Knock, knock

Anyone home?

We went to Open House Melbourne on Sunday. I'm so glad we got around to it!

Open House Melbourne is a weekend of open buildings. Special places, amazing places, eco spaces, places not normally open to the public.

We queued for the State Library tour of the elephant lift (for moving around that spare elephant) - a 1920s wooden panelled lift with, we were told, idiosyncracies.

We peered over the bannisters at the compass rose on the floor under what once was a Foucault's pendulum. Pendulum now lost and, as someone said, probably holding down papers on someone's desk. Beautiful staircase.

Then down into the catacombs, surprisingly bright for channels running into dirt floored wasteland for dead office chairs. Everyone's favourite garage.

And out into the rain of China Town, for a tasty Grill'd burger and a gentle stroll down to Myer for the mural hall, sixth floor ballroom and hall for streamlined 30s types to affect a bored moue at fashion parades. Meh. Darling.

Playing with the mirrors in Myer's Mural Hall. 

Finally, everyone's favourite haunted tin shed -- the portable iron houses of the 1850s still in South Melbourne on a fascinating old street.

Portable iron house, c. 1850, South Melbourne. 

A lovely day. Three very different faces of Melbourne. Hurrah.

 

View from the freeway bridge as we leave the sunny city. 

Away...

Painting!

I was struggling with the concept of a post a day, when I realised that the thing I really wanted to be doing was a painting a day. Just like my friend Eileen's been doing with dedication and charm! So I've been just over there at the table sploshing and splodging and trying to learn. Here's one of the efforts.

This was painted after a quick late night sketch from a photo we took in Malta a few years ago. I had a lovely time flicking through photos in the album and thinking about that trip. Bright memories of pale yellow stone houses baking in the sun, dark shaded alleys, cyprus trees and the most delicious honey and fresh-baked bread I've ever tasted. 

Memory lane is fun, and memory lane with scribbles and paint splots is even more enticing.

This time last year

On exactly this day last year, this is where I was:


In front of an amazing chunk of history, an effect of architecture, a monument of achievement. A cathedral like this one is not just a cathedral, a building: it's lives and deaths, laws and mystery, religion, belief, families and locality. Ego. Perhaps baser impulses of envy, pride or greed.

This time last year we took the train from Rome to Orvieto. On the tourist trail, I was suspiciously holding myself aloof, even while we piled out of the train station and whooshed up the funicular carriage, climbing the rock to the town.

Our self-catering place was in the unpopular end of town. It required a bumpy journey on a little bus with our big bags - all of which made us grin with glee because it cut out the loud Americans. And I hate loud American tourists in Italy. Sorry. But it's true. Luckily, they won't -- or don't -- walk, so we were spat out by our surly bus driver at a nondescript little square, some judicious directions in improving-but-rusty Italian leading us down an alleyway, to a door, a long dark staircase upwards, and some negotiation.

'You talk into the speaker phone.'

'No, you.'

Poke.
Nudge. Scuffle.

'Argh.'

BZZZ>>crackle-crackle<< -'Eh, umm, Buon Giorno....' We explain. We think we are understood. We start to rattle and babble along in broken words, but she understands: we are the Australianos, but he lived here in Italy, when he was small. Short. Little. Piccolo. The Italian flows around us, long streams of which we gather, 'How lovely! You are welcome. But you were once small! (a poked finger toward his tall frame, and much laughter) My daughter comes soon. She speaks English.' The creased old face of a nice woman, late in life meeting and interested in strangers, much though they present a difficulty of language, perhaps slightly worrying. We're all right. Paying guests who are no problem and who even understand Italian. We get big grins.

Late that night, still jetlagged from the flight from Australia three days earlier, we drift through the deserted town. Sit on cold stone benches. Sigh at the soft light. Stare intently at scultpured reliefs on the cathedral front, carved when the world was young, over 600 years ago. Hands were once alive.




