Here's to Ears!

Yesterday we went out to celebrate a) Father's Day; b) the Swans' win; and c) the first sunny day of spring. We gorged ourselves with yum cha then wandered around Chinatown and Darling Harbour, where they were holding a Chalk Art Festival.
For those who have been following my graffiti obsession, you will be almost as excited as I was to discover the artist behind the Sad Dudes!



























Not only did I get to watch him work, but his creations were available to purchase by donation. So, for the princely sum of $5.00, I now have my own original artwork, which I call "Sad Ranga Dude". I even asked him to tag it, on the back.













I'm not sure how pleased the Master is with this new addition to our walls...

UFOs, WIPs and WISPs

This UFO (left) will one day be a cushion.

Sharon B, of In a Minute Ago, asked for ideas on how to get over the stitching hump that seems to hit about three-quarters of the way through a craft project. It's always nice to hear that other stitchers suffer from the same procrastinatory problems as I do, and I thought I'd take up Sharon's challenge and try to come up with some strategies to turn my UFOs into FOs.

It is with awareness of hubris that I take on this challenge. I am a very poor follower of my own tenets in the matter of UFOs, although I do have strict principles: first and foremost, that I can't bear to make an item without a specific purpose in mind, so having this purpose should, in theory, make it easier to stay the course and finish the piece even when the three-quarters-finished state of ennui hits.

I also find that being disciplined about finishing one piece before starting another gives me great incentive, because there is always a more exciting project waiting to be started. Unfortunately, this occasionally means that I don't start the new project at all, but the upside of that is that it is one less UFO in the pile! I could give you a list of projects I have planned (and occasionally bought materials for) and never started: but it would only make me cry to think of all that wasted creativity.

I should also confess that, being an acolyte in several fields of craft, I don't apply these rules across boundaries. Therefore, if I have a cross-stitch project, knitting, a crazy patchwork piece and all sorts of other things in progress all at once, I consider them all WISPs rather than UFOs, even if it has been some months (or years!) since I touched one or the other of them.

At the moment, I am stalled on the quilting of queen-size quilt, which is about three-quarters finished. I need to summon the energy to finish this soon, simply because it takes up so much space! Once it's finished and on the bed, there will be a whole lot more space in my tiny terrace house. Then there's just the box of yarn I inherited from my late aunt, waiting to be knitted into beanies and charity blankets; the cross-stitch I promised to my friend World Citizen 3000 when he moved into his new house several years ago (he has just sold the house, so it will have to be for his next home); the felt pods I already have the fibre set aside for; and the white-on-white crazy patchwork panel I haven't touched since Can-Bra in 2004.

Telephone to glory

Yesterday's reading from the Harvard Classics Project was a chapter of Origin of Species, and the Delicious Pundit's take on it tickled my funnybone:

It isn't literally contradictory -- you can still believe that we are just like the other animals on this tiny wet dot floating through a vast universe and that you can get God on the phone -- but you start to see that God might be a little distracted when he takes your call.

Of course, if you do give the big guy a call, you might just get his voice mail.

From Crackle: Mr. Deity and the Messages - Episode 4

Sputnik

This is my new Sputnik charm: it's a strange little jewellery item that takes its name from its likeness to the Soviet spacecraft -- first launched in 1957, crashed in 1958 -- without the antennae. Fifty years later, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to wear my own piece of mid-century modern space junk, even though its aesthetic appeal is a little dubious.

The drum on kettles

I decided that I wanted to clear some kitchen bench space by getting rid of my rather ancient and grubby electric jug, so I set out to buy a kettle for my gas stovetop*. This turned out to be a much more difficult search than anticipated.
Firstly, most of our local homewares stores only sell electric jugs. Then, I found a gorgeous kettle on ebay, but when I checked the manufacturer's website, the starting price on ebay was already above the recommended retail price. So, I wrote down the nearest stockists listed on the website but the first three I went to were a) boarded up, b) a hole in the ground, and c) claiming never to have heard of the brand.
Lastly, when we did find a store with a kettle, the offerings were either ugly but practical or beautiful but impractical. I think the most frustrating moment in my search was when I found a lovely, stainless steel, satin-finish kettle with a curvaceous shape and a stylish stainless steel handle. However, the sales assistant couldn't guarantee that the handle would not heat up when the kettle was boiled. She suggested I buy it and try it out. "If the handle does get hot," I asked, "can I bring the kettle back for a refund?" "You can't bring it back if you have used it," she replied. I did not buy it.
By this stage I was feeling very much like poor Alice at the Mad Hatter's tea party:

“Take some more tea,” the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
“I’ve had nothing yet,” Alice replied in an offended tone: “so I ca’n’t take more.”
“You mean you ca’n’t take less,” said the Hatter: “it’s very easy to take more than nothing.”

I did eventually find a kettle, with a sweet little whistle that sounds just like Gran's used to. It ain't Alessi, but it was a tenth of the price. And it works. I put it on the stove and made a cup of tea, and now I feel much better.

* I thought it might also be more energy efficient, although it appears that the savings in greenhouse emissions from using gas are largely erased by the fact that it takes twice as long as an electric jug to heat the water. (A gas stovetop kettle is twice as efficient as an electric stovetop kettle, however.)

IF THE CITY IS Y

I snapped these images with my mobile phone camera today and yesterday. The erosion of advertising materials in both cases--in the glossy flyers wilting in the rain where they protrude from the letterboxes, and the torn edges of the multiple layers of the street posters--appealed to me in an aesthetic way as well as philosophically. I only wish I'd had a real camera with me.

Success isn't everything

This piece is my last felting foray (for now) and probably my least successful, but it shows that there is beauty even in failure.
I used the nuno technique that produced the purple scarf (below), but this time I felted the entire piece of fabric, in order to produce the lovely ruching that you can see in the foreground of the picture. Unfortunately, I chose polyester fabric (it's actually an op shop find, a sheer scarf with brown roses printed on it). It was hard work to get the wool fibres to "grab" the polyester threads, and therefore the ruching is a little uneven, with large bubbles of scarf fabric popping up all over the surface, as you can see in the background of the picture. It's not unsalvageable, but I still need to decide what to do with it. Ideas are welcome.

