Vibrant embroidery through heavy eyelids

The last time I moved house I didn't sleep right for about 2 months. With my impending next move now less that 3 weeks away, the sleeplessness has just begun again. Oh, boy. The upside is I was done at work by 1.45pm and have had a blissful afternoon of veging out in front of TV of varying quality ranging from the crap (Entertainment Tonight and The Bold and the Beautiful - each full of freakishly proportioned semi-humans) and excellent (SBS Food Safari Pakistan edition. Mmm - Yum! and Seachange - I never saw it all those years ago).

The other lovely thing I've been doing this afternoon is exploring the world of Takashi Iwasaki's art and in particular his embroidery. I'm an instant fan!

Nyokinyokinijiirokousen by Takashi Iwasaki
Embroidery floss and canvas (hand embroidered)

Traffic Jam by Takashi Iwasaki

Mixed media on paper

Learning Auslan

For about 6 weeks now I've been attending Auslan classes at the Canberra Institute of Technology (CIT). Auslan is Australian Sign Language - the language of the Deaf community in Australia. (No, sign language is not universal - there are different sign languages all over the world, although Auslan is related to British Sign Language, in a similar way as Australian English is related to British English.) I am absolutely loving it. Our teachers are amazing and manage to make the 5-6 hours of classes a week fly by. I've been able to slot comfortably into a second-semester class with other students who have been learning the language for the past 6 months. I've been gobsmacked at this because it's been 9 years since I last studied Auslan and that was only one year at La Trobe University in Melbourne.

Words like proper nouns and technical terms are often spelled out quickly in Auslan according to their English spelling. "Reading" another person's fingerspelling is one of the skills that takes the longest to acquire, but it seems like I've picked up where I left off with this, which is wonderful.

Here is the two-handed alphabet in Auslan. It's the same as the British sign language alphabet. Some sign languages, such as the ones used in France, Ireland and America, for example only use one hand.

You can look up other signs at the Auslan Sign Bank, which is essentially an online dictionary.

Most people want to know why I am learning Auslan. For me it's not because I need to communicate with any people I know who already use the language as is the case for some of my classmates. I'm doing it because I think it's a beautiful language that for some reason it makes my soul happy. Maybe one day in the future I will have a professional use for it, but for now I'm happy just learning.

Exciting news

Back at the blog again after my first extended unexplained absence. For a while there it didn't please me to blog, but nothing much was pleasing me for a couple of weeks there. But things have turned around, as they always do and so this post is about a couple of things which have made me happy recently.

1. It's spring. Thank God winter is going away. This week, right on cue, flowers on the plum tree outside my bedroom window bloomed and I wasn't the only one to notice. I watched this Crimson Rosella munch flowers for at least 10 minutes this morning.

2. Here's the best news though: I bought a house! Yes, my months of househunting are finally over. There will be no more agonising over whether items on my wish list were really in the "must have" column or whether they were merely "desirable". There will be no more soul-searching over questions like, How much space in the garden do I really need? Would I really ride to work all that way every day? Is it really stupid to pay nearly 5% of my income in body corporate fees? Will my guests really mind sleeping in a second bedroom that is so small it could be mistaken for a cupboard? After seeing more than 40 homes before this and putting in 4 previous offers on other places and bidding in an auction, I finally nailed a sale! It took me about 3 seconds to know that I liked it and about 10 minutes to make an offer on the spot. Move in at the end of October. Can't wait! Now if I could just conjure up the same situation with a man...

Lovely north-facing garden.

Lovely sunny lounge room.

3. Had a good old scavenge at Second-hand Sunday today for stuff to put in the new house. Best find was a gilt-style picture frame around an oil painting that I don't really care for. So I'll carefully remove the picture and replace it with one of my photos, I think.


Then there are these awesome gum boots. Too small for me, but I have someone in mind who might like them.

Mistakes are part of life

This scarf is the first thing I've ever knitted which will have a price tag on it. For that matter it's the first piece that's going to be part of an exhibition too. So that's all pretty exciting. I'm donating it to the Breast Cancer Neck Decorations exhibition through Craft ACT. So if you like it, you can buy it, although I don't know exactly when or where because the date and locale for the exhibition is still a bit up in the air... Check the blog link above for updates, I guess.


