Window

Canberra: Blundell's Cottage window
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

Not sure what I liked more here, the wonderful rich blue of the window frame or the intricacy of the random stone wall. This is a photo I took years ago at Blundell's Cottage on the shores of Lake Burely Griffin in Canberra.

Atonement

080121 Atonement
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

I was a bit dithery about going to this - malicious little girls aren't my cup of tea, really...although I did enjoy The Piano, so there's an absolute that isn't absolute.

Verdict: Very Excellent and Recommended.

I avoided reading the book, though I do plan to read it now, so I didn't quite know where it was going. The two leads were excellent, and the malicious little girl (although in her grown up incarnation Romola Garai's performance owed a fair bit to the stunned mullet school of acting). The four minute tracking shot of Dunkirk is a boggler - reminded me of the long tracking shot in Kenneth Branagh's Henry V. Maybe there's something about war and tracking shots...

Inspiration

0801 Flinders St Station mosaic 1
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

Quilt-inspiring geometry is everywhere (this is a mosaic near the entrance to Flinders St station). It's my kind of quilting that this has a bunch of blues, a bunch of browns, lots of variations on each colour. At a quilt shop (not that, ahem, I'm short of fabric, exactly) I find myself much preferring to purchase a little amount of a lot of fabric, rather than yardage of a few (unless it's a border). For the same reason I like jelly rolls, charm packs, fat sixteenths, other ways to have variety.

While in Melbourne I invested in some happy summer prints, cherry and pink and lime and aqua, and this morning I've been playing with ideas in Electric Quilt. And downloading some of the EQ palettes I don't have on this computer (if you have EQ, here's the link: http://www.electricquilt.com/Users/Downloads/palette_lib.asp). That's another way to play with fabric, and it involves less (physical) storage...

There was a fierce storm yesterday afternoon, enough to bring down trees amid the rumble of thunder which lasted hours, and cracks of lightning sometimes close enough to make you jump. This morning there's washing to be done, but the day is grey and not promising for washing to get dry, the air and ground still damp from yesterday's rain. I was going to paint a couple of cupboards for the sewing room too, but again I wonder how the paint will dry today. Tomorrow's going to be warmer. Maybe tomorrow. (The cupboards will help finish off the sewing room, which I know seems to have been underway for a long time - but it will get there).

(I haven't forgotten Scatterday, a catchup is coming...)

Melbourne, January 2008

Melbourne January 2006 mosaic
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

What can you do in two days in Melbourne?

Gawp at the Shot Tower in Melbourne Central, and other architectural details such as those wonderful pillars and ceilings from a bank building. Travel on trams, and wish you had been there in time for the daily 2pm tour of the Royal Exhibition Building.

Spend time at the Queen Victoria Market - the food sections are brilliant, olives and bagels and cheeses and more, fresh fruit and vegetables - but skip the tat of trashy rip-off T shirts and stuff. (Trays and trays of mangoes, can you tell it's summer?)

Visit the Melbourne Museum - excellent exhibition about the human mind on at the moment, wonderful Federation Tapestry on display (even if they did burgle "Eternity" which is a quintessentially Sydney icon!) and even a classic display of pinned bugs such as used to be the staple fare of museums.

Visit the National Gallery of Victoria International, which has an excellent shop with Tord Boontje lights and cut outs, Mozi textiles, Florence Broadhurst textiles, graphic black and white softies, a fabulous red sarcophagus backpack (from an LA museum) and one lone, boring, unimaginatively chosen book on quilting. Sigh.

But to make up for it, the gallery contains some astounding artworks, including Shonibare's simply wonderful Reverend on Ice, a charming ceramic depicting chicken killing more prettily than you might have imagined, delightful vintage postcards depicting Britannia and ?Madeleine of France having a poke at each other with flags over the English Channel, Farinelli (just a detail here of hands), antiquities from South America and more.

You wander through lower ceilinged rooms (here a Picasso, there a Man Ray) and then find yourself in ones with cathedral-like proportions, over here a Monet, over there a Canaletto. It's an impressive collection (and in the decorative arts section we found a hugely helpful museum guard, who assumed his job was to help us enjoy the collection, not watch us beady-eyed and stop us burgling it - his delight in what we could see enhanced our delight).

Be frightfully glad that your hotel room has a view over the Yarra, past Crown Casino's belching night-time flames and to Port Phillip Bay.

Enjoy what seems like lots of public artworks - statues, sculptures, mosaics and more. Decide that while Southbank and the Yarra aren't Darling Harbour and Sydney Harbour, well, it's not a bad stroll either, and the streets in other parts of the city just don't seem as crowded as Sydney.
Visit a couple of quilting shops, because it's always good to see what they have in other places. (I'd particularly recommend Amitie, which was buzzing-busy and full of yummy fabric). (Being grateful for lovely directions supplied by helpful quilters).

