Boringness will rule.

Until I find my camera so that I can photograph craft some more. Or until I've got the work ebooks project out of the way so that I can illustrate again. Or until I wear another vest.

Picnic day!

My birthday was on Saturday, so instead of a last-minute dinner I seized the day and planned ahead and decided it was a good excuse for a day-trip to Bowral. This was one of the bigger organisational feats in my life so far. I had the idea in December last year, in fact. I wrote a rather extensive list on Thursday, things to do, buy, and make. This wasn't chip sandwiches in the park! It was a pretty proper picnic. 

First, I gathered picnic blankets. I bought one of those tartan ones, but then I also went to an op shop and got a bedspread and 2 lace tablecloths for a few dollars each. Throwing lace tablecloths over the blankets made everything look so much fancier.

Photos by Denise.

I took real cutlery and my cheap glass tumblers, because plastic cuttles are annoying and plastic cups have no stability and drinks get spilt. How nice it looks, sparkling glassware with Ribena on a white lace spread! I broke 2 glasses getting them home and washing them, but like I said, cheap. Completely worth the sacrifice.

Artful photo of the healthy part of the picnic.

I also made cloth napkins, by cutting squares of leftover linen from my last shirt-making and overlocking them (mum has just lent me her overlocker). 30 minutes on Thursday night.

And the final fancy thing was that I baked bread. It kind of meant that we left a bit later because it took ages to rise and bake on the cold day, but it was delicious and still warm when we got there and ate it. I made a basic white mix, split it in 3 and put LSA in one and lots of olives, garlic and herbs in another. SOOOOO YUMMMY, much better than my last olive bread.

So other than that bit of special effort, the picnic was cheap and basic and I only had to buy some deli and salad stuff, and others also chipped in with BBQ chicken, lollies, etc etc. We read some appropriate poetry, napped, whizzed through the main street to buy gumboots and fabric and coffees, and then plundered an antique shop in Mittagong of their second hand clothes. I bought some culottes! A skirt but secretly shorts. Speaking of shorts, the day was too short and we were home by 6pm (to head out to various Saturday night engagements).

Review: A splendid time was had by all. It was quite possibly my happiest birthday ever.

Another vest.

This is the second vest in my woolly vest collection. I do not wear it very much, because it is a bit unusual, but I do like it. I found it among my Grandma's clothes when she had her big downsize-from-big-family-home garage sale last year, and it was crocheted by another member of the family—one of her sisters-in-law or someone. It has a few moth holes which I have sewn up and aren't noticeable. I like the colour and the crochet, but when I wear it the openess of the crochet feels a bit weird and it's not very well shaped around the  neck and shoulders, particularly at the back. Anyway, when I wear it I feel designy and authenticly retro. And the shirt under it is one of my most favourite, but is so thin now I have poked my finger through it at the back. Vests are so helpful for delaying shirt death: it's like independent living for active retiree shirts.

Book craft.

Ta-da! A beautiful picture frame made out of a book. I put a postcard in it for demonstration. I think it looks pretty awesome and I could totally make a million dollars selling them on Etsy. Bring me your quaint hardcover books, people!

You can see by the tag and stamps it is just an old cancelled library book, I found it in my parents book shelves when I cleared it out of the bad books. I saved this pile which had nice shabby covers under the paper covers.

My mum lent me her ruler and knife which cuts at a 45 angle for picture framing. The books were pretty difficult to cut through, the cardboard was thicker than framing cardboard and the books were a bit too small for the big ruler to get a good grip on, so it was a bit rough and wobbly, but they all still look really good. What I need is a drill, so that I can thread string through the back cover and tape it to the front, to hold the books closed when they are hanging on the wall.

I also did a little bit of painting. The deck chairs will hopefully be Sarah's wedding present, although I had a better idea last night maybe, and I have wanted to paint a swallow for ages, and it was fun. I might frame it in one of my books.

Wardrobe favourites: vest.

By the way, I am loving this vest at the moment. It's the weather for light layers, and although I love a cardigan, the vest is just different. The arms are free to be cool, it doesn't matter if the shirt is clean or has missing buttons as long as it has sleeves and preferably a collar, although a tshirt works OK too, and it's woolly and all warm, and a bit smart. I got it last year from an op-shop in the upper hunter. It reminds me of the country.

Skipping church and destroying books.

Last night I didn't go to church. I very rarely skip church and I didn't even have a very good excuse, but it worked for me. I spent the entire last weekend away with wild st including church after, and this Saturday I spent all day in the church hall painting banners. On Sunday I was incredibly stiff from the painting, went to the cathedral, and in the afternoon relaxed by reading and painting and cutting holes in the front of old books. When time came to go to church I made excuses to myself about being stiff, tired, and churched out, but the truth was I wasn't that tired or people-weary. I was in a pretty happy state of mind for a Sunday night. I even regretted not being at church a little bit. But I did figure out my need to stay home: I had a nice quiet evening home alone pottering and thinking, and I realised that that was actually all I wanted. Some quiet in my own head. A break from listening to things and saying things and getting to know people and going to and fro on the earth.

