I love this one especially!
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Friday, May 30, 2008
Bib la difference!
I have fine-tuned the shape a little, narrowing across the shoulders, taking off some length and closing up the neck-hole slightly. I'm quite happy with this version, and will make more like it.
I've got a cool piece of fabric with a Japanese-y cartoon print called The Itazura Kid (a recycled garage-sale pillow-case!) in mind for the next one.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Conquering the world, one bib at a time...
My son is a chucker.
A spectacular, monumental, volcanic vomiter. Mt Vesuvius, I like to call him. He rips through outfits with waves of hot clotted yoghurt, and recently has begun to follow up with a steady stream of clear spit. (Teething, everybody likes to say knowledgeably. Whatever.)
Consequently, we've been using up the few hand-me-down bibs in our possession faster than I can wash them. We had an excursion to a DFO on the weekend to see if we could find some bargain bibs, that weren't these piss-weak little newborn's spit-catchers and chin-cloths, and that didn't cost the earth. Oh, and that didn't have hideously ugly and naff graphics on them. (My preference was to find them at op-shops, but they are rarer than hen's teeth in my area, and those I found were pretty disgusting.)
We came home empty-handed and slightly disillusioned until it was suggested that I have a crack at making some, and miracle of miracles, I actually just got on with it there and then and whipped up TWO! As I whirred away on the sewing machine, I mentally built a reclaimed fabric bib empire, complete with minions, a bald cat to sit on my lap and a good stock of evil mwahaha-has.
So, here are my two steps towards world domination. Only prototypes, as I discovered on putting onto my lad that they are just a wee bit broad and long, although through the course of an evening wearing one he still managed to saturate it while remaining fairly dry beneath. Which I think may be a marker of success.
A spectacular, monumental, volcanic vomiter. Mt Vesuvius, I like to call him. He rips through outfits with waves of hot clotted yoghurt, and recently has begun to follow up with a steady stream of clear spit. (Teething, everybody likes to say knowledgeably. Whatever.)
Consequently, we've been using up the few hand-me-down bibs in our possession faster than I can wash them. We had an excursion to a DFO on the weekend to see if we could find some bargain bibs, that weren't these piss-weak little newborn's spit-catchers and chin-cloths, and that didn't cost the earth. Oh, and that didn't have hideously ugly and naff graphics on them. (My preference was to find them at op-shops, but they are rarer than hen's teeth in my area, and those I found were pretty disgusting.)
We came home empty-handed and slightly disillusioned until it was suggested that I have a crack at making some, and miracle of miracles, I actually just got on with it there and then and whipped up TWO! As I whirred away on the sewing machine, I mentally built a reclaimed fabric bib empire, complete with minions, a bald cat to sit on my lap and a good stock of evil mwahaha-has.
So, here are my two steps towards world domination. Only prototypes, as I discovered on putting onto my lad that they are just a wee bit broad and long, although through the course of an evening wearing one he still managed to saturate it while remaining fairly dry beneath. Which I think may be a marker of success.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Where history lives.
My partner and I recently made the radical decision to move interstate. We bought land in Tassie and plan to leave Victoria in October when our house lease ends.
Contemplating the big shift from mad, bad, dangerous to know and open 24/7 Melbourne (Smelbourne to its mates) down to small, cold and islanded little Hobart (Slowbart to the bitter 30-something expats that make up half of Melbourne's population - or maybe just to me!) presents me with various issues and emotional hurdles to be overcome. I grew up there after all, and you don't leave your home-state without good reason.
One such pang hit me today when walking home from the supermarket, with my little glassy-eyed, spittle-blowing, Melbourne-made son in tow. I passed a guy who reminded me vaguely of someone I once knew, a friend of an ex-Clifton Hill housemate, and I suddenly realised that in returning to Hobart, the run-ins with people from my past will no longer be with people I have met and known as an adult, but more likely people I went to school with (a whole other kettle of blog-posts!). These incidental meetings serve as reminders of my various other incarnations. I see someone I knew during my undergrad and remember that I spent the best part of the late nineties taking drugs, drinking beer, dancing in my bra at the Evelyn, and other such niceties. A friend from my Dip Ed last year brings me out of my spacey maternal reverie to remind me that I am a qualified teacher. Someone from the creche I worked at years ago passes me in Northland (I look the other way like the scumbag snob I am) and I am transported back to the days of plastic bowls of macaroni cheese, snotty faces and heated disputes over the dress-ups.
