afters

When I haven't been around here for a bit you can most likely guess by now that there has been some demanding stuff going on PhD wise.  I was told by my lovely hairdresser today to update the blog (ta S xx), so here I am!   Our graduate research conference was weekend before last and I spent all of last week in recovery mode.   It took some serious wrangling in the last month or so to get ready to present my work, but the most interesting thing I got up to was making a sampler constructed out of this stuff...

Anyone for box chain?!

I will show what I made...just haven't got around to photographing it yet, but as a teaser, I will tell you that it is all about revisiting my making skills from my previous incarnation as a fetish wear designer!
Part of my post GRC recovery was spent on sock knitting...my feet have been so freezing during this very chilly wintery season that I decided to use some of my sock yarn stash to actually make socks rather than the usual baby cardi's.

This is the first time I've attempted sock knitting...so far so good, I'm nearly up to the heel shaping.

Other stuff...the lovely drawing salon semester finished last night...I'll get around to showing some more drawings soon...and the magnificent Ms Rehe is going on a drawing adventure to New York, so do stop by Patsyfox in the coming weeks to see what she is up to.

Not much happening garden wise...some winter planting and planning for hopefully a better warm season in a few months...I did pick some carrots yesterday...they were yum :o)

happy anniversary!

6 years today since P and I were wed!  I picked some of the few autumn roses that we have at the mo...both P and I agree that these are much nicer than the lanky and characterless long stems that you can buy...so these days I request no flowers on occasions like this!

Instead, we had a lovely dinner at Quaff in Toorak Village, close to where we were married at St Johns church.  We had a nice surprise that there was a sculpture exhibition along the strip, with various sculptures being shown inside the shop windows...we had a squiz after dinner...

And when we got home, an amazing surprise for me on the coffee table...a Lily Serna number puzzle book...much better than long stemmed roses - yay!

draw something

I hope everyone in Australia had a nice Anzac day and remembered the Anzacs...what an awful cold day for them though!  The first wintery weather for the year hit us here in Melbourne yesterday and it was a bit of a shock to the system...I particularly felt it as I was up early to go to a leather workshop at the hub and out late at the patsyfox drawing salon.
I really haven't turned my hand to any serious illustration attempts since my undergrad fashion days, and I feel the pain every time I try to get ideas down on paper.  I've been thinking about it for a while, but decided to bite the bullet and get some skill brushing help from the wonderful Angie Rehe.
We started with drawing the fashion figure and here's some sneaks at my first attempts...I'm not quite ready to show full illustrations yet, just the bits I like best, plus the first lady was toppling off the page a little as kindly pointed out to me by Angie!



Angie liked the shoes in my second drawing so I'm showing you this bit...her face was a disaster!  We're doing faces next week, thank goodness!

Enjoy what you have left of the last public holiday that we have for quite some time peeps!

crumb bum stupid head

The personal vernacular of hubby P and myself has of late been evolving to the tune of the opening skit of this portlandia ep…



…and we’re currently in the midst of calling each other and the doggles “crumb bum” and “stupid head” at an almost constant and ridiculous rate.  It’s quite fitting really, as I am at the moment lifting myself out of a state in which I felt I was a firm stupidhead and definite crumb bum a lot of the time!  Yes, I’ve been wrangling this darned PhD of mine into some kind of ok shape, and I finally feel that I’m getting there.  A fog has finally lifted, while the hazy melancholic autumn is setting in.  Maybe this is a phenomenon to watch out for…decline pushing other areas of my life into the hopefully sublime!

You might have noticed that this little old blog is looking quite a bit different…it’s been on the back burner for a bit, but the wrangling has been happening here too and it’s finally looking a lot more designerly!  The tabs up the top are yet to be populated…this will evolve over time.

I’m still making lots of lettuces as opposed to growing them, (there are some growing too)…I might make a salad…

back in not so black...again!

Back towards the beginning of my bloggy happenings I moved away from blackness and into blackness with the blog layout...for a while I've been tired with the black, and even though it is less lit pixels, a pal pointed out to me that a difficult to read screen isn't very sustainable either!   So I've taken the plunge to start redesigning the blog page in line with some new directions I'm taking...it's a work in progress...watch this space!

As I mentioned in the previous post, the uni semester started last week which takes me away from all routine things, and this week has been about developing a new routine...which is kind of nice - means some jiggling of priorities and attending to the really important things.

I didn't touch the garden last week...it has been a very disappointing season with the lack of a real hot stretch and all of the pests (aphids and rats!) that have just caused almost everything to fail.  Even the last hope for apples is out the window as these late season sturmers have been munched away at (I think rats...again!)  When I went to take a pic I discovered european wasps sucking away at the flesh too!

But I did manage to pick one, the last with no rat chews...and looking at the woodbridge link, it's reassuring that my apple looks the same as theirs, even though it is insanely early compared to the june/july ripening time that they predict...

There are always some lovely things in the garden though, like this orb weaver on one of the rose arches....

And the zucchinis and cucumbers I planted to replace those pulled out during the dog vs rat debacle are doing well...even though they are late in the season, hopefully I'll get a crop...

I'm starting some experiments with making vegetables in the studio...not sure where it will go, but I'm doing some plastic crochet Marjorie Bligh style with a twist.  I'm doing some hyperbolic crochet to make some lettuce forms...in this case using glad wrap from a bunch of organic celery...


From sheet to form :o)

giant eyelets are go!

