Sunday, January 20, 2013

Boredom Does Strange Things


The middle of the hottest summer ever, there are fires raging around the country due to the heat, Sydney just had it’s hottest day ever and do you know what I’m doing?……….knitting, yes you read that correctly.

Still can’t get into my studio and I can’t start my quilt until Joanie and I both have a free day from work so the next best thing was to start a cowl……in readiness for the first crisp, cold day…….. possibly sometime in June!

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But when that longed for crisp, cold day arrives, I’ll be ready with my toasty warm cowl.

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Tuesday, January 15, 2013

The “Chook”

If you’ve been reading my blog you know we are almost at the end of a kitchen renovation, and if you ever read the comments you may have seen this one from my BFF Carmen.

Chook comment

Now if you are not from Australia you may be wondering what a chook is. Well……it’s a slang term for a chicken…….here’s a few examples of how it would be used in a sentence.
What’s for dinner?………roast chook.
Have you fed the chooks yet?
Did the chooks lay any eggs?
Don’t even ask me why we call chickens chooks because I don’t have the slightest idea, but I do have a theory. I blame it on the Irish!
I’m sure all those Irish convicts called chickens chicks, but with their accent it somehow morphed into chooks and that’s how it came about. Good theory?

Anyway about 15 years ago a friend and I were trawling the op shops and I spied this picture languishing in a dark and dusty corner and it was love at first sight. Somehow this ugly chicken……gee, maybe it’s a rooster………just spoke to me, cluck, cluck, and I had to have it for the princely sum of $4.50 and money well spent I say.

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She’s made up of different ceramic shapes glued to a backing board.

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I loved the colours (I’m a sucker for autumn tones).
So home she came with me and took pride of place on a wall in my kitchen. Now the chair that DH sits in at the dining room table faces the wall that my chook is displayed on. About 12 months after I’d purchased it and hung it he looked up one day and said “when did you get that” well DD and DS and I just about fell off our chairs, after being on the wall for over 12 months he’d only just noticed it. Men!
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My chook was actually the inspiration for me to start mosaics, some of which still grace the walls of my home and others.

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Well now that the kitchen is almost done and the walls have been freshly painted I hung my chook back up on the wall and she looks great.
She’s exactly where she’s supposed to be Carmen.

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Playing around in a photo app as is my want to do of late.

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Sunday, January 13, 2013

The Continuing Kitchen Saga

 

It’s still not finished, but there are only a few small things to finish off. But we did come up against a fairly major obstacle………THE.FRIDGE.DOESN’T.FIT. Well it does fit into the alcove but we can’t manoeuvre it into it’s home due to the fact that the stupid thing will only roll backwards and forwards and not sideways which is what we want it to do in order for us to get it in. Cabinet maker comes back on Tuesday to see what can be done.

Meanwhile I did manage to squeeze into my studio (amongst all the chairs and other assorted kitchen paraphernalia) and made a necklace.

 

The pendant was made quite some time ago. Textured clay embedded in a bezel.

 

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Most of the beads are from my Bali Stash and I have no idea what they are.

 

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I’ve threaded everything onto cream coloured waxed linen cord and did some knotting too.

 

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The toggle and clasp is from Bali also.

 

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Cream clay antiqued with Golden’s raw umber.

To stave off boredom while my studio has been out of commission I’ve decided to make a quilt. My lovely friend and co-worker Joanie is helping me and yesterday we went fabric shopping. Joanie makes the most divine quilts and she was a huge help in the selection of colours and prints. I’m making a “slash and stack” quilt…….I know, my mind boggled a bit when I read the title. You can see a gorgeous example of one here on Knotty Gnome’s blog.

 

I’ve also started another blog. I came across Fat Mum Slims blog and she has a photo a day challenge happening with great daily prompts to help you along. So I’ve called my blog My 365 Daily Photo Project and I’m mainly using my iPhone to take pix and using different photo apps to play around with filters and frames. Stop by and have a look and feel free to leave a comment or advice, that would be great.