It's like filling up on a long drink of water - or milk, and feeling the sustenance of the art and the power of the images filling you back up again. Yes, this is why I studied art history. This is the Renaissance and its tangled precedents and the master artisans of Europe. The Christian history and its worldly remnants. Myths and legends: of the master craftsmen, now, as much as of the religious rites they depicted.



It's hard to explain my love of Italy and how I feel more alive there, but this comes close. It's something in the comfort of inspiring but understood old friends: art works that I have loved and studied with curiosity since the first days when I heard of them, and saw them in books.


Sometimes life is quiet and sometimes it's loud. Some days, like the day exactly a year before today, it fills you with a richness you can feast on for decades.

The Old House

I bet you thought I'd stopped with the old house theme, but like any obsession, once you get started it just gets rolling. Or perhaps it's because I haven't taken the time to sit and draw more of the images I'm collecting.

Check out this bike! Apparently the sign in the window advertises rice vinegar. Mm. I bet it's a food shop selling interesting, wonderful things. Can't you almost smell the musty soy-sauce aroma?

Perhaps it's time for some breakfast.

There hasn't been enough sewing going on around here recently. As if I am going to say, 'Gosh, what lucky me, I've had plenty of sewing time". No, not likely. I finally sat down and started making my Christmas presents. With most of my family in Canada, I've already missed the post, but I'm sure they'll forgive me. They're gathering for the arrival of a special baby, and I'm on important baby-quilt duty.

A backing of extreme Japanese cuteness was purchased on the weekend. The Cute-o-meter went 'bing-bing-bing-Bing!' when I shook out its lovely folds of little folktale houses, bears and squirrels and little dogs.

And I've started on one of the patterns I downloaded ages ago. Soulemama's Gratitude Wrap will be going out to lucky friends this year, with my own cards tucked inside. That is, if I get organised...

---
Blogger, what is it with you and photo credits? Photo above originally uploaded by Life in Asia (aka Life in Nanning)

Houses

You'd be forgiven for wondering if this blog has become a house blog instead of a craft blog. But, you see, there are so many inspiring house photos - these three dug up from the archives of a summer visit to Charlottetown, PEI, many years ago.

This is what's inspiring my next round of drawings.

Gorgeous weatherboard: front-face and square. I look at this and count the windows: how many rooms would that place have? I'm sure there'd be enough for a craft corner somewhere in the eaves. Perhaps that little attic room with the light on?


Let's walk a little down the street. The houses sit close to the road, but it's so quiet. Not exactly genteel. Just quiet.

I love the colour-coordinated trim and the solid confidence of the houses. The cars look so small - and this is North America, so I assure you, they're not.

Steep roofs for rain and snow, plenty of space for living through cold and dark winters.

Or if you have an affection for ice cream blocks - those cardboard-wrapped blocks of ice cream that you slice, perhaps you'd have gone for the deluxe confectionery residence with marzipan frosting?



Sugar sprinkles, anyone?

On my desk: the first house drawing

(click the image above to see it a bit larger if you want)

Here's a loose interpretation of the first photo I posted yesterday. I'd like to work this into a sweet, squiggly-lined sketch to print onto my white cotton/linen mix. Perhaps.

I'm still deciding what to do with it, but I think I need to draw more versions and see what happens.

-B


There's lots more 'On my desk...' goodness, going around the creative desks of the world....

Old House near Wooldridge, Missouri

When I went to university in Canada, there was a drive we would sometimes do when someone had a car -- out to the coast down roads past what once were prosperous farms.

On the hillsides, overlooking wet fields and grey muddy inlets of the sea, often in freezing damp wind, stood houses like this one.

Fractured planes of weather boards, bright red roof. Another candidate for the sketchbook.


Old House near Wooldridge Missouri
Originally uploaded by Uncle Phooey

Italian dreams

Tonight as dinner cooked, I was looking at photos on the laptop and sighing over the pictures from Rome. I've been thinking of Italy all day, today - just can't get it out of my head....