Stop typing right now because there's thunder overhead.....and it's raining, such as it's supposed to so much in Melbourne, and didn't, at least not on this visit.

(Later): Tourist tips:

• Ask at your hotel for maps: they weren't easy to find at the airport. It was much better to have our own map to pull out at any time and consult.
• The Circle Tram is free and travels in both directions around the city's central grid of streets - the trams for this were mostly dark burgundy in colour, and consistently pretty full. They (sometimes) had a (free) printed Melbourne guide in pockets near the door and also a spoken commentary. (Unfortunately we ran out of time to see the display of venomous spiders at an opal shop. Gee whiz.)
• If you're going to pootle around Melbourne all day, and are likely to need more than the Circle Tram, just buy a Zone 1 ticket from a newsagent/convenience store and be done with it - you can buy all day ones, covering bus/train/tram together. If you're visiting quilt shops further afield, check to see if you need a Zone 1&2 ticket.
• If you're travelling outside the CBD, tram stops are numbered, so if you have a particular destination (like a quilt shop) in mind, check ahead of time to find out the nearest tram stop number, much easier than hunting street names.
• Some museums/galleries are free. Some aren't. Some will charge for particular exhibitions only.
• I'd like to tell you that I found one website that did a simple "What's on in Melbourne Right Now" listing for galleries/museums/exhibitions. But I didn't. If you know one, bung in a comment. We found the places we went to through a combination of reading maps, guides, online sites, the newspaper (The Age), and stuff we'd knew before.
• The Skybus from Tullamarine (Melbourne) airport was easy to find and use: if you're going home again, it's cheaper to buy a return ticket than two singles.
• Wear comfortable shoes, and enjoy walking (if the weather is kind).

If you click on the mosaic, it will take you to a larger version.

It was a busy (we walked miles), happy two days. I still think, though, that there's nothing can beat flying back into Sydney with the afternoon light catching the red roofs and silvering the turns and bays of the rivers and harbour, seeing the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House....

Kids, films, ratings

Sometimes I'm horrified by the films to which small children are taken - you wonder just what sense they're making of it, or wince as they whimper in fear. If I go to a G-rated film, I expect a kiddy crowd and the noise/popcorn/rustly unsettledness of it all. If it's M or MA, you hope not to have children running in and out, or clearly upset, or clearly uninterested in the screen action. But sometimes you wonder if a rating, focusing on a small part of a film, might deter a worthwhile experience for medium-sized or older children.

There's an interesting article about this in the New York Times: Take the Kids, and Don't Feel Guilty.

Flames

0801 Crown Casino's flamethrowers
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

They're quite possibly crass, but they're eye-catching, the flame-throwing pillars outside the Crown Casino complex on the Yarra in Melbourne. On the hour, at night, they go through a short cycle of flames - with a basic camera, it's kinda like trying to catch a blowhole doing it's thing, as they flare and die and you hope you haven't wobbled too much... But it's also a spectacle, and there's something elemental about fire and flame...

Reverend on Ice : Shonibare

0801 "Reverend on Ice" Shonibare
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

This artwork was originally created in association with the arts program of the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, and was subsequently acquired by the National Gallery of Victoria. It's inspired by the Scottish painting, "Reverend Robert Walker (1755 - 1808) Skating on Duddingston Loch" (link takes you to National Gallery of Scotland page on this work by Henry Raeburn).

There's something delightful, and curious, and engaging about Shonibare's sculptural figure (even it it's not ice, it's wax, and Don't Touch!).

There's an article from The Age about this sculpture here.

Art gallery

0807 mini culture-vultures at the Art Gallery
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

Mini culture-vultures at the Art Gallery of NSW - this was an interactive school holiday program about Australian Aboriginal music. The kids were engrossed and engaged and enjoyed participating.

Yesterday it was the National Gallery of Victoria International, today the Art Gallery of NSW. Both have lots to offer, but one thing I noticed was that the Victorian one (what's with National and International? The National Gallery of this country is in Canberra....) combines what is split in NSW - here, if you want to see decorative arts, furniture/textiles/glass etc, that's in the Powerhouse Museum, a separate institution. I'm not arguing either system is better or worse, just different.

From a quilting point of view, I always look at the textile books section in the gallery shops, just to see what they have. And am usually disappointed. I don't expect an art gallery's book selection for quilting to be one how-to book of fairly bog-ordinary designs. Hello.... there are lots of interesting quilt/art quilt books out there which would be much better as representing quilting in this context. If you've got to have a how-to, what about Simple Contemporary Quilts: Bold New Designs for the First-Time Quilter by Valerie Van Arsdale Shrader? It's got designs from a bunch of different art quilters of high esteem. One would assume Quilt National books would be a given, if you want representations of current work, and then a couple of good books on quilt history, if you want to round out a bare-bones selection.

