Road Trip 4: architecture

One of the pleasures of travel is seeing the architecture of Away.

Sometimes it's just the angles of a modest nineteenth century cottage, like this one in Violet Town.

Or the pleasure of seeing a classic corrugated roof weatherboard cottage with wire fence and a tumble of pink roses - this one also in Violet Town.

Or else something grander, like the Art Gallery in Bendigo, Victorian sandstone and the clear influence of nineteenth century gold rush money.

We parked next to the Art Gallery, in a car park overlooking the oval and this graceful grandstand - iron lace done well, as historically it was (and in modern terms, usually isn't).

In the city centre, there were lots more buildings to admire - influences from English architecture, other tall thin buildings with mansard roofs that looked like they might be found in Paris, and a whopper of a cathedral (which I didn't photograph).  Rosalind Park has this Soldiers' Museum, with Queen Victoria keeping an eye on things:

For me, it's sometimes the smaller details that are most engaging.  Here's the ex-fire station, next to the Gallery - a wonderfully grand side door:

And (from memory on the same street, View St), this relic of past activity:

In Castlemaine, the visitors' centre is in what we guessed was once a wool store, with wonderful green paintwork.

Lots to see, and much more than I could photograph on one short visit.  Castlemaine (that's cassulmaine, not carslemaine, one learns - rhymes with hassle rather than parcel) and Maldon (wonderful main street!) too are rich in beautiful buildings, large and small.

Road Trip 3: food

Away is a chance to try something different, maybe for lunch (a dee-licious sandwich isn't hard to pack) and definitely for dinner.  Like, maybe this sort of pizza: white wine chicken with napoli, mozzarella, spinach, leek, cracked pepper, roasted mushrooms and port salute cheese from Clogs in Bendigo.

We did bypass this opportunity (in the main street of Bendigo); although if you had hollow-legged children, it could have been a useful option.

The gourmet pizza was good enough to have another one from the same place the next night: roasted pumpkin with napoli sauce, spinach, roasted capsicum, goats cheese and mozzarella.

Two nights of good pizza meant something different was needed for the third night.  Noodles!  A Combo Box from Noodle Box  includes: thin egg noodles, roast pork, lean beef, chicken, prawn, shrimp and Asian vegetables in oyster sauce.  Yum!  There's a local branch of this franchise, I've since learned, so it will be a future destination for sure.

I won't mention lunch at the Bendigo art gallery's cafe, which was the most tasteless frittata I've ever had the misfortune to encounter (I took to vainly adding salt in search of some flavour). The water for the tables was warm from the tap in a bottle hot from the dishwasher (on a day when it was nearly 40degC outside, hot hot hot - they had no ice) and the service indifferent. So forget about that.

BUT: on the way home I had the pleasure of a sushi train lunch with the (charming) Shopping Sherpa , after an expertly-guided tour of her doll house exhibition (of which more in another post). I didn't take any photos of lunch, but she did. They're here.

And to tell the truth, when you're travelling for hundreds of kilometres, it's good to have the fast food option of Subway , for decent nutrition and the crunch of fresh salad; also, although I don't drink coffee, a McCafé may be the only place to get decaf cappuccino in small country towns (on the main road in-transit food places, anyway). We did notice that the coffee brands in Victorian cafs are quite different to those in NSW; seemed like a very diverse market. One particularly good coffee place in Bendigo is the Wholesome Bean. Free trade, different varieties of coffee, a tiny hole-in-the-wall place that smelled fabulous. The menu looked good too, only it wasn't lunchtime. But they had decaf.

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Road Trip 2: Meg & Mog Patchwork shop

0901 Meg Mog Patchwork shop 01
Originally uploaded by rooruu

Rushworth in Victoria isn't a very large town. A thousand people, according to the welcome-to sign. Maybe in the US you'd think that's plenty to support a quilt shop, but it's a trickier call in Australia, with fewer quilters per capita; and Rushworth's a think-about-it drive from anywhere else.

But there, as we drove through Rushworth, was a sign: quilt shop open. And so we stopped. It was nearly closing time, but a quilt shop is a quilt shop, and a break was welcome too.

It's a charming little shop. 



The garden's suffering from the same dry weather and lack of rain as much of the country through which we drove, but the pink roses were blooming, and the shady verandah looked like an inviting place to sit.
 

A carefully chosen selection of lovely fabric, samples everywhere you looked of quilts and dolls and embroidered pieces and stitcheries, with the patterns and all you needed to make whatever it was you fell in love with.


Purchases were made. Oops, there goes the 'no fabric buying in 2009' plan. Oh well. I can always get back on the wagon.



If you're travelling in the area, make sure you stop at this quilt shop.  Meg was lovely too, but said that the duty 'mog' was elsewhere on this particular day.

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Road Trip 1: on reading, and being Away

I've just been on a road trip.  Good to be Away, good to be home.

You know how I listed a bunch of books I was going to read? Some went on the road trip, ready in a bag for the reading moments that come on road trips, maybe in the evening as the sky goes softly pink and the trees turn into silhouettes, but there’s enough light to read by, at least for a while.  It's good to prepare yourself with the drink of your choice and a plate with seaweed rice crackers, a white Castello cheese and some green grapes, if it's January in Australia when the grapes are in season (Castello and seaweed crackers are in season all year round, hurrah!) (but don't substitute strawberries for the grapes - something about strawberries isn't happy with Castello).

