One day on our recent visit to Tasmania we spotted these amazing, fast moving clouds.  The photographs do not capture the drama of the weather on that day but they were so mesmerising I couldn't stop looking and craning to see it all whilst Riscy drove us out of Launceston towards Bridport.

Here is another shot:

 

I have been reading a little bit lately.  A minor miracle.  I had a childhood reputation as a bookworm and even managed a fair amount of reading whilst completing my engineering degree.  But in recent years I just can't stand laying around reading when I could be creating something.

So I don't read much anymore, and usually will only invest enough time to read a trashy romance or two, nothing serious. Invest - probably isn't a good analogy as reading Mills and Boons is akin to a bit of mindless TV - but better, I reckon :-P

When I was in Tasmania I read The Turning by Tim Winton.  The book is a collection of short stories.  This was a minor turn off, but I took it with me because I loved reading Winton's book Dirt Music when we were camping on the East Coast of Tasmania a few years ago. While reading Dirt Music I was listening to waves crashing and seabirds squarking with the smell of seaweed in my nostrils and it was an amazing sensory experience to marry with a book set on, in and around the ocean.

The Turning was EVEN BETTER than Dirt Music.  The stories were threaded together with connections to the fishing town of Angelus.  Layered together, overlapping, illuminating and adding to previous stories so a picture is built up of the town and how it (the town, the people, the landscape) shaped the life of one character in particular. 

Here are some links if you want to read some reviews:

Amazon

Sydney Morning Herald 

Guardian 

On Monday I was home sick and read a book my friend Sharon loaned me a long time ago The Five People You will Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom.  I had tried to return it unread as the subject matter didn't appeal, but she really wanted me to read it and Monday seemed like the ideal time.  I don't know If I was weak from lack of food over the entire weekend or the jackhammering had scrambled my brain, but this book made me cry.  And cry, and cry - one of the main objections I have to this sort of subject matter is that it is a 'cheap trick' which is sure to elicit an emotional response. 

Like  the long dead, much missed wife coming to meet you when you die. It was a very quick read and probably quickly forgotton.  However, there IS nothing like a good cry. The picture of the author on the back was another turn off, he looked like one of those TV evangelists or self-help authors.

 I am currently reading The Skull Mantra by Eliot Pattison, a mystery/thiller set in Tibet.  So far so good :-)  I'm off to bed to read some more now.

 

I was unaware of this wonderful artist until recently Hannah Hinchman - Journal Writing guide. Thanks to Serena Fenton at Layers of Meaning for the link. Given how much I have enjoyed blogging, which is the only form of journalling I have ever stuck at for more than 3 days... I have been toying with the idea of starting up a paper journal. Will it distract me from my blog and art or will it enhance my artistic experience? Only one way to find out!! I have linked to Ros Stendahl before but I thought another link was warranted given the hours of enjoyment (absorbtion) her journals have given me :-). A real inspiration. No quilting has started on the dredger quilt. I'm letting it sit for too long and it is going cold on me. I'm going to start stitching tonight even it it is just stitching down the trusses. Hopefully that will settle my nerves.

Have you heard of National Novel Writing Month? Starting 1 November (today) and ending 30 November you write a novel or 50,000 words of a novel (which ever comes first) I've calculated that if I write 2500 words for 20 days of this month I would have 50,000 words. Now, Carol, and anyone else who has a burning desire to write a novel, but thinks you need to take a year off work and live in Tuscany to really write: I want you to think seriously about trying this. If you do it, I'll do it. I'm gonna start tonight in case you decide to accept this dare... just so I have a head start. As the idea is to write the novel without too much agony over quality, I'm going to discard all pretensions of being capable of writing like AS Byatt and settle into a zippy little genre romance... I know my shit in this sphere. I DO NOT wish this to interfere with my artistic ambitions, so I'm going to ignore the tv this month and use that extra time to write. See, I have it all worked out :-) We had today off for the Melbourne Cup. It was a very hot day and tomorrow will be even hotter. Too much champagne has been imbibed, but its traditional. Isn't it? Makaybe Diva won the race for the third time, which is a record. I'm not into horse racing at all, but since they give us a public holiday, I figure I have to take a bit of interest.

The workshop I took at Geelong was called Books on the Edge - That Ain't a Book! by Marianne Little and Gail Stife. We actually did do traditional book binding as well, coptic and celtic etc. But my main interest was to explore materials and tools I'd never used before: I just took some photos of my work, they aren't the best, but I hope you get the idea :-):

The family peeking over the book is my sister and her family, must have been taken about 3 years ago, as her baby is now a 4yo handful!

White Page - Detail

My perspex book.

Pods on the Path. My unbound metal book