Herbal remedy

My first piece of felt was a simple square, which we made as a sample to show how much the wool fibres shrink as you felt them. (A lot.) I made the piece reversible, with a soft green on one side and a cream on the other side. Although my felting instructor assured me that my work was passable, she did warn that the felting police might not wholly approve of the fabric, which was not properly fulled. This means that the fibres are not completely felted together and the fabric may not keep its integrity with wear and tear.
I wanted to come up with a use for it, anyway, so I made a little four-petal template and cut flowers and a few leaves from the square. I fulled them a little more after I had cut the shapes, just to soften the edges up a bit. Then I stitched them onto a headband using a variegated silk thread that became a feature as the flower centres. (Or I should say, since they are supposed to be hydrangea flowers, that the template had four sepals and the silk thread represents the flowers. Just being pedantic.)
The result is not bad for a beginner, I think.

Pebble discrete

The felting adventure continues, this time with some felted pebbles. The coarse, variegated grey Corriedale wool was the perfect texture for these little treasures. You'll never guess what's underneath the felt, either: pebbles!

Silk and wool (what I felt II)

In my second felting class I was pleasantly surprised to learn a felting technique called "Nuno". This technique of felting onto open-weave fabrics is an Australian invention, an answer to the problem of our lovely climate, which doesn't provide many cold days on which you can comfortably wear fully felted garments. Nuno felting is lightweight and easy, and it creates some lovely crinkled effects on the fabric as well. As the wool fibres felt up and shrink down, they pull the fabric and any other fibres (such as the mauve mohair fibre I used as an accent) into lovely, squiggly organic shapes. This scarf elicits comments each time I wear it. I wore it last night when we went to see David Sedaris at the Opera House.

What I felt...

Yesterday I completed my third felting workshop. I have been slack about uploading pictures of my creations, some of which are more successful than others. But I'm quite pleased with these felt pods, which I modelled on some sea cucumbers in the Sydney Aquarium. I need to find something to place in the openings to represent the feathery feelery bits (which, I believe, are actually the sea cucumber's internal organs that they push out through their mouths to 'digest' food as it swims by).
As it turns out, I'm not the only one making reef creatures out of felt or other fabrics. See the Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef designed by Aussie sisters Christine and Margaret Wertheim (I've read Margaret's great book on women in science called Pythagoras' Trousers, which I can recommend). And there's also Stitchin' Fish, a blog I'll be adding to my favourites list.
The lattice the pods are resting on is one of my first attempts at felting, as well, although I consider it a failure, so I won't be showing it separately. In the next couple of days I'll try to post additional images of the more successful examples of my felting, though, and I hope you like them.

Beanie feast

A few months ago, I blogged about an article on homeless kids in Sydney and at the end of it I wondered what I could do to help them out. I referred to a non-denominational charity that I had heard good things about, Just Enough Faith.
Checking their website, I found that they needed donations of beanies, scarves and blankets for the winter, so I started knitting. Just as I was finishing the first beanie, the local newspapers ran a series of articles in which they showed photographs and evidence that the CEO of Just Enough Faith had been caught putting the charity's money through the poker machines at a local club. Oops!
As it turned out, that first beanie I made was stolen when our house was broken into (along with lots of other irreplaceable stuff, but that beanie really hurt--I mean, I would've given it to them if they'd asked me!) Despite these setbacks, I kept knitting beanies, and putting them aside until I figured out which charity to give them to.
I also knitted a few for other people, including Ms N.D., my nephew the Moose and my little second-cousin (or first-cousin-once-removed, or whatever the heck the relationship is), whom you can see here sporting my fluffy creation.
Now, with a bunch of beanies in hand and the end of winter approaching fast, I have finally found a charity to give them to. Knit One, Give One was started by a Victorian woman for much the same reason as I started my beanie-knitting, so I'm happy to hand my hard work over to her for distribution. And it's not too late: I've seen people in Melbourne wearing beanies in summer!

P.S. I got my beanie pattern from crumpart, although KOGO have one on their website as well.

P.P.S. If you find a newspaper article about the founder of KOGO being caught gambling, don't show it to me! I couldn't bear it...

Identity crisis

According to Mike on Ads and his little googlebot, I have a 51% likelihood of being male and a 49% likelihood of being female, based on my browsing history. (I'm glad they clarified the sums: I wonder if the Dude would get a 20% likelihood of being chimpanzee, if he clicked on the button?)
Why do the internets think I'm more likely to be male? It could explain why I keep getting those emails from blonde Russian women who want to marry me...

Reading at length and in depth

I happened to read two blog posts today that talked about different approaches to reading over the space of a year. Keri Smith talks about the idea of reading just one book for an entire year. She cites the example of a guy who carried a copy of Finnegan's Wake around with him for a year, reading and rereading it until he understood it. Which makes me think the story is apocryphal: I mean, who can understand Finnegan's Wake at all? However, I do understand Keri's desire to get back to basics in this way, although I'm not ready to take up the challenge myself (too much to read, too little time).
The other blog that I discovered today is the Harvard Classics Project, in which Chris Marcil writes a daily post about the books on his grandfather's Harvard Classics reading list. His take on how the classics are relevant (or not) to the modern world is funny and inspires a desire to investigate a broader range of literature in bite-sized chunks.
So which will it be? In-depth study or wide-ranging browsing? Or a bit of both?

Art and craft

This is a little bib I made for my new second cousin, Quinlan. I made my own pattern, copying the basic design from Saidos da Concha, a source of inspiration for me at the moment. I like the idea of the "Handmade Pledge" that Etsy is promoting: to make or buy handmade gifts rather than simply adding to corporate profits. Of course, it remains to be seen how much I can stick to the plan, as people's birthdays seem to sneak up on me, resulting in last-minute dashes to the shops for pressies.
On another note, the beach art that the Dude and I did on our recent holiday is now on the V&A World Beach Project website.

