Pendent or pendant??????

(As I typed this post I typed two different spellings of this word, both were accepted!? Is this a case of english verses american? Is one more acceptable than the other,or are they equally acceptable???)


While I was in Melbourne I wore this little guy ( For some reason these pendants seem to have little personalities!) Well this pendent is not that little its about 2inches across. I wore it when I went to the Rose St Artist Markets and several of the stall holders commented on how much they liked it and wondered where I got it. I felt very chuffed as I thought all of their stuff was so delicious and I didn't have enough money to buy everything I wanted to. I bought a very cute little birdie brooch made of felt with embroidered detail, a very funky woolen hat and some ceramic and silver earrings.

It made me think that I'd like to make some more of these pendents.

And low and behold the little plaster molds I made to press the clay into turned up in the general migration of things into my studio! I make the pendents from clay and then hand paint the designs on using glazes and fire them. It is always a bit exciting to see exactly how they turn out because the colours as you paint them are not what they end up as!

This one is quite soft and pretty however the photo does not really show the true depth of colour.

OOps this one lost the flower all together!

This is a bit better, I like to wear this one as I like its shape, and the colours go with quite a few outfits at the moment.

I love the strength of colour with this one. He was fun to make too...

Unfortunately I made the beaded section quite short and the extension chain that adjusted the length with the clasp fell off and now it is just too short to wear comfortably. I must get to and fix that soon! But right now I'm going to get down some of my design ideas for new pendents.

Pink Fish
Originally uploaded by ~*Hannah*~

Absence, does indeed make the heart grow fonder.

I have a very dear friend that I have known for years- 27 years in fact. We became friends on the first day of year 10. I was new to the school and she was one of the first people I met. We would talk at each other my mother used to say, hardly drawing a breath in between sentences answering a question while listening to the next one simultaneously. Goodness knows what we talked about but we always understood each other.

There were times when we didn't manage to catch up and there was one embarrassingly long period of time where we got so busy with our lives that we neglected our friendship for about 18 months or more. We had not fallen out or anything it was just that time had got away from us! When we caught up again it didn't seem to matter too much time seemed to fall away and I felt as close to her as ever.

Well at the moment she and her family are in Sweden visiting relatives. She has been away for about 4 weeks and I miss having her here to chat to, not that we did constantly but I could call if I wanted to and we would catch up in cyberspace. This week I have begun to miss the little notes and emails and have come to realize (more than ever) how much I truly value her friendship.

Chicky babe wants to know why I don't make my blog cool! I thought it was ok. Apparently my photo of the teacups in my header are not cool (I love them.) Now she wants my attention and wants to go for a walk so I'll spend no more time at the computer this afternoon. Off for a walk.

Note from Chicky babe: hey thats unfair! my words have been twisted to sound incriminating!! Sure i said "why don't you make your blog cool" but mum needs to learn the new age lingo! i was only meaning maybe borders on a title thats more than a photo, i know she is more imaginative than just a photo!!! Don't make me out to be the bad one!

old chook!

Today is my birthday!

The celebrations started last night Chicky Babe and Tweety Pie (CB's friend, who spends so much time here she is almost part of the family, she calls me her third mum and I have decided she needs to have an honorary pseudonym too!) Any way the girls decided that they would cook me dinner as a birthday treat. They have made some Chinese dishes in cooking classes at school and I was spoiled with a yummy stir fry.

Tim bought me a lovely teacup. (But didn't mow the lawn as he promised he would do!)

A friend of mine, H. dropped over with red champagne and a beautiful pot of orchids. Bantam Boy bought me some lovely Irises and Lint chocolates! My house looks like a florist shop!

This morning we all went for Yum Cha.

Unfortunately BB had to work, unfortunate for him because Mum and her partner (my step father I suppose) took us out for High Tea in Cottesloe.

Chicky babe hidden by a tower of dainty cakes, pies and cucumber sandwiches!

Chicky Babe and Tweety Pie decide which delicacies to devour.

MMMMM.... Take a closer look!

Two little cakes left that we couldn't finish off. ( Mum took them home, Tucked away in her handbag wrapped in a serviette!)

Even though I called this post old chook, I've coped quite well with turning 43... that was until while mum was talking to me she suddenly stopped talking and started to giggle. Nervously I wiped my face and looked quizzically at her. "Your eyebrows...!"

She had noticed my grey eyebrows. I don't have any grey hairs on my head, I have grey eyebrow hairs not a lot just a few on each brow in the center . Up until now it's been one or two that have been plucked away with the rest of the rouge hairs that stray away from the pack. But now there are a few more and I fear that if I continue to remove them my eyebrows will be too far apart or non existent!

Green...

I just found this site and now I am suffering from studio envy!!!

babette WIP

babette WIP
Originally uploaded by dette.k

Even though I know I haven't got enough squares to make a decent sized rug last night I just had to start joining them together to see how it would look. I've done a few more tonight. Here it is draped over the corner of my lounge chair. It's lovely and warm even if it is only a little ove 50cm square at present! I'm loving the colours. I'm already thinking of the next one!!! Regular shaped square motif of some sort rich creams and orange and reddish browns I think or maybe green, purple, pink and yellow. Either way it will be made from very soft wool.