And then you can always read before sleep, in the luxury of not having to get up at the crack of dawn for work, but being able to be a bit indulgent, flexible, foolish about finishing several more chapters than you otherwise would. 

Maybe read a chapter or two over breakfast, before you dig out maps and guidebooks and the local phone book to plot where you want to go, what to see that day in this place that is new to you. Maybe just sometimes have time to stop, and disappear into a book; and if you’re lucky, be travelling with company who read too.

I worked out, on this trip, that there are books that are voyages. You need to fortify yourself to undertake them. I’m not necessarily meaning Dickens or Tolstoy or such (none of which were on my list, some of which I have read) (why did I think I should tell you that?), but books that require a certain amount of attention to character and mood, to the intricacies of plot or language or the rhythm of the sentences. Books that are voyages, so you need time, and attention, and to bring to them your focus so you can journey well. 

And then there are books which are easier. A small boat, wooden, with oars. All you need is a picnic basket, and a bit of not-too-energetic rowing, and maybe you’ll find a tree to moor the boat, and a place to spread a rug and lie in the shade and disappear into the story. Maybe the second time you read it, if it’s good enough to warrant the second reading, you’ll pick up the intricacies of language, or the qualities of plot or structure or writing that you didn’t notice first time through. But first time through, it’s reading for fun, a little row on a pond and the certainty of being home in time for tea.

There’s another class again, the books which are utter bonbons, the written equivalent of the meringue movie, light and fun and nothing more, but that’s enough.

Actually, there are lots of sorts of books. Ones you read for pleasure, for duty, for information, from necessity, all sorts of reasons.  Many worlds to explore, to disappear into, many stories to entrance or engage or amaze or terrify you, depending on what you like.

But I found, on this trip, that by and large I’d taken voyage books along, and they didn’t really fit my mood.

We went to Bendigo, to see the Art of Couture exhibition at the art gallery there, wonderful fabulous clothes from 1947-1957. Of which more in another post.

Among Bendigo’s treasures is the Bendigo Book Mark , a second hand book shop that is one I’d love to have nearby always. A huge selection, beautifully organised, well priced and with a charming proprietor in Nigel. He greeted customers with equal charm and dealt with each customer with respect and thought, whether they were after military history, or their weekly fix of ten romance novels, or whatever.  (I'm not sure if all the stock is on their website - but it's a browsable shop for sure and certain if you're in Bendigo).

After our first visit, I emerged with The Sunday Philosophy Club, by Alexander McCall Smith. I’ve been resisting Alexander McCall Smith, for no good reason except he seems to be so ubiquitous and has such a prodigious output (The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, the 44 Scotland St series, the Sunday Philosophy Club/Isobel Dalhousie series and so forth, each one seeming to get a sequel pretty much every year) that I wondered if I’d like them. But on holidays, and in a second hand book shop, you sometimes take a punt on something you might not otherwise try. I bought The Sunday Philosophy Club, and started it that evening, and had it finished, with pleasure, rather quickly (I am a fast reader, always have been).



Somehow, now home a few days later, I’ve already read book two (Friends, Lovers, Chocolate) and lent it to a friend; read book three, The Right Attitude to Rain which will be also lent to that friend; lent book one to someone else; and courtesy of new and secondhand book shops on the road trip, came home in possession of books four and five (The Careful Use of Compliments and The Comfort of Saturdays - US title The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday). Hmmm. Ample evidence that I’m enjoying spending time with Isabel Dalhousie in Edinburgh (it’s so many years since I was in Edinburgh, and all I can remember is the mad parrot in the hallway of the B&B, and catching the bus into the city on the one day I had to explore there). Right book/s for the time and place. Not a voyage, but a pleasant row (rows?!) on a shady river. And I’m sure I’ll enjoy rereading them when I’m dawdling for detail, not racing for plot as you do first time through. Keepers. Lenders, but I do hope they return promptly.

So now I’m home, and still with some summer holiday time, the voyage books can take their turn. (After books four and five.  I'm on a roll.)  Away isn't always away from home.

(If you're after the hardback of The Careful Use of Compliments, or from the 44 Scotland St series, The World According to Bertie in paperback, Clouston and Hall/Academic Remainders had them yesterday at reduced prices.  They were new arrivals, so if they're not on their website, you can phone them).

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Eight is enough. Holiday reading!

Eight quilts.  Well, quilt tops.  A basketful!  The two scrap tops I've been writing about, another little bright happy one I, um, assembled the other day because, well, just because - oh, and not a scrap of fabric was bought new, instead I cut up some lovely fabric I bought a while ago; the one I made yesterday (the cricket was on, OK?  Third Test, Australia vs. South Africa, and this means radio cricket commentary and that's just EXCELLENT to quilt by!) from some fabric and idea that had been percolating for a while (more shopping from the stash!); and, oh well, a couple (OK, four) others from the last while which it would be good to get quilted and done.

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My poor Bernina sewing machine is begging for a break.  So eight is enough, at least for the next few days, when other things are on the holiday agenda.

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Isabelle, you really should take up quilting.  Before you retire, so you can enjoy it sooner.  And no, it doesn't pay the bills here, but gosh it's fun! (Creates the bills, more like, the muttering says) (Phooey to that!).

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For a change of pace, here's the current holiday reading list:

The story of Edgar Sawtelle (Wroblewski)

The good thief (Tinti)

Comfort food (Jacobs - same author as the Friday Night Knitting Club)

The book thief (Zusak)

Graceling (Cashore)

The household guide to dying (Adelaide)

I'm halfway through American wife (Sittenfeld)

I do have Morton's The shifting fog, but The forgotten garden left me a bit cold and feeling manipulated, so it's slipped down the list a bit.  I know lots of people liked TFG, but it just didn't do it for me.

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Lots of possibilities in the next few days (and the absolute conviction that this evening's visit will mean that my dear mama will beat me at Scrabble.  She always does!).

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Happy holidays!

(Excuse the extra full stops.  Blogger seems to have decided that it doesn't believe in spaces between paragraphs, bless it.)

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Scrap quilt blocks

0812 scrap quilt blocks
Originally uploaded by rooruu

These are some of the scrap quilt blocks I started just before Christmas. Today was a sewing/quilting day, an audiobook on the iPod dock (Bill Bryson's The Lost Continent,; he has a sharp, sharp, witty way of writing - this is the one where he revisits the US) and off I went.

The two piles of scrap blocks are now two completed quilt tops, and I found enough time to cut out and sew what I suspect is a baby quilt top. Not bad for a day's work. As runs the cliche of quilting, scraps cost the same per metre as the fabric you started with - and on a rough, rough calculation there would have been the equivalent of at least 8 metres of fabric scraps in that scrap box. At $20/metre or more here (if you're an American, you can faint now - that's Australian dollars, but still $12US or more/metre) that's two quilts (including the fun of designing and making them) for the cost of using scraps, rather than spending more money on more fabric.

There are two other quilt ideas I would like to play with soon too (and plenty more on the backburner - more ideas than time to make them). There does seem to be something of a fabric stash in this house (how astonishing) so the 2009 plan is to 'shop' for fabric at home before buying anything new; work with the fabric that's here and waiting to be played with.

Hmmm. We'll see how I go. No rules, just good intentions.

Quiltlet: G is for Gundagai

0812 Quiltlet: G is for Gundagai
Originally uploaded by rooruu

And here's the seventh in the series of quiltlets I'm designing for Australian Patchwork & Quilting magazine. Gundagai is in volume 17 number 6, out now so you have time to do a bit of Valentine prep, if you so wish.

I used one of the Clover yo yo makers for this one, and it made a heart-shaped yo yo much easier to achieve. The colours came from the striped background fabric, varied intensities of reds and pinks to suit the heart idea. An easy one to make, and fun.

Added later: Candy asked in the comments about the yoyo maker.  Yes, it's one that makes heart shapes.  More info here.  They're fairly readily available in Australian quilting shops.

Quiltlet: F is for Fassifern

0812 Quiltlet: F is for Fassifern
Originally uploaded by rooruu

This is the sixth quiltlet in the series I'm making for Australian Patchwork & Quilting magazine. Fassifern is in volume 17 no 5.

Although this has an oriental feel to it, what I enjoyed was putting together fabrics that weren't all distinctly oriental - some, for example, are nineteenth century repro fabrics - and yet creating that effect. The black circular designs were from a Lakehouse fabric.

There didn't seem to be many if any placenames of Aboriginal origin that began with F, so I reverted to an interesting word which turned out to have Scottish heritage.

Christmas Day

0812 Christmas Day
Originally uploaded by rooruu

One of the kids took this photo on Christmas Day - the extended family gathered, requiring as you can see more than one table to seat us all. I love the simplicity of this photo - the two mismatched tables, the simple vase of white roses from the garden, the backdrop of space to play backyard cricket and conduct serious waterpistol warfare, the gum trees of the bush beyond the garden. A simple, joyful family day, as it should be. The best sort of perfect, that isn't trying for some distant standard, but better, wiser, more achievable perfection.

Summing up 2008

Here's one way to sum up 2008: measure yourself against this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson:

"To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."

I think so.  Mostly.  Enough.

Here's another: a mosaic of favourite photos from 2008.

Thank you for reading my blog during 2008 - Happy New Year!

Christmas playlist

What with iTunes and the little cassette gadget which lets the iPod play through the car's stereo system, I got to thinking about putting together a playlist of Christmas music to accompany the Christmas travelling hither and yon.

The challenge I've always found with Christmas music on CD is that I don't like all of any CD.  Every choral carol one has five selections that must have pleased the choirmaster, but which make you want to skid past to the cheerful familiarity of Hark the Herald Angels Sing.  They may be tricky/clever/musically intricate, but they're not Christmassy enough.  Maybe my tastes aren't refined enough.  Hey, I'm allowed!  So this house has a pile of Christmas CDs, but cherrypicking is the preference (unless it's Handel's Messiah).

Ah, but between iTunes and the iTunes store, cherrypicking is easier than it's ever been.  Forget buying whole CDs - just buy the tracks you like.  So between these and the CDs I already have, I assembled a Christmas 2008 playlist.  It's a tad eclectic, on reflection, including traditional carols by traditional choirs, crooner Christmas songs (very fifties), Messiah (the Combined Church Choirs CD of highlights) and Frank Kelly's Christmas Countdown (you surely know that one - the Irish monologue spoofing the twelve days of Christmas, which begins, "Dear Nola...").  And a couple of versions of favourite things, because I couldn't decide which to choose.  Or because, in the case of In the Bleak Midwinter, Sarah McLachlan's version and the choral version are entirely different from each other and both wonderful.

