Silhouette

0803 Easter Show Central District display
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

This was part of the Easter Show, the Central District display. There were other silhouettes, too. My favourite of all the district displays - original, simple, showcasing the produce with elegant simplicity.

Coming soon...

Busy end of the week, with a two-day conference, and the Easter Show on Sunday. Photos soon... (but not of the conference, you'll be glad to know).

Vintage silver - wing detail

0803 vintage silver - wing detail
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

OK, I admit it, I'm doing a weekend catchup, so there's a bunch of photos from the same visit to the Powerhouse. But aren't you glad to see this? Look at the workmanship on the wing, the head. Lovely.

Florence Broadhurst

0803 Florence Broadhurst
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

Part of the Florence Broadhurst display in the Design exhibit at the Powerhouse Museum. While some of her designs were wildly mod/modern, others have common ground with the toile and nature-inspired organic shapes of fabric such as that on the antique shoes from yesterday. Separated as they are by two centuries...

I've blogged about Florence Broadhurst before, and provided a bunch of links then, so if you're interested search my blog and you'll find that info.

As you can probably tell by now (and I haven't blogged or Flickr-loaded anywhere near all the photos I took) the Design exhibit at the Powerhouse Museum is definitely worth looking, and will occupy a significant and happy amount of time and attention. But if you can't see it in person, here's another way.

Antique shoes

0803 antique shoes
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

Dating from the 1740s. Aren't they beautiful? Also from the Powerhouse Museum, in the same display as yesterday's fan.

Antique fan

0803 antique fan
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

Eighteenth century, I think. From the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney. Wouldn't it be lovely, on a hot day, to be using a jewel like this? (I tend more to the nearest bit of A4 paper, which lags considerably in the style stakes....). There are so many ways to ornament your life, though, now as then. Choices, from little stuff like your coffee cup (or coffee) to larger stuff like how to spend a weekend, or with whom, or how to arrange/rearrange your house.

If you have a thing for fans, the Powerhouse Museum website has lots of its collection in images available online. (But I'm too tired to hunt out the link - I figure, if you're interested, you're just as good at googling as me, if not better...)

Vale Anthony Minghella

Consider:

• the touching, funny, grounded happiness and sadness of Truly Madly Deeply: the scene where her piano is joined by his cello, and he returns; and then when he asks her to translate the poem. The rats. All the sentiment that's skipped in favour of more authentic emotions.
• The clear and difficult and intricate and simple and not simple, and so beautifully acted work in The English Patient - the script, the direction, all that it gives your eyes and your heart.
• The shining, poisonous human interplay of The Talented Mr Ripley, Seymour Hoffman and Law and Paltrow and Blanchett and Damon.
• The restrained and desperate yearning of Cold Mountain, another picture of landscape and actors working to leave room for the audience to think - another one for eyes and heart.

Vale

Anthony Minghella

January 1954-March 2008.

Thank you.

• BBC obituary
• Minghella on film-making and writing

Hay

0803 hay
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

I'm sure there's an absolute farming logic to how hay bales are scattered in the field; but to my untrained eye, it's pleasingly random. My untrained eye liked the colours and shapes here, too; the spiral of the bale, the lush green and quiet straw, with darker green behind and a milky blue sky. It's all colour inspiration!

Minimalist stripes

0803 quilt detail (calm stripes)
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

Another Recycled Threads project done and dusted. Very simple, this one, minimalist. Found just the right starting piece, and off I went from there. What is it? Aha! Published in Australian Country Threads magazine in a few months....

Bridge and stonework

0803 bridge and stonework
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

Did the virtuous 7km walk by the river this morning - went a bit farther than we sometimes do, to see the view from the other side of this bridge. Between this one and the Harbour Bridge (although I don't know if they were being built at the same time) you could have made money on rivet manufacture...

We admired the brickwork, too the rising concentric circles. Maybe it's structural, but it's pleasing to the eye, too.

It's a popular path - you pass people of all ages, old, young, fit, less fit, friends and families, people on bicycles and on foot. One family was sitting on rocks at the river's edge, Mum holding the baby (maybe a year old?) on her lap, the little girl next to her clutching the remote control while Dad fished out the model boat for another try - they said it had been his when he was a boy. Looked like they were having a lovely morning in the sunshine, making memories of family time. As we walked on, the boat zoomed out towards the centre of the river, and there was a happy grin on the face of each family member.

Easter eggs

0803 Easter eggs
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

I do rather like the pastel 'bird's egg' sort. Very pretty, in a glass bowl on a little quilt. For as long as they last...

It's good, at Easter, to have time to listen to family stories. What is interesting the little kids (medieval times and dressing up; and another one and I played on the computer with a paint program, vandalising/undoing on a picture of her, seeing what all the buttons did No, I don't want to be blue!), how the older kids are going (one is reading vampire fiction - suggestions welcome beyond Anne Rice, the Day Watch series, Robin McKinley's Sunshine, and please, no vampire romance), asking the grandparents for stories of their childhood (we asked them about their 21st birthdays: she had had a dinner party for twenty at a hotel, including a dance and some nice boys from the university, the thought of whom still brought a grin to her face; he had been in the air force, during WW2, so there might just have been a beer or two to celebrate, but nothing else).

They're like Easter eggs, in a way - things to discover, unwrap, savour. Where the family's been, where it is, where it might go.