So NOT square

This morning I listened to the latest Skepticality [sic] podcast, Rationalist Rap. Swoopy interviewed Greydon Square, who is a hiphop artist, former gang member, former US soldier in Iraq and currently a physics student. I'm not a big hiphop fan, but I liked the mellow sound of his music and the poetry of his lyrics (in much the same way as I like the Hilltop Hoods, homegrown hiphop from the Adelaide Hills). Sometimes wisdom appears in unexpected shapes and forms.

Hear Greydon Square's music on his myspace page. I like 2008 A.D. and The CPT Theorem. Just a warning: as in most hiphop, some language may offend.

Dream house

Via Poppytalk.

Catch the sun in a jar

Available from dstore.com.au. I'm adding it to my Christmas wish list.

Love this idea!

Idea vending machine

Sad kids and other dudes

An exhibition at a local art gallery (you can preview it online) may be the work of my favourite, but heretofore anonymous, graffiti artist. Last year I took photographs of some examples of his/her work and blogged about them in February, March and April.
So is Stormie Mills the culprit? The exhibited works are similar but not exactly the same, and the artist apparently lives in Perth. My examples are somewhat simpler in style, as well, although something that you have to paint on a fence while looking over your shoulder to check that the police aren't coming to arrest you may be necessarily less polished than something you paint to sell in a gallery. Perhaps my Sydney graffitist is a disciple of Stormie Mills', rather than the artist himself.

People in glass houses...

I had a good laugh at the item in my local newspaper, which reported that a Popefest Pilgrim had asked a Sydneysider whether the moon they could see here was the same one they saw at home in the USA.
"How dumb are those Septics?" I guffawed, as I pointed out the article to friends and family.
Should have kept my stones to myself, I realised, when I saw this display in the Nelson Bay newsagency:



I'll bet Edwin Hubble's grave is registering on seismographs over this gaffe.

Guerilla art, part three

While Queequeg and I were sailing the ocean blue and other nautical things last week, we had a chance to put some more Aussie beaches on the map at the World Beach Project.
I made this handprint at Zenith Beach, Shoal Bay, almost exactly 18 years after the Master (AFSM) and I had our first kiss on that spot (awwwww). As you can imagine, Queequeg was pretty grossed out by the whole idea of a romance, especially one involving his parents.
He made a picture of a whale at Diamond Beach, where Tezznbev also got into the act, as did my sister's Little Princess.

A la recherche du temps perdu

Browsing through the books in a secondhand dealer (because Lord knows I need more books: my reading pile got down below a metre while I was on holiday last week) I came across this little retro gem.
This book--well, not this actual book but one of its sisters-- was on my high school Textiles & Design book list. I fondly recall its advice on caring for worsted fabrics, how to tell the difference between cotton and rayon, and what constitutes a jacquard weave. After all, I did top the class in Year 11, so I must have learned something. It certainly wasn't my slapdash sewing skills that won me the honour!
Dear old Rosalie wrote this book in 1962 (reprinted in 1964). Its sister was first put into my hands at the Canobolas High School some 20 years later, and now this copy completes the circle 20-odd years after that.
Plus ca change, plus ca meme chose.

Light on the Hill

101 uses for a Kevin Rudd. Following in the footsteps of "the definitive John Howard biography", one of my favourite pre-election sites. Make sure you click the switch.

New South Whales

Call me Ishmael. This pair of humpback whales were making their way up the coast to get laid at the Great Barrier Reef as Queequeg (aka the Dude) and I cruised aboard the Pequod (aka Moonshadow IV) outside Nelson Bay. We followed them around for a while and they put on quite a show, with some tail slapping and waving of fins. Just like big, scary dolphins, really.

Herman Melville's Ishmael describes the humpback whale thus:

He has a great pack on him like a peddler; or you might call him the Elephant and Castle whale. He is the most gamesome and light-hearted of all the whales, making more gay foam and white water generally than any other of them.

The devil's wisdom

Say, hast thou naught descried that met thy wishes?
Thou didst o'erlook a boundless territory,
'The kingdoms of the world and all their glory,'
But all insatiate thou art,
Lusted for naught at all thine heart?

Mephistopheles, in Faust Part II Act IV, by Goethe.

Very Machiavellian.

Impressionism

And we sit there, by [the river's] margin, while the moon, who loves it too, stoops down to kiss it with a sister's kiss, and throws her silver arms around it clingingly; and we watch it as it flows, ever singing, ever whispering, out to meet its king, the sea--till our voices dies away in silence, and the pipes go out--till we, commonplace, everyday young men enough, feel strangely full of thoughts, half sad, half sweet, and do not care or want to speak... we fall asleep beneath the great, still stars, and dream that the world is young again.

Jerome K Jerome, Three Men in a Boat, Chapter 2

Music: Nocturnes: Sirenes by Claude Debussy
Image: Sunset on the Seine by Claude Monet

One week until P-day

Yesterday I stopped in at Cardinal Pell's Moneychanging Emporium Inc (prudently located across the road from the temple rather than inside it). Unfortunately they were all out of Pope-on-a-rope, and I hesitated to ask for the T-shirt I really want ("John-Paul, George [Pell] and Ratzingo: Australian tour 2008") just in case I was spotted by an oversensitive SES volunteer and incarcerated in a tin shed in Kellyville for the duration.
For those who haven't seen the monstrosity yet, you'll be pleased to know that the Merchandise Marquee only covers about half of Hyde Park, right under the benevolent gaze of Apollo atop the Archibald Fountain. Let's hope the pilgrims spill a few drops of holy water on the trampled earth so that the grass grows back quickly after they've gone.

More guerilla art at Bare Island

The Dude and I went down to Bare Island to make some art for the V&A Museum's World Beach Project. The rock stacks in the picture were our first attempts, but then we found some pieces of flat, grey sandstone that the Dude assembled into the shape of a reef shark. We've submitted it to the Project, and it should appear on the website in a day or two, so please check it out. Updated 7/7.
I challenge everyone who is near a beach to have a go at this form of guerilla art. It's free, fun and easy, and Australian beaches are sadly underrepresented in the project!

