Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Tis' the Season to be Felting

After a long break from blogging, wherein I became qualified to teach primary school children...yes, I can now stand proudly in the ranks with such luminaries as Miss Beadle from Little House on the Prairie and Mr Kotter...
I return to the subject of felting, and Christmas, and how in love I am with photos of Robins hopping around in the snow in the northern hemisphere. I was moved to felt a robin of my own, to give to a dear friend, funnily enough named Robyn, who helped me through the year of madness and unprecendented child juggling.
Our Christmas Tree is adorned with many little handmade angels the girls were given by friends at school, and Chicken No.1's amazing needle felted Father Christmas'.
We have also been visited by four furry friends...new guinea pis, who we of course promptly subjected to the indignity of being in a studio Christmas Photo Shoot on their second day of life!
Am trying to read Atonement, which I am loving, yet finding hard to stay awake to get through...and listening to Loreena McKennitt's Christmas album, which is strangly alluring...




Sunday, July 20, 2008

6 Things I Liked Today, actually Yesterday and the Other Day..

Tagged by lovely Kirti

1.The Magnolia trees starting to bud their mid-winter beauty...



2. Reading Morality for Beautiful Girls, by Alexander McCall Smith, the third charming book in the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series.

3.Riding to school with the chickens



4.Shopping at Ceres Organic Market while the chickens "pat" chickens...




5.Visiting The Steiner Store to buy pencils...the chickens are ploughing through the sketch books and working down the pencils in the most admirable way! This oasis of calm and gorgsous books and toys is very hard to leave...


6. Discovering an amazing paper cut artist

Who wants to play??? Anna???

Sunday, July 13, 2008

The Light, the Darkness and the Beings of Colour

I have just come out of a very beautiful dream of a week, floating amongst the transluscent rays of colour, being lifted and lilted upon the dance between the light and the dark. I have spent another week with an amazing woman, who teaches the incredibly elusive transformational colour painting of Liane Collot d'Herbois. This week we dove into the willowing, curly depths of Indigo, and the light rays of the Sun God Ra, yellow! She told the incredible story of Parzifal, a tale which speaks to the soul of a modern seeker such as I. A week of painting thin veils of coloured water one upon the other, dreaming into light filled hues for days, journeying, through story, into King Arthur's court and contemplating of one's path and destiny has changed me just that little bit more, and rippled to my fanily in the most subtle healing ways. I am so happy for the opportunity to grow and explore in this way!

St Christopher wading through the waters, an orange movement on its head!
An indigo and viridian veil painting which became a Green Obsidian crystal.

A wet-on-wet study of yellow...daffodil.

The charcoal drawing after an intimate Goethean observation of the top of a thistle! with bee...

Yellow rays in charcoal.

And exploring Camberwell Market this morning way, if not as airy and lofty, in a different way very fulfilling, having found the dream silk-velveteen dress of the year! Gotta love shopping in 7am Sunday morning semi-dark 5 degrees!!!

Sunday, July 6, 2008

Markets and Heights

The sun has warmed the wintery days splendidly, and the chickens and I have been enjoying Melbourne-town-life...visits to our fave fave farm, playing shops at Ceres, and blowing a bit of trash and treasure cash-booty on a very short but very high Ferris Wheel Ride...there's a few postcard shots thrown in! but what the hay! This city looks very neat...I think something should be done about it!









Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Big Chicken's Portrait of Mother, Becoming One With Rock

Woolly Comfort


To ward off the post-holiday blue funk, I have headed straight to the crochet bag, making flowers like a maniac, a bit like one might attack a packet of tim-tams on a cold lonely winter night! But how very much more rewarding!
I have finally finished embellishing Little Chicken's knitted winter hairband with a luscious flower, which pleased her very much. And knitted a few more "just in case" flowers. I have also repaired a poor jumper, a gorgeous hand-knitted red op shop score with a too-tight neck. I cut the knitting!!! An ungodly act, which I have hopefully reseemed myself for by crocheting intensely around the whole neckline to repaitr. I will see how long this lasts!

Monday, June 30, 2008

More Kakadu joy...