Ah.  All the stuff we like.  It's playing now on the iPod dock.  And here's a screenshot of most of it...

My favourite Christmas carol is Once in Royal David's City, as sung by King's College Choir.  Beginning with a single boy's voice, and building (through every verse, thank you, not abbreviated) to a swelling finish with choir and church and all.  Lovely stuff. 

It bewilders me at Christmas church services when the minister tries to 'ring the changes' and chooses unfamiliar/lesser known Christmas carols/hymns.  Can't they see that people WANT to sing the old favourites that you don't sing at other times of the year.  I've been in some Christmas Day services where the singing has been embarrassingly thin because people don't know the hymn or tune.  Were it Hark the Herald, or O Little Town of Bethlehem (all theologically sound, as far as I'm aware), the joyful noise would be exactly that.  Ah well.  Lessons and Carols seems like the best way to construct a Christmas church service, to me.  No less powerful for the familiarity of the Bible passages and the music.

What's your favourite Christmas music?

And yes, there are Australian Christmas carols and Christmas songs.  Those CDs get played and enjoyed separately to the general list above.

Summer fruit

0812 summer fruit
Originally uploaded by rooruu

Isabelle blogged the other day about buying mangoes as a Christmas treat for her son - I'd send you some of these if I could, but I don't think they'd last the trip well from Australia to Scotland....

They don't taste like soap.  You smell them before you taste them, even just as you walk past the greengrocer you can smell them, sweet in the air.  Eating them is a messy summer treat, the flesh slippery with juice, your fingers dripping - eat them outside in the sun (or prepare them genteely and eat the pieces with a fork from a glass dish - but you still have to watch out for drips).

Scraps

So I excavated the box of scraps (strips and squares, mostly, some strips a tad erratic) left over from various quilts and patchwork projects over the last year.  Is it sad, that I can look at any of them and tell you which quilt or project they were in?  No, I don't think so.  It's good to remember and reminisce (and it would have been smart to take a photo at this point, but I didn't think of it).

I'd started assembling some blocks with them.  So I did a quick bit of designing to work out how many blocks I'd need, then kept sewing.  Sew, press, trim, sew some more.  I made 54 blocks and the pile of scraps looked barely dented.....

Right, then. I did another quick bit of designing.  Hmmmm.  Over 80 blocks required for this idea.  That oughta dent it....  Sew, press, trim, sew some more, repeat....

It has.  The box of scraps is almost empty, and the 80 blocks are close to being completed.  Not sure if there will be time on Christmas Eve/Day to assemble either quilt, but there's always Boxing Day.  It's been really fun to use the scraps, instead of letting them fester and do nothing.  I had idea#3 lined up and ready to go, but I'll need to wait for more scraps to accumulate.

Oh, and in case you wondered, the last few days have also included Christmas shopping, breakfast in a rather nice caf (forgot to photograph my spinach/feta/pumpkin frittata with salad, dressing and chutney, but trust me, it was very very good), various appointments (I'm responsible for getting my hairdresser addicted to Diana Gabaldon books, ha!) and so forth and so on.  But not work, because I'm on holidays, hurrah hooray.

Thanks for the nice welcome back comments from Taph and Fran and Janelly and Candy!

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Caught up...

...well, a little.  A few quilting projects completed, as you can see, and I had fun with NaNoWriMo, and well, the end of the year is always and ever busy at work.

As I've been editing photos and composing posts, Handel's Messiah has been on the CD player - from beginning to end.  My favourite Christmas music, bar none.  It's some years since I sang it (although for about ten years I did, as part of a community choir performance at the Sydney Town Hall) but it never fails to be beautiful, wonderful, inspiring music.

Now I have some entrancing scraps and partly made scrap blocks excavated from the sewing room, and I'm going to play....

Oh, and the photo in the blog banner is not photoshopped.  Just a fortuitous location for their retail endeavours!  I could have used a prettier photo of ornaments and lights, but there's a raw authenticity about that one, a casualness that's maybe more part of summer and Christmas here in Australia.  I doubt that water pistols are part of Christmas Day if you have snow, but if it's summer, and you arm the kids and uncles...there is fun to be had indeed.  I've had winter Christmases, and summer ones, and they each have their own individual flavour.  Mince pies, for instance: lovely in winter, heavy and less welcome in summer.  But here, now, the shops have cherries and mangoes, grapes and other fruit, and at night the cicadas sing under the fairy lights.

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Quiltlet detail

0812 quiltlet detail
Originally uploaded by rooruu

This is the L quiltlet from the series I'm doing for Australian Patchwork and Quilting magazine - it will be published in vol. 17 no. 12, which has an applique theme. The fabrics you see are from a Fig Tree Quilts range for Moda, called Cornucopia; the Clover yoyo makers do make yoyo (Suffolk Puffs) a cinch to make.

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Quilt detail

0812 quilt detail
Originally uploaded by rooruu

This project was for Australian Country Threads, and will be published next year (I know I keep saying this, but the lead time is up to five months, so there's a bit of a gap between me finishing/handing it in, and you getting to see the magazines!). The fabrics you see here are from Charisma by Chez Moi for Moda, a range with beautiful colours and patterns.