Tell me in the comments below when you've done it.

Guerilla art

The new camera has arrived!

Let's all make some guerilla art. Post links to yours in the comments below.

Shameless self-promotion

Yesterday's mail brought a copy of a book I edited before Christmas and I have really looked forward to seeing in print: Wild Tea Cosies. You can guess what I'll be knitting this winter...
I've also just received copies of two books I produced for Inspirations Books, Stitch it: Home and Stitch it: Quilts. These are co-published in the USA by Leisure Arts and available from amazon.com, too.
I'm really proud of these books, but another reason I'm telling you about them is to prove the Master (VoR, FP, HD, MBT, and *now* AFSM) a liar--he keeps telling people that I sit at home all day watching Dr Phil on cable TV. (Actually, I sit at the computer all day writing blog entries and reading other people's blogs...)

Stripe me pink!

A new shop opened up recently, just a few doors down the road from my house. The Remnant Warehouse buys the ends of bolts of fabric from designers and clothing manufacturers and sells them, if there is a large enough quantity, by the metre, or by the bolt end for smaller quantities. (They also have general sewing supplies, from thread and needles to embroidery accessories and braid, thus promising to save me many trips to Spotlight.)
The beauty of this is that these fabrics are not necessarily readily available elsewhere and they are cheap. This lush, stripy cotton print has a hint of metallic gold that really makes it zing, and it cost me just $10 for 2.5m! I also bought a 3m end of a bolt of sheer polycotton fabric with woven navy and white stripes for $6.00 -- cheap or what?
Now, what am I going to make? I've got a few ideas already, but suggestions are welcome...

Dancing with scissors

Ms N.D. and I went to the Opera House to see Edward Scissorhands, the ballet. I confess that I've never watched the movie, but I couldn't resist the concept of the story told in dance. Without the words, the emotions expressed in the narrative seem so poignant. I'm not sure if I want to see the movie now: it might spoil the ballet for me!
My only criticism of the production was that it was performed to a recorded soundtrack--the original soundtrack from the movie--and I missed the light and shade of sound that would have been added by the use of a live orchestra.

The audience was rather younger than average, not surprisingly. On my left during interval, two schoolgirls discussed their plans for post-HSC travel: "I want to live in Germany," one said, "but I want to learn French. So I'm going to learn French and live in Germany." Subsequent eavesdropping revealed that she only knew the name of one town in Germany, Hamburg, and she wasn't really clear on which part of Germany it was in, or what attractions it hosts. One suspects that she would do better to live in France, where at least she might be able to communicate, or perhaps in studying German culture and language before she launches herself on a country of which she knows next to nothing!

I love listening to teenagers talk in public, they have that perfect combination of thinking they are very smart while at the same time revealing that they are quite ignorant.

Chelonious postmodernism

"...it is unlikely that tortoises brood under the shelter of their shells on the condition of being a tortoise. Tortoises are in this sense remarkably similar to postmodernists..."

Terry Eagleton, The Meaning of Life

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Accordions for peace

(c) FreeFoto.com

This speaks for itself, really.

Foxy!

I love books. (I know, you are all thinking, "Tell us something we don't know!") Only fellow book lovers can understand, though, that sometimes it's more than the words in the pages, or even the pictures on the cover. Sometimes it's the texture of the paper, the way the edges of the pages are cut, or the weight of the cover as much as the thoughts printed thereon. Some of my favourite recollections of books include their physical presence; for instance, the paperback edition of Our Uncle Charlie by Elizabeth Lane, with the glossy coating peeling off the bent corners and the crease down the centre where I'd rolled it up to carry around in my bag, evokes almost as many happy thoughts as the stories of the Murphy Boys and the fire in the shed and the barefoot kids crawling all over the gig as the family drove to church on Sunday. Or the inscription on the yellowed pages inside our blue buckram-covered copy of Three Little Maids by Ethel Turner that reminded me that my mother had once been a little girl excitedly reading the tale of Phyllida and Weenie. Or there is the tattered paperback edition of The Adventures of Milly-Molly-Mandy by Joyce Lankester Brisley with illustrations that had been carefully hand-coloured by my artistic older cousins, using one of those little tins with the square cakes of watercolour paint. More recently, the Dude has discovered a series of teen boy adventure books that come with stiff cloth covers, an elastic band to hold them closed, and several gatefold inserts with maps and pictures and other clues to the mystery on them.
I know I am not alone in this love of books and reading, as evidenced by the existence of the booklover's magazine, Slightly Foxed. A free issue is available online for your perusal. Check out the article "Nuffin Like a Puffin" for a beautiful insight into the development of reading habits in childhood. I want to subscribe, but I'm afraid I'd spend too long reading the magazine about reading and not enough time reading the books!
Anyway, now I'm off to tackle Ulysses again, and it's a brick of a book with pages that feel like newsprint, reminiscent of the paper that wraps the soap in Leopold Bloom's pocket.

Beautiful beche-la-mers

Go see 'em at National Geographic dot com. Gorgeous!

David Doubilet/National Geographic

Too much author

During the American Civil War, a female sergeant disguised her sex until, to the horror of her commander, she "was delivered of a baby... in violation of all military law and of the army regulations."

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, in Well-behaved Women Seldom Make History.

Okay, the poor guy was probably a bit shocked that one of his 'men' delivered a baby, but are you really telling me that it was written into the mid-nineteenth century army regulations that 'Thou shalt not give birth to a baby'? Why would they have bothered, if they weren't expecting to have women in the army at all? I feel that Ms Ulrich has used that ellipsis for nefarious purposes, to make the poor man look (more) stupid.