I really sadly forgot my camera today so I will post the efforts of my book mutilation tomorrow. It's pretty exciting. I think I need a drill.

Home stretch!

I have almost finished the painting! I did it for a couple of weeks solid, then I had almost 2 weeks doing other things because it was print run and I'm also trying to put some ebooks together by April. This week I swung the ole brush again and only had a few to finish and a few I decided needed more done on them. For example, today I worked on some I had already done, but the people were standing on puddles of grass, with no background, and I thought they needed a bit more 'place', so I painted more grass and some garden beds too. They look heaps better now. I'm glad I overcame my laziness about backgrounds.

And so I think I only have one small picture to paint, of some toys, and I've also started outlining, because I needed the confidence boost. Outlining finishes them. I scanned in the picture I was so devastated about recently, so that you can see how it looks now. I blotted colour out of the face with water and paper towel, which rescued it. The outlining is done with some watercolour pencils, not dipped in water though. I use black and grey and peach mostly. I vary the darkness of the outline, and I do a little bit of shading and try and remember I can be a bit messy, because the more sketchy the pencil outlining looks the more dynamic the illustration is. This part of the job is easy and satisfying!

Weekend of sisterly sewing and bread.

This was probably my last bit of sewing for the next month or so. All my weekends are crunched full of stuff (although Sunday the 27th looks empty so far) and spare after work hours I'll be painting something for a present. I have to admit I'm getting sad thinking about all those busy weekends. Individually they are weekends I'll enjoy, like church weekend away, my birthday, a wedding, but, to use a design analogy, the brain needs white space.

ANYWAY! I made a bible cover for Wendy on Saturday. I luckily happened to sort of match up the pattern on the strap to the cover. Took about an hour to make, while my sister sewed new velcro onto Elsie's hat and we listened to Feet of Clay (Discwold) and let some bread rise and some spare ribs marinate.

I made half the dough into olive bread, half into plain white. It was a wet dough, so very moist and springy when baked, but the wet dough had to be kneaded which was sticky and tricky. I should have put more olives in the olive bread. Can't have too many. Saturday was not very healthy, ribs and bread. But we walked two hours as well.

Sunday lunch was a lovely BBQ with cathedral church friends in their backyard near my house. They had chickens! In Randwick! 4 hens, which provides them with 20 eggs a week. Graham brought sirloin steak oh my goodness yum I can never eat minute steak again. I took my favourite salad with baby spinach and chickpeas in it. Tish brought a nectarine crumble. Ahhh! How good is crumble! So easy, sweet and moreish. Esp when fruit is cheap.

Bad dream.

Don't get them much, but last night was a corker. I got out of bed and wondered why I was so tired. This is probably why:

There is some stuff I forget, and then I'm in a hospital bed at night and a nurse fiddles around under the blanket and cuts a big bit of flesh out of my left knee. I think she's cutting bits off me to eat. I spend the rest of the dream staggering around the hospital, and it's not night anymore, trying to hide among a group of old people who are having a story time in a nice book room, etc etc, and whenever the psycho nurse finds me I fight her with whatever I can find, trying to explain to all the other patients that she's not a nurse, she ate my knee and wants to eat the rest of me too. One of the old people suggests I leave the hospital with him and stay in a cottage in the country where he plays golf, I do leave with him even though I am suspicious about whose side he is on and I don't like golf, but at least I have a relaxing drive in the country. Then I am back at the hospital and there are people being put in a big black van which is on a really high balcony, and the psycho nurse falls off the balcony like in an action movie, and so does someone else who was a nice person.

Then I woke up and forgot. But I remembered when I was walking to work.

Magnolia Square.

Boutique craft fair at Paddo last weekend. Only took an hour and a bit to check out, and $5 to get in, and it was worth it. The stalls are carefully selected and really well put together. Expensive, of course, but worth going for the inspiration, and we found some cute earrings and hair bows we could afford. Hot tip: bunting. You can make bunting out of paper, pages of books, hankies or crocheted circles: instant designy craft cred. Also, pleats are the new frills. Photos follow of a pretty stall, crochet bunting and random goats from Mongolia.

Singing.

Tonight is singing night! I am going to an 8 week community college class for beginners, this is the 4th week. It's good. Even though I'm pretty advanced in terms of musical knowledge as a piano player, I'm a complete beginner singer, so it's helpful. There are about 12 people. Mostly women. Mostly pretty shy. We do 45 minutes of warm ups and learning about the voice, and 45 minutes of singing as a choir. Currently we are learning 3 part harmonies for Hallelujah. There is a harmonica class downstairs, and another singing group after us for better singers. This is the "something out of the box" I chose to do to start the year.

Shirt #3.

I bought this nice linen half price on my successful fabric shopping trip the other weekend. I started to wonder if it would be better for a skirt because of the size of the print, but a linen skirt would scrunch up and not sit nicely, and also I don't want to always be paralysed by indecision. Stick with the original plan and make the jolly shirt. So I got sewing on Saturday afternoon. Here is the half way shot.

I didn't have the bias binding to finish the arm holes, I bought it yesterday and finished up last night. This is the nice inside detail.

Finished, photographed, and being worn by me now!