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Quilt detail

0812 quilt detail
Originally uploaded by rooruu

The editor of Australian Patchwork and Quilting magazine challenged me to make a quilt from no more than three fabrics with a major component of recycled material. Yikes (I can't do a shirt quilt, which are always fun!). This is a detail from the quilt I made - I had it commercially quilted as I wanted an allover pattern on it for texture. See what it looks like in Australian Patchwork and Quilting vol. 17 no. 11 next year!

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Quiltlet detail

0812 quiltlet detail
Originally uploaded by rooruu

This is a detail of the K quiltlet, which will be published in Australian Patchwork and Quilting magazine vol. 17 no. 11 next year. I hadn't done any embroidery for a while, so it was fun to play.

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Ikea bird lights

0812 Ikea bird lights
Originally uploaded by rooruu

Everything else has been so busy that there hasn't been a lot of Christmas decorating going on around here. There's a string of fairy lights around the verandah that come on every night, and I did invest in these bird lights from Ikea. They're LED, battery powered, and came in several colours - blue, white, orange, yellow. Ikea's had some great little individual LED lights like this over the last few years - dragonflies, hearts - just fun (and safer than tealights, if you're not in the room all the time). They also have small strings of battery powered fairy lights, very handy to wear when wearing fairy lights is called for...

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Quilt detail

0812 quilt detail
Originally uploaded by rooruu

This is a before-quilting picture - I had this one machine quilted with a lovely butterfly design (Hermione Agee of Lorien Quilting has great designs - ask your machine quilter about them). This one's a present for a little girl at Christmas (she likes butterflies) and will be in Handmade magazine next year.

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Birthday candles

0812 birthday candles
Originally uploaded by rooruu

At a birthday party for someone rather older than two, I caught this picture, intrigued by the way in which the wax had melted.

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Quiltlet: E is for Echuca

0812 Quiltlet: E is for Echuca
Originally uploaded by rooruu

This is the fifth in the series of quiltlets (little quilts) I'm making for Australian Patchwork and Quilting magazine. Echuca is in vol. 17 no. 5. I liked the energy in this one of the sashing and plaid fabric and the mix of reproduction and modern fabrics; the conversational fabric in the centre of the blocks took some cutting (it was an overall scatter in a multitude of directions) but it's worked out well.

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Jacaranda

0812 jacaranda
Originally uploaded by rooruu

The jacarandas were magnificent this year - they're such a beautiful tree. With some that seem to have particularly intense lavender blossoms, you feel as though you're walking through lavenderblue air as you walk under them.

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Catching up...

I remember once reading a theory that domestic machinery converses, only we can't hear it...

just after the modem died, I picked up my digital camera.  It started, but then froze.  And a sinister rattle was evident...

Yes, said the lady in the shop, it will take three to four weeks to return to you after being repaired or replaced under warranty (thus cutting it very fine with Christmas in prospect).

So the modem died, and the camera, and it was all fun and games to get them sorted.  I especially appreciated Optus replacing the modem at no charge, and then charging me for it, and only admitting this after I asked them the second time... as I said, fun and games to get it sorted.

But now it's holidays, the modem's working, the camera's back (I missed it!) and I'll bung in a few posts here to catch up.

Did you miss me?  I kept reading your blogs and missed blogging.  It will be good to re-establish the habit.  The amusing thing is that the blog's stats haven't changed much - this blog seems to gather a bunch of traffic from googlers, more so than regular readers.   But Isabelle's nice comment on the modem's return (isn't it good to have term finished?????) reminded me that there are regular readers out there..

Kiva: Martha and Khoen

See this field, and this wonderfully cheerful man?

This is Mr Khoen Khiev , and he's going to grow jasmine there.  For my work Christmas cards this year, I took out two Kiva loans and included information about one or the other in each card, with a note.  The one with Khoen said:

Your gift

will grow jasmine in Cambodia.

To show how grateful I am for your work and help this year, I’ve made a Kiva loan

that will be as productive

and appreciated as you are.

Here's some more information about him:


Mr. Khoeun Khiev, 55, and his wife, Mrs. Heng Sok, 50, live along the Tonle Basac River, a tributary of the nearby Mekong River, about 15 kilometers from Phnom Penh. They were married in 1978 during the Pol Pot regime and have four children: one son and three daughters. Three of their children have full-time employment and the youngest daughter studies in a local school. Khoeun and his wife have been growing jasmine flowers for ten years. In addition to farming jasmine, he is also a fisherman. The couple grow jasmine on their farmland near the house and sell the flowers in the Phnom Penh market. Khoeun is requesting a loan of $700. He will use some of it to purchase a water pump and pipe for farming. With the remainder, he will buy more jasmine trees to plant on his new plot of farmland.