On another tack, the whole premise of this book is built on the fact that the eponymous line from the author's PhD thesis has been quoted–and misquoted–on coffee mugs, bumper stickers and T-shirts ad infinitum, often with spurious links to the original sentiment. To make sure that it doesn't happen again, Ulrich has very kindly italicised certain sentences in her text to let the reader know what she considers suitable for reproduction.

This is quite annoying, because it takes away that delightful feeling of discovery that comes when one finds such a quotable gem. And, contrariwise, it makes you not want to quote that sentence at all, and quote other bits of lesser wisdom and more spurious provenance.

Disclaimer: I own a "Well-behaved women" T-shirt, and am otherwise enjoying the book very much.

What's happening?

Trampled underfoot, saturated and scuffed, this piece of formerly glossy paper drifted under my front gate this morning. I just love the texture of the abraded surface and the way it has made the colours bleed into each other. It reminds me of the oil painting of my grandmother's stepfather that hung, crumbling and cracking, in the hallway of her home for most of my life.

On the selvedge

New discovery of the week is a glossy UK magazine celebrating the rich culture of textiles: Selvedge.

"If France was to get back on her feet [after the Germans retreated from Paris in 1944], she would have to find the money to buy herself some shoes."

Kate Constable, writing in Selvedge about La Theatre de la Mode, a postwar exhibition of mannequins dressed by couturiers such as Balenciaga, Nina Ricci and Pierre Balmain.

Sad dude II

This image is from a story on homeless youth in Sydney in today's Sydney Morning Herald. The wall of the squat features artwork similar to the sad graffiti people I have been collecting images of around the city.
The story that accompanied the image was pretty sad, too. Most of the homeless teens interviewed were caught in a cycle of drug use: they can't get accommodation unless they stop using drugs and they can't stop using drugs until they get accommodation. Some of the reasons they gave for using drugs were to stay warm and to stay awake so they wouldn't be bashed or robbed while they slept.
No wonder that old dude and all his grandchildren are so sad.

P.S. Do you have just enough faith to help the homeless?

Vale Swadlings

We were woken by sirens this morning, which turned out to be an eighth alarm fire at the hardware store two blocks down the road. Flames 15 metres high were shooting through the roof, fuelled by timber, paint, LPG cylinders and all that hardware stuff...

This afternoon the Dude and I wandered down on the pretext of buying the makings of dinner at the smoke-logged grocery store, to survey the damage. We just loved the irony of the smouldering remains, walls tilted at a precarious angle, behind the footpath sign proudly proclaiming "Now Open". It sure is.

Another great achievement for the fireys: the Swadlings Memorial Carpark.

It is what it is

I found Keri Smith's blog recently and made it one I'll check up on regularly. I love her list of 100 ideas for living a creative life. Why not try one today?

Today's entry has the slogan I've quoted in the title of this post. I want it on a T-shirt!

Easter reading

Sex is the balance of male and female in the universe, the attraction, the repulsion, the transit of neutrality, the new attraction, the new repulsion, always different, always new. The long neuter spell of Lent, when the blood is low, and the delight of the Easter kiss, the sexual revel of spring, the passion of midsummer, the slow recoil, revolt, and grief of autumn, greyness again, then the sharp stimulus of winter, of the long nights. Sex goes through the rhythm of the year, in man and woman, ceaselessly changing: the rhythm of the sun in his relation to the earth.

DH Lawrence, A Propos of Lady Chatterley's Lover

Earth Hour 2008

I'm getting excited about Earth Hour, on March 29th. If the weather's nice, I plan to go out to Sydney Park the night before and take some photographs of the city lights. Then, during Earth Hour, I'll go to the same spot and take some more photographs to see what the place looks like with the lights out. I'm hoping to get a good view of some stars too.
In my philosophy class last night we discussed the postmodernist view that large-scale change cannot be effected by individual agency. I'm not suggesting that turning the lights off for an hour will have any major impact on climate change, but to see the way that this phenomenon has spread across the planet (as shown on the map above) from its conception as a local event last year surely shows that small steps can lead to bigger things. There is hope for the future!
So don't succumb to postmodernist despair: sign up, and make a difference to the world.

More sad graffiti

This bemused old gentleman has appeared on the hoardings outside the former Nando's chicken shop that was firebombed a couple of weeks ago. I am not sure if he is the grandfather of the sad children or whether he is simply weeping for the loss of his favourite Portuguese chicken shop.
The Dude is getting worried. In the past 12 months, there have been three large fires in the vicinity of his school: first St Barnabas Broadway, then Nando's, then the Broadway shopping centre (His Dagginess' brother, Tiger, was the first officer on the scene at that fire). The Dude and various of his mates think their school might be next. If they're lucky.

Oh my god!

Since I'm joining the teapot cult, I thought I'd put up an image of my latest idol, bought in Taipei in January. It's not two storeys tall, but only a petite three inches. Yes, the cups do fit together to make a perfect egg.
I think I'll appropriate an ancient heathen festival to celebrate my new beliefs: how fortunate that there's an equinox in a week or two. Now, what would go nicely with a steaming sacred beverage? I know, soft fruit buns! Hmm, perhaps I could decorate them with a cross to represent the chicken's perch...

I got religion!

This morning's broadsheet had a story about a woman who worships a teapot. Forget the Flying Spaghetti Monster, where do I sign up?

On a serious note, I am not unaware of the irony of the situation: I can make jokes about the beliefs of all sorts of religions but the woman in this story once went to jail simply for saying she is not a muslim. A quick google brought up several recent news stories about similar cases. It made me give some thought to what I can do to help these people.

So here's what I did... it's not much, but I signed up for Anwar Ibrahim's newsletter in the hope that somewhere along the way I can learn enough about Malaysian politics to do something, even if it's just to write to the PM or my local member to encourage them to put political pressure on the Malaysian government.

In the meantime, I'm off for a steaming cup of ambrosia from my divine vessel. In-cha-lah.

