Next art class

I went back for my second art class and it was just as much fun as the first! I had gone to the art store in the meantime (of course) and bought some lovely pastels in pretty colours and pastel paper in dark shades, so the teacher set up some apples for me under a strong light and I had a bash. This is the photo of the apples... nice colours and good light and dark contrasts.

It was definitely a learning curve, especially in how to combine the colours and how to get something that looks textured and not like a wall of solid crayon. Then getting the lights lighter and the darks darker without everything going all muddy. 

I was pleased with this in the end, but it took a lot of fiddling about for such simple shapes! I'm going to try something landscapey next week, we shall see how it goes. The teacher gets us to take a photo halfway through too, which is really useful.

The main problem is how filthy your hands get, with smudging everything together. Then I end up wiping it on my jeans. I need an artist's smock...

Battery warning

This quilt is called "battery warning" because something must have been going flat at the time. I'm not sure what, but it was probably a garden tool ... although it could have been the ride-on mower. We just got it back from the auto-electrician today and it needed something electrical done. Just in the nick of time too - the grass is looking very shaggy.

This was started at a Saturday quilters meeting - the Tuesdays we just drop in and sew whatever we are working on but Saturdays one of the group will run a lesson on something they do or have seen. So this was about making hexagons by folding circles, not over papers or using a running stitch. 

It was great fun but it requires a certain precision in folding and stitching, which I do not have! So I couldn't really put them together in any normal way so I just sewed them onto a background square and used them in the middle of a medallion quilt. 

This was glue basted again, which is still awesome! The quilting is just a squiggle because I don't love the colours enough to do anything time-consuming, but it turned out fine.

Arty things

On Wednesday we went into Canberra to vacuum the-house-that-no-one-wants-to-buy, do grocery shopping and have lunch with number one (who had just finished a lab about the science of reporting the potential for uranium enrichment accurately to the International Atomic Energy Agency ... nuclear engineering, such a roller coaster. We heard about it with great interest and zero understanding). 

Then after lunch we all went to the Cezanne to Giacometti exhibition at the National Gallery  - highlights from Museum Berggruen. It was amazing - lots of Picasso and Klee and Matisse - but also they brought in things from Australian artists with links to the works. It was more coherent than it sounds and we all had a very good time. 

We couldn't agree which one to take home with us other than it would probably be a Picasso - the other two liked 'still life on piano - cort' but I preferred 'still life with blue guitar'. We all agreed that a tall skinny lady from Giacometti would be AMAZING in the sheep pen, to surprise visitors. 

At the other end of the artistic scale, I did go to the drawing group at the local regional art group last Saturday. It was lots of fun - not just drawing but painting or pastels or pencils, whatever you wanted. I was not very good but enjoyed a couple of hours (with a glass of wine). I can't find what I did so I won't post it, but it did inspire me to actually ring an art teacher from a flyer I picked up ages ago and I joined her Tuesday afternoon lessons!

There's about five people in her backyard studio that work on their own things, but she starts beginners off with a few standard lessons, including (of course) a selection of glass bottles in charcoal. Dark and light, shapes and negative space, highlights and shadows. I had a lovely time doing it, she is a very good experienced teacher, and the results are so much better when you learn it properly!!! Who would have guessed?

Flowery flowers

I think it's just going to be pictures of flowers from here until autumn ... it is so exciting whenever a new one pops up! And many of them are not at all the colours we thought they might be. For starters, there are five camellia bushes when we thought there were two ... we can tell because there are five different flowers. There is a big forsythia tucked in there as well, that gives the yellow flowers. Very gaudy, but we like that.

Isn't this variegated pink amazing? Coconut ice we're calling it.

The little rhododendron is an absolutely shockingly bright pink. Not subtle at all. The other one hasn't flowered (and is looking a bit sad to be honest) but we're hoping it's more elegant. Hah.

Blossom is everywhere and gorgeous. The bees are in the rosemary behind it but I'll have to chop it back at some stage. When we get round to this particular bed.

We have tulips! I didn't know they were skulking in the ground; just these three so far and they look like being a very dainty shade of pink. 

