Poppalina

Crafty business

Some friends have a fashion label, Baraka, and a new store, Baraka HQ. They are in the process of making the store the place to be for all kinds of things besides a lovely place to shop, with craft classes, a book club, story readings, movie nights and much more.

I mention this purely to show you some pictures I took of a kid's t-shirt printing class, which was going on in the next room from the book club I attended. (We were discussing Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea, if you're interested; which is very much worth a look.)

Masterpieces created on the day included: a charming lady robot,

four siblings;

but my personal favourite was the shark.

Specifically, the proportional size of the tiny fish's eye at the realization of what appears to be imminent.

In other news, last night I went to a yarn swap at the best yarn shop that sells coffee (or cafe that sells yarn) in Sydney, A Coffee & a Yarn. Ok, maybe the only, but it's still good.

I took a bag full of balls from my stash that I was unlikely to ever use, and came back with ... these:

Nice, huh?

My Mate, Bobby La

 

 

My mate, Bobby La,

Just sold her quilt

for $70,000.

 

 

 

Ofcourse, the buyer totally got a bargain. This is a hand-stitched Quilt to End All Quilts, that took some serious life-blood to make, and I don't doubt for a moment that it will hang in a major museum one day.

Still....

It's an extraordinary, (and, I suspect, unprecedented) price to receive for a craft item in Australia.

Must be some kind of record.

 

 

 

So why aren't the media onto it?

Anyone who has ever been refused exhibition space on the grounds that their work is 'too crafty' (read: not art), should take this sale as a personal triumph of Good over the Forces of Evil.

 

 

 

That said, please, tell everyone you know.

Shout it from the rooftops.

Use your media connections.

Twitter it, Facebook it.

Get your people to ring our people.

Get on the phone and tell your Mum.

If there's one thing crafters know how to do, surely...

It's communicate.

 

 

 

Because this is a victory for all of us.

And if Bobby's quilt isn't in a the Arts Section of a major newspaper by the end of the week....

 

 

 

I'm defriending the lot of you.

 

 

 

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I'm a dog, yes I am

It's not just the passing resemblance this little chap has to my own dog that made me love this ...

It's what it's saying about how she feels at different times. The Pea would, however, have a sweet, high singing voice, I'd imagine. I'm not sure what song she'd have chosen for herself.

She has always encouraged me to play a spot of Howlin' Wolf on the stereo, but I suspect that's just because she always thinks it's going to be something else.

I am, however, usually happy to oblige.

Living legend, live

A Kapinny post

Apart from this sentence, this post should be a duck-free zone. I think.

One of the benefits of living in or near to Melbourne, is that you can go and see this man appear live, quite frequently. I reckon when I lived there I would have averaged at least three or four times a year, for decades. Last night he performed at one of his very rare Sydney gigs, and I realised how much I'd been missing it, living here.



Chris Wilson is a legendary blues singer, songwriter and harp player, who is dearly loved by those of us in the know. His gorgeous voice is huge enough to plaster you to the back wall, and his harp playing is simply awesome. I've never understood why he's not massively world famous, like some of the blues greats in the US, but there you go. He doesn't tour there, because he has a family and a life in Australia, and he's not the world's best self-promoter; something to which Shula could testify. (She has been known to share the stage with him from time to time. They also share his fabulous wife, but not in a weird way.)

Last night, among several other outrageously talented musicians in the band, was the lovely Sweet Felicia, who was celebrating her birthday. She plays a mean bass and belts out a song like nobody's business. Happy Birthday Sweet Felicia!

I've always said there's no such thing as a bad Chris Wilson gig, and I've never been proved wrong. But last night I decided that if you were forced at gunpoint to rank one gig as better or worse than another, the only thing that would make a difference (other than personal song choice preferences) would be how inspired, or not, his between-song-patter was. Last night, his dry, laconic style of humour was in fine form: the hecklers-who'd-had-a-little-too-much-to-drink were loving it. And copping it.

Funnily enough, I am related to both Chris and Sweet Felicia by dog.

Thanks, Chris, for a top night out!

 

 

 

Guerrilla-edited by Shula. Some OS readers may not familiar with our National Treasure,

and we wouldn't want them missing out....

Enjoy.

Goldfrapp love

A Kapinny post

Being a lucky birthday girl last month, I had tickets to see Goldfrapp last night at Sydney's Luna Park (thanks to my clever husband). You have to love a band that takes dressing up as seriously as it takes its (seriously good) music. I want to be Alison Goldfrapp. Here's my favourite image of her, from the 2006 Supernature album. Imagine making such a fabulous thing as those peacock tail shorts. (I won't ask you to imagine wearing them.)

So last night she was wearing a sparkly, shaggy, black cape/poncho thing that made her look like a short, black Big Bird with curly blonde hair. It was more fabulous than it sounds.