Recycling CDs and DVDs

After my epic struggle to find an environmentally friendly way to dispose of my obsolete printer last year, I viewed the growing stack of used CDs and DVDs on my desk with some alarm. These bits of plastic and metal are a necessary evil for transporting data and images in my industry, but once I've finished with them the information is immediately out of date and the discs can't be reused.
The local council just dumps them in landfill; they can't be recycled with the tin cans and plastic bottles because they contain both metal and plastic. A Google search led me to this fun site -- I might have to make one of those hovercrafts -- but I've got other creative projects to keep me busy.
Finally, I found Ecodisc, so I'll be packing my stack off to them soon. If you're in Sydney, Auckland or South Africa you too can recycle your discs.
P.S. If you're in Sydney and have an old computer, printer or other hardware to get rid of, I've got the address for that too. You've got to take it to the depot at Homebush Bay yourself, but at least you know it's not going into landfill.

Here be dragons

After reading a post by the Bad Astronomer on the science of fairy tales, I surfed over to LiveScience.com and found this great article about the possible real creatures that may have helped give rise to myths about dragons.
Aren't they all so CUTE!

Rubbish!

On Monday this week, Lucky Mark, the Dude and I started walking in the mornings before work and school. The first day we were out, I noticed that the single most common type of rubbish on the footpaths was empty cigarette packets. The second day, we counted 47 cigarette packets on our three-quarters of an hour walk. Today, armed with rubber gloves and a plastic bag (and joined by the Messa), we collected 64 cigarette packets.
Most of these were found around the side doors of small businesses, which begs the question: why cannot a cigarette smoker, who carries a packet outside with a cigarette in it, carry the empty packet back inside to put it in a garbage bin?
The obvious conclusion is that smokers, who care so little for the state of their lungs, care even less about the lungs of the planet.
Tomorrow, I am going to count the second most prevalent form of rubbish: breath mint packets. Could the same culprits be responsible?

Singapore swings

Just to prove that we've been there, done that. I drank a Singapore Sling in the Long Bar at the Raffles, so now I can come home.

I also astounded the people in the Raffles shop by buying ten packets of Raffles Iced Tea -- well, you never know when the Master will be back to get some more. We've eaten chilli crab (and various other delicacies), shopped at the markets in Chinatown and caught the MRT everywhere. Went shopping on Orchard Road (waste of time -- the markets were much better) but did get a jar of my favourite face cream from Marks & Spencer. Also discovered that you can't buy bath salts in Singapore.

Yesterday we ate [roast chicken and rice] in a food court off Orchard Road. It was so crowded, people were grabbing the corner of a table wherever they could. At our table, the two girls opposite got up to leave and a fellow who wanted to sit down immediately signalled for the trays to be cleared. A grumpy little old lady was in charge, and she came and sullenly cleared the trays while complaining bitterly to me in Chinese and gesturing towards one of the food stalls with sharp, angry hands. Then she wiped down the table top with a damp cloth, made somewhat damper by the fact that she ladelled some of the leftover chicken broth from the bowls on the tray onto the rag -- so much for hygeine! I never did work out what she was so cross about.

Today we make the Aussie pilgrimage to Changi Memorial, then perhaps drop in at Little India on the way to the Night Zoo at Sentosa Island.

First Pavarotti, now Teresa Brewer

As children, my cousins and sisters and I would beg our grandmother for a chance to play the old 78s in the cabinet of the stereogram in the living room. One of my uncles had been a big Teresa Brewer fan in his (and her) heyday, so "Ricochet Romance" was on high rotation (along with its flipside, "Too Young to Tango").

Sing along:

I knew the day I met you, you had a rovin' eye
I thought that I could hold you, what a fool I was to try
You buzzed around the other girls, just like a busy bee
And when you'd finished buzzin', cousin, you buzzed right back to me.
But baby...
I don't want a ricochet romance, I don't want a ricochet love
If you're careless with your kisses, find another turtle dove
I can't live on ricochet romance, no, no, not me
So if you're gonna ricochet baby, I'm gonna set you free.

Oh, Teresa, how you spoke to my prepubescent heart! RIP.

Just what I have been saying for years...

Sydney Morning Herald, October 24, 2007

Hail the Master

Lucky Mark graduated today with his MBT. Best guess at what that stands for gets a prize (or at least a big sloppy kiss next time I see you).

Iron-y

I was complaining of feeling tired despite having a reasonably early night and a reasonably good sleep, and Lucky Mark asked me if I had been taking my iron supplement.

"No," I replied, "because I haven't had the strength to get the child-proof cap off the bottle."

Walk to work Friday

Ten steps down the hallway, up the attic ladder and I've walked to work. I was out (driving, unfortunately, because the distance was a good 10 kilometres) taking the Dude to his friend the Dealer's place to spend the day, when I noticed the streets were buzzing with 20- and 30-something pedestrians, lugging their laptop satchels and streaming steadily city-ward.

An article in yesterday's newspaper pointed out the trend for members of this younger generation to live an inner city lifestyle, rather than subscribing to the suburban tradition of large house and yard that seems to have been the ideal for the previous two generations (Baby Boomers and Generation X). Of course, there are those of us Gen-Xers who live in poky little inner city terraces despite the trend...

But I liked seeing Generation Y out en masse, walking to work and thinking about the effects on the environment and their own health of our city's great reliance on fossil-fuel-fed transport. The only shame is that the demographic was so narrow: where were all the older people on Walk to Work Friday?

Verbing nouns

Lucky Mark was reading me an email he was writing so that I could act as his portable thesaurus. The email was full of such phrases as 'in order to progress this application' and 'we will action the document'.

"Why don't you use plain English?" I complained. "'Progress' and 'action' are nouns, not verbs."

"Everybody else does it," he pouted.

"That doesn't make it right," I echoed my mother's favourite admonishment. "What's wrong with saying, 'in order to take the application to the next stage'?"

"That takes too many words," he whinged. "'Progress' is faster to type and say."

"You can't use that excuse for 'action'," I countered. "'Act on' has one less letter!"

"But it has a space, so it's still the same number of keystrokes."

I give up.

There's no other word for it

Yes, she is.