The other loan was to Martha:

I chose this one for the particularly office people at work, because of the stationery.  Here's more about Martha Luz Chogas de Melendez :




Martha belongs to the Nuevo Eden (New Eden) Communal Bank, located on #441 Jr. Aguaytia, Yarinacocha district, Coronel Portillo province, Ucayali department. She is 49 years old, is the mother of 2 grown-up children ans she is married. Her husband works as a professional photographer. With the first loan that she received from Manuela Ramos of 300 soles (Peruvian currency) she decided to invested in selling stationery and school supplies.
Currently, she is dedicated to sell stationery and school supplies and has a copy machine at home. This business provide her earnings that allow her to pay her loan back on time.
With this loan of 2,000 soles (Peruvian currency), which will be paid back in 4 months, Martha will buy 6 boxes of ballpoint pens, 4 dozen notebooks, 3 dozens of luster paper, fixing the copy machine, etc.
Martha feels happy with everything that she has been able to accomplish. Thanks to the support of the communal bank her economic stability has improved.


And my card said:

Your gift will buy stationery and fix a copier in Peru.

To show how grateful I am for your work and help this year, I’ve made a Kiva loan

that will be as productive

and appreciated as you are.

There's another group of friends with whom a Christmas present exchange takes place - next year, we're planning that each of the four of us will choose a favourite charity and make a donation to that instead of exchanging gifts.


My Kiva portfolio is growing! - these are the seventh and eighth loans I've made.  Once I've put money in, I don't take it out when it's repaid, but reinvest in another Kiva entrepreneur.  Most of my loans have focused on textiles, since that's a particular interest for me, but there are so many great possibilities... there's a permanent Kiva link over on the sidebar, so do take a look.  I hope that some of those to whom I gave Christmas cards consider investing in Kiva too.  It's been a good thing to discover in 2008.

The modem has landed...

...after a saga and a half. Or indeed, a minimum of 2 3/4 sagas with a cherry on top. At least.

More later.

Modem died

New modem coming very soon, and blogging can then properly resume.

NaNoWriMo count is now nearly half way, (over 22000 words) with 13 days to go....

Two quilts being longarm quilted, and another quiltlet well on the way to being finished....

And lots happening at work. It's a busy life!

Australia: the movie - full trailer

Australia Trailer

This is the full trailer, not the teaser trailer that's been around for a while.   Source, if the above doesn't work for you.

Christmas hearts

0810 Christmas hearts
Originally uploaded by rooruu

OK, I'll admit it. Didn't need any more Christmas decorations...but these little painted wooden hearts came home with me from David Jones. Not expensive, and rather sweet.

I'm most besotted with the bird lights from Ikea. Which I can't find on their site, so will photograph and post here soon.

Quilt in progress

0811 quilt
Originally uploaded by rooruu

This is the J quiltlet - I'll post a full pic when the relevant issue of Australian Patchwork & Quilting magazine comes out next year (the current issue here includes the E quiltlet. Must blog that this week). The screenprint panel is by Saffron Craig.

Two quilts are waiting to be taken to the machine quilter, I'm a little behind on NaNoWriMo writing and the K quiltlet is well under way. A weekend of progress.

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Street fair

At the annual street fair today, there was plenty to see.  There's a largehuge version of this mosaic here .

Aha, but if you're a regular reader, entranced though you may be by the mosaic, you're thinking, what about those gotta wanna tasks she was planning for the weekend?

Let me distract you for a moment.  Did you notice those madly decorated shoes?  And exploding brooches?  And the charm of a normally busy roadway given over to games and hopscotch?  And the green-winged kid on the unicycle being madly followed by a smaller yellow kid pedalling like crazy on his bicycle? No?  Do take a look.  It is curious, though, that in this day and age, one feels slightly hesitant about taking photos, even at such a public event.  You get the odd person looking askance, as though you're doing something vaguely criminal.  Hmmm.  A pity.  Note: I spent less than an hour at the festival...

OK, you're not distracted entirely, are you?

On the NaNoWriMo front, while I haven't typed them up yet or thus amended my total on the NaNoWriMo site (I handwrote them), I wrote another 1600 and some words today (1667 is the daily average you need to sustain to reach 50,000 by the end of November).  So the widget on my blog shows no change, but progress was made.  Tick.

On the quilting front, the larger of the two quilts has gone from pieces to a top.  Just needs a simple border, and then I think it will be longarm quilted, as a quilting pattern would work nicely with it (ie it's not suited to either straight lines or scribbling, and I'm not skilled enough to do the kind of pattern I want on it).  Tick.  I know what I'm going to do tomorrow with the quiltlet.  Tick.

Tomorrow is another day.

PS Candy asked how my quilt studio is going.  Right now, it isn't, but the plans are reforming.  Also, it's too cold to quilt there in winter, so I didn't. 

Gotta, wanna...

0810 Christmas ornament 02
Originally uploaded by rooruu

What I've got to do this weekend: break the back of two quilting projects, a larger one and the K quiltlet. Keep going with NaNoWriMo, since the weekend bursts clearly, for me, help along when a weekday gets busybusy (see over there on the NaNoWriMo widget? over 11,000 words?! The blank page and bungee jump of the 50,000 words is still scary and challenging - good challenging).

What I want to do this weekend: curl up to finish the third Temeraire book (Black Powder War) and then read the fourth, which is on the pile...along with the second Charlaine Harris book...and I have the third Charlaine one too... (yay for bookdepository.co.uk, which meant I got them a LOT cheaper than buying here, mad though that seems).

Not that any of this isn't fun, of course (and I haven't bothered mentioning the expected gotta-dos, like housework and washing and such. They're just regular weekend work). It's the creative tension of deadlines. Often, of course, that's what DOES help you get stuff done.

