers such as Ruth Rendell, whom Alvtegen has been compared to, I expect a 'why-done-it'. The body or the crime, and often the identified perpetrator, usually appear early on, and the rest of the novel explores why. You know what is going to happen. And often, the suspense almost kills you.

I suspect the problem I've identified for myself is that Alvtegen diverged too much away from the generic parameters of crime fiction in this novel.

This sluggishness of the plot has been remarked on by others, who are obviously kinder in their reviews judging by Alvtegen's website. I suspect that the novel contains structural problems related to the intricate complexities of the subplots. There is literally too much going on and whilst all plot threads reduce in the end, the discovery of a body is almost an anti-climax.

There are too many characters with too many problems. In the previous two Alvtegen novels I've read, the main focus is on one or two characters. In this novel it's hard to keep up with who owns which problem. There is emotional damage and destruction everywhere!

This lack of clear focus also seems to be the reason that there is no sense of personal restorative justice and realignment of psyches in the end, something that I was grateful for in the other two novels where Alvtegen provided a reassurance that wounds could heal. A happy ending of sorts.

There are three endings, all outlined in their own chapters. This should be a clue to the structural problems and lack of textural integrity, if nothing else.

1. Chapter 32. There's another death. A certain amount of textual integrity here in that this death is poetically linked to the much older one.
2. Chapter 33. There's an indication in that the reading of a personal journal by a stranger will reveal a gross injustice that won't be able to be covered up. So society will achieve justice even if the individuals involved won't.
3. Chapter 34. Here, the death of the author is no big deal. Who cares?! ?

There is some attempt at structural integrity in the conclusion. The final image the reader is left with is of an overly sentimental bucolic scene where a little boy plays. It's not the same little boy we meet in the first chapter who's anxiously waiting for his mummy. This little boy is entirely responsible for the first little boy's predicament. But too much has happened for us to feel the true impact.

Five (?) of the characters are authors of varying degrees of public success and this allows Alvtegen much scope for exploring the world of words, a self-referential theme that is perhaps a little distracting given that the world of book publishing in this novel seems far too depressingly dismal. Authors experience writer's block and the rounds of book talks become boringly the same.

Sooooooo, perhaps this novel represents a departure for Alvtegen from a point where she has faith that society can heal itself through the healing of individual psyches, to one where she merely hopes that perhaps justice will prevail in society in a very generalised sense.

Perhaps the world is getting bleaker for Alvtegen?

Nevertheless, I'll look forward to her next novel because this gal can write! Just like her great aunt, the creator of Pippi Longstocking.

Big Huge Labs

American Mary Carroll, keen photographer and blogger of such blogs as In a Soft Light, Little Red House and Simple Things  first introduced me to Big Huge Labs. I really enjoy dropping into her blogs. Some of her photographs are simply breath-taking and I do love her energetic sourcing and styling of interior designs.

I know there are other online photograph sites but I've enjoyed using this one for this trading card as well as the mosaics of spring in my Orange backyard that you see below.

Thank goodness I'm not in paid employment because I've whiled away many an hour on this site allowing my creative impulses full reign.

If you know of any other cool photography sites that offer free tools such as these, please do let me know.

In the Reading Pool

The pool setting was taken on our holiday to Port Douglas in far north Queensland in October last year. A tad tortuous to use the pic given that I don't see too many exotic holidays for us on the horizon at the moment. Hubby is travelling to Western Australia for work soon. I'm going to Keepit Dam for a spinning weekend. I'll just have to make that count.

Meanwhile, back at the Inspiration Theme Corral...I purloined the actual phrase  'Reading Pool' from Carl V of Stainless Steel Droppings blog when I dropped in there today. This phrase is so much more interesting than TBR or whatever, and I could immediately see the possibilities for fun in my own Photoshop catalogue of pictures.

I dropped in on Stainless Steel Droppings because I was inspired by the latest post by Bookpusher of  The Genteel Arsenal to travel further afield and visit the blog of Carl, the self-styled "Renaissance Geek". Anyone who calls themselves that and then explains the phrase in a self-deprecating way, has got to be worth visiting. He has a Gothic-inspired scary book challenge happening at the moment.

I'll get started on the first challenge level. Surely as a Retiree I can tackle 4 scary novels in a month? It might be fun to go right back to the end of the eighteenth century and trawl around from there. Choose 4 entirely unexpected novels to read...'unexpected' for me, that is. I did so love to teach Postmodernism and the Gothic when I was in my teacher manifestation! Oh, and now I remember what fun it was to teach Coleridge's Christabel! And of course it was so interesting to explore the associated literary technique of the Pathetic Fallacy. Yippeeeeeeeee! I prophesy FUN ahead.

Right... a quick search of Wiki reminded me of Ann Radcliffe's contribution and I've just checked my bookseller's list and I can see 4 that I can order so I'm off...

1. Italian or the Confessional of the Black Penitents
2. Romance of the Forest
3. Sicilian Romance
4. The Mysteries of Udolpho

And while I'm here might I say how grateful I am to The Genteel Arsenal's Bookpusher for being such an inventive, thorough librarian in using her many skills to find other interesting blogs. I don't do the memes thing but I do like to link any of my readers to creative blogging and Bookpusher's skills in searching out fun things to try are excellent.

Now to puddle around in my own current pool...

• Christos Tsiolkas' Dead Europe.I'm giving young Greek-Australian writer of The Slap another go. I know my review of The Slap wasn't the most favourable, but I was struck by how compelling it was and the fact that I couldn't put it down in the end. The Dead Europe blurb refers to the European travels of a young Australian photographer looking towards the northern hemisphere for cultural legitimisation and finding a mental landscape full empty promises. I believe that Tsiolkas has something and I'm intent on finding it out.
• David Mitchell's two novels, Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas,  arrived on Monday and since reviewing Black Swan Green I've got some interesting comments from fellow bloggers about the author so I'm looking forward to reading these two.
• Yrsa Sigurdardottir! Thanks to Susan of You Can Never Have Enough Books blog, I've discovered my first Icelandic writer and am adding Last Rituals to my Scandinavian crime writers' experience. Only trouble is that the surnames are causing me endless trouble in pronouncing and spelling. Obviously way outside my contemporary Anglo-spelling background.

Meanwhile, I'm finding that Karin Alvtegen's Shadow is a little slow in building up the suspense. The plot, like the other plots of hers I've read, is convoluted and complex, but this one must be far more intricate judging by the cast of characters and lines of connection that are being established and I'm up to page 136 of the 311 pages in my copy of the novel. I hasten to add that I'm enjoying her complexity if not the pace.

The Tale of the Wee Little Spinning Wheel

Once upon a time, long, long ago when the world was much younger and when wool was much smellier, a Would-be-could-be Princess bought a teeny tiny sterling silver spinning wheel; but it was sooooooooo long ago, that her Memory refused to co-operate and tell her 'where' and 'how' and even 'why' ; instead it ran laughing away and faded into gossamer-ghost whispers that float away on the wind.

The teeny tiny spinning wheel didn't care about 'wherefor' and 'whyfor'. It just spun on its teeny tiny little axle. It turned and the teeny tiny treadle went up and then down, and then down and then up.
The Would-be-could-be Princess was quite, quite simply -enchanted. And even more so when she discovered that she hadn't actually given it away in a fit of much misplaced generosity, but snaffled it to her mean little soul and entwined it around her fibrelicious heart.

The Would-be-could-be Princess wrapped up the teeny tiny spinning wheel in a cloud of cottony white and carried it to the Jeweller who polished it until it sparkled and found a teeny tiny chain so that the Would-be-could-be Princess could wear it around her less than teeny tiny neck.

Now the Would-be-could-be Princess had a teeny tiny brave little Swarovski crystal WatchMouse whose entire role in life was to sit beneath her computer monitor and monitor the hours she whiled away in the Land of Online sailing away down the River of Broadband.

The teeny tiny WatchMouse in his teeny tiny heart fell deeply in love with the teeny tiny spinning wheel and decided that, in addition to guarding the Would-be-could-be Princess at her jousts with the computer, that he would hijack her teeny tiny tale and guard the teeny tiny spinning wheel with all the teeny tiny passion that a young crystal mouse-heart could muster and that a digital camera could record.

The teeny tiny WatchMouse watched the teeny tiny spinning wheel until his world turned pinkliciouisly orange,

paleliciously beige-ish,

roseliciously pink-ish,

until he came over all sunnysideup-ish and had to have a wee little rest because he'd got to the end of her teeny tiny tale.

'Spun Out' Part 4: the Gentle Art of Doffing

The delightful Caroline Baker, a guest tutor for the weekend, an abso-blooming-lutely excellent instructor, and kind to boot, patiently instructs me in the oh so gentle art of handcarding to blend colours into light as air roulags,for spinning. You pull one way... and then you learn the art of doffing. I am now officially 'a doffer' (of sorts)...

One of the other participants commented that it is often just assumed that one knows how to handcard like this, and to doff. We were grateful for Caroline's tuition. Sadly I am a very visual learner and unless I can see it (whatever the 'it' skill being taught at the time), I can't recall the precise instructions later. To this end I recorded Caroline patiently carding and doffing in 3 small clips and posted them on YouTube so that other participants could also have their memory jogged: blending and rolling for worsted spinning, carding while rapidly using elbow energy and doffing, and a short clip I somehow cut off from the others, which shows Caroline laying down the wool pieces in preparation for carding.

The gossamer fine roulags that resulted were wondrous to behold:

Others multi-tasked and tried to learn a new skill, observe a new skill and listen to yet another sharing of a different skill...

This is the last of my August '09 'Spun Out' reports! With many thanks for the warm generosity of our hostess Pat Gledhill-Bennett, the proprietor of 'Spun Out' at Gulgong, NSW; and for the friendly sharing of skills from all her guest tutors. In the words of Arnie..."I'll be baaaaaack"!

'Black Swan Green'

A.S.Byatt likes David Mitchell.

I like A.S.Byatt.

This must be a good sign n'est pas? Only I didn't know that until I finished reading the novel this morning, and then skimmed over the recommendations splathered all over the covers.

Yes, I had to finish it before tomorrow's Friday Ladies Literary Lunch. The good thing was that I finished it because I couldn't stop reading it.

It's wondrous strange how we select books for book groups. Such a deliciously serendipitous process.

My ceramics' tutor is part of our group. She and her son were flying out to Argentina for a short(ish) holiday. As one does. In the airport Her son selected a novel for the trip. He read it. He seemed to like it. He was going to let it find it's own way on from Argentina, but his Mum wanted something to read. She brought it along to last month's book group. She recommended it although she did mention, ambiguously, that it was "an airport novel".

Now, calling a book an 'airport' novel is to condemn it to the vast realms of pulp, of trash, of a rollicking good plot and an absorbing read good enough to make you forget that you're travelling for half a day or more in cattle class, but nothing that's going to keep asking you to think about it fondly in the years to come.

But, and it is a big 'but'... the Guardian had called 'Black Swan Green' "Rich and strange" and The Times had called it "Luminously beautiful". And my friend's son's no fool. I should know. I've marked his essays. So I went trawling the web. And found this site and read the list of reviews.

This is not an airport novel. This is a novel bought in an airport. Big difference. I suspect that 'airport novels' care more about fast-paced dialogue and clever, complicated plot twists than language, whereas novels bought in an airport are often more luminescent ^{see The Times quote} because the writer is in love with language as well as just life.

Set in Thatcher's Britain during the war with Argentina for the Falklands, David Mitchell's book is written  in the voice of a young adolescent male. A young, very articulate and observant young male whose interior life must be rich indeed but whose social persona seems as carefully gruntish as any other young male of the ilk. Jason has a stammer, which lowers his street cred in the harsh,harsh world of a school boy. Think 'Lord of the Flies' meets an earlier version of 'Catcher in the Rye'. Jason's also a poet who publishes under a grandiose nom de plume. It's handy that Mitchell has made him a poet as it allows Mitchell to experiment with a vast range of very original, occasionally tortuously contrived, but generally refreshingly successful, similes and metaphors.

We track Jason through complex family interactions, along the paths and byways of Black Swan Green and in the deadly jungles of the classroom and the playground. Vicious. Irrational. Truly scary. Perhaps my all girls selective high school had a more verbally nuanced version of this classroom reality that I've suppressed,and forgotten... or perhaps this is the reality of an adolescent male's 1980s Thatcherite Britain.

In the middle of the novel there is a slab of almost self-indulgent exploration of the art of literature when Jason spends time with the delightfully eccentric Madame Crommelynck while she mentors the young poet. Not that I disliked it mind. As a former English teacher, the discussion held great appeal, but as a structural device it seemed like a hiatus and slowed down the plot. However, I forgive it because it produced such glorious snippets such as :

"I felt giddy with importance that my words'd captured the attention of this exotic ^{how many 13 year olds do you know that use that word}  woman.Fear,too. If you show someone something you've written, you give them a sharpened stake,lie down in your coffin and say, 'When you're ready.' "

AND further on in the novel...

"Loads of words aren't actual words you can look up, but screws of grammar that hold the sentence together."

AND further still...

"Lyme Regis was a casserole of tourists."

I really enjoyed this novel because it was rich in original imagery, highly emotive and devastatingly accurate in portraying the world through a very young man's eyes. But this boy will be alright. He'll cope. He'll be okay. Despite all.

I've already checked that the bookshop has Mitchell's 'Cloud Atlas' and 'Ghostwritten', so if you'll excuse me, I'm off to ring them up and get them sent up here. 40 year old David Mitchell can indeed write, every bit as well as his alter ego Jason.

'Spun Out' Part 3: OUCH!

Looks deadly and darn right cruel doesn't it? The captive bear...imprisoned firmly...the rapid approach of the dastardly sharp-pronged needle...do you hear a silent scream...?

Kind of voodoo-ish?

It's actually lots of fun. Yet another therapeutic repetitive act designed to soothe the savage beast within your soul.

Felting.

I was introduced to felting with wool slivers at Mittagong by a fellow tea cosy constructor. She taught us how to roll and pound sopping fibres drizzled with washing-up detergent between layers of bubble-wrap. The yellow tail fins with red dots of my 'Ms Bubblefish' tea cosy were felted in this way.

My fish tea cosy is swimming in sensuously soft slivers of carded and dyed wool generously shared by my new friend Susan, yet another English teacher.

Of course, now thanks to Pat Gledhill-Bennett's generosity in hosting the 'Spun Out' workshop weekend, I know the theory of dyeing such slivers myself.

And thanks to Lynne Sutherland at the same weekend, I know how to needle-felt a bear, a small,gradually brown bear.

The wool was so soft and the colour so subtle. The implement was deadly but occupational health and safety guidelines were observed. One repeatedly stabs the wool on to the bear and the physical properties of hooking wool fibres fixes it to the cloth. Or so I believe.

I may have been a particularly annoying pupil because I was so over-stimulated by my exposure to all the new ideas such as carding blended colours and taking lots of photographs, that my attention was constantly diverted. No wonder I was soooooo tired when I came home!

However, I am pleased and delighted to have acquired yet another passion at the 'Spun Out' weekend workshop.

Daffalicious

A ceramics' friend brought along a gloriously sunshiny yellow feast of daffodils from her husband's garden, for our tutor. I was supposed to be sketching bits of fish from the art book I've cobbled together. I photographed my platter and  then I printed out a number of copies of the platter so that I could experiment with endless design possibilities. Like an adult colouring-in book, only you get to add the patterning as well.

I got distracted by all that intense yellow. I got the camera out. I set the macro-function-thingy on. I got up close and personal.