Shoe lust

0803 mola shoes
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

Wanna wanna wanna! They do use molas (South American reverse applique technique), and are made in South America, and are washable and durable, the seller said. Shoes or boots? Must go back when I decide...

Skulduggery Pleasant: Playing with Fire

How to make a nevvy very happy for Easter. Without mention of any chocolate.

1. Know that he's hanging out to read the second Skulduggery Pleasant book
2. Buy said book within hours of it being unpacked by lovely bookshop that phoned you to say it was in (and early)
3. Phone nevvy so he can anticipate parcel
4. Use an Express Post envelope to ensure next day and before-Easter delivery
5. Remember how he's one of those kids who vanishes into a book, and remains utterly absorbed (and deaf to riot or revolution), and enjoy knowing that.

Skulduggery Pleasant: Playing with Fire, by Derek Landy. I'm looking forward to reading it too.

PS Flickr is driving me nuts as any 'blog this photo' I've done for the last couple of days has resulted in no photo, no text, only a title with no entry. So I've had to do these last few entries the long way. I've been 'blog this photo'-ing for yonks, and am not doing anything differently from what normally works...if you have any answers, please let me know!

Reproduction blues

I've been playing with reproduction blue fabrics (particularly like that vintage conversational with baby Saturns on it). Project to come in Australian Patchwork and Quilting, the issue out in about July 2008 in Oz.

You + Me = Us (Harmony Day)

Scrapbooking papers, fonts from http://www.scrapvillage.com/ (library/fonts) and it's Harmony Day badge making time again at work - they look good, don't they? Although the concept of Harmony Day is apparently under review by the new Federal Government, so whether it's around next year is anyone's guess.

Remembering

0803 sepia roses
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

One of the things about being a teacher is how many faces and names pass through your life, year after year, hundreds of them. You remember some, and others less so, and others not at all, because you had so little to do with them - although then sometimes a smile from a supermarket checkout kid, or an unexpected 'hello' in the shopping centre remind you that they remember you, they know you.

But some you do remember - not every day, but when circumstances call them to mind. Maybe ones with whom you spent more time, over time, because they were in your class, or one of your mentor students, or in the year group to whom you were a year adviser, or because they picked you as a teacher to whom they could tell their stories, from whom they could find a greeting, mooch a jellybean, whatever.

I knew last week that one of our ex-students had died in a road accident, but among all the hundreds who learn at this school, year after year, I can't always fix a face to a name - on the other such sad occasions (thankfully rare), it hasn't necessarily been a student I knew. This time, somehow, I just didn't hear the name.

Until today. And this was one I knew, a sweet-natured girl, quietly independent in her ways, only out of school a couple of years. I can see her now sitting in my office with that wonderful grin on her face, talking with me of cabbages and kings, burgling a jelly bean or three (I wish I could remember her favourite colour - was she one of those who do like black ones? or did she prefer the red ones? It's not at all important, but I'd like to be able to conjure that information. But I can't). I know she brought me photos of her all dressed up for the Year 12 farewell, but I can't remember her dress. Was it red? I know she came by to shoot the breeze a couple of times, the year after she left school, and it was good to see her.

We went back to the year group photo, the year she finished high school, and there she is, near the back because she was one of the taller girls, and it's hard to believe her life is finished, now, when it should just be blossoming out. She was one who would have explored the world, with her own quiet determination, given back with quiet grace, mothered children with kindness and thought. If that had been possible.

So these roses are for her, offered with my memories, incomplete as they are, scraps become sharper. Among the many names and faces, some you do remember, and a few, sadly, mourn.

Strasburg Clock

0803 Strasburg clock
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

One of the Powerhouse Museum's longest-term attractions is a version of the Strasburg Clock built in Sydney. It does its thing on the hour throughout the day, and always gathers a crowd. This photo was taken during the procession of the Apostles, at the point when Peter was there - because the cock is crowing three times, and the devil's window is open.

More about it here.

Such things fascinate me for the mind behind them, that said, hey, I'll build one of THOSE - and does. Amazing intricacy - the clock has so many features. It must have been an engrossing challenge. It is all too easy to be deterred, to think yourself out of something being possible rather than just going ahead and seeing if maybe it is... and sometimes things don't work. But sometimes they do.

Lunch

0803 meat pie
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

Last Sunday's lunch.

I didn't go to Harry's Cafe De Wheels (a Sydney institution) but the source of its famous pies is right near the Powerhouse Museum. This is known as a 'tiger'. Something to do with the 'stripes' of pie, mashed potato, mushy peas and gravy, I suspect. You have to be quite cautious in consuming it because the plastic fork is a tad flimsy, and the gravy capable of flooding off the plate...but not, as is usually the case with pies, because the content is suspect. Nice chunks of meat. Not a daily health food, no, but fun for a change.

Here's someone else's blog entry with lots of info about Hannah's Pies, from whence this came.

An observation

Karaoke on a Saturday night should be considered an indoor sport. You can't assume that a sound most resembling assorted felines being eviscerated/obliterated in assorted ways that have little in common with the artist's original musical vision will be something that brings joy to your neighbours.

I'm just sayin'.

Art Deco wallpaper sample book

0803 Art Deco sample book
Originally uploaded by rooruu.

Another Powerhouse Museum item from the design exhibition (have I persuaded you to go see this yet?).

The saturated colours and the design of this reminded me of Kaffe Fassett fabrics. Would I buy meterage/yardage of a fabric like this? Oh yes!

(But now I'm off to play with reproduction blues, a much more subdued and restrained palette).