Is it cheating to put up just one Christmas quilt, a raspberry + pretties one that goes over a picture? I'll post a photo soon - it's in the Patchwork and Stitching Christmas issue this year.  I know it's only early November, but I just got the quilt back from the magazine and I do want to put it up and enjoy it...without the silver tree in front of it (yet) maybe you wouldn't at first realise it's a Christmas quilt? (was that too plaintive?!)

What's on your weekend list?

Mine just got longer.  I have to write quilt instructions for the two quilts I finished this last week...
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Ikea violence

0811 Ikea violence
Originally uploaded by rooruu

Spotted at Ikea earlier this week. I'm guessing it's not how the Ikea display/merchandising team intended them to be.... I did a doubletake, chuckled and then fished out the camera.

The hope of a better day

I wore my hope bracelets this morning, wondering overnight how the voting had gone. We watched the tallying over the working day, people putting their heads in the office and asking how it was going. It's the first presidential election I can remember watching like this, the internet our information source for newspaper reports and video of Barack Obama's speech (full transcript here) in Grant Park, Chicago.

What's been echoing in my mind over the progress of the caucuses and electioneering is this sentence:

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

Wishing this new beginning all the luck in the world.

Fruit, blue sky

0810 prunus fruit
Originally uploaded by rooruu

A day of small things that were good. Moments at work when I knew I was making a difference. A healthy, flavourful lunch with enough time to eat it. A Skypechat catchup with dear friends overseas, and dinner with local dear friends. Fruit, blue sky.

NaNoWriMo day 4: tally is over 10,000, but I'm aware of the bungy-jump fear of the blank page, the driver of 1667 words a day needed to meet the challenge.  And the only solution is to start typing, or writing, and chase down the story.  One day at a time.  Fruit, blue sky.

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Festive Charm finds friends

My Festive Charm table runner design from Australian Country Threads has some new friends.  Janellybelly's finished table runner is here (read earlier in her blog to see it in progress) and Dee's chosen some fabrics, as you can see here. 

Thank you!

Eric (you must read this)

In the midst of all the uncertainties of right now - elections and economics and everything else - there is solace and joy to be found in literature, and the worlds writers create.  Shaun Tan's illustrated book, Tales from Outer Suburbia, is gentle and quirky and catches you sideways with an utterly different perspective on familiar things.  My favourite story from the book is Eric.  And you can read it online in a .pdf.  Click here.  Scroll down.  Enjoy.  It's wonderful.

NaNoWriMo: day two

Still writing, and am keeping up so far.  The word count widget isn't showing it yet, but I've clocked today's 1667 words plus a few more.

I put an extract on my user page over at NaNoWriMo - do read it, if you'd like (but remember, it's first draft! - constructive criticism or fawning admiration welcome...! - leave a comment here on the blog).  The title's changed, already, and it's now The Bluebird Café.

You can help!  I don't like coffee or tea, so I don't drink them, but it would be good to have some helpful descriptions from coffee or tea drinkers (given that the novel involves a café) to use for characters/café customers.  So, when you go to a café, how do you like your coffee, or tea?  Don't just say white or black, tell me something more.  Particular temperature, particular blend of either, particular size, what? Why do you take it this way?  Or if there is something else that you choose to drink, what is it and why?  Please leave a comment on this blog entry!

Thanks!

Gee's Bend quilt show, Sydney

0811 Gee's Bend quilt show, Sydney
Originally uploaded by rooruu

As part of the Quilt Indulgence festival at Canterbury Racecourse in Sydney, there are Gee's Bend quilts on display. First time in Sydney. I've been reading about Gee's Bend quilts for several years, although haven't had the opportunity to go to the US to see them in any of their art gallery/quilt show exhibits there myself. I've been inspired by the photographs I've seen online and in books, tried my hand at the style with recycled fabrics and OK, call me a fan. So knowing this exhibition was coming up, a friend and I were definite attendees. What follows in this blog entry is, I stress, my opinion. Some may agree, others not, but the world is wide and open to many points of view.

At the racecourse, about a quarter of an hour before the 9.30am opening, we were the third car in the carpark. My experience of other large quilt/craft shows is that, by such a time, the carpark is anything but empty. We were glad there was some signage about, so we were in the right place. Odd. Unsettling, These are GEE'S BEND quilts on show here, acclaimed modern American art.

We wandered up to buy tickets, chatting to some quilting friends (the fourth and fifth cars held quilters we knew, and no, that's not what you usually find, either - Sydney's a city of millions, after all, and the craft show included scrapbooking/papercrafts, thus gathering in people from a different crafting milieu). The longest queue was to get in at 9.30, and we were in that queue for at least two minutes, but no more. Also unheard of. Odder and odder - these are Gee's Bend quilts here...and not unfamiliar, I would have said, to ?the majority of quilters, or at least those interested in art quilts/quilt history, or toddling around the blogosphere or quilting email lists.

In we went, the Gee's Bend quilts our goal. There were quilts on exhibition from several quilt magazines, representing Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Japan. But where - ? We walked past aisles, around corners, past the five or six retailers (only five or six?) and on to the quilts.

Right at the back, in two alleys, were the Gee's Bend quilts. I can't show you photos, because there were No Photography signs (thus the photo of the flyers instead). The catalogue had thumbnails of each of the quilts on display - all were for sale, for prices mostly in the thousands, a few in the tens of thousands.