August was always an especially favourite month in my teenage Sydney days. It was the time of the old three term school year so August meant school holidays. I'd hie me into Central Station then walk down to the old Paddy's Markets teaming with the rank smells of freshly rotting vegies and buckets upon buckets of golden daffodils. I'd buy me a bunch, or three.

Nowadays I'm lucky enough to live where I've planted out heaps of daffies all happily naturalising 'neath the deciduous trees. Occasionally one or two get flattened by the small enthusiastic bouncing paws of the Horseflufloozies, but there's still plenty to admire at the moment. I'd show you too, only the lawn is overgrown and the dogs have managed to squash quite a few other precious planty things. Quite spoils the effect it does. So you'll just have to join me in lusting after John's daffodils instead.

I lusted sooooooooo much, I splodged black paint where it shouldn'ta oughta have gone!

Fortunately the ceramics' fairy dried my tears with her magic fingers and her mantra that "everything's fixable'. I do so love that approach to art.

'Spun Out' Part 2 : Dyeing with flair!

Enthusiasm knows no bounds and knows that one should retrieve the gloves first, but sometimes the excitement and passion gets all too much!

Dyeing gets you like that.

The wonderful thing is that these are common vegetable dyes easily and readily and cheaply obtainable at the supermarket, and yet they produce such wonderful colours. And later, a hair shampoo and condition will have your hands model-perfect in a jiffy.

Preparing the wool involves alchemy and wizardry and baths set at the right temperature and additions of mysterious potions and timing. She'll tell you "it's easy". And it undoubtedly is once you're taught the gist. Attending one of Pat Gledhill-Bennett's workshops at 'Spun Out' will have you dyeing happily with many a smile on your face and nary an allergic reaction, unless salt is your nemesis.

I was supposed to be learning to do it all by myself but I got carried away with my camera lens and couldn't resist detailing all those glorious steps and stages, and marvelling at the creative effects through the miracle of digital photography.

I'm going back again so that I can learn much more and even though I vow now that I won't spend all my time behind the camera, I probably won't be able to help myself. A goodly part of this fibre habit is worshipping it in a variety of ways: the selecting of, the buying of, the preparing of, the spinning of, the making of, the wearing of, the giving of, the photographing of, the admiring the work of others of ...

'Spun Out'...! (Part 1)

I just know there will be other parts to blog about! Only I don't have the energy. After all it is only Monday morning and after leaving at 7.40 am Saturday and returning at 5.30 pm Sunday, I've had a very full weekend.

I've just come back from an absolutely fabulously fibreliciously speccy weekend workshop at Patricia Gledhill-Bennett's 'Spun Out' in Flirtation Hill Lane, Gulgong.

If you are either a new spinner, or like me, a fairly ordinary spinner returning to spinning after an absence of 28 1/2 years (my eldest is 28 1/2), then I urge you to join a group, attend a workshop and get involved. I learned so much from the weekend that my head hurts. Spinning. In fact.

Pat is an incredibly warm, personable, generous spinner with her own small shop full of all things spinning, and my friend and I are enormously pleased that we found her!

But before I elaborate on a very crowded weekend I just wanted to post a link to an article I seem to have stumbled on, about a shepherdess who used wool from her own prize flock to make her wedding gown. According to the online article "The Lincoln Longwool is the largest British sheep, developed to produce the heaviest, longest and most lustrous fleece of any sheep in the world." What a woman!

And then there are the relatives I re-located in Gulgong Cemetery that I'll be chasing up as well.

But...back to the spinning! The workshop was held at Pat's home and shop where we all received true country hospitality! We all gave $10 on each day to cover costs of Tutors' petrol and any left over is going to the McGrath Foundation. We all brought a plate to contribute to lunch on the two days. Friend and I stayed overnight in the historic hotel built by my great, great, grandfather at the turn of last century!

The weekend centred around the sharing and gaining of skills to do with spinning:

• learning about our wheels, which in my case meant finding out that my Windwheel needed a new belt (talking to Norman Walters from Ettrick wheels a minute ago, he tells me that my wheel is about 15 years old and that the inside of the belts can become very worn and not turn the wheel-such a relief to find out that it wasn't just me!); and purchasing another 'new' second-hand hand-crafted one-off wheel-we think
• learning from tutor Caroline Baker from Toowoon Bay about many things, including plying novelty yarns, and carding blended colours on hand carders (which was a first for me)
• learning to dye from Pat with vegetable dyes purchased from the supermarket (friend and I will be booking up our own 2 person mini-2 day workshop on that soon)
• learning to needle felt small toy bears from Lynne Sutherland
• and lots of other activities like candle-sicking and smocking and ...

Learning about the various spinning wheels

I must admit that it has come as a bit of a surprise to learn that there is such a variety of wheels around these days, and that dedicated spinners can have a whole stable of wheels (this is the evidence I used when telling husband that I'd bought yet another second-hand wheel!). When I first started to spin in Sydney in the late seventies the only wheel I used to see around was the old Ashford traditional upright wheel.

Must admit I was very taken with the double treadle Majacraft Rose wheel used by one of the group although getting on to their website I was really, really taken with the Little Gem.

I wonder how many wheels is a fair thing?

Sooooo pleased after weeks of learning and trying to use my Windwheel that the Tutor Caroline Baker was able to explain that my drive band was worn and that was why nothing was working to turn my Windwheel properly. I had almost given up hope and despaired of my gross motor-any motor-skills.
Oh so luckily for me, Pat had a variety of other wheels to use at the workshop and for sale, and I grew so attached to this one that I took her home!

She's a darling and spins very smoothly although I may have to source a woodworker to get more bobbins made for her!

Now I really am worn out! But I really, really, really want to get to the post office and get a money order to accelerate the new band for the Windwheel. More to follow... :)

What's a girl to do (now)?

It is sooooooo true. Retire and your time just exponentially fills with wonderful things to do. So many that it becomes a kind of Alvin Toffler Future Shock moment of overchoice. Even when recovering from a humongous migraine, I can still move slowly around the house while my body attempts to find a normal equilibrium. If I can still move then there are any number of choices of what to do next:

(a) I finished my olive bowls at ceramics last week. I loved painting them. I learned so much.

Now the class is learning to use wax and scraffitto and we're making huge, divinely interesting fish platters...no, not platters for fish but platters with fish decoration. I've been on the net searching for images of Chinese porcelain fish motifs so that I can get some inspiration to design patterns on my fish. I've copied a picture of my platter about 10 times so that I can experiment with different patterns inked into the bodies. One choice is to cut and paste the images into my ceramics ideas book and get sketching.

The two completed dishes in the picture have been made by our teacher Lynne Hansen. Mine is in the background. I have a lot more work to do on it yet. Lots more fun. I LOVE it!

(b) And then there's that glorious Victorian Lace Knitting book pattern. Just a scarf. To start with. I have the Annie Blatt wool. Everything's there, but my courage. However, after entertaining dear ex-student-now-police-woman-and-friend for breakfast so we could discuss knitted cupcakes, and we found ourselves knitting a test swatch of a loopy pattern for a shawl for her, I discovered that I probably should do that for me as well, and attack the scarf.

(c) And then there's the Ettrick Windwheel spinning wheel action that I really should conquer before this Saturday's 2-day workshop.

I needed a new wheel. Didn't matter if it was pre-loved. I got pre-loved at a bargain price.

I wanted portability. I got portability.

But did I need to find out how to learn to spin in a totally different way? I didn't think so. But there you go, life's one big, big, long,long journey.

(d) Then there's the cupcakes I promised to knit for the little ones at an ex-student's prac school. No problem. Just have to do them. And make sure that any decorations are sewn on in wool so little people don't make any nasty mistakes with reality.

(e) And I have a great idea for a new tea cosy. Have the wool. Have everything I need.

(f) And then there's my research into Harlequin Mills and Boon 'Sweet' category romance writing. Fascinating field in which to exercise my penchant for academia.

