A visit from Textaqueen!

Tom was in a show with textaqueen last year.  Since they were the only ones in costume at the opening, they got along pretty well.  Textaqueen was over in Adelaide for a couple of days and a swap happened - with me (and baby in utero) sitting for a portrait.  She's taken it back to colour and we'll have it back at the end of the year (exhibition work has to be finished first!)

                

I thought it was obvious

I thought that my no junk mail sign on the letterbox was adequate enough that I wouldn't receive junk mail.  I thought that was the point of the signs, but lately I've been getting heaps of catalogues, and that makes me mad (as in the angry goat in that old sesame street cartoon, who sings an angry song and jumps about with a red face)

 Even though this doesn't seem like such a big deal as I just recycle them - it's not the point.  They shouldn't just be made to be chucked away.  Reduce before recycle!  

I've even chased delivery people down the street waving junk mail and exclaiming 'i've got a sign!!!'.  Last week I chased a guy who looked truly freaked out (I am getting to be quite a heavily pregnant lady at the moment and I think I was wearing a funny hat) who protested his innocence and said that he was just the community newspaper delivery guy... (mind you, I don't want that either, can you have a sign that says 'no free newspapers'?)

It has been pointed out to me that possibly advertisers don't think that their catalogues are junk mail and it is actually welcomed in some places, and maybe the delivery people were so captivated by my dinosaurs that they missed the plaque, so I made some new signs.  Out of highly reflective shiny shiny lovely stuff courtesy of JF who works at a sign shop. 

 I think it's pretty obvious now.
Also the front garden only looks good in winter when the nasturtiums come out.  So I'm happy they're back again.  It's a weird spot, it's got an almond and a walnut tree within the bed, but both are overshadowed by a tree on the footpath which stunts their growth, and anything in the garden AND drops leaves everywhere including on the car (cause it's the only place we have to park)

So that's my rant about junk mail, and I'm off to do something for my husbands birthday......hopefully it'll be up here soon!

Wishing and a hoping

I haven't put much up here for a while, I feel like I've been busy, but not much picture proof to show for it.  We've been busy getting the garden ready for the winter bloom (and rains and masses of weeds if we're caught unprepared (again)).

A while back I took cuttings of all the succulents that have been doing well, the big, bushy ones and started propagating them.  The picture below is of the extended succulent garden with all the babies planted out (with a few stray potatoes, parsley, a climbing rose, a pomegranate and a callistemon (so it's not a strict succulent garden, but who's going to say no to  potatoes coming up?)

This area is under a lot of shade from the neighbour's tree and hopefully in summer the succulents will be big and beefy and be able to deal with the summer, so I'll still have something green and blooming to look at.

Here's what it should become like.... I *hope*.  minus all the garlic that has popped up in it.  I really need to harvest all of it from that patch next season.

The dress in it's environment

This week for me has been a frustrating blur of nothing much being done except waiting around and getting annoyed it seems.. I've done quite a bit, just not enough of what I wanted to do, but I think I need to take some time for myself and slow down a bit.  Hopefully projects will start coming together within the next fortnight.. too many ideas and too many obstacles in the way!

But here's something nice that happened - lovely photos from a lovely client.

Here's the full view of the dress that I showed a peek of earlier.

I thought it worked quite well, and everyone had a lovely wedding and party. 

I can see the hallway!

It's true!!  Nothing like finally getting around to it (with the kick in the pants of having a total stranger for dinner).  I've had one side of the hallway stacked up with boxes - boxes of fabric, stuff for the opshops, stuff for other people to look through, stuff that I just haven't got around to sorting.  In short, it hasn't been clear in quite a while...

The other side of the hallway is a shelf with custom made cardboard boxes.  Originally we'd planned to put the fabric in them, but they proved just too heavy and I had too much fabric (for 25 boxes 38 x 38 x 30cm) so that involved another change around (and the reason I'm citing that it took so long to finish) and I put in my sewing pattern collection. Previously I had them in big plastic containers under my pattern table, (where the fabric, or half of it now lives) but now they're much more easily accessible.

I also got a chance to use up all the lovely bits of paper I'd collected over the years (which were just sitting there and I never could figure out what to do with them!)  

Darkcloud suggested it looked like a patchwork (recent topic of conversation for us)  I'm pretty happy with them, and very happy it's finished!

Shirt!

I've been quite bad at getting photos lately, so I'm determined to take them when the garments get picked up from now on....

This is the third shirt from the same pattern for a client.  Each one has been totally different due to fabric choices, buttons and detailing.  This shirt is a cotton crepe (I'd never even seen that before, and it's lovely) with an asiatic feel, maroon piped collar, thicker maroon piped cuffs (with contrast lining) and fabric closures that I managed to find to bring out the red of the fabric and they're flowers to boot!

It's always nice when someone leaves the studio wearing their new garment, it gives me great job satisfaction, that I'm doing something worthwhile (albeit in a small way) and balances out the dramas that crop up!

Yay! Green Things Are Growing!

The seeds are up!  These are some of the broad beans I planted a couple of weeks ago.  They are going to share a trellis (lovely hard rubbish find by darkcloud) with some jasmine, hopefully they'll kickstart the jasmine into a growth spurt.  Last year while at the fodder store for chook food I thought I'd get some seeds as well.  I said a little bag, and I ended up with a kilo of broadbean seeds.  That's a lot. So yesterday I just put the last of them in the garden. 

I'd already stored seeds from last years crop, but obviously missed a few, as every time I went to dig a new patch there was already stray broad beans there.  They'd sat on top of the soil baking all summer and had swelled up with the recent rains and were ready to go again - nature's amazing!

I think now I've got 7 patches of them...... possibly could have done one big one, but they still need a little support, so they went near fences and posts and in the end I did a big patch near the compost bin because I was sick of it!  It'll be interesting to see how many come up, and how many ways we'll eat them....lucky I've been collecting recipes!

The chooks having fun distributing hay.
I just wanted to put these up to show that things are coming back to life - thickening up and looking green and wild (which is much better than brown and half dead)  That's the echinacea up top, a friend gave me a bit of root and it's taken off, so I've starting splitting it to spread it out in the rest of the garden.  And the succulent patch below, which has recovered from the burning season and is getting nice and healthy looking again.  My plan is to extend this patch back to the chook fence, another 3-4m and remove most of the rocks, because even though they look nice, they just end up baking the plants in summer.  So I've been taking cuttings/pups from these as well.  Free plants!