Rednesday: Streaming

From here.

Rednesday: Kapow

From here.

Rednesday: Aprons

It's my grandmother's birthday today. The last photo I had taken with her before she died is this one, snapped at her birthday party last year by my sister Abby. She died a month later.

Chapter eight of the book my mum wrote about her experience of my grandmother's Alzheimer's starts with this paragraph:

My mother had been a balabosta, a Yiddish term for a person who raises housekeeping to the level of an Olympic sport. In her spotless kitchen, the balabosta cooks gourmet feasts for her family, and when they have finished eating first, second and third helpings, she insists they take leftovers home with them. All this she does week after week, apparently without effort, while wearing lipstick, French perfume, and an apron over her good clothes.

Even on my most house-proud of days, I could never hope to be as good a housekeeper as my grandmother was. But I do like to pretend I am a little like her when it's my turn to do the cooking and I skip from the oven to the table. I can't attribute my lack of cooking prowess to her, but I most definitely hold her accountable for my love of aprons.

(The last one reads: I cook in the kitchen, but I boil in the bedroom.)

Collective Nouns

My sister Kate from Fox's Lane is this week's theme queen for My Place and Yours. The theme she has chosen is My Collection.

Whenever I think about collections, a line of comedian Steven Wright's comes to mind: 'You can't have everything. Where would you put it?' Which is why I just collect red things; it narrows it down some.

I have been waving my red flag high for the past ten years, during which time I have accrued a lot of great treasures. Here are some of them:

Thank you Kate for the great theme!

Now, I'm going to put the kettle on for a nice hot cuppa while I drop by Meet Me At Mike's to see what everyone else is collecting.

My Left Hand Part 2

Part 1 here.

Rednesday: Say Cheese!

Our camera that has been holidaying at the repair centre in Newcastle has come home to us. Although we have been making do with our phone cameras, we welcome you back with much excitement, dear little camera.

Perhaps because we live in a house with very little storage space, I am a collector of photos of things, rather than the things themselves. But I'd say more so, it is because I am a writer, an observer, that I want to document the incidentals of my life.

I thought that not having my camera for a while might be good for me; that it would force me to be more inside my words and rely less on the images. And maybe it did do that, but I didn't like it.

Rednesday: History

Thank you to The Doily for this xcellent X, which I have been using as a home for my needles. I have started creating a sewing kit, and I love that your gift kicked it off.

Thank you to The Lark for the goodie showbag you gave me when I came to visit your shop. This button badge was my favourite thing of all. We are so lucky to live in this town, which may be one of the reasons I am OK about giving up air travel. If our lives here sucked, maybe we wouldn't be so ready to say no to going elsewhere??

I moved here because my older sister Kate and her family live here. It's Kate's birthday today. Hope you had a great day, Katchka!

My final thank you goes to you, PJ, for fixing my favourite ring again.

It breaks and I wonder why I don't just buy a new one. But I love how you fix it and present it to me anew each time. That it has a history of its own that I can wear.

Rednesday: Muffin

From here.

And So

I posted this photo on Flickr four years ago. (Since then, we three have met up only twice.) Now we are heading into t-shirt weather and my arms are free to air, I am reminded of such friendships and the way they come and go like the seasons.

Here's the explanation that accompanies the image:

We three Aussies got these tats done a few years ago in Melbourne before all heading off to different parts of the globe.

Kerryn loves Kurt Vonnegut and decided to get "And so it goes" (a recurring line from Slaughterhouse Five) tattooed on her shoulder.

Finally on the other side of three decades worth of bad shit, Gil decided to get "And so it was" tattooed on her back representing the past that she has moved on from but that made her who she is.

And Meg, the eternal optimist decided to get "And so it will be" on her right arm as a symbol of the charm of the unknown.

We reunited this afternoon for a few brief hours before we were once again claimed by different time zones.

From here.

Inside the O of your wOnderful

Rednesday: Not Red

(Unfortunately my camera is still in Newcastle at the repair centre being fixed, so please bear with me while I fumble through this period with my clunky phone camera.)

I wonder if you can see what it says on these small canvases. The top one says Red and the bottom, Not Red. They were a gift from our friend Jeff for my birthday last year.

As you can see from the picture below, I too am not red.

After a decade of dyeing my hair, I can no longer justify using chemical dyes. And so, the night before we left for Newcastle my friend Suzie dyed my hair this colour.

Often people ask me what will happen if I wake up one day and cease to be fascinated with the colour red. I don't know if that day is on its way. And to be honest I don't really care.

Paper Face

From here.

The Little Roman

Most of the local primary schools in this district teach their students Italian. To celebrate, yesterday was declared Roman Day; a whole day of activities dedicated to all the wonders of ancient Rome.

Here is Z, calling out buongiorno yesterday morning, in his homemade get-up.

Fancy Nancies

This is my everyday, Knitting Nancy. She and I have been going steady since she was handmade by a friend's dad and given to me in 2003.

Then about two months ago I was kindly given these Fancy Nancies by another friend's sister. At first I had no idea what to do. I thought they all had to be used at the same time. I seriously had no idea how to even begin. It's true I could have googled or asked around some seasoned crafty types, but I never quite got around to it.

Then when my friend Vivienne very generously gave me her red case of knitting goodies, inspiration struck. Ta da!

I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with it. Maybe a snood, maybe a skirt. My knitting group is coming here tonight and I look forward to talking through my ideas with them. I'll let you know what they say.

Fig.173

From here.

Today I Can

What's In the Red Case?

Homemade Magnets

Rubbed Out

I have a lot of red things - found, bought, stolen, gleaned, acquired, gathered. For some reason, I am avoiding the word collected. Collected to me involves some kind of purpose - one does it actively. I collect my chickens' eggs, I collect Z from school and I am collecting stepmothers to interview.

I used to collect rubbers. I still have them, in a bag in a carton in a box. Since I stopped collecting them I must have opened the box, the carton and the bag maybe half a dozen times.

I picked my niece Indigo up from school yesterday. She has just started collecting rubbers. All day I had the Ghostbusters feeling that I was going to blow her mind with my collection. I couldn't wait!

But when I had finally emptied the bag onto the table where she and Z sat, instead of bits of wowed brains splattered everywhere, there were just two underwhelmed kids, and me, the very very grown up, grown up.

Rednesday: Pot