Books I read in 2021

I still scan my books into Goodreads when I take them back to the library so I can see what I've read - it is only a partial picture this year because the library has been closed for most of the sitting weeks, so I've read a lot of books that were borrowed, second-hand, bought from shops or even (gasp) books I already own and just haven't read yet. I'll put the list in here for anybody who cares, it is the usual very random mix. A bit more science fiction / fantasy than usual, and some of them were very good. I loved the Tamsyn Muir books (final in the trilogy due out next year I think) - brilliant world building but also there is something about her humour that I just clicked with - turns out she's from HOWICK so that explains it. It's a kiwi thing. I also loved the book by Susanna Clarke, and John Burnside was an absolute find, as you can see I think I read everything the library had. 

Other than that the books by Benjamin Wood, Charlotte Wood, Ian Pears and Benjamin Markovits are still memorable. This is my test, if I can't remember anything about the book at this point then it probably was good not great - and if a book isn't even good then I don't finish it and it doesn't go on this list. With the exception of the book by Inga Simpson - I used to work with Inga and I kind of hate-finished it because she was a bit high-maintenance and it comes through quite clearly in this memoir. And I don't know if I'll bother reading anything else by Sally Rooney. But other than that I can say that all the books on my list were worth finishing, which is quite a compliment in a lockdown year of very limited focus. 

Shards of Earth (The Final Architects Trilogy, #1)	Adrian Tchaikovsky
How to Be Both	Ali Smith
Rules of Civility	Amor Towles
Autonomous	Annalee Newitz
Christmas in Austin	Benjamin Markovits
The Ecliptic	Benjamin Wood
The Reader	Bernhard Schlink
Life after Truth	Ceridwen Dovey
The Weekend	Charlotte Wood
The Word Ghost	Christine Paice
You Think It, I'll Say It	Curtis Sittenfeld
The Song of the Orphans (Silvers, #2)	Daniel Price
Influx	Daniel Suarez
Slade House	David Mitchell
Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002	David Sedaris
Square Haunting	Francesca Wade
The Amazing Mrs Livesey	Freda Marnie Nicholls
The Golem And The Djinni	Helene Wecker
Arcadia	Iain Pears
Understory: a life with trees	Inga Simpson
Killing Adonis	J.M. Donellan
Ashland & Vine	John Burnside
Havergey	John Burnside
A Summer of Drowning	John Burnside
The Secrets of Wishtide	Kate Saunders
Single, Carefree, Mellow	Katherine Heiny
The Quick	Lauren Owen
Inscape	Louise Carey
The Guest List	Lucy Foley
The Midnight Library	Matt Haig
Star-Crossed	Minnie Darke
How We Talk: The Inner Workings of Conversation	N.J. Enfield
Love, Nina: Despatches from Family Life	Nina Stibbe
My Life with Bob	Pamela Paul
Coventry: Essays	Rachel Cusk
The Sunlit Night	Rebecca Knight
Between Them: Remembering My Parents	Richard Ford
City of Blades  (The Divine Cities, #2)	Robert Jackson Bennett
Normal People	Sally Rooney
Oligarchy	Scarlett Thomas
The Choke	Sofie Laguna
Piranesi	Susanna Clarke
Harrow the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #2)	Tamsyn Muir
Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, #1)	Tamsyn Muir
I Shall Wear Midnight	Terry Pratchett
The Master Bedroom	Tessa Hadley
Agency	William Gibson

A quieter week

Last week was not at all quiet - four lunches, two morning teas and a dinner out for the recent graduate! And that is the end of school, how peculiar. They limited the graduation to one guest per child so I dropped him off and then my husband sat through the ceremony and dropped him in at work after. I watched it over the wonders of the internet, so no photos, sadly.

He got top of the class in beginners Spanish and also got a principal's award, not academic, just for being awesome, which I think is pretty cool (the principal gives out two a year). He was the student rep on the school board for both years, and the principal said some lovely things about him. Now we just wait for results, which are out in January, but he has been accepted into his uni course (theatre! could definitely see that one coming) via audition so the actual score isn't important any more. Well, not for university, I am still quite curious.