I went on a big eyelet expedition last Friday, but before I get to that, I failed to mention the watermelon suprise I had the day before.  The watermelon plant out the front was looking a bit wilted after the hot weather while I was away.  I was worried that it could be on it's way out if I didn't start to look after it more carefully, but when I looked closely I saw a lovely melon about the size of a tennis ball developing!

I'll be very careful to water it everyday now, I think that's what they need.

I'm about to start making curtains for the holiday house at Rye, and decided that eyelet top style would work best for the rods and style of the windows.  I've never invested in large eyelets and the equipment to attach them - I have wanted them, but never had a good enough reason.  So I popped down to Eyelets Supply Co. in Springvale to get my 40mm beauties!

I've never been to Eyelets Supply in person, although I've rung through orders hundreds of times.  I liked seeing their sets of old skool dies...

And their presses...

Here's the big eyelets...

And the lovely sales guy Luke demonstrated how to attach the eyelets and also told the story of how he amputated his hand 15 years before!  I think he felt he had to tell me because I asked if he minded me taking pics of him hammering and thought I might notice his hand looked a bit funny.  It was amazing that he could hammer with it and write normally...I won't go into more detail, might be too gory for here!

Next door is a Chinese temple too, which was so pretty, I love the ceramic details :o)

have beans

Where have I been?  I hardly know myself...too many everyday things and holidays getting in the way!
We went down to P's families holiday house for "Oystralya Dai" (last Thursday, quote Pen!), and spent the weekend...I didn't get back till Monday night...

But we had lots of fun, and did more renos which are now nearly done, yippee!  But onto beans now...firstly a bean shaped Gemma pet on the bed at Rye (couldn't resist!)...

But what I really want to get to is the beans in the garden.  We had lots of broadbeans back in December...

Which were yum when I cooked them with my meatball dish

The purple king beans growing alongside the espaliered citrus trees on the back of the house were growing beautifully at the start...

And we were picking some lovely beans too...

But a few weeks back I noticed that not many more beans were coming and the leaves were looking poorly with some browning off.  On close inspection I discovered tiny aphids on the undersides of the leaves.  I've never seen these ones before, they were almost invisible and almost like a coating of sticky green.  I'm not into spraying at all, even with a soap spray and I'm glad I didn't because some ladybirds moved in and then a week later I could see their larvae, which are so small it's hard to take a pic of them!

These beans are pretty much a write off now, but there were a few flowers that are developing into beans now, so fingers crossed!

I have the next lot of beans planted out the front, and they are looking good, so it doesn't really matter so much.  I have the attitude (and this is true of the ratty issue and this seasons plum situation too), that I'll take what I can, or reasonably should, and if other creatures or plants in the system need to do this too, that's ok, it's a bit of give and take.  Having said that, it is just as well that I'm not relying on my garden for absolute subsistence!   But I'm learning from what does and doesn't work, conducting the garden activities in a more orderly manner now and documenting the process, which should all help as I trundle along.  Oh, and mentioning the rats again...the games continue as when I came back from Rye all of the half developed corn cobs had been stripped from the stalks.  When the dogs are away the rats will play....oh the woe of these before and after shots!

The doggles have been going nuts trying to get into the fenced garden now...my bet, clever rat knows it's the only place in the garden they can't get to!   Gems and Hugs can get their heads quite a way through this mesh if they want to and are now destroying whatever plant matter within reach in the effort to get to rattus.  Note to self...need smaller gauge mesh!

birthday, baby cardi and beans

I'm amused that absolutely no-one has taken me up on my christmas giveaway offer of a plum jam recipe...maybe no-one else has any plums either!

I've been distracted by other bits n bobs anyhow...my lovely pal Belinda held a birthday party for her little boy who turned 3...she put on an amazing lunch and spread of party food...here's my origami'd birthday card, envelope made from a page from the weekender mag and the wrapped pressie using some of my gleaned paper remnants from my digi printing...

The pressie was an origami book and paper set :o)
I also made a start on the next sock yarn baby cardi...another pal is having her bub number two in february so I'm getting in early!

And I picked the first of the purple king beans which I have growing alongside and twining up the meyer lemon which is espaliered on the back wall of the house.  Not a bad weekend!

christmas gleaning

I always like to make time for hand crafted christmas greetings, and I also like to include some dog pics like this gorgeous one of Hugo from last year...

This year I have heaps of plum jam recipes left over from the giveaway in my guest book I had for summer gleaning - the recipe's are a photocopy of my own handwritten one from my cook's organiser...

So I thought I could glean the remnant recipes for this years cards.  I used a technique from my favourite origami book - Home Decorating with Origami by Tomoko Fuse...

I folded the A5 recipe sheets into what is described in the book as a letter holder.  I printed a cutie picture of Gemma and Hugo looking down the back garden in a strategic spot on the back of the recipe so that I could write the christmas message around it...

For an envelope to put these in, I decided to make my own.  A while back pugly pixel blogged about a coolie envelope template from jetpens...which I promptly purchased online!  It makes tiny envelopes, so I blew it up on the photocopier to A3 size to also make four bigger sizes...I spray glued the photocopy onto a piece of cardboard and cut it out to make my own template - yay!
I've been collecting any interesting images from magazines, booklets and newspapers so went through the stash to come up with some sweet combo's...

And to finish off these ones which weren't going through the post, I sealed the envelopes with some spiderman stickers which I had about the place - P is a spidey fan :o)

"Amazing power and responsibility!"