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morselsandscraps

~ my Potato Point life

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Monthly Archives: January 2014

Abandoned cradle

14 Tuesday Jan 2014

Posted by morselsandscraps in twins

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small pleasures, treasures

Prowling the streets of Potato Point with a friend who is an expert at spotting treasures amongst chuck-outs for council pick up, I found a small cane doll's cradle and snaffled it. When I did my own first detailed scrutiny of my find, I was horrified at the sharpened cane spears on the hood and imagined the damage they could do to twin eyes when wielded by exploratory twin hands. I almost tumbled it back onto the pile of discards, but it was cute, so I kept it, made a mattress and a pillow and a sheet. Last week I solved the problem of attaching the hood with string, blanket stitch and a large eyed blue plastic needle. I ran out of string two stitches from the end, and improvised with red ribbon, which then wove its way around the rim and terminated in two bows.

Now, spears rendered harmless, it is ready for Janek and Maja, who arrive in tomorrow. The spotted inhabitant was bought in Stanthorpe, surreptitiously because my daughter thought a doll was too gendered. The blue inhabitant was bought at Moruya markets out of a suitcase. It was made by an old friend trading under the name Over the hill.

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

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Illuminated

12 Sunday Jan 2014

Posted by morselsandscraps in photos, Potato Point beach

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blue bottle, sunrise

Travel themes at http://wheresmybackpack.com/2014/01/10/travel-theme-illuminated/ often seem to coincide with photos I've taken recently. These two were taken as I travelled along the beach five minutes from home. They exemplify one of the things I love about photography. Two steps to the left or five minutes later and I would have missed the particular translucency of the bluebottle and the beach-burnishing. There is always only one chance for that specific shot.

 

 
 
 

 

 

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A new year and a deck garden

08 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by morselsandscraps in photos

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herb garden, Moruya markets

I'm not a gardener, but I had the foresight 50 years ago to befriend a man who is. Thanks to him, I now have a herb garden on my deck, in a box he made of leftover boat timber and the remains of my Broken Hill book case. My contribution? I donned my white gloves, tatty sarong and leopard skin slippers and wielded the paint brush.

We bought most of the herbs at Moruya weekend markets, from one stall root bound and from another one fresh and eager to transplant. Some plants were an offshoot of my new laptop, a gift from my computer advisor's mother. Some were grown from seed. They were nurseried in a new garden in the bush, inspired by a leaky tank and not yet discovered by wallabies or possums: soon an electric fence will take over from midnight and 3am patrols. On New Year's Day my sons wrangled the box onto the deck, a bucket parade transported soil and my share of the plantlets took up residence.

I have a new pastime: watering my plantings, watching them grow, snipping off fresh greens for salads, pasta and sandwiches, and chasing off bower birds and cabbage moths. And I have a new poetry of names: sorrel, sage, parsley, mint, thyme, oregano, fenugreek, rocket, radicchio, coriander, basil, tatsoi, tarragon, chives, lemon balm.

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

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Subtle

07 Tuesday Jan 2014

Posted by morselsandscraps in photos, Potato Point beach

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sand patterns

My eye is drawn to beach subtlety: things that are delicate, fine-drawn, understated, low key, muted. In this collection of photos there is nothing lurid, obvious, crude, garish or artless. The subtlety is in their simplicity, their uncomplicated composition and their subdued palette.

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 

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Circles

05 Sunday Jan 2014

Posted by morselsandscraps in phototheme

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circles, geometry

My first early morning beach-walk with my grandson was very different from my usual solitary, meditative stroll. He whirled and raced and kicked and climbed and pulled faces and found a shearwater skull to add to his mother's bleached collection. When he scuffed the sand into a circle of footprints, a new post in the geometry series was conceived.

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

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A portrait gallery: Beach spinifex

04 Saturday Jan 2014

Posted by morselsandscraps in photos

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Potato Point beach, Spinifex sericeus

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

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My life in stitches

03 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by morselsandscraps in autobiography, memories

≈ 1 Comment

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knitting, sewing

A casual remark by a friend sent my memory cascading through all the sewing of my life, and knitting too, as the memory riff expanded.

My sewing career began with samplers in primary school: pinwheel and needle case showcased my skill at running stitch, whipped running stitch, french knots and lazy daisies. Then there was a pair of white bombay bloomers turning a delicate shade of grime as I learnt about run and fell seams and inserting elastic. When I was introduced to the joys of huckaback, I embarked on my first episode of obsessional behaviour (which later manifested itself in photographing bark and rock faces.) Evidence of my huckaback frenzy surfaced when I cleaned out houses after the deaths of my mother and aunts who had treasured arcane huckaback gifts. Long after primary school I huckabacked a knitting bag for myself in red, yellow and black, before I knew the Aboriginal significance of these colours.

