Folk Ladies

I have just bought two excellent cd’s that are on high rotation in our house at the moment. One is First Aid Kit, two teenage sisters from Sweden who did a live to air concert last week at our local, and excellent public radio station, if you find the recording you will hear me clapping and the baby having a squawk in a quiet but between songs. The second band, also female and folky, is by Mountain Man which is just beautiful especially the song animal tracks which you can hear here. Hooray for music.

Daffodil

The winning flower

My friend comes from a long line of champion daffodil breeders and this last Saturday was the town show in Kyneton when she is from. I have wanted to go each year for the last ten and each time something has come up so a 12 year flood wasn’t going to stop me this time. It was wonderful. A tin shed with the rain pelting down on the roof and rows of perfect blooms created from rare breeding stock and secret pollen deals, battling it out for the various prizes. The winning daffodil was spectacular and was won by someone who swept up many of the prizes. There was also a children’s section where local school children made sculptures out of fruit and vegetables that were particularly wonderful. My friends father also won two prizes to continue carrying the family mantle.

Tara Donovan

A friend has just pointed me in the direction of Tara Donovan. Her work is so simple and so clever created out of everyday items, pencils, straws, Styrofoam cups, but repeated to create landscapes and microcosms. It has got me thinking.

Kinder

We recently returned from a wonderful adventure in Japan. As well as spending time in the large cities and zooming around on the bullet trains, we had some beautiful and quiet times high up in the mountains in tiny villages surrounded by bamboo and cedar wood forests.
It was high summer over there and very hot and humid. The baby was a trooper and took everything in his stride. One day in Kyoto we were hot and getting cranky as we wandered around in the heat trying to get back to our cool tatami mat room so the baby could have a crawl around after being clipped into a sweaty pram for hours. I saw a tiny hand painted sign in both Japanese and English saying there was a children’s bookstore so we went to have a look. On the first floor of a building was a lovely bookstore filled with all the classics translated into Japanese. We were told there was a kindergarten upstairs and we could take the baby there to play with some other children. It was so beautiful, two grandmotherly women played with another baby in a cool clear room filled with beautiful handmade toys. It was just perfect.

Fold

I just saw some images from a project I worked on last year for Qube Konstrukt. I hadn’t seen the finished work and it came up looking pretty great I reckon. It is all made out of folded paper. They have just got me working on a few new things for another project which is fun.

Clash

I kept waiting for the pickle and ice cream cravings but all I got when I was pregnant was a craving for colours. Instead of gravitating towards blues and grays and black suddenly I was looking at orange and pink together and thinking how fantastic they looked. The other month I went into a shop filled with brightly clashing things made of felt. There were these rugs that I couldn’t take my eyes off they were made from individual coloured felt balls sown together in a circle, they were bright, clashing and wonderful. Maybe it’s a permanent change, one for the better perhaps.

Mini-Festival

If you are around Melbourne tomorrow come along to the SMR festival for garage sales, sausage sizzles and lots of great music should be fun!!

Story time

I am working on an exciting project making illustrations and animation for a director I admire. It has been a juggle and stressful at times but I have been listening to This American Life episodes while I work and it makes the hours fly by. You can stream them for free and I highly recommend it. I have also been sent on a tangent through them to The Moth also filled with brilliant storytelling.

Aid

I went to a friends house today to learn first aid. Turns out that class in year 9 wasn't completely lost after all as I kept recalling the answers to everything which could come in handy in case of emergency. Previously my only memory of first aid class was being awarded my certificate and then going to the shopping mall and finding a woman unconscious in the toilets and freaking out and locking myself in the bathroom... she did have a friend with her who seemed to have it under control but my lack of bravado did deflate my confidence somewhat. Any how I saw the most beautiful children's book that had been recently purchased in Spain by Herve Tullet. The pages flipped in sections and you can see it in action here. Herve Tullet's site is pretty fun the scribbling bit is great you can draw on top of his scribbles.

Garden club

My new friend Ella has asked me to join a gardening group. It is a great idea, you go along to one persons house every two weeks and take the babies and everyone helps in their garden doing what ever needs doing to help them grow fruit and vegetables or get a compost going. The children play in the garden and help dig in the dirt, learning bits and pieces as they go. The hostess makes a delicious cake and we all walked away with tiny winter lettuce seedlings, worm juice and a Vietnamese mint plant. Arlo ate a spiky succulent leaf and was like a cat with a fur ball until i peeked in his mouth and scooped the leaf out. Ah nature. I can't wait for the next one.