The left out bits......

Surprisingly.........ha........with the event of twins in my life, not to mention leaving the community we were living on and witnessing our crushed dreams laying in the mud..........I've neglected to mention some things that have happened in the last year or so.  And I figure that now that I'm pregnant again, and we're about to set off into the wild blue yonder with who knows what adventures on the way, I should tell you about some of those left out bits before I create too much of a backlog.  

The first and most impressive (I think) is that I'm going to be part of a book called Positive Birth Journeys, edited by a really groovy woman with huge dedication and integrity, Leonie MacDonald.  If I'd had the twins before I got accepted in this book, I bet she would have wanted that story, but as it was, she wanted the story of my caesarean with Balthazar....which by all accounts is a pretty groovy one.  Not many people talk about how good their caesarean was.  If you want to know more about the book, you can visit  http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/birthjourneys  I'm really looking forward to seeing my name in a real book that people can buy in a bookshop!  Bit of a lifelong dream thata one. 

Another thing that happened about 2 months or so before the babies were born, was that I was part of an exhibition called 'Unravelled' at Red Poles in McLaren Vale.  The trip was that we had to find a jumper in an op shop or somewhere, pull it apart, and make a tea cosy out of it.  I wish I could find the picture of the jumper I bought and pulled apart, but for the life of me I can't!  And of course, me being me, the tea cosy ended up being rather sculptural, and you'd definitely be excused for wondering what the hell it really was, but I liked it:) 

As I made it I thought it looked a lot like one of the trees in The Magic Roundabout - ever watched that as a kid?  So I made 7 flowers to hang around the base of it, and called it Ermintrude's (she was the Friesian cow) Trea Cosy.  I thought I was very clever.  The staff at Red Poles were awesome, and there was one woman who'd had twins herself, and she was incredibly sweet and understanding with me.  And she asked me to just bring everything I'd made and all my clothes along too, and made room for it all, and it looked really groovy. 

And you wanna know the funny thing?  The big irony??  I had a teddy bear that was stuffed with the same fleece it was spun and crocheted from, and a hat on a triangular stand, and another hat called the Tree Hat on a magic puddingesque stand (they're all on the stand on the left), and a big 7 ft stand with sleeves on it that folk call The Uterus, with a big spray of emu feathers off finger like appendages on the top (that one's on the right), and a bird cape with raw fleece needle felted on the bottom, and belly dancing outfits and skirts, and hugs, and all sorts of other designer innovations....all things that I'd put a huge amount of work and inspiration and creativity into......and those three hanging wool bags in the middle on the wall, that I'd made for decorations for Tribal Fibres, that had as much inspiration as...well.....as a decoration that I'd just run off because there was a gap on the stage that needed to be filled......and guess what I sold?  Of all my designer creations, and sculptures, and not to mention the trea cosy.......I sold the wool bags.  I'd thrown them on in with everything else as a last minute thought, called them 'Pendulous', and they did look great, but it made me laugh.  A kinda almost sad wry laugh, but laugh I did.  I think I'll just have to be content with being ahead of my time, and stop expecting so much from my woolly creations from now on:)

And meanwhile, back on the community, the kids were having all sorts of fun, roaming around the gorgeous red gum treed acres, swimming in the dam, playing with the chooks.....

  

Running all sorts of experiments about what happens when you chip rocks and crystals apart, and what happens when you rub mud all over yourself, and what different colours of mud look like dried, and a million other things that I can't remember now, but I'm always suprised and amazed with what they come up with for fun......

And then there were our excursions out and about.....

 



We went on lots of trips to the botanic gardens and spent hours upon hours upon hours wandering round with our nature delighted kids.  They took a lot of these photos.  We spent almost a day just in the cactus garden, and then another whole day sniffing the roses in their huge rose garden. 

If we're ever stuck for something to do, the Museum, Art Gallery, State Library or the Botanic Gardens are alway sure to please everyone.  It's such a blissfull thing to walk amongst such huge, eccentric and amazing living creatures as the plants that reside there.....

And onetime we found an amazing tree that was an awesome backdrop for my incredibly photogenic family... 

And then there was the day when they were all fighting and yelling at each other, and there were heaps of people around on the community, and I was aware that one of the community members thought that the amount of noise they made meant they had no 'internal furniture'.....still can't work out what that meant...so they had no internal lounges and wardrobes??  Do they need them??  Anyway, I wanted them to be a bit quieter, so I called them all to me and asked them what we could make on the property, from things that we could find on the ground........it took them a bit of conjecture to work out what they wanted to do, which was another part of the collective problem solving to yelling at each other, and before they all knew it, they'd hatched a plan, and we spent a blissfull day in the sun creating a village.

First off, the ever pragmatic Lilly made a garden right in the centre, and Griff started making roads and creating dwellings, while Spiral-Moon got a plastic plant pot and sunk it in the ground for the water tank.  Then she made a composting toilet, while Lilly moved onto making tee pee like structures from bark.

There's a bit of Spiral-Moon near one of them......