The yarn is hand-spun and hand-dyed Annie Gregg 100% mohair from Tumut, NSW. It was really itchy before I soaked it for blocking and thankfully the itchy bits have relaxed now. I love the colours which I call "rainbow and astroturf"! Anyway, the title of this post came about because this scarf started off as Taphophile's Short Circuit scarf but I misread the pattern and it became something different and I love it! It's fairly short because I didn't have very much yarn. I had some more in a slightly different dye lot and tried to kid myself that it would be ok and added it on. But even though others assured me it was ok, I couldn't live with it. The shade change glared out at me everytime I looked at it so I ripped it back and it is now a short woman's scarf or one for a girl instead. I've priced it at $40. Does that seem about right? It is gorgeous!

Yummy card I made

My grandparents, who live in super North Wales, are having their 70th wedding anniversary this week. How about that, eh? 70 years of marriage! They're both in their early 90s now. Here is a picture of them at my cousin Clare''s recent wedding to Ash, who will both have to live to over 100 to achieve the same feat.

Anyway, while staying up until the ridiculously wee hours last week to watch the first two sets of the "Wombledon" men's finals (wasn't it exciting? - I wish I could've watched it all but it went on for 9 hours with rain breaks), I made them this card. I like to make cards for people when I have time instead of buying them one. Much more personal. I'm actually really happy with this one. It's just silver pen on purple card - pretty easy really.


Certainly not as good as Jejune's gorgeous greeting cards, some of which I just had to buy at the Old Bus Depot Market's last Sunday. Well done to all who organised a gorgeous stand.

Rant: What not to do on a first date

Don't talk that much about your ex-wife
Don't ask me for too many details about my last ex-boyfriend
Don't ring me when I am 3 minutes late meeting you
Don't email me with all the things that your ex-wife says are wrong with you
Don't invite me to a movie for a first date - you can't get to know someone sitting silently beside them
Don't then talk during the movie
Don't awkwardly pat me like a dog when it's time to say goodbye.

Honestly, I don't really know why I went. Actually I do - it was the whole getting back on the horse thing and I'm proud of myself for doing it, even though it was all somewhat excruciating.


On the up-side, Mamma Mia! the movie rocked. I love Meryl Streep in anything and this shows us she can do singing and dancing as well as acting. Mr Darcy...I mean Colin Firth, another favourite, is in it too. There is even a nice wet white shirt reference in there. Pierce Brosnan is the male lead. I have a problem with him - always seems a bit wooden (is it just me?) and his singing doesn't quite cut it. Oh, well. Overall, though, it is great fun. Highly recommended.

Semantics of stash and a literary dinner party

My housemate J comes up with the most original ideas. On Sunday night she held a dinner party, to which invitees had to bring 300 words of creative writing on the theme of 'the moment'. Despite feeling like I was back at school and doing homework on a Sunday afternoon beforehand, it was actually a really cool event. 12 people brought along some really great pieces of writing. Each piece was read aloud by someone other than the author (with authors remaining anonymous) and then we all voted on our top 3. Trying to kill two birds with one stone, my 300 words were a re-purposing of my blog entry from the weekend on my stash. Because I didn't think non-knitters would know what a stash was, I ended up changing the motif from knitting to books, but before I decided on that change of direction I went looking in the Oxford English Dictionary for its definition of the word 'stash'. Here are the definitions:
Stash
[verb] Store (something) safely and secretly in a specified place. Their wealth had been stashed away in Swiss banks.
[noun] 1. A secret store of something. The man grudgingly handed over a stash of notes.
A quantity of an illegal drug, especially one kept for personal use: one prisoner tried to swallow his stash.
2. (Dated.) Hiding place or hideout.

You can see that the word is intimately related to secrecy with a splash of danger and a hint or illegality in there. This leads me to the issue of the excellent no-guilt stash manifesto by Bells and Amy. For those of you who took the pledge, how is that working out for you? Has the guilt eased since you signed up? Was there a euphoric honeymoon period and then a back-to-reality return to guilt? Well, I reckon that what we all need is a new word. Stash is just too loaded a term. So let's put on our thinking caps and come up with a more liberating term.

Post your suggestions as a comment. I've made some quick but crap suggestions here so you get the idea. I'm sure there are some very talented wordsmiths out there who can do much, much better (acronyms welcome) or perhaps you know of some guilt-free synonyms already in use.

piles of furry soft joy
yarn sanctuary
RBY: reserve bank of yarn
sanity insurance collection
mood enhancement storage scheme