What I'm leaving behind are the tangible remnants of my history as a grown woman. I came here at the age of 21, and feel very much that I have lived my whole adult life here. I think on some level I am afraid that by leaving the place I also leave behind my history and therefore my actual self. But these are all just memories after all, and I take them with me wherever I am, regardless of the faces from the past swimming up out of the crowds to remind me. It's not like I have my memory wiped when I cross the Bass Strait... they stopped doing that years ago!
In a way, it's fitting that I am coming full circle and returning to the place of my very happy childhood with a happy child of my own. And what real loss is there in not chancing a run-in with my ex-boyfriend and showing off how far I've moved on since him?! That would really just be an empty and narcissistic exercise anyway!
Though having said that, I'm sure there will times in Tassie when I try and impress new friends with my past as a life model or raver or illustrator (HAH!), because at the end of the day, I actually am just a little bit empty and narcissistic!
Contemplating the big shift from mad, bad, dangerous to know and open 24/7 Melbourne (Smelbourne to its mates) down to small, cold and islanded little Hobart (Slowbart to the bitter 30-something expats that make up half of Melbourne's population - or maybe just to me!) presents me with various issues and emotional hurdles to be overcome. I grew up there after all, and you don't leave your home-state without good reason.
One such pang hit me today when walking home from the supermarket, with my little glassy-eyed, spittle-blowing, Melbourne-made son in tow. I passed a guy who reminded me vaguely of someone I once knew, a friend of an ex-Clifton Hill housemate, and I suddenly realised that in returning to Hobart, the run-ins with people from my past will no longer be with people I have met and known as an adult, but more likely people I went to school with (a whole other kettle of blog-posts!). These incidental meetings serve as reminders of my various other incarnations. I see someone I knew during my undergrad and remember that I spent the best part of the late nineties taking drugs, drinking beer, dancing in my bra at the Evelyn, and other such niceties. A friend from my Dip Ed last year brings me out of my spacey maternal reverie to remind me that I am a qualified teacher. Someone from the creche I worked at years ago passes me in Northland (I look the other way like the scumbag snob I am) and I am transported back to the days of plastic bowls of macaroni cheese, snotty faces and heated disputes over the dress-ups.
What I'm leaving behind are the tangible remnants of my history as a grown woman. I came here at the age of 21, and feel very much that I have lived my whole adult life here. I think on some level I am afraid that by leaving the place I also leave behind my history and therefore my actual self. But these are all just memories after all, and I take them with me wherever I am, regardless of the faces from the past swimming up out of the crowds to remind me. It's not like I have my memory wiped when I cross the Bass Strait... they stopped doing that years ago!
In a way, it's fitting that I am coming full circle and returning to the place of my very happy childhood with a happy child of my own. And what real loss is there in not chancing a run-in with my ex-boyfriend and showing off how far I've moved on since him?! That would really just be an empty and narcissistic exercise anyway!
Though having said that, I'm sure there will times in Tassie when I try and impress new friends with my past as a life model or raver or illustrator (HAH!), because at the end of the day, I actually am just a little bit empty and narcissistic!
Today is a good day to dry.
I love the old Hill's Hoist.
Okay, some might say that it isn't necessarily the prettiest piece of industrial design, but it serves a great purpose and I can't imagine what you would do without one. I have to admit, I do rather like the aesthetics of them myself (form following function?), and I find the sight of a line full of clean laundry snapping away in the breeze and sending off waves of sun-baked cleanliness a lovely thing to behold. I don't know anyone who would deny the pleasure of climbing between clean sheets dried in the sun and wind. That fragrance goes up there with fresh-baked bread, newly cut grass and baby skin as top-ten all-time best smells.