Port Authority building, Melbourne

0807 Port Authority building, Melbourne
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

You feel pleasantly lucky when you can look out of your hotel room in Melbourne and see this nice old bit of architecture. Melbourne of course did well, architecturally, when the 1850s goldrush money poured into town - there are a bunch of beautiful Victorian buildings. In addition to that Victoriana, there are plenty of other buildings to appreciate as well. Sydney has a bunch of good ones too, but it's when you visit a less familiar city that you tend to notice more.

More happened than appreciation of architectural detail...more photos to come. It was an excellent flying visit.

Shot Tower, Melbourne

0807 Shot Tower, Melbourne
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

What better to have as a centrepiece in your city-centre shopping centre than a shot tower? This is at Melbourne Central, and is a very striking piece of preservation/re-use. I had seen it before, but on arriving at the atrium had one of those, aha, it's a good idea, moments. It's an interesting exercise in different architectural geometries side by side, the glass cone and the brick tower.

Tartan landscape

0807 tartan landscape
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

Somewhere out there, the Fletcher Jones banshees are out to get me for vandalising their work on this kilt.....

(Fletcher Jones is one of Australia's few bespoke kilt makers, I'm told).

It's got a spinal sort of look, a skeleton in fabric. It's for Recycled Threads, so all I can offer is a glimpse till the autumn/Mothers' Day issue of Australian Country Threads comes out mid-year.

Pierrepoint

0807 Pierrepoint film
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

Albert Pierrepoint was one of Britain's hangmen in the twentieth century - his work involved between 400 and 600 executions. This dramatised documentary featuring a very fine performance by Timothy Spall was compelling, although not always easy to watch.

(Sideline note: the film makes the point that Pierrepoint dealt with the criminals' remains with respect and courtesy - but when he hanged very few women and almost entirely men, why is it a woman's body that we are shown in full as he bathes it after the hanging? Is it that it's 'easier' somehow to show a naked woman than a naked man?).

Like Vera Drake, it's a film set in a thirties/forties English domestic world, poorly lit, cramped, drably coloured, a claustrophobic environment in which the characters do their best to live respectable lives.

You wonder what it did to a man's mind, even one as phlegmatic, workmanlike and professional about his work, when after the WW2 Nazi trials, he was chosen to go to Germany and found himself hanging 13 people a day for a week.

In his biography, Pierrepoint had this to say:

It did not deter them then and it had not deterred them when they committed what they were convicted for. All the men and women I have faced at that final moment convince me that in what I have done I have not prevented a single murder. I have come to the conclusion that executions solve nothing, and are only an antiquated relic of a primitive desire for revenge.

Here's a page that shows the status of capital punishment in the world today - where it still exists, where it's been abolished.

Brighton

Brighton
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

Another place I enjoyed visiting some years ago was Brighton. Maybe it was partly Georgette Heyer (Regency Buck, for one) and her mentions of the Brighton Pavilion, as built and decorated by the Prince Regent.

You mustn't have been able to photograph inside, as I don't seem to have any interior photos- although I remember how amazingly elaborate it was. Think I bought postcards, instead.

It may not have been too late in the afternoon when this photo was taken, looking over the sea front. In an English winter, the day closed in all too quickly. But I rather liked the moody atmosphere of the day's ending, the vintage bollards, the sea and pier.

Although to one now accustomed to Australia's sandy beaches, I'd forgotten the shingle ones of England. Isn't that why you travel, to find things you'd forgotten, and discover things you didn't know?

2007 Year in Pictures

Summing up 2007:

three photos per month.

January:

Roses, Vaucluse House and a quilt made from orphan blocks from many of my projects.

February:

Books (particularly The Time Traveler's Wife), mad matador fabric and wonderful vegetables to photograph.

March:

Martian starfruits, Robin McKinley's Sunshine and one of my favourite performers on stage.

April:

Casino Royale, a scrapbooking chipboard album made for a grieving friend and stitching done on Anzac Day.

May:

Finally putting photos of my quilts into albums to document them, making sweetly pretty cupcakes and a charming jug.

June:

Red Nose Day, my challenge quilt comes home, a blue evening sky.

July:

The inspirational Choir of Hard Knocks, stairs at Watsons Bay from a happy day with friends and the final Harry Potter book.

August:

Daffodils and jonquils, fragrant strawberries and a quirky op shop shirt (that will go into a quilt).

September:

The six Ken boys, my hair done up for a (rare) formal occasion and a healthy breakfast in a pretty aqua bowl.

