begborosteel

Haiku (esque)

2012-01-25T06:47:00.002+11:00

The mosquito did not
bite me
when I was asleep

Here at the bottom of this cliff
white butterflies
and flowers

Such an explosion
on the dam
a very small bird

The skirt I wore
when I was thin
fits again

White and scattered
summer birds are calling
who will drive them off

How good it was
to view the moon
without poetry

Pre-Occupations

2012-01-18T16:23:00.005+11:00

1.How to move camellia bushes and hydrangeas.
2.What's for dessert - when we seem to be giving up dairy, wheat, sugar and fruit

3.The headless stick figure shadow I throw at sunrise matches the rock art up at Mt Lawson.

4.Achieving 5.5volts on the electric fence between Near Bottom Hemps and Far Bottom Hemps.

5.That big article in The Weekend Australian full of gag inducing generalisations about pre-colonisation culture on this continent. That the author may have a point or two, but how words fail me in response.

6.Almost fail. My husband reckons that we are living our way back into dreamtime, keeping a foot in "Australia" and a foot in......

7.The header breaks down. Father and son lose a spear in the part of the river that starts to get deep.
8. Adidas lycra things

9.A two piece ensemble made from separated overalls. Would you belive me if I told you it looks very smart?

10.A pallet of cotton nurse's uniforms decomposing in Bill The Toole's hangar.

11.How to get the grass off the clay tennis court without spraying it.

12.What to wear once the grass is off the clay tennis court - 1930's blue and white would be lovely, but I keep having 1980's fluro fantasies. This is not allowed.

13.A battle/relationship/death slow dance with a Telecommunications Business Centre. I don't know whether to yarn bomb them or pursue their hint that they have a position available for me back in the office. Or is it just midsummer madness.

14.Finally realising that even decaffinated coffee renders me incoherent.

15.Not getting wistful about the days when my housemate opened a cafe in the front room and we sucked on that coffee machine like manic cherubim on the madonna.

16.Getting through a day without shouting.

17.The transparent red/orange/black/white cotton geometric body shirt and maxi pleated skirt that Tallangatta Op shop granted me two days ago. How it blazes.

18.White flesh peaches on the rack.

19.Cash. We had quite a bit in a sock and it was fun while it lasted. Would like some more. Liquid is the new credit.

20.Trust The Hunch.

Nannini Handbag, December 2011

2011-12-20T00:15:00.002+11:00

When life goes wild, it's hard to know where to start. Sometimes I start with:

Nannini Black and Grey Handbag contents:

Duracell torch
Blackberry circa 2007 (because I fumble like a caveman over touchscreens)
Iphone 4 (because I've lost my cybershot again)
Car and powerpoint chargers
Needle and Thread
Black lighter
Opinel camp kitchen knife
Eden organics deodorant
$1400 in cash
Hooker's phone number
Graduated string of ebony beads (would like this in pearl one day)
Grinding stone from Argadargada Station (500km NW Alice Springs) to fit a ladies hand
$10 in loose change
Dodge Challenger matchbox car (my husband's favourite)
Straps cut from seams in pale blue overalls
2 elastic hair ties
Tear drop shaped cameo earrings
Flora by Gucci (tester that came with towels in a wedding present)
Jade ring
1 Rhinestone earring
Red alert lipstick by Australis
Map of the Quality Resort Siesta Motel, Lavington NSW (there are cacti, pancake machines and saunas here)
5 medical bill receipts
Fan (gold)
Blue Hermes wallet (fake)
Woodland Birds Identification Brochure.

That does not sum up just what has been going on lately, but the clues are there.

four firsts

2011-10-30T11:58:00.005+11:00

first made from scratch garment sold (hand stitched, dress lengths to come)

first new product in a while (leather)

Joe's first catch

first bowl of roses from the big garden

Lemon Aid

2011-10-02T17:22:00.002+11:00

1. We had upset stomachs until the lemon tree dropped an over-loaded branch and we re-discovered the alkalizing properties in this magic fruit.
3.I'm raising a poddy calf. It didn't bawl for milk at the front door this morning. I found it nibbling strange wilted leaves under the carport. Tomorrow, I'll bring it a latte to go with the tobbacco.
4.I cancelled the last proposed stunt. Selling failed writing attempts at a writer's festival seemed like a good gag, but the masochistic thrill of it has worn right off.
5.I have exchanged art and writing for gardening and chasing cows. That's it. No more. Never again.
6.This has been said before.

Latest Stunt

2011-08-30T07:55:00.001+10:00

Check out my latest stunt HERE.

Yes, pictures of blossoms will follow. And the 7 and a half thousand trees we've been planting.

xx CJH

Running around....

2011-08-24T06:55:00.002+10:00

I've been running around a bit lately, and great changes are afoot.

The making has started again, along with living loving gardening and farming.

Beware. Shots of bursting blossom follow soon.

Love in the meantime.

Mrs CJ Houston.

mwah.

2011-06-30T03:18:00.006+10:00

A thing of beauty is a joy forever.

The present from Pen makes herself at home.

We haven't caught a mouse in two days. And the sewing machine is back!

Electricity rising = billy on the open fire. Billy on the open fire = discovering the sturdy iron bar that will hold the pots. Anthony Bourdain on TV = fascinating with fire cooking. I roasted a whole butternut in the ashbed. Good it was too.

The flowers will come from our gardens

Postcard from inside a wedding machine

2011-06-27T23:15:00.004+10:00

I went to a shop called Flowers Naturally. I could smell real flowers, but I couldn't find them. Room after room of towering plastic constructions, table drapings, $230 plastic posies, perfect daze. I left.

My mother, the page boy, the bridesmaid and I went for a ceremonial dress fitting in Wodonga. The dressmaker was trapped by an ash cloud in Darwin.

We went to see the photographer. His shop had been turned into a tattoo parlour. He was not there.

The hair and make-up interview was great. The woman knew exactly what I wanted. Then she rolled her eyes and looked a bit frightened. I have seen similar looks in first -calving heifers. I did not stay to watch her bump descend.

Our musician has gone off to make a documentary about permaculture in remote aboriginal communities. Dad rose to the challenge of downloading some music. Mum stopped him just before he sent his bank details to an obscure russian website. Dad reckons she sounded like a banshee as she did this.

2011-06-27T23:15:00.001+10:00

Long time no....

2011-04-14T07:34:00.004+10:00

Dear Blog,

You have been neglected.
I lost my camera charger.
I found my camera charger.
By then, the camera was lost.
I am in documentation withdrawal.
Lots of new work created, a big cartel account that can take 100 products, and....
Bear with me.
Some old work perhaps?
From back in 2005, when my house was still a shed by the cattle yards.
And I was cranky about information age teething pangs.
And how I lurked.

xx Char.

Hey Horatio

2011-03-26T14:26:00.003+11:00

1. Alas poor Yorrick, I resuscitated him frequently.
2.Late 20th century momento mori from Tooles Disposals - closing down the Thursday before Easter. Wah.
3.He looks good as a stationery caddy - pencils in the brow, scissors through the top of the dome - but I'm also tempted to paint him up. Then he'll qualify as hand made at the Albury Makers Market.
4.Shove over Hirsty and lookout ric rac chicks.
5.Whack day today - fluctuating between Myles Davis Bitches Brew and Tim McGraw (Live like You were Dying)
6.Whatever gets you through stitched finger, studio sorting, and sunny cobwebbed house play. I guess.

Max To Tea

2011-03-22T06:37:00.004+11:00

1. Sometimes it's good to just drive. We did. This is what we saw.
2.He was on his way to Mad Max's 30th in Broken Hill.
3.He reckoned it had cost him about 30 grand.
4.Driving it in public is a worry.
5.I saw Love The Beast the other day. Dr Phil descibed the importance of hobbies.
6.I wonder if artists need hobbies.
7.I am taking up the Way of Tea.

Pause

2011-03-21T20:40:00.004+11:00

1. The posting deadline for entry to the Wangaratta textile comp is Wednesday.
2. The doctor said I am not to bend my finger.
3. All forty two half-done projects look at me like cattle that have been in the same paddock for too long.
4.Sweet peas are sprouting, even in my garden.
5.I spent a night out under the biggest moon in two decades and my thoughts were not hounded by poems. Not once.
6.I'm waiting for the mopoke that calls from the darkest hour.
7.Nothing doing but laundry.
8.And the love of gentle friends.

genius

2011-03-07T07:53:00.004+11:00

1. Some weeks ago, I visited my friend, author Jane Downing.

2.She showed me her small collection of covered hangers - my favourite was a gift from an aboriginal women's collective. There were black, red, yellow and sparkly lace elements.

3.Everyone had been telling me how important is was to see The King's Speech. I went to see Black Swan instead. This was a mistake.

4."Based on a true story" quipped a long-suffering boyfriend from the row behind me, as Natalie Portman's legs buckled/metamorphosed.