Surely not...

Last night I grabbed a pair of stockings from the local IGA. I needed a pair to wear with my woolen pants which although comfortable and wide legged, have a tendency to be a bit scratchy and I also wanted to wear my new shiny black Melbourne shoes.



Anyway this morning I was getting dressed and started to put on my stockings. At this point I will let you know that I am a big girl with long legs- even when I was underweight for my hight I had trouble with stockings not being long enough- so I bought stockings for the woman with a 'fuller figure'. As I was putting them on I found it a struggle....

There is something dreadfully wrong here ...

I was having difficulty putting them on....

Did I get the right sort? Yep they are fuller figure stockings, same brand I wore whilst on holiday a couple of weeks ago. Have I got suddenly much bigger??? Surely you can't put on weight that quickly???....

More struggling...

Maybe someone decided to play a trick in the shop and swapped them around...
Another check of the box....

CONTROL TOPS!!!! I had inadvertently bought control tops! I hate those things! they suck ( I was going to say they suck you in but I think they suck is right.) and make great muffin tops!
So I decided to cut the top off them, this seemed to work fine, while I was at home but during the day they started to roll over at the top and felt alarmingly like my pants were falling down!!!!

They are now in the bin!!!

My space & making it mine.

It's not quite done yet but it's good enough to work in.
I went to Ikea to buy a rug to cover the brick paving that forms the floor of my studio. I found this beautiful green cotton rug for under $70. Much better than those acrylic things I had been considering- purely from a cost viewpoint. I love the old pink chair- it was my great grandmother's and the light fitting was from the side of the road- one of those verge side collections.


As you can see, the window frames need finishing off and it could do with a lick of paint but there is a clear space waiting for me to sit and create. It feels a little new and not quite mine yet. It needs to be used, I am a creature of habit I am not used to this space yet.

I made a start by snatching half an hour last night just to sit and draw. No plan, no agenda. Just a pretty little leaf, a beautiful , soft, long bristle brush and a dish of ink. I made several very stiff renditions at first. It took a while before I was able to abandon myself to the rhythm of the brush and fluidity of the ink.


Finally I was able to shut out the world and made 2 little drawings that were passable. Two little beginnings. A start to claiming this new space as my own.


I emerged feeling regenerated and a little more buoyant. It's funny isn't it that even half an hour spent doing something you really love can make such a difference!

Crochet the ends in as you go.

I read One little acorn's this is post about her trade secret. She said if you want to be creative just get on with it make a start and do it. I agree and although I am a master procrastinator it is rarely the creative stuff that I put off. I'm much more likely to put off the dreary day to day stuff that keeps the lights on and the water flowing! I have been working on doing those things more regularly and am making progress. I was reflecting on what my 'trade secret' might be over the weekend and decided on.

Crochet the ends in as you go.

Having discovered this technique of crocheting in the long daggy bits of wool as you go is a great time saver and does not leave you with the long dreary job of threading the needle and sewing in all those ends, thus leaving you more time to spend creating other things. Multi tasking, developing techniques that make whatever you are doing just that bit more efficient.

This is the other one seeing past life's clutter to what is beautiful beneath it.

lamenting love lost....

I just spent an hour typing a post and the stupid computer deleted it all!!!!! For some reason the mouse is playing up and adding and erasing lines at will!!!

Maybe it was the universe trying to tell me not to publish that particular post, that I had said too much and given away a little too much information in my Heide story.

It was a story about a relationship that was as tangled as this piece of sculpture appears.

I chose the first book for the book club I started a couple of years ago. I had just ended a long complicated relationship with an artist and I chose a book about Sunday Reid called "the heart garden". It was a kind of rub salt in the wound kind of choice. I found the story very interesting and wanted to go and see the place for myself.
Standing in the little old house listening to the tour guide speak I found myself hundreds of miles to the west and many years in the past.

My time with 'the crow' had some similarities to that of the early days at Heide, fascinating creative people from all parts of the world would gravitate to this charismatic crow (perhaps rather, he collected them.) I have not spoken to him in almost two years, but still dream about him now and then and although I am very glad to have left the uncertainty of the relationship behind I still miss him and his lively, interesting, stimulating and very social world.

I will look for something clear cut, well defined and simple like this!

Home again,

I LOVED Melbourne!! There was so much to see and do, Bantam Boy believes he could live there quite easily. I loved the snow and the art markets and the galleries every few paces!

But I missed this.....


I just had to do some baking as soon as I could when I got home. Baked ricotta with chilli, olives and semi dried tomatoes.

And this.....


I crocheted the central motif from one of the books I bought in Melbourne, finished off from my imagination. (Note to self- crochet hooks may not be allowed on the plane in your hand luggage but they can go in the suitcase! After weeks of knitting and crocheting my shawl which was fab! I was having withdrawal symptoms.)