 

 
I was very young when I learnt how to knit. My teacher was a missionary friend of my parents, on furlough from some exotic place: a Pacific island? New Guinea? Africa? She sat on our special chair with arms and a tapestry seat, and I stood in front of her as she guided my small hands through the intricate moves of plain and purl, initiating me into the possibilities of stocking stitch, rib, basket stitch and moss stitch. In a bout of enterprise when I was ten, I knitted striped tea cosies and sold them to my teachers. All through high school and university, I knitted as I studied, the same scraps of wool over and over again into strips, portrait or landscape as the whim took me. A bad move, I suspect, in the light of current research into the perils of multi-tasking.
 

Over the last few years I've been adding hand-knitted jumpers to the wardrobes of different members of my family. The pattern of the current one looked deceptively simple, but I stalled at the idea of repeating a collection of stitches 0 times. Usually I can do a pattern without thinking: this one crawls along at the rate of four rows a sitting as I count each stitch, and tick off each row. I shudder to think how many times at the beginning I had to rip rows undone, figure out where I was up to and start again.

 

 

All through my childhood, my mother made my annual new dress for the Sunday School anniversary in November. When I was 15, I bought the blue and green (should never be seen) material myself. I misread the pattern and got half a yard too little. Mum rotated paper pieces and improvised and completed the pintucked, waisted frock, but her patience and skill were sorely tried. She said “That's the last time I sew for you” and thrust me into the world of dressmaking. I made my short white crimplene graduation dress, and a red one, also short, when I was witness at my aunt's registry office wedding. After my own wedding, I manufactured a duffle coat for my new husband, a collection of maxi-dresses out of very cheap material for myself, a particularly hideous pinafore to cover my first pregnant bulge, and then clothes for my first little girl, including one with red ribbons tied at the side. Much later I tackled formal gear for my two daughters in high school: black, short and tight for my eldest daughter who was hobbled as she minced up the hillside and lowered herself into her Corolla; black, strapless and whaleboned for my younger daughter, driven to the venue by me in a shameful battered Corona. (For her year 12 formal, she bought her dress and waited for a limo to collect her.) The apotheosis of my dressmaking career was my sister's simple wedding dress. It ended up with a very classy rolled hem, because somehow I managed to make it too short. My niece had it altered for her wedding shortly after my sister's death.

When my children were small I was a toymaker. I made the whole Ingalls-Wilder family, Pa, Ma, Laura and Mary: hand puppet kings and princesses and the knave of hearts: pencil puppet penguins, parrots and owls. I made them for my own tribe and sold them through a Moruya craft shop.

My blood pressure misbehaved when I was expecting my fourth child. I didn't need medication. Patchwork hexagons did the job. I littered the world with small paper templates and snipped off ends of cotton. I still have the larger hexagonals, bright representatives of my capacity for the unfinished.

 

 

Lately, my sewing has mainly been patches on ripped clothes, multiple attempts to save a threadbare favourite skirt, and topping and tailing sheets. Until now. The imminent summer visit of my Polish twin grandchildren has me sewing again. Once again I face the challenge of threading the machine, turning corners, avoiding loopy stitches and a hard-to-manage reverse. Janek's shorts and top in two shades of blue aren't cut out yet as I debate size, but I am already enjoying the reversible sunfrock and flower petal hat draped on display over the back of the lounge chair, bright red and white spots for mała Maja.

 

 

Postscript: At this point my sewing machine, never entirely satisfactory, rebelled: loose stitches, bent needles, a recalcitrance when I tried to reverse became overwhelming. I sent it off to be serviced, and bought myself a new Bernina sewing computer. Now I'll have to take on a multitude of sewing projects till the end of my life to justify the expense, or accept the fact that two summer outfits for one year olds cost me $865.
 
 
For another take on the family knitting history, read my daughter's blog

http://migrationtothenorth.wordpress.com/2012/10/31/in-praise-of-knitting/

 

 

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Sequel to the secret fairy garden

01 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by morselsandscraps in nature, photos

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Secret Fairy Garden

Nature has been at work again. The secret fairy garden that gave me so much pleasure on the Potato Point road (https://morselsandscraps.wordpress.com//?s=On+the+road+to+Potato+Point) is slowly succumbing to the bark peel of the spotted gum. Like a Tibetan sand mandala, the completed perfection of the paintings lasted only a short time. Gradually the images left the trunk, and then the blue cloth curtains. Now the only traces are the lamps and flowers and spotted mushrooms planted in the ground, the doorway created by a scar from long ago and a vivid butterfly that has not yet become unattached.

 

 

 

 
 
 

 

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