Maybe the sales angle was the reason they were here, tucked on temporary white alleyways behind an escalator in a racecourse stand, for one weekend only. When their arrival in Sydney was first publicised, some months ago, I contacted a major museum that exhibits textiles among other things, and suggested they should look again at these quilts, given their standing and the success of such exhibitions in major US museums and galleries. Couldn't get them interested.

So here we were. Desperately glad to get a chance to see the quilts for real, not just moderated through a photograph.

What was good:

Being able to see them at all. Magic. Amazing.

Being able to see detail of workmanship - which varied a lot, and demonstrated a variety of different decisions/choices on the part of the makers.

Being able to see a range, from some one considered more successful to others which seemed less graphically successful. The most successful ones, to me, usually involved plainer or tone on tone fabrics - often still a scrap-based variety, but my preference is for the patterning of piecing, in these quilts, over the patterns on fabrics.

We were there early, so had a fair amount of time to browse them before the aisles held more people - but it wasn't at all crowded.

Reading the few laminated biography sheets there about some of the quilters, their family histories and how and why they quilt. It would have been good if they'd set aside an area somewhere, as many museum exhibits do, continuously running the documentary about Gee's Bend and the quilts, so you could see them talking, hear their voices.

What wasn't good:

The sadness of something this amazing being tucked away into a weekend at a racecourse for the quilting fraternity. One of the things about the Gee's Bend quilts, for me, is their capacity to amaze and engage non quilters with the possibilities of quilting as an art form, modern design, in all sorts of ways prompt the response, "I didn't know quilts could be like that!" My guess is that the only people there who weren't quilters were accompanying quilters.

If you look at Citysearch, or the Sydney Morning Herald, there is NOTHING about this exhibition. Nothing. That's such a shame. If an exhibition like this is to find an audience beyond the quilting fraternity, it needs to be publicised to the mainstream media to reach that audience.

The layout - two alleys of them - meant that you could only stand back a few feet to see each quilt. In a larger gallery situation, you can stand back further, see the quilts in different ways. When I was in Melbourne at the NGV in January, one of the pleasures of the rooms, large and small, was the chance to stand back and see items from a distance, as well as up close.

An hour and a half later, we were done. We'd studied the quilts, discussing what engaged us, what our expectations had been, how they had been met/adjusted by the reality of the quilts. I'm still utterly delighted to have finally had the chance to view the real thing, after reading about them for so long. If you have a chance to go today, then do (parking won't be a problem). Among the rest of the quilts on display, we enjoyed seeing them all and were very impressed with a number. Without the Gee's Bend quilts being there, would we have gone? No.

As a quilter and quilt history enthusiast, I'm so sorry that the capacity of these quilts to evangelise, to connect with people, was confined by their context and the limitations of this exhibition. I hope a major gallery or museum does mount a proper exhibition of them in Sydney in the future.

Added later: The Gee's Bend exhibition that has been touring the US for several years is Gee's Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt.  It's in Philadelphia now (thanks for the tip, Candy).  If you want to see what a comprehensive exhibition can involve (and this is just if you access the website, let alone if you go to see the quilts) then here are some links - make sure you investigate the tabs on each page to go deeper/learn more, and also listen to the podcasts:

• Main exhibition page , including podcasts
  
• Teaching materials , including details of quilts and quilters
• The Gee's Bend Photographs , an exhibition by Linda Day Clark, including podcasts
• Quilt Stories: the Ella King Torrey Collection of African American Quilts , a related exhibition running concurrently.

Hmmm.  Can we have that in Sydney, please?  And just while I'm being curious, why is the exhibition in Sydney not mentioned at all on the Quilts of Gee's Bend website page about current exhibitions ?  Or on the Tinwood Media website (publisher/promoter of Gee's Bend quilts)?  What was on exhibition in Sydney?  

If you haven't read it before, here's the 2002 review from the New York Times which acclaimed the Gee's Bend quilts as astonishing modern art.

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NaNoWriMo: day one

The word counter widget isn't operational yet, so here's today's tally:

2101 words. 

(With the goal of 50,000 words of novel by 30 November, that's 1667 words a day...).

Date loaf

0811 date loaf
Originally uploaded by rooruu

Afternoon tea, after a day including a quilt show, a quilt shop and Ikea (blue Christmas bird lights! Hurrah! - will post a pic soon) in good company.

And home, to the quietness of late afternoon, the day cloudy and enough time to bake a date loaf. The smell drifted about the house, warm and welcoming, and it tasted (as you can see) good. Topped with cinnamon sugar, buttered and eaten with relish (figurative, not literal), warm from the oven.

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Afternoon

0810 afternoon tree
Originally uploaded by rooruu

Yesterday the afternoon sky was clouded with quiet, beautiful shades of grey-blue, and the tree a tracery over it.

Rhubarb

0810 rhubarb
Originally uploaded by rooruu

It's a while since I did any fruit and veg shop photography. I was in there the other day, and just took this rhubarb photo - when the misting spray came down and I whipped my camera out of the way.

Wouldn't this make a good colour combination for a quilt? Lime to jade greens, pink to cranberry. Hmmmm. Maybe when I'm finished all the ones I have to get done first.