(g) Or I could read any one of the tottering pile of books TBR.

Or...I could blog instead :)

Time for a cuppa methinks...

'Strawberries & Cream 4 Tea'

My tea cosy stable is growing fast!

Actually it's not as productive as it looks because I started the strawberry cosy sock in green before I went away to the 'Wild Knitting' course. Now I've learned how to cast on so that the opening is far more elastic. Luckily I had a little one cup teapot that I could use. The strawberries are from a Ravelry pattern. You use dpns and one berry takes me 45 minutes to knit. I varied the wool colours. The cream was created by changing the colour of the frill on the knitted tray. The base sock etc is from Loani Prior's 'Wild Tea Cosies'. I just adapted the pattern. As one does.

I love using pure wools for cosies as they are so soft yet firm.

I can't wait to create more variations. Watch this blog!

The little model needs to turn for best effects...

I've taken heaps of pictures...as usual.

Knit-in-Knitting Fridays

Today is Friday. At least it is in my part of the world.

Friday is the day that my English teacher friend of long standing, and I get together and knit. The rest of the week my friend is coaching English.Friday is her day of rest.  Friday is her sacred knitting day. So we usually spend it together. Last Friday we travelled two hours to Gulgong, to Spunout (website in development) to see the extremely gracious, very generous Pat's shed full of carded wool, raw wool, dyed wool and every accoutrement that a spinner's heart desires. Two and a half hours passed in a flash. I bought. I bought lots. And we're going back next weekend for a two day workshop on spinning, dyeing and felting. Can't wait. But there is a potential problem.

I gave away my Ashford upright in a moment of madness when the English teacher thought she'd never spin again. How stupid was that? So I found another  wheel, an Ettrick Windwheel, second-hand. I blogged my joy before.

I've been too scared to use it. My friend persuaded me to try it today and to my horror it has a totally different action. I was flummoxed. She was slightly dismayed to think that we'd look like a pair of hillbillies next weekend when I thought that perhaps the wheel was broken! We examined it. We both tried it. We studied it. We looked at the instructions for assembly. But no go.Thank goodness for the internet and the kindness of a new blog I stumbled on. I typed the following into Google :" ettrick spinning wheel treadle action" or something like that. A number of hits came up but I loved the name of the blogger best- The Spinningfishwife! Anyone with a blog name like that has to be fun, and kind I've found. I found a great post, on this kind of spinning wheel and left a comment of thanks. I've already received a follow-up email with heaps of excellent advice including a YouTube clip of a lady treadling on one so that I could see the movement. How very, very kind. I've also joined the Aussie spinners' group on Ravelry. She will surely have saved me from horrendous moments of embarrassment next weekend because no matter how kind people are I was still going to feel very doughy.

I love the internet. Rich in resources and networking!

People have also been very kind in their comments on 'Ms Textuality'...when they managed to stop rolling on the floor in gales of hysterics.

We christened 'Ms Textuality' today. She is as heavy as predicted and her pages flop about as we pour.

As predicted, the pot keeps very warm! I'll save the Russian Caravan moment for Tinkingbell. Today it was Taylor's of Harrowgate's Yorkshire Gold. A worthy tea with which to christen a grand tea cosy.

I just adore her weird quirkiness and her roly-poly bulk. A little like moi actually :)

The Thinking Woman's Tea Cosy

"You can never get a cup of tea large enough, or a book long enough, to suit me." C.S.Lewis

It's done! Finally! It looks like a whole fleet sailing along, a veritable Armada all by herself. Any tea she ever graces will be kept mightily hot within the deep pages of her books. That is, if you can actually lift a pot full of tea embedded in this tea cosy. Recommended for the strong wrist-ed only.

At last I get to integrate the disparate selves of my psyche into one gloriously extravagant post - knitting and reading. I call her 'Ms Textuality'. She's sending out messages, signals, signs and subliminal output, in every direction.

Interpreting some of her messages involves getting sidetracked into notions of breasts and breast cancer; and fresh local produce such as strawberries and the Slow Food revolution; and endless piles of books all black and white and red all over.

She combines my absolute all-time favourite passions: reading books while drinking tea. I think I'm in love. She's large, she's luscious, she's a little lascivious and delectably soft. I want to display her photographs endlessly. I've only taken 64 so far today whilst bemoaning my lack of styling props. I need grand old houses and lots of warm wooden antique everythings and drooping branches and endless rose gardens and sweeping rural vistas redolent with fluffy lambs frolicking in the gloaming.

And I've learned heaps by constructing her, mainly thanks to Grand Purl Baa Loani Prior's 'Wild Knitting' workshop at the Sturt Winter School. Getting taught approaches and techniques has given me a wonderful start to the Art of the Tea Cosy..

Bought another white china teapot today with a recessed lid that will make a perfect base for my next cosy. The next one will be a much more sedate one than this little extravaganza.

But ooooooooooh, how I love her! Next time you drop in do ask for tea.

SPIN gives figurative language such bad PR!

"SPIN:informal; the practice of presenting news or information in a way that creates a favourable impression" ^{Collins Australian Dictionary}

I hate SPIN! Only because it's given the expert nuanced wielding of beautiful language such a bad name.

I was reminded of this recently in an informal discussion at a workshop where I think I may have flippantly boasted indicated that I could dress up my justification for any practice in life by expanding on the philosophical implications of said whatever-practice in divinely constructed sentence structures choosing from a vast array of glittering language techniques and carefully nuanced and shaded complex semantics items. Hint: this practice of flippancy is not best employed amongst new acquaintances. They are may possibly potentially might be justified in labelling you as egocentric,nay 'really strange'. This realisation hit me when someone responded with the implication that this was spin and that spin spread  its ugliness everywhere. Or that's what I thought I heard implied.

Perhaps it was ever thus and it has taken this moment in history to actually label the practice with a  pejorative name that damns by association any attempt to be creative and philosophical with language that is not intended for fiction or poetry.

BUT... I HEREWITH REGISTER MY OBJECTION TO THIS NEFARIOUS ASPERSION!

I can see that I'm going to worm my way into a linguistic black hole here, but here goes! 'Spin' is just another example of choosing language to convey the writer's attitude and purpose. Spin's purpose appears to be to make an unpalatable truth so palatable that it will end up like tasting of ambrosia or mother's milk. Spin: the mother's milk of truth.

Spin uses the same words and bells and whistles techniques, but the rub lies in the intent. See the ABC's The Hollowmen for a brilliant example of spin-doctoring. Whereas my intent is pure as the driven snow. I aim to  highlight the extraordinary significance of an ordinary life, whilst presenting it in an extraordinary self-justified manner that makes me the heroine of my own little soap opera. Don't we all?

Feel like Alice at this moment pondering the potential depth and scariness of the long linguistic black hole...

Sooooooooooo, where were we? Oh, yeah...

Opening books such as the dictionary and a literary terms reference guide gives me a drug-like hit. It's like being a kid in the proverbial lolly shop.It's like being in a wool shop faced with floor to ceiling yarns of gloriously riotous hues of colour and texture and ply.And having heaps of money to feed match that addiction. Some call it obfuscation. My dad called my use of complex language and forms, 'flowery'. My husband tried to edit my theses and essays with a public service plain language mindset.

GET REAL!

This is language and I love it! I love tossing it around, savouring it, sipping it slowly, chewing on it for hours. I love adding to it. Seeing how many ways I can match it and stir it and combine it and bake it and...

Yeah, I know. You get the picture.

But, is it spin?

"Three Woollen Books July-August 2009"

I'm still working on the body of the tea cosy, but at least the books are done.

I adored Jenny Christmann's woollen books at the NGA. I have plans for lots more of my own.

One references breast cancer, one references the notion of books as form and substance; and one references recipe books.