This is a photo from the cafe at the front of the building - the only one still open for my afternoon coffee, out in the public area with the tourists. Not that there are many of them! But even a few is lovely, after the building being shut off for so long. Generally this week we are being much quieter, both at work and at home. Omicron is gathering steam in Australia so I will get my booster shot tomorrow but otherwise what can you do. I am already trying to stay away from people and have no plans for travelling anywhere other than the beach ... I can't see anyone being interested in a lockdown over the holidays. 

More unrealistic fish

Sorry Dad, my failures to accurately render fish fins continue on. This was a course by Felix Scheinberger who probably has one of my favourite styles of all the artists so far. It is loose and interesting and includes people scenes and city scenes which I prefer to landscapes, or abstract things. But they are harder to do, and he makes it look so easy! Anyway we did do fish, soft-edged fish in washes and hard-edged fish in pen.

We copied paintings of people for a while, trying to use different styles, I tortured a Rita Angus self-portrait for an evening. These are the best ones, you don't want to see the mutant colour pencil versions. 

And then a building with a wild-haired lady in front of it. With typography.

I had a longer look through all of his work, and I love so much of it! To capture a city scene  with buildings and people ... I had a go at creating a couple of my own but they were pretty appalling. In the end I just copied one of his of an old house line for line - it's still not very good but better than when I try to make it up myself. 

Most of the time I am just cross with how shit I am. I don't remember feeling this with quilting or weaving but maybe I did at the beginning and I've forgotten. But hey ho, on we go....

A bit tired

We are all getting a bit end-of-the-year tired ... or maybe it's just me. I did some christmas shopping on Sunday and I am NOT crowd-fit at all. It was exhausting and overwhelming and so many people! I mostly just bought stocking stuffers for the kids and various chocolate-related items for work, nothing particularly difficult ... but I still had to have a little lie down at home afterwards. Pathetic.

We put the christmas tree up as well - not that the children were interested - my husband and I did it. Left to myself I wouldn't bother, but it is pretty with the lights, and it was quite nice just to be able to put the ornaments wherever without worrying about pets or children. 

I went for a walk Saturday morning but had to do a slightly shorter version, so walked past where I used to work twenty years ago and they were knocking it down! And, the strangest thing, see where they are knocking over exactly as I walked past, was where I used to sit - up on the fourth floor. How is that for a coincidence, I haven't been down that street for years, and I got the grand finale. It was when I worked for the Audit Office and I HATED it. Soooooooo boring - I think performance auditors are born, not made - and some very odd people. I stopped my walk and watched it all smash into the ground, with much delight. 

Saturday afternoon we went and looked at a house for sale out in the countryside around Canberra. We are thinking that instead of waiting until retirement to get onto acreage we could do it now and buy something close rather than down the coast; we could bear a half hour commute into work for a few years until we retire, and the kids would cope. And then we would still be able to have beach holidays, when we need a break. From our retirement. Anyway the location was absolutely beautiful but the house was unnecessarily fancy and will be well beyond our (pensioner) budget. But there are more modest houses out in that part of the world and we will keep an eye out .... 

Best Domestika so far

I think this course is my favourite Domestika so far - Creative Watercolor Sketching for Beginners by Laura McKendry. It went into a bit more depth and got a bit more creative than some of the others - which are good but you just really do one thing. This was way more interesting and she had us doing some different things. The results aren't fabulous but the process was great fun and a bit mind-stretching, which is probably the point. 

This is where we used watercolour to make random patterns on paper, then cut it into shapes and glued up a collage. 

This is where we used monochrome to do light and dark to show planes (as in faces) and planes (as in ... planes). It was quite enlightening.

This is make blobs on the paper and turn it into things, then tell a story with those things. With some glued up collage bits too. Why not.

This is draw an ordinary item close to hand with lines and outlines. I had a reel of cotton, how surprising.

This is a favourite and I would love to be able to replicate this more broadly - for this I just copied what she had done - how to take blocks of colour and create objects. The colours in this are put down as just rectangles or blocks but the finished product is most clearly birds. I love the look of this, and have tried to do it on other things, but can't figure it out. Yet. 

Random unrealistic fish in random unrealistic colours. The idea was to use 'un-complementary' colours for deliberate ugliness. I succeeded. 

Random unrealistic fish in monochrome. With splatter. As you can see, nothing particularly fabulous resulted but heaps of fun to do and I can say I learned something with each technique. I have another course of hers in the queue which I am looking forward to.

