Colours, squared..

As promised, photos!  (Also, as perhaps implied, not very good photos.  Taken with my phone is my excuse.)

First, here is a photo of some colour inspiration - a Cotinus or smoke bush.  I have several of them growing near the front entry of the house. At this time of year they are fading from darkest red/brown into their autumn colours.  I like the vivid orange against the red brick wall, offset by the grey foliage of the curry plants on the right.

Many of the wools are a fleck or variegated.  This doesn't show up very well in such strong light, except for the gradations in the brown 'triangles'. The entire centre offset square and about half the surrounding stripes is made from 2 skeins of a variegated boucle.  I'm trying to work in some teals and a bit of grey to offset the rich red/brown tones.

Square draped over the couch, in the shadow of the screen door. Once again the direct light is bleaching out the colours a bit but you get the idea.












Creative energy is always well-spent.  What a pity I don't feel that managing paperwork, wrangling Important Things and doing the washing are creative activities!

Working on changing..

. the shoulds into coulds.

This is a much more positive mindset.  Perhaps because the sun came out after some evil chilly winds?  Perhaps because a few days of complete rest is a good idea from time to time.. perhaps because my honey smiled a lot on the weekend while we blobbed around. It's better, anyway.

I'll refrain from making a list.  Needless to say I haven't done all I could, or should.  Or can.  But when faced (yesterday) with the need to decide what to do today with my sis (my acquired sis, for those who might wonder), I ran my mind over the endless list of tasks and opted instead for 'going to the movies'.  We were lucky, the right movie was on at the right time, and thanks to some sisterly coordination were fully supplied with a sandwich and a coffee during the screening.  We went to see this and enjoyed it very much.  Not the most profound movie, not the most sophisticated, but very fine entertainment.  

And the cinema is in the same shopping centre as one of the very few yarn outlets in Canberra.  I was forced, forced I tell you, to have a look and see if I could find some of the RIGHT purple for my current craft project - a very simple crocheted square which is growing up to be a blanket for M's bed.  You want a picture?  I shall try to get one in the sunlight tomorrow and post it in the next snort.

I rarely start making something with any plan, let alone any pattern.  I look through my wool; fiddle around with some colours; pick up some needles or a crochet hook, and off I go.  I have an idea; I want to try a new stitch; I'm inspired by the colours in an artwork or a piece of fabric.  Sometimes I've bought wool because it was so beautiful I couldn't leave it behind.  Knowing that at some point I would look at the colours and feel inspired to start something.  I don't make clothes. Yet! (I've started making a sock about eleventeen times and never made it past the first five rows).

I just start making something.  It tells me it wants to be a big square or a long rectangle or a scarf or a thing made up of lots of little bits of things.  And I work on it, happily letting it emerge as itself. That is quite fascinating but what happens next is magic - it finds a home.  It finds a purpose, a new owner/admirer; it turns out to be someone's favourite colour or just the right size for their cushion or perfect for keeping in the car.  It flings itself around the neck or lap or furniture of the home it wants to go to.

Finding its home can take time but without fail, something I have loved making but don't NEED to keep, will be just the thing for someone or something (the cats of my life have notably taken over many of these woolly creations).  And off it goes!  The wonderful thing about this process is that I never feel 'oh I can't make another one of these, what will I do with it?' etc.  I KNOW it will find a home eventually. And no, I don't have great stacks of creations lying around.  Remarkably few apart from those already in service.

See?  The magic works.

Here is a drawing of a fantasy woolly object.  I've used some of my favourite colours.  Tomorrow, a photo I promise.

Should be but aren't..

This week we 'should be' celebrating.

We 'should be' finished with M's exam for the semester.

It 'should be' a calm, slow ease into the proper beginning of winter.

I 'should be' feeling that I've bested the paperwork for now.

(Sone of) The dollars we are owed from the insurance company 'should be' already paid.

The parade of medico-legal appointments 'should be' easing.

Nup.

So...
this is a bad drawing of how I feel.  It kind of looks like a miasma melting into some failed caramel fudge.

  Yep.

Read this...

.. in a very small font... so that no pesky interfering gods hear it.. 
Today we had a (small) win with the bank ..

The journey to mortgage-land has been rough, long, bumpy and nothing if not full of billabongs, culs-de-sac and backwards movements in all directions.