Now to finish constructing the tea cosy and it will surely be one very warm pot of tea! I'm being very challenged by changing from one set of round needles to the next. Trying to get a tight even tension is driving me bonkers! I've already frogged it once. My husband tried to be nice to me when I was obviously seething at the pain of perfection. I actively rejected the niceness. How mad insane can a tea cosy make one??? Tea Cosy Syndrome (TCS).

An overhead view reveals their woolly lusciousness.

'The Slap' Christos Tsiolkas

Tim Winton's 'Breath' may have won the Miles Franklin but it's this book by Greek-Australian Christos Tsiolkas that I keep hearing about!  Many women of my generation seem to be in the middle of reading it or just finished and eager to talk about it. And their comments are enthusiastically favourable.

The premise of this novel is very clever. There is a barbecue.Someone's unruly child gets slapped by a non-related guest as a way of stopping behaviour. The parents of the child press assault charges. The child has been taught 'No one touches my body without my permission'. The converse of this is not true. Therein lies a myriad of ethical dilemmas and faction separating reactions.

I hated and loathed the first few chapters. Only that it was the next book on my Book Group list, I would never have chosen it myself. Why? Because it was being pushed as trendy. I'm not attracted automatically to the subject. And if I'd read bits of chapter one I would definitely have discarded it.

But I am a dutiful book group participant and I value everyone in the group having read the text so that informed discussion is possible. And any book is worthy of discussion at least!

I hated the way it was being marketed, as a good book for book groups!!! What is that kind of book for crying out loud? Contemporary? Provocative? Trendy? Pushed by a huge publishing machine?

The incident of slapping forms the axis of the book. After the slap scene is set the subplots spin out centrifugally as each major player reacts to the SLAP. Tsiolkas structures his chapters around each of these characters and explores their backgrounds allowing us to understand why they react as they do.

He successfully examines the changing cultural mores of second generation adult children born in Australia, or raised in Australia by bewildered immigrant parents, often with mixed ethnic ancestry. He does this with wry humour as the following quote reveals: "His wife's voice suddenly screeched and he dropped the paper. 'Manoli!' she called out in a shout loud enough to frighten the dead souls trapped in the newsprint.'Do you want coffee?'

However, it is a depressingly bleak, dark book full of broken people in broken relationships, where lies are the main currency of communication,adultery is rife, and the next generation are watching and learning how to destroy their own chance at a fulfilling life of integrity. Families are straining at the seams. Allegiances are demanded not along the lines of truth but along the lines of family or old loyalties and history.Old friendships are shattered after being forced to take sides. And it is a side-taking issue. The best personal outcome is the blossoming self-image of a young gay teen. But only after he attempts suicide. If you're heterosexual then you're doomed to despair. If this is contemporary Australian society then get me out!!

The heterosexual sex is almost pornographic in its expression of violence. I can't make up my mind whether this is due to  clever description and characterisation, or a gratuitous representation of what might be said to pass for heterosexual male fantasy. The young adult males whore and fantasise their way through each day choosing younger and younger women as the next piece of fresh meat. And meat rots fast.

The only male I did like in the whole novel was the young gay guy. At least he had a gentle respect for women and hadn't yet developed the misogynistic characteristics of the other men.

In the end, I read it compulsively. I wanted to know what happened next.

As for the theme. Been there. Watched someone's child throw a dictionary at a baby's head. Thankfully he missed. My own boy child had been in tears of frustration at how to react towards this aggressive unhappy preschooler. He'd never encountered such unchecked rampant egocentricity before. The baby's father solved it by angrily hissing words of vile, hellish retribution through clenched teeth. But at least he didn't resort to a slap. We all wanted to though.

Concept Tea Cosies

Okaaaaaaay. Clever you! Maybe you've always known that knitting was an art medium, that yarn was the thing to use to express social comment and articulate your perspective on life.

Moi?

Nooooooooooooooo-t!

I'm used to dealing with divinely descriptive figurative language and the artistic possibilities of neologisms. I can analyse tone and alliteration and tropes and sometimes metonymy. Structural representation of paragraphs a la Michael Ondaatje? You betcha. Yarn and stitch as forms of expression? Nah!

Not that is, until very recently.

I've always known that I loved soft sculpture , but it wasn't until my involvement in 'Stitching up the NGA' that I started thinking about knit in other ways. There was Denise and  girl+dog and The Knitted Convenience. And then there was that queen of the wild knitters, Loani Prior herself. Heaven help what I thought I was in for? Eccentric tea cosies of a practical persuasion? Instead I seem to be constructing conceptual tea cosies and entering competitions and thinking about what statement I think I'm making! My hands pick up the wool and start knitting of their own volition. I've become the medium! And really, all I ever really wanted was a pretty tea cosy, a practical one to keep the tea pot warm when it was occasionally used for real tea leaves and not the delicious Nature's Cuppa teabags always available in this house.

Then there was my search of the internet for more information about Jenny Christman's simply inspirational "20 woollen books 1977-78" owned by the NGA. I adored them. I worshipped them. Stuffing of my dreams! They combined my twin loves - books and knitting. Would that I could use them for my blog banner. My unified self!

 

NGA images.

In my internet foraging for information about Christmann, I came across a 'new' blog to follow -The Knitting for Art Exhibition authored by Alison Friday, who appears to be living in Stockholm and knitting up a storm! It seemed that the universe was telling me to get over it and embrace knitting as my new expressive medium!

So, I've been making me a tea cosy or two. One is much more straightforward. It involves strawberries from a pattern that I found on Ravelry. And after a not inconsiderable amount of angst and torture and almost tears and great encouragement from the vet I can now use 4 needles to make strawberries. And they are sooooo cute!

And the other tea cosy has been inspired by Jenny Christmann. In fact it's a homage to her. I'll explain it all over the next few weeks. But first I've got to finish it. Got to knit me some pages. Whole chapter's worth, in fact.

Do you think that in adapting Loani Prior's tea cosy circle tray to the making of a breast, a mammary gland carrying device, that I thought to read to the end of the pattern where you simply pulled the hole closed tight? Of course not! I struggled and cursed and told myself how useless my analytical ability was despite 8 years of university, two honours degrees, two diplomas of education and a masters degree. Hopeless!

But I'm okay now. I've recovered. I'm keeping abreast of the times. I'm now the proud possessor of two breasts complete with Swarovski crystal nipples.They grace the cover of a book. But that's another story and I have pages and pages to go before I turn in.

Prescient Presidents

The Ladies Literary Luncheon was at my place today. It's been and gone. I cooked up a storm. It will be a summer menu when it's my turn next. It was a sleet menu today. But enough of cauliflower soup with Gruyere toasts and pear and hazelnut puddings with dark chocolate and lashings of custard (store bought custard, of course).

And the Horseflufloozies only went berserk for the first 30 minutes at the advent of all these new members to incorporate into their pack. Much fawning and grovelling and baring of tummies was undertaken. Thank God the ladies were dog lovers because my humiliation at their (the dogladies) lack of decorum would have been overwhelming.

I finished our designated book at 5.15 pm yesterday. I loved it!

I had bought it 18 months ago, together with The Audacity of Hope, fully intending to read them but life and other books intervened. When it was chosen for book group I was delighted. I rushed out and ordered the Cd's of the book read by Obama himself, intending to listen while I knitted. Did this happen? Not.Will I listen to it even though I have now read the book? Of course! 

We listened to Obama read the introduction to the 2004 edition. I had tears in my eyes as he talked of his mother, her death, and her overwhelming influence on his life. He wondered whether a book about the often shameful aspects of his father's life should have been a book about the wonderful aspects of his mother's life. It is apt that a book with that title should feature a cover photograph of the infant Barack in the safety of his mother's arms, held securely while he lunges and twists around. Indeed this amazing young man is fulfilling his mother's destiny. Not in terms of any presidential aspirations but in following the social justice blueprint of her very being.

Was he prescient? I don't really think so, but you can see that being president is just being able to undertake his perception of his social obligations and perhaps have the chance to achieve social justice on a much larger canvas.

Is it eerie reading this book with the knowledge that this man is now President of the USA? Extraordinarily so! Had I read it when I first bought it I might have recognised his potential. Reading it now it seems that the path to the White House led from Hawaii  to Chicago via Kenya

This book was published in 1995 and re-issued in 2004 when it seemed that perhaps he had political promise, and was that novelty... a black man of 'first this and first that'.

Barack Obama is not a god. He may have fulfilled many people's dreams of the inevitably righteous path of justice in becoming the first black president of the United States of America, but he is not a symbolic figurehead. Nor is he a myth. He is just a man from a very complex family background, which may explain the reason why today's very complex multicultural USA was ready to embrace his vision

And this book that was published to a then modest reception in 1995, is an extraordinary document of a social activist with a genuine love for the disenfranchised, a moral crusader. He lives the dilemma of being half black and half white.

This was most poignantly illustrated for me in the incident in an international hotel in Kenya where he and his sister were neglected by the black hotel wait staff in favour of a young white family who had arrived much later than the Obamas. Racially discriminated against in both worlds? That's got to hurt!

There are many things to love in this autobiography:

• the commitment to social justice at a grass roots level in two very different cultures
• the rational exploration of each issue
• the articulation and command of nuanced phrases
• the self-deprecating humour
• the warmth and compassion of his tone
• the bewildered acceptance of the ever-expanding number of siblings as more of the results of his father's sexual liaisons unfold
• the gentle misunderstanding understanding of cultural expectations in diverse cultures

Reading between the lines as his mother's beliefs and actions are referred to, one gets the picture of a young man whose family grounding of normality is based on accepting diversity, on an acceptance of being a social crusader as a way of being human. Perhaps consensus thinking was fed to him at his mother's knee? We assume that his mother was intelligent, but we know that his father was extremely gifted. This Obama is advantaged by his mother's culture in being able to steer that intelligence into strong, achievable goals.

I really, really like this thinking  man's woman's politician.

'Shame':Karin Alvtegen sure scares the heck outta me!

The Scandinavian crime fiction course continues...^{see previous posts}

I finished this novel ages ago, but I needed to put some distance between the reading of it and the discussing of it.

Alvtegen is a mistress of suspense. Her careful structuring of tension does what few books do. She scares the hell out of me.

The title of the novel says it all. 'Shame'. This is Alvtegen's theme. An emotion that is entirely egocentric. Constructed by a fragile developing adolescent psyche, a self in reaction to a perceived humiliation or act promoting guilt.

Long, long ago, two teenage girls were severely scarred. One's first innocent exploration of her sexuality was turned into a public humiliation at the hands of her extremely religious parents. She eats to compensate. She eats. A lot. The other takes on the responsibility for the violent death of her brother and spends her life trying to make amends to her mother. She becomes a doctor. But then she feels that she is responsible for the death of yet another young man, and so she begins another journey of penance. The two women become linked by proximity, and yet another six degrees of separation.

Enough about the plot. Alvtegen has the ability to enter the mindset of the psychologically tortured such that physical setting and plot play second fiddle to the tortured convolutions of a brain attempting to integrate horrendous truths into a schema that makes life tolerable. Only it doesn't work. The life of this interior subsumes all commitments to work, to relationships,to care of self. Indeed, I found that getting inside the mind of the obese protagonist was one extremely worrying place to be. I knew that I was safe inside my own room but my mind was incredibly jumpy looking for safe houses to rush to as the next scary imaginative scenario unfolded.

The truly brilliant aspect of  Alvtegen is  that when she's got you to the point where you think that the world is so evil that it's going straight to hell in a hand-basket and you utterly despair for the future, she offers her characters a way through their hell to a world where redemption is entirely possible, rational and realistic. It's like being dragged backwards through a barbed wire fence. The pain does eventually stop and all you're left with is a vague throbbing and a haunted memory of the experience.

I do have another Alvtegen on the shelf to read but I'm not touching it for a while. I know she's good. I'm just not ready for another psychological lashing, another soul searing scar on my grasp of normality. Yep. She affects me that badly.

The Scandinavian Crime Fiction blog at Wordpress is an excellent platform from which to explore more Scandinavian crime writing. There have been some great analytical reviews and some particularly perceptive ones of Larsson. My bookseller asked yesterday whether I'd like him to set aside a copy of the third 'Millennium' novel when it's published in English soon. Is the Pope Catholic????!!!!!

The blessings of digital cameras,computers and Mosiac Mondays!

History lessons at school and university always covered the various big technological innovations inevitably starting with the wheel and definitely touching on the printing press! These were reasonably isolated events. The social impact of nineteenth century technological progress was recorded and lamented by novelists such as Thomas Hardy. Sometime in the future I can see historians being overwhelmed as they try to catalogue the number and significance of the technological innovations of the twentieth century. Exponential is such an inadequate word! Whether a  twenty-first Thomas Hardy will arise to condemn their impact, is something for history to record.

The technological history of photography and painting as ways to record and represent reality must surely include the significance of the democratisation afforded by the relatively inexpensive purchase of a digital camera. In a blogger's hands, a digital camera is an amazing tool for recording significance of objects and events to individuals, to the common wo(man). A visual social history of the basic elements that rock our individual worlds.Stroll down through my knit blogroll in the right hand column to see the ways in which each blogger represents their love of design and colour. Look at Mary's Little Red House Mosaic Mondays' posts to see how someone living in another culture responds to history and beauty.

It's getting so that I can't create anything anymore without wanting to enhance the process by taking endless photographs of each and every step of the process where I can feel myself loving and worshipping the act of creativity by seducingromancing the object with close-ups. It's as though the lens is stroking the objects and telling them how wonderful it is that I can see the divine goddess at work in their structure, their colour, their texture. I'm working on two new tea cosies and each step of the way I'm photographing the projects on and off my uber sexy Knitpro needles made of a special birch wood! And likewise, I can hardly wait to go to ceramics class tomorrow and continue working on my olive bowls. My camera is as important a tool as my special glaze brush!

But for today I'll stick with posting a mosaic of my friends' garden. They specialise in bromelliads. And as I walked with them around their garden I felt that the camera was an instrument of focus allowing me to concentrate ever more fiercely on the image of their design. This mosaic is a homage to their special creative imagination, but they express it in plants.

On Blogging

As a creative art form for the highly egalitarian and deeply individualistic 21st century, blogging is intensely satisfying. Provided that you don't have ego-crushing aspirations for fame and fortune, the internet provides a colourful, dynamic, interactive medium for public expression that hasn't been readily available in the past.

It is a wonderful truth that the gatekeepers of the printed word such as newspapers, magazines and book publishers and editors, are simply unable to control who has access to what, on the internet. They are simply not able to continue fulfilling their previous role as public arbiters of commercial taste and value. Witness the peer-reviewed knowledge base that Wikipedia has become!

Of course writers seeking commercial success to sustain lifestyles, are forced to curry the favour of print institutions. But we members of the "great unwashed" can write and publish to our heart's content.

Some of my non-blogging acquaintances have heaped covert scorn on my presumption that I could have something worth saying! The implication in tone and words was that I was cultivating extreme hubris to venture forth and bare carefully censored glimpses into my private soul to a world greedy to slurp up and steal identities, to judge worth, and convert it into a monetary value, the only value that they could recognise for public writing.

Yesterday whilst reading the Saturday paper, I analysed the opinion columns that I enjoy reading on a weekly basis. I wanted to compare them in tone, subject choice and overall style, to the blogs I enjoy reading.The writing was personal. First person was used. The subjects varied but the structure follows a familiar pattern. Some aspect of the writer's daily life causes them to ponder the sociological significance of the event they've experienced. In writing about the 'I' they write about the 'we' of our common humanity. But as a reader I am assigned a very passive role. There is no opportunity for real dialogue, to engage our common humanities. Only one viewpoint is heard. What an impoverished medium that is!

Blogging is instant, is now, is up-to-the-minute relevance. But of course blogging is much more than just providing instant feedback by hitting the 'Comment' button. It's about networking and building knowledge communities that are as many and varied as the niches they service. It's about instantly linking your blog to someone else's and extending the opinion forum.

It can also be about an extreme amount of hard yakka. One of the few things that I really dislike about TypePad is that you've either got to use one of their generic blog templates or insert your own. Now I could have misunderstood the biz but when doing your own template banner you are offered either image or text! Not both! Surely it's not that hard when they seem to be able to provide all sorts of whizz bang add-ons and editing function? Blogger offers the ability to upload an image then provides the software to create your own title and sub-heading! How cool is that? I actually paid out cool hard cash and invested in Adobe Photoshop Elements just so that I could endlessly design and tweak my own blog banner, one that represents my style and themes with a degree of accuracy and atmosphere! I have a feeling that either I have a deeply unstable self-image as a blogger, or that I am endlessly fickle,or that I am annoyingly perfectionist in constantly searching for the perfect image with the perfect font and perfect pithy witty text. Really, it's all too frightening to contemplate. If you've been following me for the last year you will certainly have seen an endless array of blog banners.

But...Friday night and yesterday had me feeling like a relapsed alcoholic on a binge. I kid you not. A reader from a group in the USA that makes charming masquerade masks asked how to subscribe to my blog.The subscribe button was buried deep in the sidebar! I realised that there was so much clutter on the blog that a clean-up was necessary. What prompted me to change the banner again I DO NOT know. It involved a frustrating amount of work tweaking text and image. And don't even talk to me about pixels!!!

In the interests of blog design history I'm publishing the variety of banner styles I spent at least 8 hours designing, waking throughout the night from dreaming about designs, and tweaking before I settled on the current one. Current for today anyway.The clarity of focus was distorted by the pixel size but one of the lessons in life that I am trying hard to master is that of compromise and a realisation that perfection may always be way outside my idealistic reach!

Example 1: Description of main blog topics; quirky blog descriptor.

Example 2: Avatar and pun.

Example 3: variation playing with image and font style.

Example 4: More information

Example 5: Don't tell me I did another one?????

It makes me so exhausted just looking at the things! I'm in need of a serious wool fix. Really, really, really need to knit something. Gotta go now. I'll leave you with the final blog banner. For today. Seriously, if it changes again soon, I'm in need of some heavy counselling sessions!

You really MUST~you really SHOULD~you really OUGHT

Read TWO things today...

(a) This is soooooooo exciting. I just have to blurt it out. Think public toilets. Think female public toilets. Think historical female public toilets.Denise from blog grrl+dog is up to something. Something special. Something significant. Something that should have been recognised before. Something that is and will be, sociologically significant. If you live in Sydney then you've got a front row seat. If you're travelling in from somewhere else then add this to your Sydney sites' itinerary! She's the mistressmind behind the 'Knitted Convenience' and the link I'm giving you to her blog is for the whole of her blog because her blog is just too, too quixotic not to enjoy strolling through. Here's wishing Denise ponderously wonderful colourful yarn stacks for eternity for having the vision and the commitment to articulate the righting of a wrong!

~and~

(b) If Loani Prior is to teapot cosies then the Alice Springs Beanie Festival is to beanies. Unfortunately we've missed the chance to send in an entry this year, but YOU may not have missed an opportunity to see examples of beanies from 10 years of the festival currently on view at Cowra Regional Art Gallery. The beanies are there until  the 16th August. If Loani sent the tiny teapot in my soul bubbling, then seeing these beanies had my scalp itching to 'aveago meself!

 It is certain that this textile self-expression incorporates yarns in an exciting format. Wearable art, although some examples might have you straining to emulate tribal women carrying giant pots of water on their head.

And to my chagrin, I suddenly realised what Denise of grrl+dog had been saying about Canberra and the NGA knitta event and the beanie classes behind the sculpture garden!

Such is life!

Fish Out of Water

Am sooooooo tired I can barely lift a finger, although I have continued knitting a new tea cosy since arriving home yesterday afternoon, and I have sketched ideas for a few more whilst stopping for coffee in the Blue Mountains, and I did stop beside the Beekeeper's Inn at Vittoria where I knew I could plonk 'Ms Bubblefish' on a fence post and not risk losing her to a cow, or the dam whilst I took these 'fish out of water' pictures!

And I am considering making some more tea cosies and entering them in competitions such as next years Castle Hill Show. Such was the inspiration of doing the Sturt Winter School's 'Wild Knitting' with Loani Prior.

We had absolutely the bestest time! A real Mad Hatter's Tea Party of a week! Loani was sooooooo inspiring. The kind of really annoying teacher who starts you off then gives you a big shove until you realise that you really do have the skills and the confidence to give whatever marvellous vision that is trying to break out of your grey matter, a go!

The only worrisome thing Loani told me was that I really shouldn't use my tea cosy for the actual pouring of tea as one tea stain and it would be cactus (or words to that effect)!

And that raised the whole question of tea cosy as art form, a question that I'll admit I'd never actually thought of before. But here it is, my 'Ms Bubblefish' avatar reworked in tea cosy form and extending the metaphor of this post-retirement life sometimes making me feel like I'm a fish out of water!!!

'The Offerings of War'

Ravelry Group Exchange with 'Cupcakes from Los Angeles'

Blessings upon the internet and all who sail surf there!

Once upon a time...

One day, whilst feeling quite reasonably defiantly just a tad lonely in sharing my knitted cupcakelicious obsession in the seemingly knittedcupcakesoulless wilderness of central western rural NSW , I turned, as you do, to the internet, and sure enough, there was a niche group out there of kindred souls who shared my obsession.

:)

Blessings upon the good folks at Ravelry! I found 'Cupcakes from Los Angeles':

  "This group is for all the crocheters or knitters out there in Los Angeles or anywhere else... If you love to crochet cupcakes, or anything sweet, this is the place for you. Make friends...create memories, and maybe do a swap one day. That would be fun!"

It was the phrase "or anywhere else" that particularly pleased me. Orange qualified as "anywhere else". I knew I was somewhere. I knew I sure as heck knitted cupcakes!

Soooooooo, we've just done the swap thing. My cupcake winged its way to Los Angeles and the post offices of two great nations didn't let us down! Before I posted mine I decided that I'd take it on a journey. Was I daunted that no one on Flickr wants to do the Cupcake Caravanserai thing? Not I! Eccentricity appears to be curling its way benignly through my system and I'm happy to be a misunderstood trend setter genius for our time. :)

The cupcake went from my front porch to that of 'cupcakefields' somewhere in an LA summer. It explored Parkes: an alpaca farm, got acquainted with the Father of Federation, and endured the rain and biting cold of the central west in mid-winter. The coffee cup shot shows Kings Cross in the background from the cafe at the NSW Art Gallery.

Sir Henry Parkes has this thing about the symbolic implications of the cupcake metaphor. The pink cupcake is nestled in the fold of his book, in case this reference is a tad obscure. Mist on lens is entirely my fault.

It had an entirely country Australia experience.

This cupcake finally left Australia through the port of Sydney. It jazzed around the NSW Art Gallery, the Conservatorium of Music, the Opera House and the Quay. It had fun.

This has to be my favourite shot location of the lot! I took heaps of pics. Just look at those reflections.

The cupcake was placed on the light dome over the top of the conservatorium library and nature and physics did the rest!

Behind every great cupcake knitter and photographer stand two willing assistants and collaborators...my darling Vet, and my very dear friend. Always delighted to climb public monuments and tag them momentarily for photo shoots. Happy to take myriad styling directions. My very public thanks to them. And to 'cupcakefields' for initiating the swap.