There's been a lot of thinking going on lately, about this new adventure of mine called; "What am I going to be when I grow up?". I have been searching, and looking, and talking to people, and examining my past with the aim of finding my future: which new career will suit me best? I count myself lucky to have had an excellent first career in marketing, with 12 years of book marketing, online editing, and its associated fields. But it's time to move on, or move over - the shift might be just across the hall or it may be all the way down the street and around the block, into a new industry. Meanwhile I balance the question of time, and the necessity of finding something soon.

Beep! Beep! Where is this little blue truck going?

To the market perhaps, she loves food! Or just to hang out outside the art gallery and look painterly? She's had an interesting life so far.

As a part of this search, I'm using a book many people have recommended before, called "What Colour is Your Parachute?", by Richard Nelson Bolles. It forces you to assess and stand back from what you have been doing, what you love doing, and where you can make a living, through a series of exercises you do. Together, the exercises build up a picture of where you're going (or should be going). Best of all, the book gives you a regular shot of confidence, which can be sorely needed when the hunt goes on for several weeks, and you start to worry.

What have I discovered? Well, that there are so many things that I'm enthusiastic about, but writing, books and art are always there. Thinking, looking and learning. Being with people. I have met some fantastic people through the search through interviewing them about their jobs, and what they love (and loathe, if they want to tell me).

Like the Aussies say, it's a long road. I'm looking out the door, wondering whether to trot left or right, or just see what turns up.

Honk, HONK! With a honko-horn like this, you sure would hear me coming...

Love Fridays...

And I'm loving this one just because the sun is shining.


Blossom and sunshine.


Good sniffs wafting on the warm breeze...

Must go and enjoy said sunshine while I can, peeps! I've got a quilt to put together and some freshly-gesso'ed art journal pages for playtime later.

Happy weekend.

B

Blue and white

Sunny, breezy, blue and white day...



Magnolias down the street next to the fenced-off, abandoned house.


That blue wall recently got a new addition. Isn't she lovely? I've never met the person who painted their house blue, but I bet they're creative types.


It's so restful, I'll just stop for a break...

Quilt Hunting, part 2

Well, it wasn't only quilts that we found at the O'Keefe ranch - there was also a cowboy exhibition in the museum, with all sorts of artifacts, including these beautiful embroidered gauntlets.

The caption reads: "Beaded and fringed gauntlets were extremely popular among the cowboys of the BC Interior. These gauntlets from the South Okanagan are ornamented with beadwork and embroidery".

When I first saw the gauntlets, they reminded me of the embroidery you tend to see on Canadian First Nations' items, such as moccasins and gloves. There are a few examples in the Textile Museum of Canada, such as this embroidered and beaded decorative cuff (presumably for a coat), made by Woodlands Cree in Western Canada, c. 1880, or this pipe bag from Ontario, of about the same time.

Most of the photos in my previous post were from the Schubert House, on the ranch -- but of course, there was a main house, which was decorated in rich style as befitted a successful ranching entrepreneur of the late 1800s.


The recreated ranch house kitchen...


... with a triple Irish Chain quilt on display below the window.

The very expensive William Morris wallpaper on the stairwell and hall. Somehow this stairwell manages to be dark and rich-looking, but not gloomy. Perhaps it's because of the light wood of the banisters and the high contract on the wallpaper, or perhaps also because the staircase is freestanding and there are no supports or posts constricting the space?

You can't see it in this picture, but a judiciously-placed mirror enabled the lady of the house to glance up to the upstairs landing from the parlour - just to make sure that there were no eavesdroppers amongst the children of the house!

And finally, upstairs in one of the bedrooms, a beautiful washstand sits next to the bed with a faded beauty of a log cabin quilt. The colours of the room are cool and comfortable, but not dull - simple and charming.


- Now I want to go and make a log cabin quilt!

B

Quilt Hunting

Today we went down the road to the O'Keefe Ranch, in the dry hills north of Oyama. Worked by father and son for over 140 years, the O'Keefe was established in 1867, and it's now a heritage site with houses, a store and a church, farm machinery, proud chickens and young sheep, and of course... quilts.

