May 22, 2009
It’s the little things today. Like the way the sun is shining across the front of my house as I come back from the school run.
And the little deer I picked up from the Hospice stand at the market last weekend. My great-aunt Kay used to have some exactly like this. I don’t know what happened to hers but now I have my own and I love them.
May 5, 2009
Jordan Seiler is the guy behind Public Ad Campaign, the fantastic project that produced NYSAT on 25th April. The PAC blog explains their mission and talks about the various projects. As public space becomes more and more one big billboard, I’m so glad there are people out there fighting it, often at personal risk – see Jordan’s latest post regarding the artists who chose to reveal their participation in the April 25 project and face prosecution as a result.
So, go check out the blog. If you’re Stateside, get involved. If you’re out there in the world, get inspired. Let’s talk more about how corporates are, often illegally, taking over public space, and about how to let them know that We Don’t Like It.
April 28, 2009
cronicasbarbaras.com: WE DON’T WANT ADS, WE WANT ART.
I had to press this for several reasons. Firstly, and mostly, because it’s just a wonderful thing that this group of people did. Secondly because this lovely blogger took time to find out what the whole story was, and take lots of pics to go with it. Thirdly, because the art that replaced the ads is fun and varied and even sometimes really good.
March 5, 2009
Wow, last year got really busy, and a bit crazy. And somewhere along the line I lost interest in this blog. Having now given it a bit of thought, I was taking myself *far* too seriously. I wasn’t interested in reading my own blog, and that’s definitely not right. So I’m going to take inspiration from some of my favourite bloggers and try to resurrect this blog in a whole new guise.
So I give you “the blog that tells you about what I’m doing at the moment”. Which probably means it’s very varied. Very. I am starting to suspect I have multiple personality disorder. A brief overview:
1. The children started Grade 1. So I have to manage a whole range of school-related important things. I have a special calendar to help with this.
It has spaces for each of us, and stickers, and a pocket at the bottom for school notices and suchlike. I also have a clipboard on the wall in my workroom for notices. There are not just school notices. On top of school there’s karate, bellydancing and cubs. And that’s just the kids.
2. I work. Yes, I really actually have a job, which I try to do well. It’s a mite confusing at the moment since many things seem to be happening at once in several countries and nobody seems quite sure what is just a thought and what might actually happen, but that’s kind of fun.
3. The academic year has started. At the moment I have roughly three seminars a week. Research Methods 1 – which is more fun and less obvious than it sounds. And Agriculture and Rural Development – which is just as theoretical and Marxist as it sounds. Thankfully, I get to sit next to Taz in both of these classes, and she is bright, funny and a bigger teacher’s pet than I am.
4. I make things. All sorts of things really, but many involving fabric. Hence, I am rapidly collecting what is known by craft addict people as ‘a stash’:
5. See above. So currently I’m making a book bag. Which is not what it sounds like. I made my first one in December.
But it’s really small. I can’t really fit much in it at all. So I am trying taking out the spine and creating a new base. Which requires a bigger book to start with. Bron, bless her, cleverly suggested using annuals. So I visited the SPCA and picked up a stash (see how that word creeps in?) of annuals. These are just a few of them…
Aren’t they fabulous? Would you like a bag made with one of these? I can’t wait to choose the perfect fabrics for the linings.
But I had to start somewhere, and I started with one of my own favourites from when I was a kiddy. ..
Here are the two side pieces laid out with the new base in place. I’ve been trying to figure out how I’m going to put these together. For this one I’m going to try using clear Contakt around the outside – which, if it works, will also save me having to varnish the outside. The lining is already cut and is in the same pink and red check as the handles and base. Goes perfectly with those ultra blues and pinks on the cover.
Then I have a whole workbasket of other stuff to work on. There’s an embroidery project – I ordered some fantastic embroidery transfers from Sublime Stitching and I’m loving them. There’s a Frida Kahlo shrine (that’s the weird yellow thing in the back – you won’t recognise it when it’s finished). In that beautiful vintage tin are my embroidery flosses – another stash. Bron got me the tin for my birthday and I LOVE it! Not in the basket are the fabrics for my daughter’s new comforter (they’re still in amongst the fabric stash), but I’m hoping to get that finished by the time our good friends the Murvis’s arrive to visit later this month.
So that’s what’s keeping me busy. And yet here I am blogging about it, because I am a born procrastinator. And now I’m going to grab a cup of coffee and a slice of hot buttered toast and get down to actually doing some of it…
July 24, 2008
Right, I’m in the process of working myself up to a big rant about all the ‘we’d die for Zuma’ and ‘Zuma will rule us from prison’ crap, but in the meantime I popped over to Up and Left for a quick read. Wena writes really well about everyday stuff that is as important, and probably far more important, than my rantings about the dangers of nationalist fervour. She has reviewed a restaurant in ‘new-look Muizenberg’ that appears to epitomize all the hideousness of the branded universe. Don’t take my word for it… read all about it.