5.Jane lent me a sweater to stave off the air-conditioning. There was something eastern european about the sleeves.

6."I did this back in the 80's." she said. "I knitted the black lines between the patches, I was so silly. I did the quadratic equations to get it right."

7.When I came out of the cinema, there was a locust plague. I went around and around a deserted carpark, taking video. Then I sat in my car and filmed other people going around and around the deserted carpark, taking video. I think we were all hypnotised into moving like bugs.

8.I really didn't want to give the jumper back, but I did.

Confession. Obsession.

2011-02-28T23:34:00.005+11:00

1. I took delivery of 60 heavily patched and frequently name tagged overalls this week.

2. They were supposed to be for customisation and embroidery. But.

3.They made a great nest for Joe on the kitchen floor. He rolled around a bit, then threw a box of 150 detachable white collars into the mix and tried to flap them like cockatoo feathers. Four year olds are born performance artists.

4.I had no idea how to store the collection. Then I noticed my freshly painted (Bauwerk limewash I love you so much I could drink you) newly minimalist shelves. Bye bye clear surfaces.

5.The simple act of colour coding was fun.

6.I was almost overwhelmed by the information stored in the collection - company names, workers names and sizes and body types, laundry company names, project names, the smells of the work undertaken, the wreckage and corrosion and patina in the cloth.

7.I have trouble with visual diaries, but I think this project is calling for one.

8.I had this boyfriend and he left the country and he didn't take his company work gear. I wore the logo embroidered shirts and trousers for some years after. There was a jumper fluro-painted with the slogan Safety Begins with Me. My boyfriend was not safe, but the jumper was good at parties. Now it hangs on a peg next to the back door down at the homestead. We found six bats living in it last year.

9.Two items accidentally found their way into the job lot - a pair of blue polyester overalls (I piffed them) and a very fine, brand new pair of khaki overalls. I never thought I'd actually start wearing overalls, and I am very afraid of the whole 80's performance artist throwback thing, but there are those who would say it was only a matter of time before we came to this.

10.I'm thinking spiked heels, victory rolls and just a glimpse of net somewhere. If only to wear with the khakis as I whip the other 58 items into line.

11.We're not talking about the 150 detachable collars, the 500 paper nurses hats, and the small piece of thick red leather. I suspect they'll butt in at some stage.

Wild Apples and Return to Rhymes

2011-02-23T22:31:00.004+11:00

There's a tree about 20 metres down the Omeo Highway from our driveway. I walked past it four times a day, for years, as I went to and fro the dairy at Noorongong. I finally, actually, noticed it in 2005, when it threw forth great, red, old fashioned apples. They took me back to years as a kid in Wales, and tasting old breed fruit from an orchard in the grounds of ruined mansions and farms. I picked baskets and baskets of the Noorongong apples and carted them up to The Man from Snowy River Festival, along with a car load of abstract art and two memorised poems by Henry Lawson. I didn't sell a lot of art, the poem about the girl left waiting by the slip rail was well received, the poem about girl rouse-abouts dressed up as boys was less well received...and the wild apples sold like crazy. One couple bought two apples, then came back an hour later with bicycles and panniers to fill. It was delightful. I've watched the tree on and off over the years since 2005, but nothing doing. This year is different - paltry stone fruit crops, but apples everywhere. Driving Joe backwards and forwards to kinder, up and down these valleys, I'm dodging pickers of all ages as they raid the roadside trees. Yesterday, finally, I put on my Harvest Smock from Cottage Industry and went to work. The fruit was smaller than back in 2005, and not as red, but still pretty tasty and super crisp. Of all the casual jobs I've done, commercial fruit picking was one of my favourites, and I really had to stop myself from slipping back into the zone and stripping the tree. On the way back up the drive I spotted another tree, and what a wonder it was. A great sprawling cave of tangled branches, massive fruit low for the picking, and a wombat in residence underneath. By strange coincidence, I've been tempted into performing in the Upper Murray again, at the upcoming Jingellic Show. I wrote a poem called Horses and Women this morning, and it's still pretty rough. Like a lot of bush poetry it needs inspired reading aloud to make up for the bumpy scan. It's a very long way from the beat-booze-inspired rant I put on at TINA in 2009, but it makes me laugh, and hopefully it will raise a few smiles on other people too. A harvest prayer to the muse: may the poetry zone be as accessible as the fruit picking one.

And the moral is....

2011-02-23T06:41:00.002+11:00

I was trying to cook oxtail in a hurry the other day, which is a mad pursuit because it takes about four hours minimum. The recipe comes from The Silver Spoon cookbook - an italian bible that has dishes for every conceivable ingredient that might be in season - from lambs lungs to chestnuts. The oxtail uses the old carrot, celery, onion, garlic base with some white wine. I'm teetotal these days and there was no white wine in the house. The folks are also partied out and their cellar was down to a lone bottle of spumante, so I took a big breath and used just a little bit of white balsamic. The carrots came from Mum's patch. As I went up to the garden I felt, as I always do, that funny mixture of awe, guilt and inspiration. A couple of carrots came up easily. Then I ripped the top off one. In my haste, I went for its neighbour, and ripped the top off that too. With the ends of two sizable carrots looking at me out of the dirt, I thought about slinking away, but deep down realised there was no escape. I had to get dirt on

my fingers, hands, and right under my nails. Eww. The soil was softer than I remembered, and a rich brown. After a bit of poking around, the carrots came up. What a pair. What form. No wonder they didn't come up easily. What a charming reward for such a small act of persistence.

Domestica

2011-02-22T21:50:00.003+11:00

It's been way too long between fire drums, and tonight was the perfect evening to re-start the tradition. I asked mum to throw us a zucchini on her way back from the veggie patch, and she came though with roma tomatoes, basil, and capsicum as well. The corn came from the freezer, but it cooked up a treat and the charred bits tasted like popcorn. There were cutlets marinated in rosemary, lemon and the superb olive oil I picked up from The Tallangatta Hub last week. The chicken drumsticks were a long slow cook, and accidentally smoked by the process. With a very frou frou pink and blue sunset and the company of a good friend it was all very bucolic...until the ex-army metal folding chair collapsed on Joe's head and Joe's head did a slow-mo smack into our sincerely rustic concrete "table" (a slab of busted water trough resting on stacked blocks). Guess a BBQ isn't a BBQ without someone getting mild concussion. He's alright, and looking forward to grandstanding the damage to his public at childcare. I'm still a bit shaky.

make play live

2011-02-16T09:05:00.003+11:00

It's all a bit exciting at the moment, but Pink Peppa has emerged from the fray. A vintage gingham doll from Bendigo, she has raggy new hair ready to dread and a super cute dress and bloomers from the ladies at The Hub in Tallangatta. I had planned to tattoo her with cross stitch detailing, but she says she's fine as she is, thank you very much. I guess, like me, she's waiting until she's thirty.

Up for sale now in the Big Cartel store, along with some new stock. More to come.

love like salt

2011-02-14T06:41:00.003+11:00

There is someting about love and salt in King Lear.

In Japan, girls swap valentines tokens and chocolates with their friends. I like this.

Enjoy the love in your day.

xx C.

A Day with Dawn

2011-02-13T17:56:00.008+11:00

One pomegranate swelling, more flowers on the way.

Cathy runs off with the pumpkins.

Now that's how the silks get sorted

Home salt beef

I look at quilts like this on the internet. It was so special to realise that one lives just up the valley from here. The cats love it.

When grandpa came back from the war, Nan knitted this cushion. She stuffed it with all the letters he'd sent her. 60 years later, inside the tightly sewn panels, the paper has turned to confetti.

Heathcliff...

2011-02-09T13:17:00.002+11:00

Heathcliff. It's me. I'm Cathy. I've come Home.

Yer tea's on the table.

(And if you think I'm standing funny i'ts because I seem to have misplaced my stays)

ivy skirt from curtains, Scarlett O'Hara style

top from pillow case, tad aussie flour sack dress style

up soon on www.bbsteel.bigcartel.com

Pony shirts 1-2 of 11 up now.

xx C.

Tumbling Tuesday

2011-02-08T21:21:00.003+11:00

Joe started Kinder this week - he's been having a ball and I've been having very strange dreams. It's been wonderful to have two full days in the studio, but the freedom has gone to my head a bit and the staff at Tallangatta Op Shop and The Hub have had to put up with me hanging around and mumbling about socialisation. The funny thing is that there are lots of other local mums in there too, saying similar things and buying ridiculous things. The older ladies just nod and smile, nod and smile. I could list the purchases for the week, but that would be embarassing. The house has become surreal as I process my haul - Raggedy (Handy) Andy in the sink with tea leaves getting a good staining, a large white macrame pot holder getting mussed up and at risk of a scorch and wax treatment, black red and gold horses rearing and bucking over worn-in tshirts...and so on.

I also rearranged my bedroom. The bed now faces my open wardrobe, so I had to order it. This involved relocating most of my apparel to the studio, carefully folding the treasured Penelope Durston frocks (The Harvest Smock, Agatha and Cressida) and hanging my rapidly growing collection of covered coat hangers. They are all too lovely to cover up, so there they dangle. Coat hangers are tricky to catch in a photograph, but when I figure out a way to display them to you, in all their glory, I will. I know I'm getting a bit obsessed and having an empty wardrobe full of covered coat hangers is not really functional, or sustainable, but by god it's fun.

In the meantime, would you be appeased with a picture of Raggedy (Handy) Andy? Am still deciding on how to embellish him. He's too big for the 6 baby doll's dresses with matching bloomers that I bought at The Hub...but that's another story.

xx Char.

Moving Monday

2011-02-07T20:34:00.004+11:00

Slowly Sunday

2011-02-06T15:31:00.006+11:00

Fully Shrunk Feist and Other Things

2011-01-26T07:52:00.005+11:00

hanger 3

2011-01-19T12:01:00.003+11:00

this one was a right pain, but I think I love it best

Kindness a strangers...

2011-01-17T12:25:00.003+11:00

1. Back in December, on Wray Street in Fremantle, I came across a shop called Madame Bukeshla. Sculpture and textile art in the window, hand painted wallpaper, Belgian linen sheets, a fine collection of vintage covered hangers, an open studio at the back of the shop floor, shelves and shelves of vintage fabric on display and ladies in vans pulling up with trolley loads of more....I went into a kind of spin. Trish Bygott and her business partner were very tolerant, and we raved a bit about blogs and marketing and hand-making and art and so on.

2. I encouraged Bronwen to visit, despite the festive family flurries going on around us, and she bought a beautiful linen petticoat skirt. Trish sewed on the buttons to fit and then she gave Bronwen this print, for me. Bronwen's sister has mailed it from Perth, so I've only just received it. I am so touched.

3. I met John (also from Perth), in the front bay windows of the Espy Hotel, before the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion gig. We talked about the randomness of youth, covered coathangers, musical laziness in places where the living is easy, and so on. I was having trouble shifting my ticket to the second gig (responsibilities at home called) and John said he was interested.

4. The gig was superlatively good in a very strange way. Some reviewer somewhere wrote about the way the band seems to be channelling something... from...um... somewhere. For me the show was a divine, hellish sound compost. Sexy, smug, tongue-in-cheek and dead earnest all at the same time. And giving. Dangerously beyond the limits of talent or showmanship.

5. There had been plans to go out after the gig. I don't think I was the only one who needed to go straight home, alone, and lie down for ten hours.

5. We did the ticket swap at Hell's Kitchen, before I put my sorry happy carcass on a train back to the valley. The woman behind the bar looked hard at me when I asked for a "healing soft drink". Then she magic-ed up the concoction pictured above. I watched as she loaded a glass with pieces of fresh lemon, lime, orange, and strawberry. Then she swilled in soda water, raspberry, a dash of cola and just the right number of icy rocks. The just-right-medicine was garnished with a sprig of mint. And the kindness a strangers.

In Training

2011-01-16T09:35:00.002+11:00

This is not the train I caught to town, but oh how I wish it was. I can faintly remember the buffet car with the fifties counter and stools on the Melbourne to Sydney XPT, and still fantasise about the carriage pulling up out of the mists of time and rolling me away to the Oceanic Cafe above Central Station. There, I would sit in a hard flaking cream enamel painted booth and have a cup of tea with the bag still in for $1.50 and listen to the ladies talk about pills and gin in old Surrey Hills. I would battle with myself. Then I would have an ale in a tiled front bar. Then I would hit the dry street with my suitcase full of samples.

Spencer Return

2011-01-13T22:36:00.009+11:00

1. Last 14th of January I went to see Al Greene with a total stranger. How St Kilda glowed all over itself. The 14th of January before that I took myself off to see The Saints at The Forum. It was a kicking memorial to punk and other things. This 14th of January, by weird chance, I'm going to town to see a band I've waited ten years to catch.

2. I was trying on the bad black dress and the army carry all when advice from a friend's mother echoed in my ears - never go anywhere without a cardigan and a novel. I'm selling my novel page by page and the moths got my cardi, so I went hunting for a jacket.

3.Ten patched overalls from Tooles Disposals have been languishing, in pieces, in a rubber tub by my sewing table. The fine embroidery on ordinary ground was from Tallangatta Op Shop. It's been sitting over me like a talisman as I wobble my way through the crewel shirt job. Unpicked overall seams looked naff when I tried to make The Working Quilt, so I'd rolled them up into rag balls, poppers and all. These elements came together under pressure today.

4.As I sewed the last rough corner on the applique I flashed back to the early nineties, when my life was all milking sheds and nightclubs and buses in between. After days or weeks of jumping up and down, I'd crawl back to the farm, earn some cash, learn to use some other brain cells, and sit up at night, in the grain shed, sewing costumes for my return performances.

5. Same shed, same stitching, same grotty white mirror to check progress in. Only now, the walls are clad and the floors are polished. I'm a little wiser and happier. My son sleeps up the new stairs.

6. I'd get dropped off at the train station in Wodonga, but sometimes I'd trade in my ticket and hitch down the Hume. Getting into town, I'd spend the fare money on a packet of Winfield Blue and light up on Spencer Street and wallow in the the long moment before deciding whether to go left, or to go right.

7. Jon Spencer (Street) Blues Explosion tomorrow night. I am very very excited.

psst..

2011-01-13T12:52:00.002+11:00

come this way and we'll show you some things.

let me know what you think...

cassette fetish

2011-01-12T11:30:00.003+11:00

Quite a haul from Tallangatta yesterday. Amoung other things, this gorgeous little cassette recorder. The tapes were from an earlier jaunt and I've almost binned them a number of times. Joseph's been playing DJ from the weird selection - Dance Music 1 and 2 are all jigs, U2 War reminds me why I never got into U2...and then there's the demo tape called Silver Suits from Astronauts from a band called Ball Boy. They're from Iceland. Fun to wonder how on earth the tape made it to our small town. Also not sure what to think about the compilation: Side A: Songs to Wake the Soul, Side B: Songs to Raise the Dead. We haven't played it all the way though. Yet.

auntie beuys boone venus

2011-01-10T22:19:00.003+11:00

all hung up

2011-01-10T12:47:00.002+11:00

This is perhaps the most conventionally pleasing hanger to emerge from my Great Hanger Experiment. Brace yourselves. Things are about to get weird.

little green mirror 2.

2011-01-10T12:26:00.002+11:00

as your hands work under water

and cobwebs grey your hair

the little green mirror

gives a glimpse of your brow

and hints at what's behind you

quick. unpick.

2011-01-09T12:23:00.003+11:00

1. No pattern, no instructions, no pins, no pressing, no measuring. Feels like base jumping.

2. I'm cutting straighter, but this is because my material is restricted to plaid.

3. All my biscuit tins are tartan. I am becoming plaid-obsessive.

4. I have a history with plaid - there was one outfit in the 1990's composed of tight plaid waiscoat over plaid wool flares under black watch tartan skirt, bustled, under brown wool skirt. Brave. Too brave.

5. It's an unjustifiable 120km round trip to Spotlight for the Quick Unpick, but I need it NOW.

6. Wood block carving tools do not work as quick as a Quick Unpick.

7. On the work table - little plaid bags for collecting fruit from the shops (I hate those plastic bags on rolls) and a superb plaid plastic bag-holding tube. Tried to sell them to my friend, but he said he would go into ideological melt-down over the two concepts - wanting to fill the tube with plastic bags, but wanting to use the cloth bags. We could solve this by filling the tube with cloth bags, but....

8. Plaid is the new satin, when it comes to covering coat hangers. But that's another story...

wish blocks

2011-01-07T17:26:00.001+11:00

pinching cheek

2011-01-06T14:19:00.003+11:00

Joe keeps a close watch on the ripening produce in Granny's garden. We ran out of bought(!) apples the other day and he recommended checking the orchard.

"I love pinching fruit", he said, as we sneakily went round with the billy can.

The orchard has been around for as long as there has been a farm here, and there are people in their 80's who remember childhood summers when they crept up the creek to raid the trees. When we came to look at the place in 1988, my brother and I fought our way through chicken wire and grass to an apple tree down the back. The fruit was big, red and perfect from the first cheeky bite.

It makes me smile to see the custom continued.

Spearwood Spectacle

2011-01-03T04:36:00.002+11:00

Just before Christmas in Perth, our relatives took us on a quick tour of the lights. The grand finale was in Spearwood - a whole front yard lit up and populated with robotic creatures. I almost cried when I saw this grotto in the front room. Something to do with the generosity of the feat. Then an awestruck Joe grabbed my hand.

"Look mum. Come and see this..."

In a corner of the porch, on a little round table, a black and white cat watched us back.

It was the only thing that wasn't flashing.

