I did get out to dye on Sunday.  A perfect day for it.    I love the colours above, a hell of a lot better than the orangy pastels I started with!  These are relatively small bits of fabric, generous fat quarters.  I want to make bigger work, so these aren't entirely suitable for my current quilting plans, however they will chill out in my tiny stash and one day they will be magically useful.

The bigger bits of fabric were a mixture of stunning success and seriously blah.  The blah ones I can overdye or use as backing, or wait until I find the perfect place for it :-)  So no great loss.

I also fused the triptych.

The colour here isn't quite right, it is darker in real life.  The red is a bit overpowering (ugly) here, but I think it will work once they are cut away from the background piece so the green will be more dominant.

And finally:

I got Riscy to take a photo of me modelling one of my felt scarves. (for Fulvia, who asked to see a shot of the whole scarf, not just the juicy close ups).

Triptych = Fused

Modeled

 

We got the dreaded gastro (again) this week.  It has layed me low, thus my quitetude on the net.

We are expecting some inclement weather this weekend.  Hail, even.  I am not sure how the 'big dyeing plans' are going to pan out.  I had planned to dye in the carport, which may not be too inviting given we are expecting wind too.  I'm keen though as I'm totally stalled on my big quilts because I have virtually no large pieces of fabric dyed up.

Recent big news is that my dad, his wife Shaz and my little sister Zippy are now connected to the internet!  So welcome guys :-)  I am really bad at calling anyone so I'm hoping we can keep in touch better with email. Talking about email.  I have had the most dreadful spam problem recently.  I'm thinking about closing my gmail account.  I'll let people know if/when it happens.

Miniscule creativity: I have taped a large sheet of paper to one of my workbenches with the view to painting, sketching and generally doodling on it at random.   I plan to then cut it up and make little books out of the big sheets.  That's the plan.  The above is a detail of part of the current piece.  There is a quite dreadful part on this painting with drawings of sticks (yes sticks!) on a matte pastel background... I'll either paint over these or hope that they will look better cut up!  The idea is not to get to precious, and just move on when it gets too much.

Patchwork painting detail

Whew.  I'm ready for a quiet couple of weeks now.

Riscy and I had a romantic weekend in Melbourne, flitting aroung the Melbourne International Arts Festival and shopping and eating and drinking :-) Sometimes I wonder how my life got so good.  A statement which, if this were a soap opera, would trigger impending doom.  Of course. 

We attended a concert by the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa from Japan, it was a tribute to Hiroyuki Iwaki who was chief conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra 1974 - 1989. We were three rows from the front  and the ladies next to us were a bit annoyed by the seats because they couldn't see what was going on, but I quite liked being so close.  The same ladies also shared their chocolates during intermission :-)

My favourite bit (and the reason I REALLY wanted to go to this concert) was Ross Edwards Oboe Concerto with soloist Diana Doherty... she was amazing!  Dancing and moving around the stage whilst playing this piece which was composed for her.  Riscy and I also both loved Prokofiev symphony No 1 and we bought a CD the next day :-)

We saw a piece of theatre called Navigators at the Victorian College of the Arts which was quite experimental with many performances going on at once - we had a brush with fame as Paul Kelly was there.  Not that I'm a particually big fan of his music, as he tends to speak rather than sing.  Anyway, the performance came with a zine, so I'll have a good look at that over the coming weeks.

On Saturday night we saw I La Galigo billed as "epic music theatre retelling an indonesian creation myth".  The show was 3hrs long with no intermission and the program informed us that the audience is permitted to leave the theatre and re-enter at any time during the performance.  Unfortunately the State Theatre is NOT set up for this.  There is no way to leave your seat and get out without causing everyone else in your row and behind extreme annoyance.  About an hour in I started to get very thirsty and twitchy and had to take my watch off because I kept checking it every 5 minutes.  So I didn't enjoy it.  Riscy loved it - and plenty of others did too as there was a standing ovation at the end.

I know this post is becoming a little epic too, but just a bit on creativity:

I have discovered that my workroom really does need to have a certain level of messiness or it just doesn't seem right and I can't get going.  So it is now a little messy, but I'm trying to keep it functional too.

Last night I painted over a scrap piece of paper I had printed ages ago, then I cut it up and sewed it back together.  I'm gonna have to iron it to get it flat though 'cause it is wonky and bumpy, above is a detail veiw.  Click here if you want to see a larger view... the scanner still wasn't big enough for it but you get the idea.