Imagine my delight when I came up the steep stairs of the log cabin (the original house), to see this lovely feather applique quilt.

My memory says that this is called a Princess Feather quilt, but perhaps I've got that wrong? (There's a quilt like this in the textile collection of the American Museum in Britain, at Bath).

There were also more utilitarian quilts in the children's rooms in the Schubert House, one of the houses on the ranch. I loved the blue walls and this well-worn, slightly faded tufted bed quilt.

Downstairs, in the farmhouse kitchen, a very knowledgeable guide sat and told us the tale of the settlers coming across the whole of North America to build and live in this house. A party of descendents , some of whom had grown up in this actual house, were visiting.

The tale of their ancestors' cross-Canada journey is incredible: from the East to Fort Edmonton - two months by Red River wagon. Mrs Schubert was pregnant, and although friends begged her to stay in the East until the child was born, the couple were determined to get to the Goldfields, and they set out with their three young children, all under 5 - one in each saddle bag on their mother's horse, the other perched in front of one of the men.
Confident that they would reach the Goldfields of interior BC before winter, and before the birth, they struggled through the Rockies on foot and on horseback, all the way to the wild rivers of BC, where, starving, the settlement team finally took to rafts. -Only to discover that their river suddenly descended into a canyon and a mighty waterfall. So they walked. Three days up and around a mountain, then down again to the river to build more rafts, where, somewhere on a riverbank, not far from Fort Kamloops, their daughter was born.

I can hardly imagine the story, though we're sitting on old chairs in their kitchen, and there are toddler great-grandchildren rolling around on the grass outside. The swing screen door bangs, and when we go out into the meadow, it all looks peaceful, as if rivers and starvation and drowning never shadowed the horizon, and we know that they lived to a ripe, quiet old age.

Sunshine on The Sun

I hear that London doesn't get sunshine often. And that's borne out as truth by what I see ... rain, rain, and more rain.... with a sudden break for a spot of sunshine, shining on the aptly-named Sun Tavern.


Don't you love those two dark round windows, and the bold red and white scheme?

B

The Viking Loom

This is the name of a shop I went into yesterday, and it's fairly appropriate for a post about York.

I've been there a few times now - a good friend went to university here, and I popped up to see her when I lived in the UK - at least twice.


York is in the very north of England, and it's a main tourist attraction town for very good reason. There are many fantastic half-timbered houses, a river, a castle, and several heritage manors and guild halls from the medieval age. And of course, there's a Monster.....


York Minster is the cathedral for the city, commonly known in this family as the monster. (As in, watch out, there's a monster behind you!)

It's a fantastic building, a huge cathedral with buttresses, beautiful windows, and extravagant carving over the west doors. (And during the restoration of the 1990s, local people were used as the models for the character portraits carved in stone over the west doors, including a fine portrait of one of my friend's colleagues from the Medieval Studies department....)

But we went to York not just to see the Minster and remember good times, but also because there is a new kid in town....


... the National Quilt Museum!

I am in love.

A few years ago, when I lived in the UK, I was a member of the Quilters' Guild of the British Isles (great name), an organisation set up to encourage, teach, record and preserve Britain's quilting history. They have a library, teaching facilities, they collect and preserve old quilts for study, they publish an academic journal, and - my favourite - they run the major quilt show in Britain, the Festival of Quilts, at the Birmingham NEC.

We lived just outside of Oxford, which is only an hour's drive from Birmingham, and the first year I drove up, attracted by the possibility that there would be a few quilts to see. Many hours later, I emerged, exhausted, eyes revolving gently in my head, enthused, inspired, amazed - there were something like 800 quilts to see, of all sorts and skill levels, all colours and sizes, from miniature to maximum size. Even a tent made of patchwork!

So the next year I was prepared for the some 1100 quilts that greeted me - I took provisions, I planned my route, I wore runners for maximum walking pleasure, and I went back for a second day. Mmm. Bombing up the motorway in my rattly old Nissan, I was quilter-spotting all the way - cars of 4 women, white hair and homemade patchwork bags on the back shelf in the car - they must be off to see the quilts!