Perfick

2011-01-02T12:12:00.003+11:00

Home smoked trout

Garden grown salad and so so waxy potatoes

Eggs from happy hens just down the road

Friends and family

Gentle sun and a light breeze

So nice to be here this year

Hello Crewel World...

2010-12-31T07:41:00.003+11:00

I quite desparately wanted to look normal when meeting the relatives in Perth, and hunted high and low to find summer tops that covered the heavy ink on my upper arms. I found a couple of cotton/linen tops in a chain store and wore one for a day or so, then started to customise. More than once I asked myself what I was thinking when I cropped it to just above the hip bone - I think it was a reaction to all the longer lines around. I have a long body, short legs and a pear shape, and tend to get weighed down by mid hip lengths.

The embroidery started with cross stitch on all the hems and then carried on to flowers. As I worked I remembered the jeans I did back in 1991 (images of sitting at The Tapas Bar in Johnson Street embroidering them while I was still wearing them). The jeans went to my friend Ariad, who took them to Queesland. Ten years later I bumped into writer and emerging arts advocate Sally Breen at a regional arts conference in Albury - she noticed my Alexander McQueen rip-off suit covered in liquid paper insults and subsequently commissioned ten cross stitch pieces for a show called "Celebrity" with the ARC collective on the Gold Coast. Many drinks and half a manuscript later Sal and I joined up the dots... she'd bought my embroidered Levis from Ariad way back in the days of West End grunge.

The blouse was embroidered in time for Christmas morning, and decorated with a little red leather wren brooch from The Den in Fremantle. It was still too short, but I wore a knit dress underneath and was almost content. Yesterday I found a broad tan leather belt and things got a whole lot more interesting. I am half-way through sewing the cut-off piece of linen into a tie that will pull the blouse flat across the belly, gather it prettily at the back and finish in a broad bow. I am, as usual, time travelling. And regretting all the floor length full skirts I've piffed in earlier attempts at normalising my wardrobe.

I have a commission for the next blouse. Guess the Elizabethan bed spread and four poster curtain project will have to wait.

Sometimes a Great Notion...

2010-12-30T08:44:00.003+11:00

Surveying the rows and rows of carefully bagged silks, cottons, wools and twines at the Good Sammy in Fremantle, the title "Sometimes a Great Notion" came to mind. It's the title of my favourite Ken Kesey novel, a book about a logging family with the motto "Never Give an Inch". The passage about a logger getting pinned down in a rising river is horrifyingly powerful, and reading it was an experience that has stayed with me for years.

After one visit to the Sammy, I found just enough cotton to embroider this doll. It's caveman quality work, but so tactile and comforting. Compelled to go back for a second hit, I came across this shortbread tin. I'm more of a hoarder than a collector, but this is my second tartan tin in a month. I sense a collection coming on.

This doll, the threads and the tin also echo a secret family story that was unfolding over our visit in Perth - blood ties, a young man with a bag pipe and a kilt in Derby in the early 1940's, a baby.

The Good Sammy craft section contained a host of unfinished craft projects, but I resisted the urge and added a macrame chandelier to the list of lost things that haunt.

Good Sammy

2010-12-29T22:40:00.005+11:00

They called the op-shops "Good Sammy" in Perth. I liked the ones in an arcade off High Street, in Fremantle. There was something unusual, but perfectly logical, about the way things were arranged....

little green mirrors

2010-12-28T22:40:00.002+11:00

I like little green laundry mirrors so much, I'm thinking of devoting a whole blog to them.

This could be a side affect of the jet lag.

Our trip to Perth and back was amazing, inspiring and deeply refreshing.

Words and pictures to follow soon.

photos not uploaded

2010-12-17T01:07:00.005+11:00

what was grey and gold

is gold and blue
the reds are faded
the strangers are related
the whites are peeling

we feed the seagulls chips
and watch the fish
and talk of lines and rods

pink and gritty
we paddle with the brown men
swap stories about fathers
and despite the shirts and creams
and hats and parasols
we let the sun seep feel it
even in the cool bedroom

on the high wall
through a little vent
cast flowers
play wings onto the ceiling

Pleasing

2010-12-11T12:42:00.002+11:00

Joe and I leave for Perth on Monday, which means we've had to get organised for Christmas earlier than usual. We delivered presents to Granny and Pa this morning, wrapped in paper that looks like it's been languishing in the storeroom at Tallangatta IGA for the past twenty years. Of all the purchases and constructions, this flimsy paper ($1.99 for five scant rolls) pleases me the most. Right. Now back to packing, cleaning and going round in circles. See you on the other side.

It's not art if it's useful...

2010-12-08T23:26:00.006+11:00

I've been making Christmas presents this year, which has been a scary process. I only have one friend (I think) who would appreciate a pot holder made out of patched overall pieces, so I had to change my ways for the rest. Some of the ideas have come from a year's worth of blog following, which has meant a fair amount of agonising over being derivative. I also adjusted my choice of materials - my construction skills are dodgy, so I had to compensate with finer fabrics and papers. I've had a metre and a half of vintage linen mangle cloth in the collection for a while, left over from a little puppet restoration project. It was about $45 a metre from The Growing Suitcase in Beechworth, and seemed like a wickedly decadent purchase at the time. I find it so luxurious to handle, which is interesting when you think that the fabric was so work-a-day when it was made. For a while it graced my wooden ironing board and I really treasured it, so cutting it up was a bit frightening. Sewing it into useful things made me feel a bit better, and I hope the people who receive them enjoy the waxy feel of the linen. Cutting the scraps into useless things that have been "done, done and done" by a thousand other crafters was almost breathtaking and the end result looked so familiar I was downright cranky about it. Walking back in the rain, from a late night visit to the main homestead, I saw the useless things hanging, illuminated, in the heart of my house. The wonky Christmas lights were flashing in another window. "Deceptively warm and festive," I humbugged to myself as I opened the door... and realised I had not been deceived.

Bah.

2010-12-08T20:09:00.004+11:00

On the last of the blue and green days

we put our feet in the swallowing river

and now the misted landscape moves

like a house with sliding paper doors.

Beneath a flock of butterflies,

a claustrophobia of school sores.

A cop car pulled out from under the desk, as I swept.

I am angry and I don't know why,

despite cherries and loquats

and the thrush that perches and hollers at our back step.

All aches in places, fever and suitcases,

as the magpies whinge up worms,

I stitch up the shimmy trees in constant breeze

and curse the threads that knot

and curse the threads that don't.

shadow boxing

2010-12-03T19:33:00.001+11:00

go grass go (ten things)

2010-11-28T20:25:00.002+11:00

1. I knew a man who carried seeds in his pocket. When he found cracks in the concrete he sowed them.

2. We were just getting the car jumps right when I heard the clapped out Briggs and Stratton over-revving over the back lawn. I went out, cursed, and took over the mowing. The machine started easily, which was just as well. It stalled 15 times on the 15 square metre lawn, then I took it down to the shed and swapped it for the new machine. Another Briggs and Stratton. I asked the folks why they'd bought another one and they said the old one had been alright. 15 years ago.

3. In 1990 I mowed protest spirals into the front lawn stripes, my Grandfather made me a large gin and tonic and then I hitched to Queensland.

4. Joe stood on the porch and pointed at the bits I missed, over by the cattle yards. He gave me a thumbs up when the job was done to his satisfaction. Then he went inside and spread peanut butter on the table.

5. We have both been sick and my room smelt like old fever. I stripped the bed and pushed it under the windows. Then I let the sunlight disinfect it while I read a bit of Faulkner and Hemmingway. Joe found me. A banana and coconut muffin picnic seemed like a good idea. Now the mattress cover is clean, with a light crumbing.

6. I know a woman who is quite old and frail, but every now and then she has a bottle of champagne and a think. I did this last night.

7. I watched Liam Neeson in Taken and barracked as he shot every bad guy. I cried because Cary Grant was married to a plain woman and the judge wanted to take away their adopted baby. I went around the house taking photos of the composting clutter but everything came out yellow but all the other bloggers don't use flash so I didn't. I thought about the last four years and swore a bit, gave more thanks (because this is what the taxi driver outside the Royal Children's hospital told me to do) and went to bed.

8. Joe woke me at seven with a demand for electrical tape. I was not hungover. I repaired the broken wire on the Christmas lights. Then Joe slammed his finger in the fly wire door and I dropped the Christmas lights' adaptor on my foot. It was really heavy. We were both screaming. The lights didn't work. It appears that one pin on the adaptor was driven back into the adaptor when it landed after its fall. The broken lights are intricately strung up with the fibre optic garden lights and they look alright against the curtain, even though they don't flash.

9. Joe and I had a fight. It's called Mosquito Finger Wars. One person makes their index fingers into probosci and one person has to slap the mosquitoes down. When a mosquito gets slapped it makes a raspberry sound. I made the mosquitoes, but the slapping really started to hurt. Then we both started to laugh, round and round, cracking each other up. I could be wrong, but I think this is the first time we've done this. Really really both laughed.

