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???

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!!!

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!

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!

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.

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.