Back then, the Quilters' Guild were promoting the idea of a national collection for quilts in Britain, and I was eager to see how and when it might come to fruition. I was right behind the idea of preserving and displaying the wonderful heritage of British quilts, from wholecloth to english paper piecing, crazy quilts, quilted garments, and the wonderful colours of Welsh wool quilts.

The collection opened just a few days ago, on 7 July, with their first exhibition, Quilts from Bed to Wall.

This exhibition includes examples of heritage and modern quilting, including utility quilts and a Canadian Red Cross quilt made for displaced people during the war, as well as recent quilts by some of the best and/or most well-known British quilters, including Laura Kemshall and Pauline Burbidge, some of which were commissioned to mark the 25th anniversary of the Quilters' Guild. You can read their notes about the show, which explain the development of the idea better than I ever could.

The show is housed in a medieval guild hall - St Anthony's Hall - which is a bright, large, and above all, fascinating space for quilts, sensitively remodelled. They talk about the work that went into the show here.

Long may the quilts hang in bright colours under the black-and white eaves. Well done to the Quilters' Guild, I applaud your achievement!

Inspiration is just around each corner

We're still on the road, but we've reached our half way rest point, which is J's father's house in Yorkshire, UK. How lovely it was to arrive here, to be met at the station and to whisk away up the steep hilly streets lined with familiar grey stone houses and tall terraces.

And then it poured with rain all day, so I felt not the lest bit guilty for spending most of the day in bed, or on the sofa with a gripping, old-fashioned murder mystery.

The travel we've done so far: Italy, France, Germany and Denmark, has been exciting, challenging, interesting, at times frustrating, and often times exhausting.

(Leeds railway station, UK)

I felt at times as if the image inspiration bucket was all filled up and spilling over the edges, and I just needed to go and sit on a park bench, or a sea wall somewhere, and think nothing thoughts, or just thoughts of colour, fabric and no real ideas...

(Helsingor castle grounds, Denmark)

But the main thing I think of on this trip are the people we have met and the unexpected discoveries, which stand out all the more for being unexpected. Like the Commedia dell'Arte pantomime at the Tivoli Gardens, with Pierrot and Harlequin dancing and miming; or the enthusiastic art student in Florence who recommended we go to a service at the Badia Fiorentina, an enormous greek-cross church with huge arches disappearing into light and incense smoke above, and nuns coming and going, coughing and then, finally, singing....


(A cafe we found in Copenhagen, just at the moment when one more tourist cafe would have made us scream, and when we wanted good coffee, books, university types and .... delicious cookies. Ah, those cookies.)

We don't have pictures of many of the most memorable things - we just talk about them and recall them to each other, and that's a different sort of trip memory. The photos stay the same - they almost ossify the memories - but the stories, well, they change with every telling.

(J. photographed Copenhagen's weather predictor: the lady with the bicycle comes out when it will be sunny; she has a dog and an umbrella when it will rain. Both were attempting to come out at the same time, and yes, we had rain and sun.)

When we arrived in London, we went to see some wonderful old friends and their many children (three friends, five children), and we also managed to slip away into central London for half a day. For J. it was coming home and seeing old sights, but even there, there were unexpected delights.

(Neal's Yard, Seven Dials - wonderful Neal's Yard Remedies shop, and the Neal's Yard Dairy and the Monmouth Coffee Co. are just around the corner.... Stinking Bishop cheese and a Colombian dark roast, anyone?)

... And other new surprises such as the King's Library, in the British Museum, now a display area for themes such as Trade, Language, and Myths and Magic, with wonderful objects from the collections here and there:


We even saw a set of golden horns that we had read about two days before, in Denmark, and which were stolen and melted down for the gold. But two copies exist - and we stumbled across one of those copy sets in this library: serendipity.


And the Great Court is always a lovely space when you need to stop and stare up at the ceiling for a while, while resting tired paws.