Under that was a pair of sparkly black legging/platform boots that, it turned out, go all the way up, jumpsuit style. It made me wonder what it was like to put on: do the platform boots dangle off your feet until you're all the way in?

For the encores, she swapped the cape for a wispy, wired silk organza top that gave her an angel wing silhouette, followed by a long-haired jacket, with the hair shaded from pale pink down to bright red. The first encore was a note-perfect 'Utopia', from Felt Mountain (2000): no mean feat, considering the previous hour's robust singing, with its operatic soprano-style beginning.

Totally gorgeous.

Toy Society

I dare say that you're all familiar by now with the Toy Society and it's methods. It's an ingeniously simple concept. Toys are handmade, packaged, and hung in a place where someone will find and take them home. Street art. An act of love.

 

The kids did a drop yesterday, delivering toys to a particularly fun-challenged street in Footscray, a working class suburb of Melbourne. Most of this neighbourhood is transit and emergency accomodation, comprised of refugees from war-torn areas around the world. Almost no one speaks English, and is even less likely to have internet access.

The street is always full of people just hanging around outside, and the drop gathered an audience quickly. People were quite nervous, at first, about what the kids were doing. They were reluctant to get involved, wanting to know what the catch was. Much gesticulating was required to convey that it really was a gift.

Eventually, one little boy took the plunge (a particular favourite of Mym's, so she was pretty pleased about this).

   

Check out this smile, as the penny drops.

  

Beautiful.

And a fitting parting gesture from us.

Thanks, Bianca.

Immortalised

Probably the most popular post I have ever written is this one. Even after all this time, people hit it, link to it, and download the pattern, every day. The photos have been featured on Flickr Explore, it's still under discussion at Ravelry, and people across the globe have knitted up the Scariest Balaclavas in the Known Universe (scroll down for proof), no doubt freaking the permanent hell out of anyone unfortunate enough to bear witness.

All this from a post that took me maybe five minutes to write. The ones I labour, agonise and cry over are, for the most part, residing in the Where Are They Now file. But anyway...

Today, the piece de resistance. By a graffiitti artist in Leeds, UK (click to view large):

  

Specifically, this person, from here.

Fantastic.

Totem

Personally, I find the Melbourne Fringe the most groovy festival of all, and that's really saying something in a city that has a festival for whatnot or other about every 5 minutes.

So I donned the lippy and my best black clothes and went in to Fed Square for the launch of Totem.

On account of the fact that I was in it.

But there were so many people, I couldn't see my bear anywhere.

 

Seriously, I couldn't find her.

   

I looked up...

 

But she was not there.

I looked down, and became momentarily distracted by Andricon Girl's dolls. I've admired her work for years.

 

I looked and looked, until I had quietly worked myself into a po-faced frenzy, convinced that they had lost her, or maybe left my bear out because she wasn't cool and groovy enough.

But then the crowd gaped just enough for me to catch sight of her. There she was, right in the middle of everything, residing comfortably on a quilt on the floor.

Such was my relief that I promptly burst into tears, and had to quickly nick outside for a fag.

After all, it's not every day you see your work in a Real Live Exhibition, and realise that you really did grow up to be an artist.

However, this crying like a girl at the drop of a hat thing?

Has definitely got to stop.

Totem - Dolls with Soul. Federation Square Atrium, Melbourne. Until October 12th.

Dream is Over

I have wanted to die.

I have felt like I was dying.

But I did not, of course. Too easy, I guess.

It's just that five years of waiting, and loving, and shutting up and keeping my cool and hoping against hope that things would work out in a fairytale-ending kind of way turned out to be a complete bust. As it was always going to. But I had to try. It's what I believed in. It's what my daughter believed in. Even the dog was in on it. Now, of course, I just feel like an idiot. A demoralized, exhausted fool, who stubbornly refused to even plan for this eventuality, on the grounds that it might have undermined my faith.

I have no plans, immediate or otherwise, to commit suicide. And that's On The Record, guys, so you can stop calling me. Not that I don't appreciate it, you understand. But if I could have a dollar for every time I hear that anxious tone in people's voices.... 

Actually, I used the time when I wasn't crying, or taking the Lord's name most grievously in vain, to finish the Big Bear for the exhibition.

 

  

So, it would appear that Life Goes On. But we are leaving where we currently live and will be heading off into the Wide Blue Yonder just as soon as we possibly can. Well, sort of, anyway. Heading for a more rustic, poetic life, no doubt attended by absurd levels of bone-crushing poverty. Because we are Proud Like That.

And though we may find ourselves sincerely regretting the absolute finality of our actions from time to time - especially while I'm sitting in the queue at Centrelink waiting to hear what options I haven't got to choose from - we will still, if only in our hearts, be free.

And that's a Good Thing.

And I'll be taking my brand new laptop with me, of course. Thank God for the blog, and all who read it.

And thank you to Judi, for taking the photos.

Family Values

I have it on Good Authority that there will be cupcakes.

See you there, Melbourne Groovers.