10. The bitumen was freshly laid, outside the pediatrician's rooms, back in autumn. I had decided to stop trying to convince the pediatrician about the importance of optimism. His need to be right was greater. For him. The bitumen was freshly laid, but boy, the grass was fresher.

a festive little spirit

2010-11-23T21:11:00.002+11:00

I tried to sit down to my over-due tax forms last night, but wound up clearing my desk instead. Then one of these little creatures came to visit, rapidly followed by many more. I think we might send Christmas cards this year.

wonder walk

2010-11-22T23:56:00.002+11:00

On Saturday we take the perfect antidote to stalled projects - a walk in a magnificent garden. It's impossible not to marvel at the creative forces at work in nature, and, me being me, I get a bit jealous. Why can't I make anything that approaches the beauty and complexity in a garden? My inanimate manipulations seem so very primitive. I find myself on the point of becoming competitive with a flower. Then I realise that we, as we pass through the garden, adults and children at various ages and stages, are not so very different to the garden. Complex, beautiful, changing creatures, created partly by nature and partly by the sheer hard yakka of the gardeners around us.

And besides, a flower couldn't even begin to make a quilt.

Wannabe Straight

2010-11-19T21:19:00.002+11:00

I don't sew straight, I don't cut straight, hell I don't even stand straight. What was I thinking when I started to piece these overalls? Something about men, work, scent, redundancy, loss and lack. No wonder I came over all wobbly. This piece has reminded me of my dangerous ambivalence when it comes to form. My head, heart and soul are cluttered places and my projects are sorting processes. I start with a goal that is about 66.666% unachievable - some massive material object to be generated while I think things through. Along the way, the scope shrinks, the form shifts and if I'm lucky I'm left with something that resonates with at least one other person on the planet. I'm always running out on time and patience. A novel becomes a sculpture, a poem becomes a rug, a quilt becomes a paragraph. This is not the path to artistic excellence, it's the art of failing well.

Sill Quips

2010-11-18T21:25:00.004+11:00

There are five in our family - Mum, Dad, me, my brother and my sister. Back when we all lived together, we also had a couple of shady boarders. They were called Somebody and Nobody. Somebody was the one who broke things, lost things, took things and left things lying around. Nobody never did anything.

It's just me and the four year old, here in the shed, but I think Somebody has a bit of a sense of humour.

Ragland

2010-11-14T21:31:00.004+11:00

It's done. Finally.

I've been working on, and talking about, this one for months now.

It's a 200x140cm knitted rag rug that sits happily on a floor, but is also pleased to engulf any comfortable but ugly piece of furniture that needs covering.

The themes, inspirations, origins and processes behind it could be a small novel, but narratives annoy me right now. A friend came to view it today and commented that it was the kind of rug that things would get lost in. She was right.

book keep

2010-11-04T17:00:00.002+11:00

Past the dragons, the brides, the babies and the dancers,

a mouldy little tower in a dank part of the wood that surrounds the shrine.

It's where they keep the books.

Junior Hi

2010-11-03T16:24:00.002+11:00

Junior High School art project, photographed though a dusty toy shop window in Mishima.

mountain home

2010-11-03T15:06:00.002+11:00

The rice is bagged

and the sheaves are dry.

How the wild grass waves.

(I can just imagine what the neighbours would say about the

way that new house echoes the mountain)

Oh Sha Cho, I just don't know

2010-10-26T19:33:00.003+11:00

say it's only a paper moon

hanging over a cardboard sea

but it wouldn't be make believe

if you believed in me

The president asked me

if this song would be appropriate

played at his wedding anniversary.

Potted Bear

2010-10-25T21:41:00.005+11:00

Once upon a time, there lived a brother and a sister. They were partners in the same business, but they had different ideas about how to do things. The sister seemed more cheerful and welcoming, but if customers actually asked for anything, she'd direct them 200m up the road, to her brother. He also liked fairy lights and pot plants, but didn't believe in over doing the decoration. He concentrated on plants in two big white urns and tended them carefully. They began to look like bears, which was interesting, but a little bit frightening.

Parking West

2010-10-24T22:43:00.003+11:00

Spot the Volcano

2010-10-17T18:57:00.003+11:00

I love the way she does that

Little Things

2010-10-16T20:34:00.006+11:00

Tick Box

2010-10-15T23:10:00.002+11:00

There is no journey without jolts. Moments when little details rise up, loom large and threaten.

On embarking, we are handed a card, and on the back of the card is a question:

Have you ever been deported, deported under a departure order or denied entry?

There are boxes to tick. Yes and No.

Eight hours later I join the queues at immigration. At the end of the queue, a young woman checks my papers and directs me forward. I step onto a piece of floor marked STOP, behind a thick yellow line, and a man gestures right. All the other foreigners have been channelled left. I stand in front of a desk marked out for nationals. The immigration official looks at my card and gestures to another officer. Wordlessly, he walks me out across the lino towards an office door. Just before the office door, he gestures left and I find myself at a desk marked CREW. I put each finger on a fingerprint scanners and look at my own face on a screen as the digital camera takes a picture.

"Harder please," says the man, holding up his index fingers.

I press harder.

"Thank you," he says, and hands back my passport.

I am through.

Outside the airport hotel there is a massive cigarette vending machine.

Next to it, a machine offering portable de-fibrillation.

Party Past

2010-10-05T15:59:00.004+11:00

The pub is low and dark and carpeted with a scatter of screen eyed boozers. It's my friend's birthday and she should be here, but she isn't. I make a phone call and a ladder appears before me and takes me up to a room I never knew existed. It's gracious and high ceilinged, cheese is out on the tables and drinks are for sale.
"You're too young to be here," says a man I've never met.
"Come here and talk art," says a woman.
"Weren't you in another state?" asks a man I once knew.
"I am in another state, " I answer. This is the end of our exchange.

My friend, magnificent in sequins and raspberry plush, laughs loud as her son brings out a cake. A rich, dark number seventy studded with handmade chocolates. I slip back down the ladder.

"Terrible rain," says the cab driver.
"Beautiful rain," I say. "We all need to drink."
"Good girl," he smiles. "You are the first to say this today."
Rabbits on wheels, we swing out of the traffic, into a narrow tiled tunnel. We curve away under the heart of the metropolis, merge, and emerge into a green place. The roadside is laced with many-trunked trees, there are moored yachts in the bay.

I buy a small dark cake, and after dinner I share it with my brother and his friends.

block ache

2010-10-02T21:58:00.003+10:00

Today, all edges are off. The sky is a gentle grey, the air is mild and the rain is soft. Red lit orange light traffic goes by in wet whispers, and I'm meeting memories at every corner, bend and roundabout. A girl in impossible shoes hails a cab. A chocolate cake is peeled out of its little box. Pasta boils. Children are put to bed. The kerbside couches soak up whatever's going. Young men stagger on root buckled concrete and dance behind windows in over lit and under furnished lounge rooms. A black plastic hut with a palm tree roof has been erected in a front yard, for religious purposes. Calm, traipsably laced up, at peace, beside my brother, I walk my aches around these blocks.

Escape

2010-10-01T16:21:00.006+10:00

The spare bedroom is not just a spare bedroom. It houses fishing rods and line and tackle. I push open the sash window, lower down a length of nylon line, and call out to the grinderman. He lends me a drill bit. I clamp a pair of rusted pliers around the bit and make my own door handle.

Before going out, I carefully make up my make up to look like no make up. There are marle mummies everywhere this morning, me included. At the stop, an old man lets the others get on the bus first. I let him go ahead of me.
"See, gentlemen everywhere," he says.

Hours of browsing later every item of apparel in the centre seems about to rise up and smother me in blended arms. I buy myself a bag. Then I buy three singlets, three pairs of socks and a loaf of irish soda. The man who sells the bread has blue eyes. Like mine. I'm not Irish, he's not smiling, but anyway, the bread is good.

Grinders, Paper, Lock

2010-10-01T10:50:00.003+10:00

I picked up the currency I'd ordered from the bank in Wodonga yesterday. As the teller counted out the notes I was stuck by how beautiful they were - delicately, intricately designed and subtly coloured and printed on such fine paper. It took me back fifteen years to a little spare bedroom, where I'd worked, and to evenings after work when I would stack those brownish notes into a small box. I'd never earnt money like that before. Not as beautiful. Not as much.

I went to bed early last night, in a spare bedroom in a city. I pushed the door firmly closed and crawled under the quilt, knowing that when I woke up I would not have to get up. There were dreams: an endless search for a bamix in cupboards full of baby clothes and chocolate; massive bowls of parsely getting chopped with a milk frother; a parade of lovers, televisions and angle grinders. When I came too, the angle grinder was still at work, three floors below. There was no knob on the bedroom door.