Cosying Up to My Inner Manic

Not sure I should be trying out the new Beta version of TypePad whilst battling a tea cosy episode of sheer manic proportions, so any mistakes you see here you won't be able to distinguish between mania or sheer fatigue or mere typos. Such is life.

Last to leave the workroom tonight. Sheer doggedness. Too cold to wander down to dorms and drag one's body up to dining room. Determined to complete tea cosy. Must complete tea cosy. Will complete tea cosy. 

This is a cosy of mammoth persuasion defying species identification and made with much cussedness. What did I learn she asked? That I was so bloody-minded but still basically a 'good child' so I muttered sotto voce-so sotto voce- that I don't care whether I made the phrase up or not...completing the task, appreciating the challenge but confirming that I was so stubborn that I would stay on in the workroom to construct an end to it all! The question of what was art and what was craft was bandied, tossed back,picked up, squished,lay like a Tyrannosaurus Rex of elephant proportions as a fibrous subtext in the middle of the workroom.

My fingers really really really wanted to drift back, to creep back, to rush back, to...

Will knit alllllll day tomorrow!!!!!!!!!!

Tea(sing) Cosy Ideas Out of the Yarn

Day 2 of 'Wild Knitting'. Who knew that knitting could be such an extreme sport requiring stamina, strength and the ability to think round tangles?

There are those early mornings...

There are prototypes to work out and you knew that maths was always a bit of a challenge (: There are scaled designs to grow whilst not forgetting to note down what you did. And I did. Forget, that is.

Can you guess what kind of a teapot cosy I'm working on, thanks to the inspiration of blogger grrl+dog who is also attending the course? As usual my fibrephiliac tendencies carry me away and I take a thousand photographs romancing the wool...

Apologies if I don't answer your comments for a week or so. I'm absolutely dog-tired. Extreme knitting is a sport that I'm going to have to ease into. In fact, why am I blogging at all? Good grief! Look at the time! And I thought Orange was cold!!!!!

Teapot Cosies in the Mist

This was Mittagong at 7.30 am...

This is a 3 cup teapot...

This is a teapot undergarment undergoing construction and having a fitting to check suitability of dimensions... This is the end of the day and I'm barely able to lift a needle... 'Wild Knitting' workshop at the Sturt Winter School at Mittagong with 'Grand Purl Baa' Loani Prior. I'm exhausted. Stuffed. Depleted. And it's only Day 1. Am I having fun? Need you ask?????!!!!!!!!!

All Stitched Up! Done&Dusted!

They came. They saw that it was concrete. They wrapped it up. As you do!

In fact... now that I can see the photograph more clearly, I do believe that there is a blogger reaching in to the trolley...grrl+dog, off to cloak some more concrete. Well done to the (w)rappers! What a great job!
Talked to a young couple and the boy's mum had sent a piece in black and white Collingwood colours from Melbourne and they were posting pics back to her. Had a delightful surprise when someone asked "Are you 'Ms Textual?"-my beanie and scarf were accurate identity markers :)... It was whisperinggums, a fellow book blogger!!! Her post on the event is very generous as she herself is.
Soooooooo touchable, and as a woman of so many words, wielding them to inspire, to transfer skills, to chastise,to praise,to evaluate,to reflect, it's just wondrous how expressive wool can be...
Sooooooo, now it's time to let Loani and the wild knitting begin! With apologies to Maurice Sendak.
But perhaps there's still time for you to get (w)rapt...

"NGA entrance starting to take colourful shape"...see NGA Flickr website

NGA entrance starting to take colourful shape
Originally uploaded by National Gallery of Australia

These look fabulous!

Can't wait to start taking my own pics. What a knitbloggy week I have ahead of me!!!

Loani Prior's 'Wild Knitting' at the Sturt Winter School and Knitta's Stitching Up the NGA.

:)

Check out these two blog posts from grrl+dog who is down in the knit of things at the woolly heart.

Also flit across to Flickr and check out   

National Gallery of Australia's photostream.

'The Marriage Bureau for Rich People' Farahad Zama

 The blurb reads..."What does somebody do with a wealth of common sense if retirement palls?" Hhhhmmm? Open a marriage bureau? Not my personal first choice as a retirement option, but...

The Vet and the Horseflufloozies gave me this for Mother's day in May because he/they thought that a combination of Indian literature and a Jane Austenesque Pride and Prejudice theme, would be especially pleasing to my reading palate. He had read a review of it in the newspaper. I love how the people closest to you can just know things like that. 40 years of association will do that. And it's largely true.

The narrative follows the establishment of a new small business by a retired Muslim man who offers a marriage brokering service to busy or desperate Indians of all castes and religious persuasions. The characterisation of his wife, Mrs Ali, is particularly strong. It is her wisdom, compassion and insight that achieves success in the background.

The Indian setting is rich in its descriptions of domesticity...instead of Sweden, this time I'm plunged into the noises, smells and living arrangements of India. And Zama is very detailed in these descriptions.

If the historical institution of marriage throughout human society is for the legal redistribution of property through procreation of offspring, then this novel gives a very clear insight into the many varieties of subcultural complexities of historical choice in Indian 'culture', given the multilayered aspects of religion and caste and language group. It also makes a very clear statement of social change in contemporary Indian approaches to the selection of marriage partners. And it does so with wry wit, compassion and an ultimate valuing of the romance of mutual attraction over parental calculations of wider family advantage. Just as Jane did really. Except in both cases the marriages seem ideal in that they combine the social class choice of the parents with the romantic choice of the girl and boy. Best of all possible worlds really. And perhaps that is what all this social manipulating is all about.

Within the mire of marriage machinations, questions of social justice arise even more as we follow the attempts of the Alis' son to achieve justice for rural villagers about to be ousted by commercial interests on a national scale.

No wonder Farahad Zama is on to his third novel in the series. This is a rich seam from which to extract many a narrative gem.

I married a boy from the local area, which automatically meant that we were from the same social class and thus shared many similar experiences of life. Zama's novel has forced me to consider why the marriage has worked so well and if it is due largely to the same issues that the Indian parents raise.I'll let you know when I have some answers. But don't hold your breath!

I love Farahad Zama's website. You can feel the excitement of following dreams, publishing success and the motivation to move on into it. Extracts from Mrs Ali's essays at the end of this novel give you an inkling of that sheer engagement.

Already having the book in my possession I read an interesting review of it on Kate's Chronicles of a Country Girl blog. Kate made a comment about Zama's style being "a tad unsophisticated' and I know what she means as it had me thinking about it as well. Perhaps it is that thing of 'voice' again and in this case the voice is that of Mr Ali who sees things largely in black and white. The sentence structures are certainly simple, resonating with a conversational tone. On re-examining the novel I see that the plot is largely driven by the dialogue. That one conversation leads to the unfolding of more sub-plots. Like most ordinary conversations within families and between old acquaintances, the language is plain and the semantic choices largely simple. The object is exchange of daily transactions and the language level seems to match this. The people are basically uncomplicated and linguistically this reveals itself in a certain naivety. However, behind this literary lack of sophistication lies integrity, sincerity and a celebration of a changing India.

Public knitting contributions laid out for sorting

Public knitting contributions laid out for sorting
Originally uploaded by National Gallery of Australia

How exciting! I can see that my piece did make it to the NGA. It's laid out on the floor in the middle row, about 7 pieces down from the front, or the lower part of the frame. It's pale blue and ochre brown.

Bless the NGA for their Flickr site with photographs as I'm really feeling the tyranny of distance. I really want to be there NOW watching as the pieces are assembled and wrapped. I'm traveling down on Friday so I'll be there Saturday to wander around and wrap myself up in the experience. I'm (w)rapt already. In fact, I found quite a substantial amount of leftover wool from the project, even after I made myself a hat to wear with the piece so now I'm rapidly knitting a moss stitch scarf to wear with the hat to wear to the exhibit to be photographed near if that's the stage things are at.

How absolutely thrilling :)