Other than that it is all about the roses ... after pruning 104 roses and spraying 104 roses we have now fed 104 roses and mulched 104 roses. Actually only 97 because there are six in the bottom bed I'm weeding before mulching (if you can call using a mattock on a garden bed 'weeding') and I think I did kill one in the pruning extravaganza in July. Next week I will spray 104 roses for black spot (yes, even the dead one, you never know).

And our neighbour came over after clearing out his strawberry bed to see if we wanted any runners ... why yes please, so Brad planted about 80 in the ex-cineraria bed, covered them in sugar cane mulch and we will see if they live. It's just a temporary measure until we get our proper vegie enclosure built as I doubt the birds would leave us any fruit; but even if we don't get fruit we will have runners of our own for next year. I googled cineraria too, it turns out what we called it in NZ is "florist's cineraria" which is quite different, more like a daisy, and some botanists have it as genus senecio, which explains Pam's word for it! how confusing it all is.

K'gari

 

When we were in Brisbane we did a mini-break to K'gari (formerly known as Fraser Island) which is about a three and a half hour drive up the coast and an hour on the ferry. It's a fascinating world heritage site and national park - lots of tourists but very little development. I wasn't sure what to expect; many people love it but they seem to love driving up the beach, camping in the dunes with no amenities, and fishing ... none of which appeal to me at all. But neither of us had been so off we went.

It was absolutely beautiful. We stayed at the resort on the bay side of the island, which had mostly seen better days but we were in a little house up in the bush with a deck and our own kitchen and it was lovely. It might have been warm enough to swim - although neither of us thought to bring our togs - but definitely warm enough to paddle. 

We saw dolphins both ways on the ferry, and lots of amazing birds. The island has roads but they are sand, very windy and very steep - you need to have a 4WD and know what you're doing so you don't get bogged. We have neither a 4WD or any experience so did a full day bus tour (4WD bus, hilarious) to see the main spots.

I took a lot of motion sickness pills and thank heavens I did because it was TERRIBLE. I'd rung beforehand to try and see how bad it would be - fully expecting the usual "you'll be fine" or "most people don't have a problem" - they said it was really rough, expect the worst and they have seasick bags on the bus! So I took all the pills, they worked fine but I felt completely spaced out all day and slept for 17 hours when we got back. 

This is the beautiful inland lake that was our first stop.

Then we did a bushwalk along a gloriously clear river - filtered by sand, lots of sand. Onto the main beach, which is a 120 km of gazetted road with an 80 kmph speed limit, including some 40 km spots where you have to cross creeks or there are camping areas. There was a traffic cop with a speed radar at one, so there you go. 

It was stunning, but you can't really swim in the open ocean, it's too dangerous. Lots of good fishing though, and I'm sure people do swim, but I'd be nervous. And of course dingoes that tend to attack tourists - we saw some (safely through the bus window). And we saw lots of whales breaching just offshore, including some calves, really exciting but my photos just look like ocean although there were three whales in the shot, I swear. 

This is an amazingly clear creek that I wandered down - transclucent water, sandy bottom, feels like a million miles from anywhere (and not like you've just hopped off one of four tour buses, including several minibuses of british backpackers, who were having a lovely time and looked exceptionally sunburnt). 

It was a great day and I'm glad I did it, but I don't know if it's really a holiday destination for me. There are designated camping spots up and down the beach but there's no facilities of any kind (including water) and it gets incredibly busy over the summer. There was a wee plane doing joy rides taking off and landing from the beach.

The next day we did a guided nature walk that was excellent, and my husband did another beach walk in the afternoon while I slept for a couple more hours. The pills had caffeine in them to try and keep you awake ... which works for about two hours while the sleepiness lasts three days. We had a good trip though.

Springtime

It's absolutely bucketing rain here today but the last few days have been gloriously spring-like and warm ... lots of gardening. Or mowing, as we realise just how much grass we have and how quickly it grows.

Most of the trees are still bare but some of the blossom trees are out and very beautiful.