Maybe it's a particularly Australian thing to do, but I was flabbergasted to read this article about how it is so rare to hang laundry outside in Canada that it's a newsworthy event when someone does it unashamedly! There are even tips at the end of the article about how to dry laundry without using a dryer, like putting your delicate smalls on a rack indoors to "avoid embarrassment"! Cos having clean undies is pretty mortifying. I'd rather everyone thought I never washed mine at all, or just threw them out after each wear!
I know dryers can be handy, but really, most of the time they are totally unnecessary for most people. Especially in a country forever gripped by drought!
Besides, some days, if it weren't for the endless stream of laundry to be hung, I might never leave the house!
Okay, some might say that it isn't necessarily the prettiest piece of industrial design, but it serves a great purpose and I can't imagine what you would do without one. I have to admit, I do rather like the aesthetics of them myself (form following function?), and I find the sight of a line full of clean laundry snapping away in the breeze and sending off waves of sun-baked cleanliness a lovely thing to behold. I don't know anyone who would deny the pleasure of climbing between clean sheets dried in the sun and wind. That fragrance goes up there with fresh-baked bread, newly cut grass and baby skin as top-ten all-time best smells.
Maybe it's a particularly Australian thing to do, but I was flabbergasted to read this article about how it is so rare to hang laundry outside in Canada that it's a newsworthy event when someone does it unashamedly! There are even tips at the end of the article about how to dry laundry without using a dryer, like putting your delicate smalls on a rack indoors to "avoid embarrassment"! Cos having clean undies is pretty mortifying. I'd rather everyone thought I never washed mine at all, or just threw them out after each wear!
I know dryers can be handy, but really, most of the time they are totally unnecessary for most people. Especially in a country forever gripped by drought!
Besides, some days, if it weren't for the endless stream of laundry to be hung, I might never leave the house!
Friday, May 09, 2008
Fad no# 24: TTV Photography!
I have had good intentions of blogging more often since I've been at home with a baby, but frankly, I'm fucked if I have anything interesting to say most of the time! And on the rare occasion that I might think up a thought worth writing, I lose it in the quagmire of my fritzed short-term memory before I can find ten minutes to post it when I don't have a baby dangling from one of my sad udders!
But last weekend, while feeling particularly sorry for myself, I was ambling about my saved websites and rediscovered these lovely images. I assumed they were taken using some fandangled fancy camera, or printed on some fabulous type of paper, but when I did a whole five minutes research (my old friend google), it turned out to be a very simple technique, that even very simple folk like me could muck about with at home!
So...what is TTV photography? Basically, shooting with a digital camera through the viewfinder of an older camera. And that's it, as far as I can gather. Dead easy. And effective! I wanked about one afternoon, in failing light what's more, and came up with a few okay pictures, I think, after a bit of diddling with the contrast in photoshop to make up for poor light and such.
So here are some that I was pretty pleased with, given it was my first crack at it and it was getting dark and I was dicking about at home and while walking the baby and, erm, the dog ate my homework. (Just gotta cover all bases!)
But last weekend, while feeling particularly sorry for myself, I was ambling about my saved websites and rediscovered these lovely images. I assumed they were taken using some fandangled fancy camera, or printed on some fabulous type of paper, but when I did a whole five minutes research (my old friend google), it turned out to be a very simple technique, that even very simple folk like me could muck about with at home!
So...what is TTV photography? Basically, shooting with a digital camera through the viewfinder of an older camera. And that's it, as far as I can gather. Dead easy. And effective! I wanked about one afternoon, in failing light what's more, and came up with a few okay pictures, I think, after a bit of diddling with the contrast in photoshop to make up for poor light and such.
So here are some that I was pretty pleased with, given it was my first crack at it and it was getting dark and I was dicking about at home and while walking the baby and, erm, the dog ate my homework. (Just gotta cover all bases!)
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