What I find so amazing is that just 3 hours from Darwin is the most splendid natural paradise to freely drink up to one's heart's content..cannot get the land out of my dreams...
I have become obsessed with the basket weaving of the women from Arnemland and that area! Everywhere we went, I found I had just missed a weaving workshop with an Aboriginal elder woman! I came home none the wiser as to how to actually make these baskets, but with a few gorgeous small examples of the work. Then I found this website Arnhem weavers and I am desperately plotting how I could possibly go back up and do one of these workshops , sleeping in croc proof bark huts and weaving and dying pandanas!

Well, until I find myself back in Arnhemland I will have to settle for buying a bunch of raffia and plaiting a basket.

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Kakadu Dream...







This incredible place, so full of huge tree spirits singing, wild crocodiles baking themselves, or sliding through the rivers like silent dinosaurs. The stories the ochre paintings in the rocks tell, of spirit-being sisters playing cheeky games , transforming into crocs until they stay that way, the lightning god Nammagon, cheeky mullet fish who jump back into the river when no-one is watching, of wild yellow flowers announcing the lovemaking of crocs and turtles, or billabongs full of giant pink lotuses!! I am swooning...this place, Kakadu, Northern Territiry...like another country , I am preparing to board the plane, scarves and socks tucked in the hand luggage for the Melbourne wee hours arrival.

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Divine Waters and Red Dirt!








I am in love with the red rocks and dirt up here in the Northern Territory. We just spent three nights camping around the blissful waters, (free of the legendery killer crocs) bathing in the cooling waters and the hot springs amongst Pandanas trees and red rock. Being dwarfed by the brilliance of termite construction genius, gazing into the depest red sunsets, baking under the full moon under the mozzie nets, sleeping in swags...starting to wonder what anyone else would be doing anywhere else? Yes, slipping into holiday oblivion...

Monday, June 16, 2008

The Tropical Adventurites!





The tropical adventure has begun! The first few days has been about allowing the stress of life in Melbourne to slowly seep through the pores and be absorbed by the benevolent gigantuan palm trees out the window. Lots of staring at green, green green...swimming in the pool, strolling the Darwin markets, they do love a market up here! Learning to drive a clapped-out scary backpacker van, and control my worrisome mother mind about things like brake failure and being stranded in massive HOT national parks...We set off to an amazing national park full of waterfalls and plunge pools!! to camp for a few days!

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Prodigal Blogger Returns


Okay, So I've done it again. I started a blog, wrote for a while and then life became busy and I couldn't spare the time to reflect.
Yes, Amma came, we had a sublime trip/family reunion in Pambula....aaaahhhh...Pambula!
And then life as a full time student, part time yoga teacher, parttime student, mother of two, oh and a wife...hubby struggling (muffled calls...in vain) under the pile of unattended dirty washing, unwashed plate...or is he in the empty fridge, just to keep out of my way.
I have resurrected my obsessive, compulsive self, charging through the sleepless nights in front of assignments, and heady days whirling from teaching placements, to dance classes for the girls, to study, work, kid exchange rendesvous.
No time for knitting. Reading. Movies. Although I did sneak one in last Monday night. The Edge of Heaven, a Turkish/German collaboration. What an amazing journey of a film. I officially wish to retire to some seaside village on the Black Sea in Turkey.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

In Anticipation of an Ocean of Goddess Love


I stick one pale arm up out of the pile of textbooks and papers and assignment drafts to feel for the delicious biodynamic carrot dangling in front of me, in the form of AMMA, my favourite saint (it used to be Saint Sebastian with the arrows in his torso- ghoulish Catholic Saint books with explicit illustrations of torture), for me she is the embodiment of spiritual power- soft, awesomely great, of this world and out of this world all at once, practical, of service, accepting. My favourite saint is a LIVING SAINT, and she hugs! boy does she hug! She has hugged millions and millions, around the world, and she does it non-stop, and hardly eats or sleeps, but just hugs and sings and directs the most efficiient humanitarian work on the planet!
I am a HUG-AHOLIC, and will be taking my beloveds again to see her: to melt into her rose-scented marshmallow arms, to dissolve into the Ocean of Goddess Love. She reconnects me to the Source, and I am eternally grateful I have the incredible privilige to spend time in her presence.
On a more pedestrian but excitingly practical note, it rained so gloriously yesterday, my poor drought chickens relished under umbrellas with their little friend, watching,feeling, smelling and hearing the joyous tears of the clouds!