For weeks now, I have had this unhealthy craving for isolation, stillness and containment. Planning a trip seemed like the only way to beat it. I'm seeking people, action and expansion. It's the first morning of my quest and I'm locked in.

Five Things about Camellias

2010-09-29T18:54:00.003+10:00

1. The fully blown flowers drop like severed heads - some Japanese think this is bad luck.

2.There is a cafe somewhere, inside a great camellia bush. Everything is wooden. They serve sweet bean soup with rice cakes.

3.There was once a reddish tea dress with a drooping bias hem that would stir up and then soak up the wild nights and bruise like a wilting bloom. We all wore her. She would take us out and we would rarely come back.

4.Some Camellias are sporting. This means that they throw random blooms, like the pale pink one in this photo. If grafted, the new plant is genetically different.

5.Ms Hillside has two sporting camellias, escorts to the great magnolia in her front yard. She reckons her nan chose deliberately over the top shrubs because she was by no means an over the top woman.

Sifting

2010-09-26T23:44:00.004+10:00

my happiness is like this sand

I let it run out of my hand

John Gould Fletcher

On the way home we pulled over. Joe wanted to visit someone and there was no-one else to visit, so we visited the river. We found the first warm patch of sand for the season, watched two young ducks bathe in the shallows, and met a few rocks.

My hunt for tangible, constant, rock-like happiness is ill conceived. Today, I'm thinking of happiness as sandy. It's shifting. There's plenty of it. It gets into everything and anything. It's the product of a watery grinding process.

Hello Dolly

2010-09-24T19:46:00.003+10:00

I looked at the calendar today and realised I have been moping, miserable, and maudlin for one and half months straight. Almost a personal best. Dear Ms Hillside made us lunch and we ate under the tree she calls "The Dolly Parton of Magnolias". Hard to keep up the weeping when large pink and white petals are slapping you across the cheek. And your very healthy son is stuffing grass down your back. And the air, like the best of friends, is not too cool and not too warm. And the hard boiled yolks are as yellow as yellow.

Homage to Hard Labour

2010-09-21T17:23:00.005+10:00

Bondi QA

2010-08-17T08:50:00.002+10:00

This photo has a soundtrack - girls from southern UK

blagging about the night before and the temporary week to come.

I was mesmerised.

sometimes the camera

2010-08-16T01:05:00.000+10:00

sometimes the camera is just too slow

but that's ok

Dear heads of medocrity...

2010-08-14T10:19:00.004+10:00

Dear heads of mediocrity,

Thank you for following begborosteel.

You are our first stranger.

I am so excited that such an urbane, highres blog

could be a little interested in hillbillies like us.

I love your experiments in people, place and form.

Back when I was your age (which I am guessing at) the only experiments I managed where based on body chemistry, boites des nuites and highways.

The documentation is long lost.

Here's something for you, from the archive.

500km northeast of Alice Springs, not so very long ago.

xx Charlotte

Mojo Neckpiece

2010-08-13T21:42:00.002+10:00

I've been attempting to incorporate this little wonder into the clothing I've been working on, but it completely upstages everything I set it against.

I found it on an otherwise disastrous trip to the Op Shop at the end of Clarendon Street in South Melbourne, just after being forced to relinquish my bundle of treasures to tend to a three year old who was determined to become, screaming, one with the pavement. For some reason I went back inside and saw this wooden poppet under the glass counter. Scraped back sides, red soled feet, no arms. What stories it could tell.

Somebody said "hot chocolate" at Zappa, next to The Butterfly Club, and the three year old turned back into a perfectly sensible little man.

When I got back to the studio I tried pushing in the wooden dowel, thought it looked wrong, and then found that it refused to be drawn out. So I felt compelled to continue forcing it through with hits from a meat tenderiser (hammer gone awol again), praying with every hit that the doll wouldn't split in two in the process.

I wonder what our futures hold?

Auntie Sha Sha's Domestic Wish Box/Mother Creation

2010-08-11T13:24:00.010+10:00

Auntie Sha Sha made big money back at the turn of the century, and she threw it around Surrey Hills and Glebe and the City. She could be often be found window licking at Dimitri's Pizzeria, frittering afternoons away at The Cricketers Arms, diving off patent platforms, slapping her leather skirt around the NSW Rail Infrastructure Corporation, dragging hard garbage through Bondi, and performing for the 6am cleaners at The Pink Pussy Cat. She made her first forays into mojo manipulative sculpture in the Matron's Flat behind Glebe Library. Now she's back.

From this Friday at 6.00pm, Auntie Sha's Sha's Domestic Wish Box may be visited at The Creator's Gallery, on The Lincoln Causeway in beautiful regional borderline Wodonga. Inspired by european and japanese house-hold shrines and god shelves, The Wish Box is a home for the ancestors, a place to stand and call for help, a meditation point, and somewhere to put the physical, spiritual, and mental clutter that all houses attract. Visiting domestic gods and goddesses are invited to record their wishes, hopes and secrets on the tags that surround the box.

The Wish Box is installed as part of the group show Mother Creation, an annual event that is much anticipated by mothers, artists and friends in The Border Region. Last year's opening night attracted 120 folk to the tiny Creator's Gallery. This year, doors will be opened between the gallery and La Maison cafe and the opening event will merge with a contributing artist's birthday party. Artists will be wearing an apron collection that spans 40 years, crafted over a lifetime by "Nan" Turner and kindly loaned by Ms Hillside. And did I forget to mention the play corner and the legendary Champagne Sorbet cocktails?....all very over-exciting.

How the Hills

2010-08-01T20:33:00.003+10:00

How the hills have been

lifting their skirts

to this gauzy can can

and sunlight blazes

streaks and streams

down through the clouds.

All is blue and gold and rimmed with silver.

Just one pink violent slash

and I go twisting

through the break neck moss

to the place that is

wet sister to our valley.

Fires burn by the side of the road,

creeping like feuds.

Dead gums gather and reach.

A round moon chases me in

up river.

A cattle dog runs me out.

Bread, Culture and Starters

2010-07-28T07:06:00.003+10:00

I remember what life was like out here, before Dad hooked up the internet. American Author Henry Thoreau wrote of the "quiet desparation" in the mass of men, and that about sums it up. No point ranting and raving about the pressures, because there's no one to listen. We've all done our fair share of running to the back paddocks for a moonlit sob or a yell, but those essential outbursts have been, thankfully, rare.

I remember the early days of computers here. At first, according to farming tradition, we bought second hand. Like horses that bailed up at crucial moments, or tractors that clapped out at harvest, those computers set us up and let us down. I remember Dad, under his desk like a mechanic under a chassis, networking his outmoded hard drives to the newer ones. Never buy new, never throw anything away.

We buy new these days. Through access to all the information flying around the broader world our little world has opened up, and our minds have opened up too. Which leads me to the gut. Many say that's a kind of brain too. We've had a rocky relationship with bread over the past few years, and it's taken a while to figure out just where the problem lies. Current thinking is that commercial quick rise yeasts lead to shocking stomach acidity, when a basic PH is the most desirable. Both Mum and Dad researched the case, via the web. I just pined and whined for the Sydney sour doughs in Bondi corner stores and the rye loaves from Frank's bakery in Glenhuntly Road in Elsternwick.

About a month ago, Mum ordered sour dough starter cultures on-line and she set up a mini-lab inside the great, black, carved, almost hideous german press in her sitting room. Open the top door on the right and you are faced with seething grey goo and and an interrogation strength light bulb. The product is pretty gothic too - hard, strong-flavoured, dark loaves best approached slowly with a very sharp knife. Sometimes they come with surprises - I'm having trouble finding words for the way I enjoyed the fig and walnut combination. Well. Shall we say thinly shaved, lightly toasted, heavily buttered, laid gently on the willow pattern and sluiced with Russian Caravan tea?

Just like a bought one. (Only better).

Order in The House

2010-07-25T07:28:00.007+10:00

Some years, my birthdays are tight little fizzers that last as long as a bit of cake. Other years, I have what I call "birth weeks" - great rolling celebrations with new friends and old, massive shakeups, and sunny daffodil weather. This year has been a corker. The latest bout of inspiration has generated some great work, and resulted in complete domestic mayhem. Living and working in a converted grain shed, with a lot of open plan spaces and not a lot of storage, makes minimalist calm a very distant dream. One of my many presents to self this year was a fabulous shelf and sorting trays from Toole's Disposals. Designed to hold 11 rolls of fabric, it will stand me in great stead should I ever learn to sew straight. In the meantime, it has allowed me to shelve my projects in full view and work a lot more efficiently. We stay-at-home mother creators often battle piles of stuff mixed with kids toys, groceries and laundry - this system has helped me achieve a degree of separation. A dedicated studio would be impossible for me right now. The challenge is to work without shutting my little darling right out.