La Nina

We are officially in for a La Nina summer - cool and damp. Normally this would be a bad thing, but we are still scarred by the Black Summer ... cool and damp sounds perfect. Long may it last. So my weekend at the beach which should have been full summer (it's December already!) was more like a winter break.

I went for a nice long walk but didn't take my jacket off the whole time. There were a few surfers but not many swimmers and the water did not look inviting. I was not tempted at all. It was also windy. 

I brought my loom down, warped it up and did some weaving. I had to look up how to do it, it's been so long, but it was a nice change to work with yarn again. I didn't do much though, in fact I didn't do much of anything, it had been a long parliamentary week with some extra late nights and a lot of shouting. And also with one covid case  ... we were all looking forward to meeting back up in person but no, back to videoconferencing until they've done all the contact tracing.

I bought an advent calendar of coffee capsules from the grocery store, which gave me possibly the most thrilling moments of the weekend. What will it be? Can I tell if they taste any different? (generally no). Other than that it is end of year stuff; we seem to have finished the school formals - there were three different schools this year. My children have friends and they all like to go to each other's formals ... luckily they also are happy to wear thrifted or borrowed clothes, so no major expense involved. Graduation next week and then that will be school! Done!

Lights!

The lights we ordered back in July eventually wound their way by container ship from Denmark and the electrician put them up today! We were a bit nervous because spaces and sizes can be very deceptive, and did we like them after all when we got them out of the box ... but they are great and we are very happy. It is hard to see but they have a slightly textured pearlised finish. They came with a set of white cotton gloves to wear when you are putting them in, at which our electrician (that does all the work in our very very dodgy house and has for many years) laughed and laughed and did NOT wear the pristine white cotton gloves. I don't know what goes on in Denmark but Australian tradies take a more robust approach to fixtures and fittings.

They are LEDs and really quite bright. We removed the dimmer switch because it didn't work with LEDs and we never use it - does anyone use dimmer switches? That is what lamps are for. 

This is them turned off. They are quite low (although still seven foot off the ground, no-one is going to be banging their heads) but we can live with it for a while and decide later if we want to raise them. We also got extra big fluorescent lighting in the shed which is amazing and we should have done it ten years ago. BUT you can now see the level of shit we keep in the shed. It is reasonably clean but I think a good 80% can be chucked.

Here is the shot from the kitchen - it makes that room so much warmer and more welcoming than the gloomy broken track lighting. See the nutribullet air fryer on the bench? Absolutely legendary, we are still learning all the things you can do in an air fryer.

In painting news I did some more Ana Victoria copies, outlining with a darker paint instead of the white gouache. It looks good, although the problems with brush control and line thickness remain. 

She did a poster with different effects in circles, which is kind of cool so I copied it, but I don't know how much further you could take this.

Chugging along

We got our water bill yesterday - in the last quarter we used DOUBLE the amount of water that we did for the same quarter last year - so I think our hot water cylinder has been leaking for quite some time. It was certainly rusted through at the bottom, so we are very glad to see it go, and the new heat pump thingy installed outside. Unfortunately they had to reduce the water temperature to the legal maximum (outrageous!) so now the shower pressure is much lower, and it wasn't great to begin with, especially upstairs. Luckily I grew up in a house with the worst water pressure in any house I have ever lived in, ever, so I'm not too bothered (Dad you perhaps should not boast about your 1969 cistern, you should perhaps get rid of it....).

I have still been doing the good watercolour classes and learning how to actually do things properly. I'm not sure the results are much better but as an Australian teacher she certainly knows her way around a gum tree. The top one is the class task and the bottom one is the homework, loosely based on the local golf course. Too many mid-level trees, needs more contrast. 

The weekend was rainy and quiet. Both children have (separately) headed off with friends for mini beach holidays, at camp grounds or someone else's house. Number two is enjoying his retail job although five hours straight leaves him exhausted :) Parliament is raggedly bickering its way through the final sitting week. We haven't picked out an oven yet but air fryers are amazing!!!! So far everything we have tried has worked out amazingly. I am a convert.

Una loca artista mexicana

I finished up with odd looking rabbit and cat people - although I might revisit those backgrounds, I love the japanese-y feel but I was getting frustrated with how bad mine were - and have moved onto hippy style galaxies with Ana Victoria Calderon. She is Mexican and does a lot of illustration like greeting cards and things. Lots of flowers, but this course was about making galaxies to use as backgrounds.