Daffodils are decorating unexpected patches of the yard, and they are all different sorts. My husband said it looks like someone just ordered one of everything from the daffodil catalogue then stood on the front verandah and chucked them in every direction. It does not appeared planned ... but they do seem very healthy and it's fun to see how many different ways you can combine yellow, pale yellow, dark yellow, orangey yellow, pinky yellow and white.

I brought some inside (with wattle and forsythia) which was a very good idea given how grey and miserable it is out there at the moment.

Last week we had a lovely few days when my sister and a friend of hers visited - they had been up with the friend's rellies in Sydney beforehand so took the train down and I picked them up at Tarago railway station. Possibly the smallest station I've ever seen; they were the only ones getting off so had to hop down quick smart. There was nobody else there at all, no-one working or meeting or leaving. Wonderful.

We went down to the beach for a couple of days to see some ocean (sadly no stingrays at the jetty, I think the tide was too low). Super lovely to catch up and have some chill family time .. they had a poke around Braidwood too but there's not that much to see really. 

So now we are back into the swing of whatever it is we do ... although I've had a bad cold the past couple of days which is a bit unfair. It's the first bug since I stopped working - I wouldn't have said I was around enough people to catch germs but maybe someone sneezed on me at the grocery store. I struggled into quilters on Tuesday, and there's garden club on Thursday, and I think I might gather my courage and go to the drawing group on Saturday. They say it's "all levels" but it still requires some level of bravery to draw in a room full of strangers ... although it's at 4 pm and the bar is apparently open. That may help. 

The cat has been very clingy since we got back. I have a lot of photos like this where she is 'helping' me with various household chores.

Brisbane

After Adelaide we had a week or so in Brisbane to catch up with my husband's parents and extended family - unfortunately his mum was in hospital after falling and cracking her head - came home after a couple of days but not much fun for her! But we were pleased to be there and able to help a bit with the cooking and keep his dad company. 

My husband had a birthday so we had pizza and  his sister made him a cake (delicious, we ate it for days). His dad is also a crazy bird man - I was the first one to open the blinds one morning to be greeted by this line up of hungry birds. They are slightly different to ours but still parrots and still demanding to be fed. Bird Man, Son of Bird Man is now his official title. 

We went into town and poked around a bit - the middle of Brisbane is lovely on a good day, especially in winter. Summer can be very hot but a clear twenty degree day in August is amazing. I went to art galleries and shops - my husband went with his dad on a tour of some historic barracks - great day out on both counts.

We hung out with his parents, caught up with extended family (including the great niece that I hadn't met before and who is very cute!) and generally had a lovely chill time. We also did a three-day trip up to K'Gari but I think that will need to be its own post because it was amazing and I took a LOT of photos....

Adelaide

We've been away for two weeks, which it turns out is a little bit too long to leave our country idyll, and we missed it very much. But we did have a lovely time and it's not exactly a bad problem, to enjoy your holidays but be glad to be home.

First we went to Adelaide for a few days for a friend's 60th - I have spent a heap of time in Adelaide over the years and know it reasonably well, but Brad hasn't at all. The last time was when we took the children in 2008 - so ages 3 and 6 - and it was a fiesta of railway museums, chicken nuggets and 5 am starts from memory. This trip was much more pleasant. We went for a lot of walks to orient ourselves, enjoyed the sights and had a lovely day for our friend's birthday - including a wine tasting at a very scenic winery.

The photo looks quite sunny but it was about five degrees and windy so we sat inside and tasted the wines (delicious, and there may be a dozen winging their way to our house as we speak) then had a lunch at a very cool historic pub, then to other friends for a lovely afternoon tea in front of two open fires. Pretty much a perfect day!

We caught up with another friend who had retired to Adelaide (and loving it, the universal cry of the recently retired) then had a day doing the art gallery and museum. I'd remembered that I thought the South Australian State Gallery was pretty good, but couldn't quite remember why, until I went in and realized that this is the gallery that just runs everything together regardless of era, and it's way cool. It's organised by themes, but not so you'd notice, and it's a wonderful viewing experience.

So two thumbs up for Adelaide - we were only there for five days and flew up to Brisbane. Definitely on the list to visit again (perhaps drive over, it's about 1300 km) and explore the countryside around it a bit more. Plenty to see!