The upshot is, however, that Joseph's wonderful broad floorspace, generally occupied by the massive train set and soccer pre-training sessions, has become inaccessible. The solution was to change bedrooms. For a couple of years now, I've been occupying the mezzanine, which was designed as a master bedroom space. When I mooted the idea of giving the space to Joseph I got a lot of comments about sons of single mothers and the dangers of elevating them to "man of the house" positions. Allowing them to dictate. Truth be told, the space had never quite worked for me, something to do with the feng shui and neccessary placement of the big bed (first bed and mattress I have ever owned). I had been thinking that the sense of discomfort was something to do with the fact that I haven't lived in one place for more than 18 months since 1984, but it was probably more to do with windows, roof angles and entry placements.

My dear friend Dawn visited yesterday and played volunteer Domestic (Joe and I both agree that a maid would be a great addition to our family). Thanks to Dawn, Joseph's now upstairs in a fabulous little fort, with the dresser that belonged to his father and massive cupboards for sweeping the clutter right off the carpet. The cupboards remind me of Japanese space philosophy - in traditional Japanese house, the cupboards are about a 1/4 of the room space, the beds are tucked away during the day and the living space is far more workable.All the hot air rises up to that room, so I no longer need to check for kicked off-quilts in the middle of the night. (Joe has a tendency to shed pyjamas and thrash about like a little helicopter .)

To keep us going through the process, I fortified the maid with her favourite cocktail:

The Domestic (fruity, bitter, fizzy, frosty)

Ice frozen flat in a shallow tray and smashed to look like shards of glass

30ml frozen Absolut over ice in large glass

Italian grapefruit soda

20ml Campari plunged into the centre

Squeeze of fresh lime juice and 1/4 lime to garnish

10ml Cointreau dropped on top

swizzle and top up with blood orange juice

Dawn reckoned pineapple thyme would be a nice touch, but I haven't got to the herb garden yet.

Now I have a neat little bedroom, with a big bed, block out blinds, a functional wardrobe and the perfect place to hang Katsuya's Tomatoes. I still haven't decided whether or not to peel the glow in the dark stars off the ceiling.

Just a little more de-cluttering and everything will be perfect.

We head to South Melbourne on Friday, to house sit for two months.

forgetting to remember

2010-07-20T08:11:00.011+10:00

Joe and I hammered the 60km into town on Saturday night, heading for a very special birthday party. We'd never met Bec, but she'd been recommended to us by our friend Helen and we were so honoured to have been invited.

This talk of friends is not casual. As creatives, out here, away from the city tribes of like minds, fellow freaks are rare as hen's teeth. There are people we know and see from time to time, but very few whose eyes don't start to glaze over at the first mention of "projects", "writing" and painting anything other than trees and water. I drive the Murray Valley Highway to town a couple of times a week, if I'm feeling brave. There are always a thousand errands to run, and friends are squeezed in. My Albury friend Nick once criticised me for always having one foot out the door. And he told me off for drinking in a frenzy when I took him to Prudence (last house I ever shared, now a very fine bar) in West Melbourne.

I read once that our seafaring ancestors, and the landlocked sailors who shore, waltzed and jobbed their way around this continent, have a bit to do with the way we still drink. For three quarters of the year you get work, isolation, lack of water. Then, when the sheds cut out and you're cashed up, you roll into town, blow the dough as fast as possible, and then drag yourself back out to necessary deprivations. And family. Personally, I feel I spent most of my youth coming down on Greyhounds.

So. Last Saturday I partied like a sailor and Joe did too, fuelled, most of all, by the joy of association with like minds. Singing, dancing, dressing up, flirting, feasting, cocktails, yarns, kids, balloons, fire. Ahh.

But before the party I actually stopped, and pulled over to photograph the landscape that I only ever seem to watch out of the corner of my eyes as we barrel by. At the time I was frustrated by the lack of zoom (too rough on cameras to risk anything that sticks its neck out too far) and by the time I got the camera sorted the sun had all but set.

Sometimes I forget to remember that I live in this wonderful place.

Looking at the shot now, I see that the annoying red blur below the half sunk sun looks, ever so slightly, like a flame crowned heart.

PS A short story has emerged in time for The Write Around The Murray literary festival competition. Thanks to Felicity of The Witches Garden for scaring me into doing it! A little tweak today, and it will be posted.

PPS Wish me happy birthday!

XX Char.

Going Commando

2010-07-19T22:23:00.004+10:00

Deep button flies

Cut broad to just above the knee

Pleated and skirty but with legs

Heavy pure white cotton drill

Fully adjustable waist...these are a few of my favourite things about this armload of garments.

Try a pair on and suddenly everything becomes clear.

And I thought the saying "going commando" was something to do with muddy fatigues and saving on laundry.

These shorts are so easy and breezy we may never need to launder again.

Even when the summer to come starts to sweat our way.

Dreaming of sunny skies

(and sharing a little of the love on Big Cartel)

Soon my darlings, soon.

XX Charlotte

box a trix

2010-07-17T06:56:00.003+10:00

In amongst the nails, screws, rulers and drivers

a packet of hair pins

perfect for holding the nurses' hats tonight

Disposa Mania Spoils

2010-07-16T18:32:00.007+10:00

I had half an hour to spare in Wodonga today, so I took a breath, set a spend limit and ventured over the threshold at Tooles Disposals. Last time I went there I disgraced myself to such an extent the sales people weren't sure that I was going to be able to fit my child back into the hatchback. Billy The Toole did ask me if I'd like to visit his bunker, I asked the divine Miss Pen Pen if she'd like to come too - and she blogged all about that marvellous experience. I didn't spend hard that day. To busy taking it all in, swearing at the new camera, and enjoying the sight of my two idols doing deals.

Today, I had a Hotel - California - in - military dress - fetish type of experience. I tried to leave four times and kept getting drawn back. The helpful Steve Stuart mediated.

These are my spoils:

A habit - Army Padre's. There was a very small one too, with a zip front, waist and gathers. I'm going to ask them to put it aside. It would fit Min Mae perfectly and I'd love to see the dance jam she'd need to get out of it.

Two little chef's hats - slipped back to play ravaged scullion in

A target tshirt like you ain't never saw. Wonder what would happen when it's worn out?

Gurkha Shorts - white white bloomers perfect for summer striding, skirty but not, label still on. Now for the Dunlop Volleys and the knitted tank. Top that is.

Two white aprons - one for the front of the apron dress, one for the back.

Beautiful yellow and blue painted metal trays - studio organisers really.

Three black boxes - to tell me what happened, after the event.

Two medicine cabinets - one for the bathroom, one for cocktails

A pair of sweet unlined black rubber gloves

Three white cotton shirts - small to bust out of, with discreet epaulates for pinning things on

A shelf

A box of bits

Lovingly patched and name tagged overalls

More photos to come.

XX C.

If I said I was Writing I'd be Lying...

2010-07-15T05:56:00.005+10:00

I know I should be up scribing but instead I'm lolling all over my desk. Too much in love with:

My new Nikki Gabriel knit from Cottage Industry. It was kindly constructed for me by Joe's Nanny (paternal grandmother, that is, not the foreign girl I'd like to employ to wrangle him). I don't think she'd mind me revealing that she used a bit of language in the process. The bespoke wool wasn't available in time to get it knitted up for my birthday, so she went Alapaca hunting for an approximation. Apparently measurements in the pattern would have eased the way a bit. I hear that pattern and wool kits are in-store now. I also like my construction upside down, and folded out into a broad shawl collar. Lots of ways to play and featherlight to touch despite the actual weight.

The pre-customised flannie from Tallangatta Op Shop.

It reminds me of the de-cuffing I gave my Ormond College rugby top back in 1990. I had no idea I was committing sacrilege, but I did start a grungy little trend. Grass green county kid, I chose Ormond for the ivy and the sandstone. Didn't bargain on the ivy league thing. Got my head shaved in O week. All deliciously downhill from there. After 20 years of nightmares about returning, I've bought a ticket to the Alumni Dinner in the great hall in October. Orpheus descends...

The vintage Sally Smith skirt. I fell for Sally's work back in 2001, when I bought a sand wool/linen asymmetric skirt and straight wide legged slacks from her store. My brother was dating a recruitment girl at the time. We went to QBar.

"Dance in your new pants and I'l give you a job." she said, minutes before the place was raided. 15 minutes, to be precise. I know because I had just hit the dance floor when the lights went on and a policeman announced there was going to be raid in 15 minutes. Then we were turfed out onto Oxford Street and into a bank of TV cameras. Funny how they do things in the silver city.

I got the job, I got promoted, and I wore and wore those separates, sometimes both at the same time. They (along with a pair of cut-price Versace grey flannel platform Mary Janes) carried me through my corporate moment and right out the other side. I was working off a 22 grand credit card debt when the heavy denim skirt came to me, label on, in a Wodonga thrift store. It's been in storage for a while, but it's out again.

Now. Will I or won't I wear this get up to do the kinder drop off at Mitta Mitta?