October:

Sewing room being revamped, cherry blossom in a family garden and another challenge quilt, this one including family initials and other embroidery.

November:

Shabby chic vintage-style Christmas decorations, a heart cushion on one of my quilts and the lighted cupboard for my green glass.

December:

Nestling, Double Delight roses in Cowra and a Christmas snowman (I gave two of these to old, dear friends, so we will each bring him out for Christmas).

It's not so easy to sum the year in so few photographs. Allsorts managed it in just twelve (thanks for the inspiration!), but I needed thirty-six (the maximum I could fit in a mosaic).

I wonder how 2008 will look?

Rawdon station, Rylstone

Rawdon station, Rylstone
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

My Castle Howard photos were taken well pre-digital, in the 1980s, and going through albums to find them set me off sorting out photos - I have so many packs and negatives from pre-digital times. It's been good to go through them, be reminded of places and people.

I still plan to keep to a photo a day on this blog, but this year I'll salt the present with the past, and photos scanned from that pile of albums and the experiences they contain.

This photo was taken at Rawdon station outside Rylstone, in the Central West of NSW. I've always been happy with how it caught the travel of light down the old tree trunk, the sunlit verandah of the old house beyond.

Castle Howard: grounds

Castle Howard 03
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

Another view of the grounds of Castle Howard. It was summer when I was there, a cool and rainy summer. Blue skies didn't matter, that day. Nothing mattered but the chance to see what I'd only seen through the television, to see it in the real world and gain a little sense of what it was like. I was not disappointed.

Castle Howard

Castle Howard 01b
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

A few years after watching Brideshead Revisited with such joy and pleasure, I was in the UK. On heading north, Castle Howard, where the series was filmed, was a must-see. I timed it to arrive there right on the time the grounds opened, and savoured being able to wander, with few people around - it got busy soon enough, with the expected bustle of a stately home. But for about half an hour, I hardly saw anyone, and walked the grounds. Magic.

Brideshead Revisited

0712 Brideshead Revisited
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

In these lazy summer days, I've been watching a long-time favourite. When Brideshead Revisited first was on television in the early 1980s, and when I was repeated, I watched every episode avidly. It was before the days of video, of course, let alone any other way of seeing the series but by being in front of a television when it was broadcast.

It's some years since I watched it, and it was surprising, in some ways, to find how much I remembered, how much detail was still clearly in my mind. Jeremy Irons' wonderful voice narrating it, the universal excellence of the acting, the sets, costumes, the whole sense of a world created.

It remains a masterpiece.

Sliced sunlight

0801 light on hederacea
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

It was good to have noticed this. I've planted hederacea/native violets in gardens before now, but this is the first time I've seen them in the wild. They're willing growers in the garden - not greedy, not demanding, but covering shady spaces where other plants refuse to grow and flowering cheerfully. There was also something about the shaft of sunlight, the slice finding its way through, that appealed to me. Maybe because there was enough time to stop and look long enough to see it, instead of rushing by.

It's in yesterday's mosaic, but I decided to give it a day of its own.

The Peace of Wild Things

0801 Bushwalk mosaic
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

Come for a walk. It's not far, and it's pretty flat, but you might walk into the odd spiderweb or two. Stay on the path, so the bush around it isn't trampled - but there is so much to see. Every colour of green and grey and brown you can imagine, in bark and branch, twig, leaf, above your head, all around, under your feet.

Stop for a moment and listen. The cicadas are singing, as they do in summer, but the trees hide birds - can you pick the raucous call of the white cockatoos? But there are many more, softer, some melodic, some repetitive - now and then you'll catch their flight, or be able to tell, at least, which tree they're in.

Watch the how the sunlight falls, the dappling of shade, the brightness of the water. Where it's still, notice how the lagoon returns a reflection of all it sees. See how the bark is a roadmap of time passing, the scribbling tracks of insects, the ruffle of paperbark.

Even the ground beneath your feet has things to show you - a necklace twig of fallen eucalpyt leaves, the tonal changes on a bushrock, the sharp and gentle shapes of leaf litter.

The easiest birds to see are the ducks - you could stop awhile near there, where you can see the water and watch them wonder if you did bring some bread for them. Sit down, and listen. Let your eyes see what can be seen, your ears hear what can be heard. There's a light wind, and you're sitting in the shade, but it's not cold. The air is clean and clear, with the freshness of early morning. It smells and sounds and feels like summer.

The poem that comes to your mind - and you wish you had learned it by heart, instead of clutching at snatches and phrases - is by Wendell Berry, "The Peace of Wild Things".

It ends: For a time/ I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Happy New Year.

If you click on the mosaic, it will take you to a larger version of the image in Flickr so you can see more detail.