So much fun. I had to go and buy some white gouache and some Indian ink, which was awesome, and then you drop it in and the strangest things happen! And splatter the gouache at the end with an old toothbrush, like little stars. 

There were a number of exercises leading up to the galaxies with strange jellyfish and flowers. She outlines many of her objects in either darker lines or white gouache. I tried to imitate the white gouache ones but I don't have the brush control ... or the control of the consistency of the paint. It has to be exactly the right amount of opaque, and mine is extremely variable, as you can see. 

This is a copy of one of hers that wasn't included in the course but I thought it was interesting - very Mexican! Number two son says it's not cultural appropriation if I have paid the artist as a teacher (which I have, just not exactly for this) and I'm not making any profit from it. He is my go-to ethical adviser on issues which may get me Cancelled. 

I cannot imagine doing a lot of galaxy paintings but the way that the ink and the watercolours work together is extremely cool. Calderon does a lot of typography with it - mostly inspirational sayings but hey - and I think perhaps a short course in calligraphy might be on the cards. Might have to buy a new brush.

Home ownership, such a delight

We had a damp and quiet weekend - drove the children around - went for a short walk between showers - did some slightly unnecessary shopping - played around with paints a fair bit - moved clothes between the washing machine and the dryer - read some books ... Very peaceful. Here are some kangaroos on the golf course refusing to get out of my way.

In a fit of over-achieving Canberra has managed to vaccinate 104% of its over-12 population so we're not interested in covid numbers any more, although people still have it. One of the local radio announcers asked Twitter why Canberrans think the vaccination take up was so high and my favourite was something like "we work in government and know that any global conspiracy is well beyond the capabilities of our elected representatives" which strikes me as both accurate and insightful.

This morning I was reading about soaring house prices in Canberra - and it is ridiculous, up 22.5% in the last year with a median house price of just over $1million - feeling smug because I have a house already ... so it decided to take its revenge in the form of the termite inspection man who came at 8.00 am and told us by 8.10 that we have two of the three species that exist in the ACT and he was looking around for the third. And of course we have to do extreme measures immediately so our house doesn't fall down, which definitely yes but at vast expense.

And during the course of the termite inspect we realised that the hot water tank (original, from 1976) was leaking. It lives in a cupboard in our dodgy and not-approved laundry (they just filled in a bit under the house, we knew it when we moved in) and sits on three inches of gravel, which should have been a giveaway. Once the leak was noticed I remembered that the laundry floor had been unusually warm lately, but I thought it was a hot water pipe (what? suddenly appearing where one hadn't been for fifteen years?) but it actually was nice expensive coal-fired electric hot water leaking across the slab (hopefully) or gouging out the dirt underneath the slab (not good). My husband also remembered the shouting at number two son for taking all the hot water, which given the size of our hot water tank (enormous) does seem a bit unlikely. In hindsight. 

So the quote my husband got over a year ago has been magically re-activated and they are kindly doing a rush job for us. And have I mentioned the oven? The one that came brand new in our kitchen renovation, that broke within a month and had to be replaced, that broke twice more and got fixed, and then broke again? I don't think I did mention it, because it was too disheartening. Anyway we went back to the store that sold it to us and said we weren't interested in getting it fixed or replaced because it was USELESS ... and they agreed and gave us store credit immediately, which was rather pleasing. Winning Appliances, if you're buying in Australia, they were great.

Unfortunately we got an unusual 76 cm wide oven so the options are quite limited unless we go mucking about with the benches, which we are not going to do. And unless we are willing to spend $12,000 on an oven (we are NOT, I don't even like cooking) there is basically one choice, which still manages to be a couple of thousand dollars more expensive than the one we had, so bye bye money. 

So basically the smugness I felt this morning about having a rapidly appreciating house value (theoretical money) is being squashed by the depressed feeling of having to actually fork out so much real money in fixing up house shit. Welcome to Monday.

Stink bugs

I did pick the stink bugs off the lemon tree at the beach - they are nasty little bastards all clustered around the lovely new shoots our lemon tree is gamely putting out. Despite the savage pruning it received. Here they are drowning in metho.

Brad said he picked off dozens before spraying, and I only managed seven, then sprayed again, so we should be winning against them. I tried to get a photo of the chewing they do, but I'm not sure if this is very clear.