And Griff behind the same one.  I was so incredibly impressed with their creativity, and the sensibleness of their village plan!  Garden, then water, then a toilet, THEN the houses....love it.  And it was so groovy for all of us to be involved in the creativity.....Griff in particular took a big part in creating awesome buildings.  And the challenge of making it from what we could find on the ground was awesome. 

Here's Griff making a roof on sticks, a house without walls, and off to the right was a big half circle of stone that he'd used to make the front of a house for the elders and the magicians to live in.

And I know it's not showing a house or anything, but I loved this photo of Lilly, in her inimitable Lilly style of skirt wearing.....

Here's an overview of the town, with the garden in the middle, two tee pees on either side, and the stone is the elders house, and above the garden and to the left is a sunken house with a bark roof that Griff created, and actually became a real idea for a design of building a house into a hill....he was so wrapped that an idea he'd had was picked up by us adults as a 'legitimate' idea for a dwelling.

Here's a clearer picture of that elders house I was telling you about....on the right....

And here's the bay that was made later, and a little boat that Griff made and sailed on the dam, resting on the plank....bit hard to see.....and it's a shame we didn't get a proper photo of it, but way over behind the village was a bush with a small hole at the bottom, and we decided a bunyip lived there, and Griff made a sign that said 'Please respect the Bunyip', and we also built it a pool......
 

 And here's me sitting in the general site, with twins in my belly, in love with my beautiful creative children, and generally pleased with myself that I'd turned yelling into such an amazingly productive and learning filled day:)

So that's just a snippet of some of the things that were happening around my twin pregnancy, and that didn't quite make it to my blog.  Next up I'm gonna try and make a video to put on here and give you all a tour of the van that I've been busily redecorating.  And the swags that I've made.  Or something like that anyway.......



 Oh!  And I just remembered!  I also played cello on a cd that was produced by a friend of mine!!   Got my name on that one too:)  Might start getting addicted to this sort of thing......

Reasessing my Reality

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So. I'm back at that point I always get to about the internet - that I'd far rather have a personal experience of meeting the next part of my creations yarns, than sell a 'product' over the world wide web to a person that I certainly can meet in many ways, but not in the ways that I prefer. I keep being reminded that the very best part of making the things I make that suprise me almost more than the average punter, is seeing where they end up, and who is attracted to the individual creation enough to part with money or energy to take it home, and begin to imprint themselves on the continuation of the 'yarn'.

I need to say again that the best bit about Tribal Fibres was that everyone who was there who had bought something from me in the past, brought their creation with them. At one point in the hall, there was a large amount of my 'yarns' from past and present sitting in the space. All those things coming together again with me - and what they'd become since leaving.

It's a trip.

And the best part about selling things to my immediate community is being able to see my yarns after they've gone as part of my everyday life. See how they're wearing, how the colour stays vibrant.... And I check on my creations, and the people who have bought them think I've forgotten them, but I've never forgotten anyone that I've sent a yarn away with. And I get to hear the stories about what's happened since the new yarn started. I loved hearing from that very suave woman that her and her family called her yarn 'the creature'. I love that people seem to really feel and honour the life in the creation.

And it seems that since trying to flog my wares on the internet, the thing I've managed to do best is to sell the stuff I listed on Etsy in person at the markets and festivals I've turned up at. I seem to have reached the critical mass point of having been heard about in Adelaide and it's surrounds, to be sending out lots of yarns everytime I go out.

Nothing quite like doing it in person....

Following (or preceeding - I'm never quite sure in this blog...) are some photo's of people who had really interesting yarns about coming together with one of my creations....that remind me to keep remembering that the personal yarns are very much one of the big reasons why I do what I do.

Up, up and away!!

This is the year for me. The year my gear is going to go somewhere groovy. Procreating has been accomplished successfully, and now it's time for me and my man to put our passions in the limelight. I got contacted by a groover at Us Trendy who wants to profile my work and I'm wrapped!! I've been waiting for someone 'out there' to show an interest, and now it seems to be starting. I've got so much to say, and so much to create, and so much to teach, and so much to learn, and so much to write about all the ideas and cross currents going through my head at any given moment. I'm really wanting to move into un-dyed, classic, wrap and fetish designs, as well as playing more with themes I've developed in the past.

And my fella got a call to wear a costume for his drumming troupe, and even though he instantly freaked out at wearing a 'uniform' ( I'm not one of the bloody Wiggles for #$@&'s sake!!), he became appeased when I suggested that I could create an artwork for his body.... We were at Rainbow Serpent Festival years ago, and he was crawling on all fours along the ground like a spider creature, and I got an image in my head of making a dog suit for him with a huge mane around his head, and pogo sticks for his hands, so he could prowl on all fours while I had a leash on his neck - pretty damn sexy I reckon. And how his troupe wants groovy clothes to wear, we're revamping the idea, and wondering how I could go about crocheting them all a costume. Or maybe just my man, who knows. I'm getting glimpses of mesh with crocheted cotton fringes..... Who knows where my imagination may take me....

But back to more practical subjects, I'll put in some photo's of the latest creation, worn by the beautiful lizard queen, to give you an idea of the direction I'm heading at the moment. Less is more, and I want to play with leaving even more open spaces on the body....