ToteChute

2010-07-14T23:36:00.002+10:00

Sits perfectly over shoulder

Holds wallet, diary, phone, cardi, novel

Could transport very important not very heavy things from a great height

Plane not included

Art and Rules and Perfect Grey

2010-07-14T23:04:00.005+10:00

Rules are necessary in art.

An example: Paint on the paper, you may not always want that colour on the floor.

I had a rule for this blog - I would post only when ideas had arranged

themselves

into proper little essays, and not before.

It's been a while between posts.

Let me amend that opening statement.

Rules are necessary in art, as long as they don't get in the way of art.

The past few weeks have been host to a charcoal smudged mood, but yesterday was dove grey.

A perfect dove grey, I said to myself as I stood in the Wodonga Safeway carpark.

Nothing has ever seemed perfect from that perspective, so I knew the fugue was about to lift.

I took Joe swimming and he loved it. We are still arguing about whether they removed the rope dividing the kids pool or whether they moved the water.

I attempted to develop my son's browsing skills in Wodonga Plaza. We made a little progress.

And today, as wind and rain lashed our corrugated iron house and rainbows blazed in and out across the back paddocks, I started to work again.

Agent Orange

2010-06-18T21:10:00.005+10:00

I have a persistent problem.

It's something to do with orange.

I don't consciously like the colour, but every time I turn around, it's there.

I'm quite proud to admit that I was 35 before I owned a saucepan.

Perhaps that's why furnishing my house has been so tricky.

After much consideration, I bought a couch and armchairs, a sideboard and a large table.

All orange.

I put a bowl of fruit on the table to decorate it.

Persimmons.

I went to Sydney to escape the orange overload.

I walked through Bondi.

This is what I saw.

Sweet Black Lunch

2010-06-16T09:22:00.004+10:00

I had a lover.
He would take me to The Mixing Pot.
All the waiters used to look.
He was a bit of a personality.
I went back today, by chance, for lunch.
I sat alone in the courtyard.
Raw beef, ink pasta, black olives.
One glass of champagne.
The waiter looked.
And filled up the water glass.
I had black coffee.
No sweets?
The waiter bought biscuits for my son, and wrapped them at the table.
Nobody knew my lover.
We shook hands.
After lunch I visited my friend.
I was afraid to ask her about him.
I did ask.
She said he was playing chess with her partner. As we spoke.
And that he was married.
It was sweet.

Sydney 1.

2010-06-16T09:06:00.004+10:00

Sally Smith Red Silk Shirt Maker

The Tale of Willy The Masher

2010-06-04T10:27:00.007+10:00

Niacinamide, said my doctor, fresh back from the Bio-Balance conference in Sydney. It stops the brain churning.

You mean obsessing? I asked.

Yes. He smiled.

It was a lightbulb moment.

I found this postcard in the Tallangatta Op Shop yesterday. I was intially attracted to the boating theme - everything's been coming up nautical lately - but the written message on the back of the card has really captured me. It launches off in a big bold excited hand and shrinks as the author runs out of space, and possibly confidence, and it goes like this:

Dear. Willie.

I am sending You this P.C. to know how you are getting on as it is a longtime since I saw. you. I was sorry when I did not see You at the Katamatite Dance the other. night. I am sending you this to know. if. you will meet me at the Boosey School corner. tomorrow Sunday. I remain your true love. Guess the name. Guess my name if you can.

The front of the picture has been customised - a swirl over the Y and the title scratched out.

Y is a Yachtsman, you'll see him at Dover becomes Willie The. Masher. You'll. see. him. at. Boosey.

We'll never know if the rendezvous took place, but an analysis of the postcard as a persuasive document reveals a few fatal mistakes. It also makes me (laughingly) remember all the poetic but slightly disturbing letters and small gifts I used to send to crushes: dessicated orange peel to a polish musician; boxes of maple leaves to a film maker; customised fridge magnets to the love of my life. Offerings like that have got me where I am today.

I'm older, wiser and single now. If I could give tips to a fellow fancier, I'd suggest the following:

Keep it neat - scribbling, spiraling, scratching, shrinking and swelling are spooky.
However fondly you mean it, don't insult your hearts desire - back in the day, a "masher" was someone thought to be effete, work shy, idle, and faux-aristocratic. Labeling rarely leads to love. In my unfortunate experience, it leads to bar brawls.
Don't try to hide your name, your age or your gender. It's all obvious really. Isn't it.
If he wasn't at the dance and you were at the dance, and he knew you were at the dance, odds are he didn't want to see you.
Watch the punctuation. All those full stops protest a certainty and undercut it at the same time. Too many exclamation marks invoke a sense of panic in any reader!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The postcard has no stamp, no address and no postmark. Maybe it was hand delivered. I secretly hope it was scrawled and never sent and that the author, spruced up and gorgeous, just happened to be at the same social occasion as Willy The Masher, and that Willy The Masher stopped mashing for a bit and asked the author to dance.

Me? I'm off on another track, thanks to that fibre optic internet connection. The mention of Boosey School could date the postcard sometime between 1887 and 1918. Unless the school was closed, and derelict, and our author was planning a private rendezvous in a quiet spot. Oh dear.

Clutter Box One and Two

2010-06-01T15:31:00.004+10:00

It's been Clutter vs Me for some time now, but we may have come to an amicable agreement.

From the Shake and Bake School of Assemblage, these two works tell stories by kaleidoscope.

23x23x4.5cm

Ribba Frames by Ikea (best suited to sitting on shelves)

AU $50.00 each, delivery by arrangement.

A wave of isolation...

2010-05-28T11:45:00.005+10:00

Joe and I had to spend a lot of time alone together before his operation. After all the trips to Melbourne I've started wondering about whether a valley 60kms out of Albury Wodonga is the right place for us, and I've been having fantasies about saving up for a two bedroom mc-apartment in the big smoke. I'd get more work and inspiration, Joe would have play mates just around the corner...the land of culture, cool-craft, cocktails and coffees beckons.

Isolation has been a key element in the many lives I've led. Alienation, a sense of separateness, and the need for solitary space are often quoted as pre-requisites for living as a writer. It doesn't really lessen the sneaking sense of betrayal in the writing process, but it's great for perspective and focus. My whole life has been a sequence of journeys, punctuated by repeated returns to isolated places.

Last Wednesday I drove 50 km to a writer's evening at the Laurel Hotel in Mitta Mitta. I'd never heard of the author, it was a mad rush to get there by 7.00 pm, and the narrow and winding highway was peppered with potentially lethal wombats. I took along an Austrian friend who has been in the area for a number of years, and who also wonders how choices in her life have lead her to a place so untainted by cosmopolitan influences. We arrived 5 minutes early, to find that Ber Carroll and her minder from the mobile library were the only customers in the joint. A fire was burning in the dining room, the bar was selling drinks. We got down to talking. Three other people arrived.

The questions Ber asked were as interesting as the stories around her life and work. She reminded me of the importance of staying open and listening - being simultaneously alert to the stories inside us that clamour to be told, and to the stories that flow around us, wherever we are. Mitta Mitta and its people came alive in the scraps and anecdotes we offered up to her. Various writing projects were discussed, and became more real for the discussion.

I talked about my habit of trying to escape the valley. My last attempt involved a doing a runner to a cattle station 500km north east of Alice Springs.

"That's not an escape," said Ber.

Up to that moment, I'd never really seen the joke in my great escape from a lonely cottage on a hill in North East Victoria to a 5,00o square km property 500km out of Alice Springs. Ber had left a small town in Ireland and landed in the great glamour and clamour of Sydney, so perhaps escape for her meant a leap away from isolation.

My escape into the "nothingness" of the outback turned out to be a trip into the heart of many matters - personal, cultural, geographical, historical and mythological. Today, I made my start at this story, in novel form, as seen through the eyes of a seven year old cowboy. Joe's in kinder today, so I set up my laptop in the back room at the Mitta Mitta Store. The owner got talking to me, made a quick phone call, and now I find myself welcomed at Mitta Mitta Primary School. As I writing this I'm sitting in the Withdrawal Room (!) at one side of the big old schoolroom, fibre-optically connected to the superhighway and surrounded by the background babble of kids at work. Research just got a whole lot easier, and the wave of isolation seems to have washed me up on a brand new shore.

A Note to Readers

2010-05-23T11:11:00.005+10:00

Joe's successful surgery was a massive event, and I am brimming over with the amazing things that have happened over the past month. We are both well and happy now, but scattered, and I'm not sure I trust myself to post responsibly. The photographs below communicate a little for the moment. The rest of the story will emerge over time. Thank you to everyone who has expressed concern, sent healing wishes and supported us through this experience.

watching sirens

2010-05-23T10:49:00.001+10:00

surgery postponed

2010-05-23T10:36:00.002+10:00

protection

2010-05-23T10:30:00.001+10:00

polish therapy

2010-05-23T10:18:00.002+10:00

smile medicine

2010-05-23T10:00:00.001+10:00