Today's Travels

As a pre-birthday treat today, Rob took me to Sydney to the National Gallery of NSW to see the annual Archibald, Wynne & Sulman Prize exhibitions. Parking was at a premium in the Domain today, and we had to drive nearly to the end of Lady Macquarie's Chair to find a spot.

The spectacular city and harbour views made up for the inconvenience, and the brisk walk made up for no gym visit today.

It was a blustery day in Sydney, with frequent showers of rain. In between showers, a number of bridal parties could be seen taking advantage of the break in the weather to have photographs taken in the botanic gardens and surrounding parkland.

We called in to see my sister and her family this afternoon on the way home. Little Georgia was gorgeous as always, with lots of smiles and cooing.

Coming out of the closet...

Well, no - not really! This is a shot of J9 & I on emerging from the aquatint cupboard during our printmaking class this afternoon. Today was oppressively hot & humid, but then we had to don dustmasks and crowd into the little tiny room which houses the rosin box to learn about making aquatints. Fascinating process, but whew!! It sure was hot and claustrophobic.

This is one of the client quilts I finished this week - I was on a roll yesterday and finished two quilts in one day of concentrated effort. Yay me for being so focussed!!

Our life drawing teacher has taken us right back to basics with drawing the figure. We have drawn boxes and cylinders, done stick drawings of skeletons, but I think all this work is paying off in the improvement of my grasp of mass and proportion, my ability to correctly measure and translate the pose. Watch this space...

Down to Earth

This is an accidental photo from today, which just happens to sum up how I feel about the day. Or maybe Kate took it - now that I think about it, that seems more likely. I drove up to Sydney to Lisa's beautiful home to share lunch with a group of special women who I'm grateful to call friends. As I looked around the group and shared in their various happinesses and heartaches, triumphs and tragedies, I realised how lucky I am to be part of an amazing network of women who both lift me up and help keep my feet on the ground. Thank you to all of you - you know who you are.

Here's a group shot - taken by Lisa's DH Peter, so I can't take responsibility for the closed eyes of some of those pictured.

Since last time we met...

We have celebrated my son Adam's 15th birthday - can you believe he's 15? My parents and my brother Dave with his family came over for a BBQ dinner. 4yo Sidney had a fun time helping his big cousin blow out all those candles.


I have finished as many client quilts as I could, including this one which belongs to Carol. It is her version of my Southerly Change quilt class, and turned out looking great. I couldn't decide which flower from my repertoire would look best, so I used lots of different ones!

I've been working on my art school projects. I want to do well, so have been investing much of my time in the late evenings in finishing drawings and keeping my visual diaries up-to-date with notes and so on. This is one of the wire sculptures I've made - I call it "hide & seek".

I've been teaching my students how to make covered journals. It has proved to be a very successful and entertaining class, with a bit of fabric painting, a bit more free-motion quilting and just a little construction work. The journals and diaries pictured are all mine (cause I forgot to take along my camera) but the variety of work produced in these classes has been wonderful!
I have also been circuit training at the gym at least five times a week for the last month, which is a HUGE effort for me - I am notoriously bad at exercising and keeping up an exercise regime for more than a week or two. I'm in week five now, and have seen some good results (and am feeling much better already).

So now you all know why I've been too busy to blog. I'll try to be better, but I can't make any promises!!

Shoalhaven Quilt Show

This weekend Lisa & I were invited to be the "Featured Artists" at the Shoalhaven Lionesses Quilt & Craft Show. It was a nice country show on the south coast of NSW where we happened to be experiencing some unseasonably hot and humid weather. We set up our displays and spent the weekend demonstrating our work (which was a good chance to get some work done on a new quilt) and networking.

Lisa brought along her beautiful hand-dyed fabrics and kits for sale, and of course a couple of pieces had to come home with me. Although it was hot and exhausting, we had a fun weekend.