Home on the Main Range

  A weekend with the girlfriends and kangaroos. Lots of rain this past week and no one complains. A few days of stitching, mostly by hand, and precious time spent with just a few of the nearest and dearest. Our first night I was kept awake by a leaky ceiling which meant a drop or two every five seconds either on my face or hitting the pillow nearby. At 1am it was not time to test friendships in a full house so it didn't help the mood or humour despite the surrounds. A second day of stitching and made good progress on the hexagons. New to me this week: I kept at one project for the whole weekend, planned how I would spend the creative time and managed to achieve a lot, in a slow going process. Spent a couple of hours in town browsing and enjoying the company of a single friend. Coffee. Drifted from shop to store - from whimsy to practical. A wonderful morning out. Relaxed without caring for the time, stayed in the moment. Didn't manage to cope with the hearing not listening crow...

  I am struck by the transition from death to life to death and how often that is repeated in each of my living moments. Completed a quilt for the baby of a beautiful person in my life, who encourages me to "go for it" and trust myself. Having someone believe in me - the treasured gift of her friendship. My brother is dying. It wasn't meant to be like this, finding then losing a treasure. The sadness is a pain that can break you open to love and life. Not easy or comfortable and that's ok.  For no reason at all, I ordered Tasmanian leatherwood honey and sat licking a lightly coated teaspoon trying to hold the memory of the aftertaste for as many moments as it took to fade. Joyful moments.  Mark-making, sketching and drawing everyday - a small and important commitment to keeping the creative burners on low whenever I'm in the white space between endeavours. The drawing helps develop a new totem / symbol - I've shed the grevillea robusta leaf for something more ...

This week was all about design me .... design me a new studio and working office centrally positioned in the new house (and still in two paper dimensions). Measuring up, moving paper furniture around, asking "what if? then checking where the sun would rise and set, how much natural light and could there be a special courtyard garden to view while at the desk? Yes to everything. A first for me to give form to my dream studio layout and have the space to achieve it. It's not always about firsts in an instant. For the first time I felt like the current temporary space had achieved "good for the soul" status, moved beyond functional success to a space and place I can't wait to be in each day. That's taken nearly three months. Some more plants managed to soften some of the lines - neat, tidy and a bit clinical - and having all my machines at the ready - a new kind of bliss. Another first for getting ahead of myself was reaching out to the folk at the Kalbar School...

A new motif. For the last decade I've created works inspired by the grevillea robusta leaf. New beginnings, new studio, new life. The calathea akoyana leaf will inspire the next decade, the plant shape that grows within the leaf, structure, lines, tone and the surprise burgundy tones underleaf. Abstract drawings, prints, rubbings, carvings, journalling, printing and textile art pieces. From five acres to little more than 500 square metres. From the outdoors to the inner sanctum. An exciting "new" for me.

This week was a discovery of something I had had access to for many years, and never been sufficiently inquisitive to see what it meant. My Bernina 1260 is a warhorse of sewing machines, the last full metal jacket of Berninas. It came from a little old lady who never used it, not even on Sundays, and her daughter- in-law looking to maximise a return for purchase. We met in the middle. I found the attachment and began the Youtube research until I could work back to how to use my near-antique version.  Some useful experiments, trials, tests, on the straight, on the bias,  and then the real deal as it attached attached to the latest quilt, for a not-so-newborn. My first bias, the first successful binding entirely on the machine (I've always finished it by hand), the my first reversible quilt.