I didn't fertilise the bamboo - don't worry Pam it is clumping bamboo not the spreading stuff. I wouldn't plant the spreading stuff! I don't even think you can legally buy it. 

The two at the end have definitely died but hey, more tomato stakes. It is a slightly strange thing to plant as a hedge but we love it - it is green, fairly low maintenance, doesn't need pruning, incredibly fast growing and it feels like a grass. We both really like the way it waves in the wind, and has a dappled shade, and lots of different shades of green. A hedge with movement ... perfect for when your neighbour builds a four metre high boat shed 50 cm from your back fence. 

Long weekend away

I took a couple of days off work to make up for the September beach week I never had and spent it in wonderful solitude at the beach. I did think that November would be better weather than September... but NO. It rained and rained and rained. All up and down the east coast to be fair - not targeted at me personally - a few inland towns are still under flood watch as the waters meander their way to the sea. This photo is on Friday morning when there was a little bit of not-rain for half an hour.

Honestly the rain was probably the best thing. I was feeling extremely low energy, and did basically nothing the first couple of days, even sewing was too much. Luckily I had brought a couple of trashy books and I played Candy Crush and looked out the window the rest of the time. At the rain. But after a couple of good nights sleep I got a bit of mojo back; made a skirt, turned out some cupboards, went for a long walk and even a swim on the last day.

The first day after the rain it was a bit cold and blowy for me although the surfers were out in force (they are in there, trust me, in the distance where the waves are).

The next day was much sunnier but there was ZERO swell! Look at that, one inch waves at the absolute most. This is very unusual for our beach, and given that the air temp was about 20 degrees (cold!) I didn't think that bobbing about with no waves to catch would be enjoyable. But on Tuesday it was a bit more active and a tiny bit warmer so I had a very nice swim. 

This is the big beach. More exposed to the rain front (southerly) so a bit rough for me, especially outside of December / January when it's unpatrolled. Big beaches need lifeguards.

Using the small pieces

Last beach weekend I felt like doing a bit of sewing, but nothing too serious, so I found some of the leftover pieces and made small things. Not super small things obviously (because they are for me to wear, and I am large) but a pair of cotton shorts, and a couple of simple tops. There was a metre or so of rayon left over from the bow shirt, so I made a little top and wore it to work. 

Bad bathroom photo, but there's not much to see. One piece front and back, bound neckline and hemmed sleeve edges and hem. Comfortable, although a little bit short. Here is the entire ensemble, I thought a shiny silver skirt would distract from any sewing errors. 

And in other work-clothing related news, we had our annual all of department meeting yesterday so I used one of my fake tattoos. Did I mention the fake tatts? A lockdown purchase from a company in Adelaide, I don't know why, they are the water soluble ones and they have literally thousands of designs. It was an impulse random thing but I have put them on a couple of times and they make me happy. I ordered enough to get free shipping (to save money hahahahaha) so they could last me quite a while.

You can see about half of it in this photo, it's about 5 cm long. My children point out that I am an adult and could get a real tattoo whenever I wanted but OUCH and TOO MUCH COMMITMENT. I am happy with ones that last two to three days.

Oh the humidity

More massive thunderstorms on the weekend but all overnight - crackers on Friday night and then again Saturday night - woke me up a few times with either the thunder or the rain. Our roof leaked again, in the usual spot, and about two dozen worms crawled in under the dining room door, which was a bit odd. The draft excluder sausage was drenched so I think water must have flooded in, carrying worms with it.

Saturday morning I went for a long and humid walk. Everything is so green. Except for the lake, which is brown with all the runoff. The ducklings were so cute, even though they paddled away as fast as I could approach them.

I like walking through the posh parts of town because they have the best traffic plantings. Check out these glorious white roses on a roundabout. Now that's what I call fancy.

My husband had a beach weekend: highlights include picking the stink bugs off the lemon tree and fertilising the bamboo. I drove the children here and there and tried not to nag about the amount of exam prep they are doing. Number two has his last exam today, which is very exciting and a little bit sad .. and his first shift on Wednesday! He is working at Aesop, which is an upmarket soap / skincare store. I do not quite understand the appeal but he is very keen. I have never been in there because I do not buy $80 jars of Camellia Nut Facial Hydrating Cream....