Shimmer

I went with my friend the Neuroscientist to an exhibition of artworks based on microscopic slides created by researchers at the Queensland Brain Institute. The Neuroscientist makes beautiful images of rat neurons and I have talked to him in the past about my desire of making some of them into embroideries, so we were both interested to see how another artist had tackled the job.
I was glad I persuaded the Neuroscientist to come because he was able to recognise and explain what the artworks represented. We had a great conversation with the gallery manager about her son's schizophrenia and the brain's role in addiction in general, then we admired the artworks: three dimensional representations of cells and cellular structures created using beads, sequins, fabric and paint (even bubble wrap).
The structure on the right of the catalogue cover above, a blue and green spiral, was described by the gallery manager as perhaps being representative of DNA. After she had left us, I indicated my scepticism to the Neuroscientist, saying that it didn't look like a double helix at all. He, of course, immediately recognised it as an opiate receptor -- which, apparently, comes out of the cell wall, makes exactly seven turns (he called them something else, like "involutions" or something similar - I'm afraid I've forgotten the term he used) then reenters the cell through the cell wall.
The talk of DNA served to remind me of this website and its pattern for knitted DNA. One of these days...

Pavarotti vale

"One of the very nicest things about life is that we must regularly stop what we are doing and devote our attention to eating." Luciano Pavarotti

I once embroidered this motto on a tablecloth, which I was coincidentally using the day I heard of the big Pav's death.

Other sayings on the same tablecloth are:

"He was a very valiant man who first adventured on eating of oysters." James I
"One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well." Virginia Woolf
"In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." Carl Sagan
"There's no sauce in the world like hunger." Don Quixote
"A cucumber should be well sliced, dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing." Samuel Johnson (a man after my own heart.)
"A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety." Aesop
"Since Eve ate the apple, much depends on dinner." Lord Byron
"Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es." Anthelme Brillat-Savarin ("Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are." Cheese, mostly, I think.)
"Talk of joy: there may be things better than beef stew and baked potatoes and home made bread -- there may be." David Grayson
"A good cook is like a sorceress who dispenses happiness." Elsa Schiaparelli
"I drink when I have occasion, and sometimes when I have no occasion." Don Quixote

The APEC effect

I ventured into the city this morning to go to the art gallery. Lucky Mark drove me in in the Big Red Car, and we were pleased to see that the threatened traffic chaos caused by road closures and the fencing off of a large swathe of public land did not really affect our route.
After a leisurely browse of the beautiful Translucent World exhibition of Chinese jade, I strolled back through the Domain and across Hyde Park to catch a bus home. In the Domain, I spotted a patrol of police officers (is that the correct collective noun?) comprised of six on foot and two leaning on the bonnet of a paddywagon. Seated dejectedly in the gutter was an immaculately dressed transvestite in a gorgeous pink miniskirt and matching jacket, with coordinating pink four-inch stilettos and handbag, her long, spray-tanned legs folded elegantly beneath her. It seemed rather a case of overkill -- the fresh-faced probationary constables who thought they would be protecting visiting dignitaries from feral protesters seemed rather bemused by their perfectly coiffed and not-at-all protesting quarry.
I saw another two patrols of police as I continued my walk through the park, as well as a fire engine with an Australian Federal Police car escort driving around the precinct in a sedate manner, and one of the converted bus/holding cells turning out of Macquarie Street. In all, about half of the vehicles I saw were related to law enforcement and security.
On the bus, the usual suspects hopped on and off. A young woman carried on an inane mobile phone conversation with a friend while fishing through her handbag with the other hand looking for correct change to pay the bus driver. I think I must be getting old, because I just wanted to say to her, "Look, I'm sure your friend will understand if you stop chatting about what you're going to wear tomorrow long enough to organise your bus fare, so we can all get home sooner." A man carrying a baby got on and paid the fare for himself and his female companion, who struggled to wrangle an empty pram onto the bus without folding it up. A woman with a comb-over sat in front of me: I am not sure what misfortune or illness had resulted in her hair loss, but somehow the hair around the back and sides of her head was still long and she had pulled it up into a knot on top of her head to cover the fluffy, thin growth that I could see through the sparse strands. I thought it was very clever of her to come up with that solution, although I think if it were me I would just shave it off and wear a scarf or hat. She was talking on her mobile phone about a job interview she was going to and what she was planning to say to convince them that she was the right candidate for the job. I hope she gets it.

Lunar eclipse 28/8/07

Pretty.

NOT trying too hard

Several months ago, I wrote a post about a luxury car advertisement that tried to appear hip and inner-city trendy but, by getting the nickname of the suburb wrong, only appeared to be stupid.
Who's really hip and local? I ordered a fantastic new book -- a compilation of zine writings by a young Sydney woman -- that's really worth a read. The publisher, Local Consumption Publications, is based in Erskineville and here's the return address they put on the package when they sent me the book:

I knew I had a book in me

I told His Dagginess that I would get a tattoo to cover the scar on my arm. I think I've found the perfect one.

It's been a while...