A few days ago I signed dozens of bits of paperwork and was told 'this is it'.  I've heard that before but this time it seemed to me that with my autograph all over things, it might mean something.

Nup.

MORE bits of paper required.  A certificate of currency (don't most people call that paper money?).  Registered thingies with the land titles office.  Double-header falling into a bureaucratic minefield of 'they said you have to', 'our lawyers said', 'it's required'... and such.  I had another request for such things this morning; my best (ie least aggressive, furious or bleep-laden) response was to turn my phone off.

Several hours later (and an/other huge medico-legal meeting over with) I turn the phone back on.  Many missed calls from Blocked.  Blocked rings me a lot. Mostly, Blocked is very shy and refuses to leave a message.  I get an auto-phone message saying 'An unknown caller from unknown number rang you and didn't leave a message'. Well, yeah..

But, but, I did get a call from The Bank Boss with a big apology. Apparently this week's paperwork requests are all wrong and the big boss never knew and there were bloods on the office carpet and quivering minions hiding in the shredder.. This is a easier thing to hear than all those reasons why *I* had to spend hours doing more things with no guarantee it would go smoothly.  I just sort of can't keep doing this stuff.  There be only one of me!!!  Anyway TBB also made a promise to front up at our place on Monday, bearing PROPER papers and another promise that after signing, yes of COURSE all those nice dollars will be ours, all ours.  A nice big debt to start off the week like good little (somewhat nervous) consumers.

And THAT means..

maybe

maybe  (shhhh)

possibly  (cross everything)

just about  (hopehopehope)

the house mods might start.

Don't gasp until I put up a photo of something REAL.  Like a bit of dug-up garden.. or a half-torn down wall.. or even a pile of builder's sand.  OOoooh, maybe even a concrete mixer!!  I like them.

We
shall
see.

This week brought to you by the quiet tears of a anguished angel watching over my shoulder; the memory of train doors closing in Paris (where my baby is right now, and where we were a little while ago, having a very different life, and we were very happy there);  aaaand the ghost of a suggestion of some Gucci, sprayed on my coat on a better day.

UPDATE: Yesterday we signed more zillions of papers. We took them to be witnessed and later the bank person rang to say the release of the first batch of dollars was available.  This cost us money!!  Nice one bank.  But then again, nice one, bank!


This update brought to you by eau-de-hydrotherapy pool, the hottest water I've ever swum in.  I am therapeutically dehydrated but fine.

imho...

Wickedness and flummery!!

Why is it that when it comes to the sharp end of managing dollars for education, institutions often look first and fiercely at 'cost-effectiveness' and 'economic rationalism' to make cuts?

Why is it that the arts therefore suffers as a discipline so badly?  What happened to the cultural value of every facet of the arts and the crucial role it plays in our lives?  Where would we be without music, beauty, vision, appreciation, absorption, discussion and anarchy?  We are all exposed to aspects of art the moment we open our eyes, ears, minds.. our homes, our furniture, the sounds we hear both man-made and natural, the colours, the textures, the print material, the ideas and thoughts we have are all shaped by our surroundings and what we bring to them as humans.

Today there was a rally at the ANU to allow the community to express its outrage at the recently announced drastic funding cuts to the School of Music.  I went along to add my voice, such as it is, to the assembly.

It is a total mystery to me that a Power That Be is prepared to put a cost on the value of teaching music.  Or, more to the point, to put a cost on TAKING AWAY resources and opportunities from within the school.  How can the PTB calculate the value of this?

There is a whole huge debate about the specifics, and what the vision is and could be, for the School. I won't get into that. I just want to have my say about the mystery of why economics and debt and business management are somehow the driving forces behind providing cultural capital, which is a concept not a service or a sale-able article.  I'm sure that the hard-working students who take on law, or computer science, or physics are perfectly able to work with concepts and apply them to how we as humans live and interact with each other and the environment.  So why is there this bias?  I don't suppose any of us would easily throw away the rights and protection we have in law; would truly like to try to live in today without the help of computers and programming and all the millions of ways they facilite processes; would prefer to throw away the collective value of learning in any discipline.  What we don't directly experience is not cultural refuse!

So..

I saw this today and it sums up quite a lot of what I think and feel about this: