Road map

A drawing of my endeavour to find my true voice, inspired by some journal notes I was making about coming to the process of making healing medicine dolls.


Myself standing by a ponga tree - one of my favourite New Zealand icons

I've been thinking about road maps as an aid to get me where I'm going with my art adventures - after drawing the picture above, I realized this is a road map of my desired destination, the final finding of my voice visualized by my art. The doll course encourages us to use mind maps to visualize our goal AND the journey to that goal. It makes a lot of sense really, to firstly know where you want to get to, and then to work out how to get there in easy manageable steps. The other night I sat and wrote a list of the things I want to have achieved by the end of 2009, then I left it in the office to contemplate it later. In the meantime my elder children had found it and read it, then they told me my goals were wonderful and achievable. What encouragement! Now I need to sit down and take each goal and make myself a road map (another list, diary, mind map ...) to help me get to where I want to go. Having had other people witness it in a non-critical and supportive way (accidental on my part, but maybe someone is looking down on me!) will keep me accountable.

Isn't it funny how little happenings occur that illustrate your point when you need to be taught something? When I was walking down the path to Bridal Veil Falls (where the photo with the ponga was taken) I fell off the edge of the path on some loose stones. As I fell I twisted my foot, hurt my knee and broke my sandal! Luckily my son saw what was happening and grabbed me just as I was about to lose my balance again. Honestly, I shouldn't be let out into the wild!! Anyway, the point I was trying to make is that you should stick to the path - road map - or else you can get in a spot of bother.

We're back!

This is the 'unreal' sunset taken from the bach we were staying in at Raglan. I love the colours that 'happened' - it looks like a painting!


Me standing by a quiet pool and a palm on the path to the Bridal Veil Falls (meant to include the one with me among the ponga, but that will have to wait!) It was so peaceful and delightfully cool.


Standing by Bridal Veil Falls, looking a bit windblown and not really wanting to have my photo taken!


Bridal Veil Falls as it reaches its destination - it's so green and gorgeous.


We returned to Perth in the middle of the week, and I'm just about beginning to feel 'normal' - flying always makes me feel terrible for a few days when I get back down to earth, so I've been catching up with my sleep. But I needed to write something in my blog as I've missed my electronic journalling more than I could imagine.

Anyway, we had a great time, catching up with friends and visiting our haunts of old, as well as breaking new ground and travelling to Raglan which we've never seen before - and it was beautiful as you can see from the pictures. I was lucky enough to see some wonderful art works at the Raglan art markets, gained some inspiration and met a lovely artist who made jewellery from shells and her own findings from sterling silver. And yes, I did give in to temptation and bought a funky necklace which had as its centrepiece a shard of the breathtakingly gorgeous paua shell. I will have to get someone to take a picture of me wearing it, words don't do it justice. It was extra special because I got to speak to the creator and we exchanged a few ideas about marketing our art.

After the two day (too short!) adventure in Raglan, we travelled up to Auckland, where we used to live and settled into our home in Cockle Bay. I've got more pictures to share from that time, but I will share them over the next couple of days, as well as thoughts prompted from my voyage. It's great to be back in our own space, with all my art materials surrounding me, but I do miss the relaxation! Suppose we had to get back to real life in the end!

Hello from New Zealand

A tiny wee note to keep me in the habit of blogging. I've been so busy travelling around this awesome country and visiting old friends that I've forgotten to blog - oops! Here's a link to a blog I follow by a Norweigan knitter which is well worth a look at; it's a post about not feeling obliged to blog, which is very apt at the moment! Actually, Turvid has copied this link herself from another blog, so it's obviously a message that wants to be spread through the blogosphere!

Tomorrow (or maybe the day after, who knows?) I'm hoping to post a few photos of our time in Raglan. For now I'm off to finish my glass of wine and do a few more rounds of crochet - yes, I really did pack a whole load of art and craft, and even better, I've found the space and time to do some.

Hello mum and dad :) xx

Bling in the City!

We ventured into Melbourne city centre yesterday by tram - arriving there a bit later than expected as we'd gone the wrong way and ended up at the tram terminus in the opposite direction, where we sat on the same tram waiting for it to go back to the city! Quite funny really, and we got to see parts of Melbourne we wouldn't have seen otherwise.

Melbourne is the shopping mecca of Australia and I haven't seen as many shoes in one place as I've seen here! My daughter and I had a great girly day of shopping (mainly window shopping I have to say) and we visited a kimono shop and got to see some amazing fabrics. I did succumb and bought a few squares of fabric and plan to make a quilt with them. One of my highlights of the city journey was buying a copy of selected works of Virgina Woolf - I'm trying to read more of her novels than a friend of mine has up to now - a kind of literary race I suppose!

On our way back to the tram we visited the National Gallery of Victoria. It had several exhibitions running, and we learned that the Bugatti family are not only famous for their cars, but also sculptures, that hidden details of needlework such as tacking and unfinished hems have become design details and saw paintings by some of the Pre-Raphaelites (one of my passions) and a Picasso! A totally awe-inspiring place and I loved it!

What do you think of the amazing glitter balls? They were hanging from the Town Hall (I think because of the Melbourne Comedy Festival which is on at the moment), and the sun was bouncing off them and making little reflections of light dance on the pavement and building. Mesmerized, I just had to take a photo. It's quite arty actually - it captures some reflections in one of the balls, the reflections dancing on the building as well as a peek at the architecture of the grand Town Hall. Bling is everywhere!

We're flying out to New Zealand tomorrow, and driving down to Raglan after landing in Auckland. Raglan has a varied art community so I'm hopeful about getting some great photos. Au revoir for now!

Preparation ...

Here's one I prepared earlier - on March 17th in fact I think I posted a photo of my bag before felting. Well, here it is after being wet felted, and I am pretty pleased with the result. The bag is a lot sturdier and more structured, finished off with a wooden button for closure. The bag is knitted in Panda Woolbale which is recommended for felting, and this did felt quite easily - it took about 20 minutes of rubbing with soap and hot water to achieve this result. After it's all finished I take down notes of the whole process so I can remember which wools work best, and how much the shrinkage is.

Today has been a fairly busy time - we are preparing to go on holiday to New Zealand for a couple of weeks. We've organized someone to look after the house and now I'm rushing around ironing and finding out what everyone wants to take. Tomorrow will be last minute errands in town as we leave really early (yawn) on Wednesday morning. I'll have my wee laptop with me, so I should be able to take some photos and post them. My luggage will be partly clothes and partly art materials as I'm sure there will be lots of inspiration! New Zealand is a truly amazing place, we used to live in Auckland so we will be spending most of our time there, but we're also travelling to Raglan for a couple of days which has a large artist's community - I can't wait! We'll be visiting the art market on Sunday, so the rest of the family won't see me very much!

Needing help

I haven't blogged for the past 3 days because I just wasn't in the headspace to do it, and today I have a cold so am feeling uninspired again :( I thought my sore throat was because I'd been chatting so much with my friend this morning whilst we were doing our craft, but no, it's those dreaded germs. Boo! So it's paracetamol and an early bed tonight, sleep is the best cure for everything I find.

Decided I need some help with tonight's post and looked through some of my arty books for inspiration. Dear Sark came to the rescue with a quote from her book "The Bodacious Book of Succulence", it cheered me up and now I'll share it here with you:

"Your creativity is an immense force that is inside every cell of you. The value of that is immeasurable. Your creativity in action is so needed by our world and the people in it." - Sark

If you haven't read any of her books, go now and find one - there will be a morsel of encouragement just for you ...

Here's to creativity and the healing power of sleep!!