I don't suppose there is anyone still checking this blog regularly since I have not written anything for over two months, but I will tell you why (just in case).
Four days after my last post in May, I went into hospital for day surgery to remove a mole on my right forearm that was growing and changing. I had a mole in this location all my life. It was large and I had had it removed once and tested (results were clear) and, when it grew back, I had it checked out on two separate occasions by skin cancer specialists and dermatologists (they said it was a "navy blue keratosis"). It kept growing -- the last specialist I had seen knew it was still growing -- and was getting so large that people I hardly knew would comment on it. I decided to have it removed, mostly for cosmetic reasons, and the surgeon sent it off to the pathology lab.
The results were scary: sometime since the last time I had it checked out it had turned into a melanoma, and (because I had been told so often there was nothing wrong with it and therefore not done anything with it) it had already grown to intermediate stage -- that is, it had grown down into the subdermal layer where tiny capillaries could have picked up the cancer cells and spread them around my body.
I had to immediately schedule more surgery to remove more skin from around the area, plus scans on my lymph glands to ensure that the cancer cells had not already spread. They removed as much skin as they could without having to do a skin graft, so I've got an impressive scar! The prognosis is reasonable: at the time of diagnosis, I had an 80 per cent chance of still being alive in five years' time. Since then, I've had the extra surgery -- including the removal of lymph glands from my elbow and armpit for testing -- and the pathology on the extra skin and the lymph glands was clear of signs of cancer, so my chances of still being alive in five years are now even better than 80 per cent.
I was invited to join a randomised medical trial that the Sydney Melanoma Unit are running with the John Wayne Cancer Institute, and I am still waiting for the results of an extra test on my lymph glands that is part of that trial.
It's been six weeks since the surgery and I am only just regaining full use of my right arm -- you can imagine it has been pretty trying for a right-handed person to be so restricted! But thanks to the Dude, His Dagginess and Ms Nominative Determinism we managed to keep the household running and I even got some work done, typing one-handed and mousing with my left hand. So that's where I've been. Did you miss me?
BEFORE:


















AFTER:

Fall Out Boy

Today the Dude (now known as Fall Out Boy, for reasons that will become obvious later on in the song) had a bone scan on his feet to determine the exact location of the problem that is causing him pain. This meant heading in to the nuclear medicine department where he was injected with radioactive isotopes. Images were taken of his feet immediately as the radioactivity coursed through his veins, then we had to go away for two hours to allow the radioactivity time to get into his bones.
It was Art Festival day at his school, and the theme was "black & white" so I took Fall Out Boy to school for the interim, and we painted his face to look like Paul Stanley from KISS, as part of the theme. When we got back to the hospital, the nuclear med technician who had supervised his injection took one look at his face and said, "Whoa, that's the worst reaction to an injection I've ever seen!"

The bone scan itself was fascinating. Fall Out Boy slid into a huge doughnut with detectors above and below his feet, and they took several images from several angles over a period of an hour. In between, we played around with the machine. Speckly images of FOB's feet showed on a monitor, and moved when he moved. When he put his hand under the detectors, we could see a speckly hand on the monitor. But when I put my (non-radioactive) hand under the detector, nothing appeared on the screen at all -- it was as though I was invisible.
Next week, we go back to the orthopedic clinic to discuss the results of the scan with the specialist and make a date for the cortisone injection and casting. FOB is keen to wait until the end of the football season, just in case his team makes the grand final this year, but the surgeon might not be so keen. We'll just have to wait and see.

For Ailsa

Elias in Oz

Acts of dagginess

The Sydney Swans opened their 25th anniversary walk, and Lucky Mark celebrated his act of dagginess by having his photograph taken with the offending cement block.

Sad child 3

This morning as we drove down Wattle Street, Ultimo, Ms Nominative Determinism spotted another member of the family of sad graffiti children that I have blogged about before (here and here).

At last we know why they're so sad. Obviously, they're Bill Posters' kids, and they're worried about their dad being prosecuted!

Selling the Dude for medical experiments

Yesterday the Dude underwent a minor bombardment of radiation: x-rays and computed tomography on both feet. Today the orthopedic specialist looked at the results and declared that there is no sign of the "coalition" of the subtalar joint (hooray!) but that there are signs of arthritis in the talo-navicular joint (boo!) and that surgery will still be advisable (boo!) but an orthotic heel support might do the job for a couple of years (hooray! Wait, did you say $500 for a plastic shoe insert he'll grow out of in less than 12 months? Boo!).

However, before we make a final decision either to proceed with surgery now or to go for the orthotics first and surgery later, Dr Ortho offered us the opportunity to get a second, third, fourth and seventeenth opinion all in one go by asking whether we would allow the Dude to be sold for medical experiments -- or at least put on display at a meeting of the orthopedic staff of the hospital so they can all have a look at him and give their opinions. I'm guessing this is a kind of Grand Rounds for outpatients. The idea of several specialists brainstorming the best treatment for the Dude appeals to me, and Dr Ortho said that quite often someone will ask an innocent question that leads to a whole new perspective on the case. The least that can happen is that they will simply confirm Dr Ortho's own preference.

Surprisingly, when I discussed the idea of selling the Dude off for medical experiments with the Dude himself, he was quite keen on the idea... until he figured out that he wouldn't actually get any cash.

Auction day is May 18th. Updates to follow.

Dude news

Last week we went to the orthopedic clinic at Sydney Children's Hospital for the Dude's two-year check-up. (For those who don't know, he was born with severe talipes equinovarus or club feet, just like such sex symbols as Lord Byron and Dudley Moore. He's already had two lots of reconstructive surgery.)

Scrawny Dude, five days old: with flippers

He has recently been complaining that his right ankle hurts when he walks, even after just a little bit of walking.
The orthopedic specialist thinks that there may be a "coalition in the subtaler joint" or, in plain English, a bridge of bone or cartilage forming between the bones of the heel joint just below the ankle. Alternatively, it might simply be wear and tear on the joint as a result of his earlier surgeries. The prognosis is that he will probably need surgery to fuse the joint, removing the small amount of movement that he has, but also removing the pain.
Tomorrow we return to Sydney Kids for x-rays and a CT scan, then back to the clinic to see what the scan shows and get the diagnosis from the doctor. He may prescribe orthotics in the short term, saving the surgery for when the Dude is a bit older, but we are steeling ourselves for the worst-case scenario.
On the plus side, it's probably only the right foot that will need the surgery, so if he does have it he can use crutches while he convalesces, rather than a wheelchair. I couldn't imagine lifting him in and out of a wheelchair at this age!
It was interesting going to the orthopedic clinic last week because it is school holidays. Usually when we go there are just a few kids, mostly like the Dude coming for routine check-ups on existing conditions, and the odd broken limb. Last Thursday there were five children with broken arms and one with a broken leg, fresh from the emergency ward, all lined up in one examination room -- and that was at 8.30am! I'll never doubt those ambulance officers and pediatric ER nurses who dread the school holidays again.