We were very fortunate because Kirti and family live there and K came to pick us up from the airport- very comforting to a somewhat nervous traveler. Kirti had made soup so we had a lovely home cooked lunch with friends for our first meal in melbourne. Beau and my two made friends very quickly. Bantam Boy has quite a gentle nature and they had a bit of fun despite the large age gap! K then drove us to our hotel/apartment right in the heart of the city in flinders lane. The people who managed the apartments were so friendly and the room was bright and clean with windows that actually opened to the outside world- fresh air!!


On our first day- when we finally got up, still on perth time!- we went on a tour of the city on the free tourist bus which took us right to the art gallery. We spent about 7 hours there. The gallery stays open until 9pm on a wednesday. BB has been studying art history so he was intensely interested in each and every detail of each and every piece of art work. Chicky Babe on the other hand would have been happy to do a cursory glance of the artwork and move on to the next entertainment. Even though I am an art nerd, I fall somewhere in between the two. I felt quite torn between what each one wanted and was at a loss because like the man with the donkey I could not please both of them at the same time. BB and I returned later in the week to finish off the sections that we did not get to originally , we left CB watching TV in the hotel in her pj's in her fold out sofa bed and everyone was happy. BB and I wandered at a leisurely pace and had morning tea on the first floor.


It was a lovely bonding time for us, I love that he enjoys these things and will chat openly and thoughtfully with me, something I cherish from my almost 17 year old son. CB (15 and a half) is a bit of a strange chicky- she's not pursuing art into year 11, no matter how hard I try she is not interested in fashion unless it is extremely comfortable and not at all revealing, she likes mainstream radio! Unlike BB she has no intention of raiding my old record collection and CD's but we still have a lovely friendship and she still likes to have a cuddle every now and then while we watch TV or a long chat when it's time for bed and I 'tuck her in'.

The kids had friends from their drama group staying in Melbourne at the same time so they organised to go to Dracula's (a cabaret restaurant not at all my cup of tea.) By this time I felt like I had walked a marathon


and we had planned our trip to lake mountain the next day so I elected to stay in and read my book (Perfume- a book that is both alluring and repulsive at the same time, quite unsettling but worth the read.) I decided that it would be ok for them to catch a cab there themselves it was only about 5mins in the taxi from there to our hotel. While they were out my mum called and I told her what the kids were doing.
"You let them do what???!!!???"
"I'm sure they will be fine, it's only minutes away."
"But it is so late and they are kids and you don't know who is out there......"
Ahh!! back to my teen years, I am wrestling with the fear I feel and the strong desire to not pass these onto my children. To really live I think you need a little risk and a fear base does not lend itself to spontaneity. I think that some of the mistakes or poorer life choices..... regrets come from decisions made from fear. I worry quite a bit, is this the right choice, should I do this or that? I over analyze things and fret about whether I've done the right thing or not. (This also has a profound effect on my art work I worry and fret that it is not good enough, that I have nothing to say- hard to believe when I look at the length of this blog and the winding road it's taken me on.) ..... any way of course I then started to fret that I had given the kids too much freedom, I wouldn't have let them do the same here in Perth ( Perth city is not as busy as Melbourne and therefore there is not the safety in numbers that melbourne seems to have.)

Needless to say they arrived safely home and had had a fantastic time. They went and did their own thing again a couple of days later and I spent the day with a friend of mine who had come over for the art fair. It was actually quite nice to spend the day doing our own thing and I kind of like their budding independence. I noticed how much they are growing on this trip, and it is not going to be too long before I have a lot more free time on my hands. I'd better get my head together so I can find my artistic voice and the confidence to say what I have to say and not worry about whether anyone agrees with me or cares to listen for that matter.

I quickly did a catch up of some of my favourite blogs ( having missed their voices for the last couple of weeks... another addiction!) But I've been so busy with work - I'm painting a mural with the kids at school.

(this is a phone photo and a bit unclear. This is about a third of what they want done- it's on brick and therefore takes ages! It needs a second coat unfortunately even though it had a prep coat first.)

....and CB wanted a ball dress made since I got back ie: thursday night/ early morning, which I might add she decided not to wear in favour of one from a friend she was supposed to try on earlier and if she had could have saved me a lot of bother!!!! But I'm not feeling at all resentful about it!! And BB's sleepless, all night art folio preparation, also thursday and therefore my pretty sleepless night. "Sorry to wake you mum but do you have water colour paints?" "Umm mum do you have coloured pencils I can't find mine".... I've not had a chance to get on the computer until now.

Fifi's post made me reflect on thoughts I hadn't intended to post but they were things that the trip had bought to the surface for me, about the kids and my relationship with them and my feelings about their being on the edge of adulthood and the double edged sword of this growing independence bringing me more time alone, whether I want it or not. I've written enough for now but I have hundreds of photos and more to write, another time.