First you play...

and then you pay! A short break in Sydney last weekend left me with some much needed visual stimulation and unfortunately, a cold! It seems that crowds and I don't agree despite precautions, handwashing obsessively, avoiding obvious sneezers etc, it was almost inevitable that the lurgie would find me.
Apart from the obvious discomfort of the cold I have a feeling of being becalmed in a sea of stuff which must be dealt with before the big move... seven weeks and counting. Difficult to motivate oneself but the time does slip away. In preparation I am busying myself (if sitting on the couch and sewing and knitting can be called busy) with finishing up the backlog of crafty stuff I have managed to avoid. The tag ends of former obsessions, teddy bears, knitted bunnies and sock monkeys. I don't want to start the new life with a hoard of half finished projects cluttering up the place.
Sometimes I wonder about my liking for infantilia but mostly I just shrug it off as the end result of a deprived childhood and a liking for small things.
Another project this week has been to make cushions using some not too comfy feather pillows which should be perfect as they don't have the annoying habit of sliding off the leather couch. It gave me the chance to try out the look of stamped bees using a stamp I made for an etegami.

The linen fabric "took" the stamp well and as the ink is impossible to wash out of clothing, I am hoping it will survive on the pillows.
The weather was perfect in Sydney and I was able to make a few sketches in the Gardens and around the art gallery, heaven to be out in the sunshine with nothing else to do but sketch and look at art! I could get used to that.

This was the first outing for a new LAMY pen, very nice for thick and thin lines with the same instrument. So, no etegami today...maybe tomorrow.

Gratitude.

This week a call for etegami on the subject of gratitude made me step back and assess my life and the things I am grateful for.
First and foremost, I am grateful to BE here, grateful for this great age which we in the developed world share, the world of instant communication, Internet friendships which will never be face to face but nonetheless bring an added dimension to our lives. I am grateful for all of the obvious things: dodging death and reaching a great age, access to good medical care, children and at risk of sounding like one of those boring Christmas newsy letters, grandchildren. Perhaps it would be easier to list the things I am not grateful for but at the moment I can't think of a thing!
Oh I forgot that I am grateful that the poo pumpers have vacated our back garden and drainage wise it is "good to GO" (see last week's post).
So on to the etegami for this week......

 

 

That's the Bluebird of Happiness by the way!

Heroes.

I guess everyone has a pedantic pet peeve and foremost amongst mine is the use of the word "Hero"in inappropriate ways. Sportsmen who save the day are called "Heroes", people who help old ladies across the road are "Heroic". The currency has certainly been debased but truly there are people who should be described as heroic: nurses who have to tolerate bad behaviour from patients they are trying to help and who have no option but to remain calm and professional, people who grind away in deadend jobs and who go home to their families every day without complaint, these are heroes.
These ponderings have been set in train this week by what can only be described as a truly pooey situation in our neighbourhood. Yep, the huge sewer main which runs along our back fence has imploded causing chaos downstream from us. Thankfully (though I do sympathise with those affected) we haven't had any issues. We have however endured the constant noise of the large trucks pumping waste from the access point in our garden in order for them to rectify the problem. Large bright blue hoses snake down our driveway, traffic cones block off the street and we have become quite a tourist attraction for local rubberneckers.
All of this activity prompted me to think that these folks who are here working late into the night in the cold and with a job description that isn't that attractive are the true heroes of our civilization. Workers in the frontline, doing a job nobody tells their careers adviser that they aspire to and remaining steadfastly cheerful through it all. Doing a job that most people are grateful that they don't have to do themselves.
Public sanitation has possibly saved more lives than antibiotics and all other medicines combined but nobody gives that a thought when they yank the chain!

Never, ever....

 ever buy a treadmill!
As a necessary condition of our move to a smaller house we are shedding larger items of furniture and various things that have accumulated on our surfaces much like limpets on a rock and they are sometimes proving as difficult to move as aforesaid limpets.
So, on to the treadmill. The treadmill (hardly used)  is a huge beast purchased by our son for us when the Prof was experiencing some health issues in the vain hope that it would encourage a healthy lifestyle (did I mention it is hardly used). As I write four grown men are attempting to get it through the door (it got IN the door) but it is stolidly refusing to go out the door!
Stay tuned...
My Saturday etegami does seem a mite gloomy but hey, with the weight of the treadmill on my mind, who can blame me? (Don't get me started about the monster barbeque!)

Star Trek, "To boldly go..."

Inspiration came this week while I was watching the latest Star Trek movie for the umpteenth time (yes I am a Trekkie and I loved the original TV series). I managed to extract several quotes that make perfect sense to me and it dawned on me that Mr Spock is one of the great philosophers, in fact I think he is probably behind all of those pithy motivational quotes one sees ricocheting around the internet. It is possible you know as he can time travel!
Seeing a very old Leonard Nimoy play the original Spock is a bit salutary when one thinks that when he was a young man I was a young woman. It must have been all of that time traveling that made him so wrinkly, I can't possibly have aged the same as he?
I am willing to bet, say...one dollar that I am the first etegamist to use one of Mr Spock's epigrams on an etegami, any takers?
I married this saying with an image of one of the magnolias currently blooming in our part of the world. Perhaps because I think that all of nature is somewhat improbable, including that apex of creation the sloth (you though I was going to say man didn't you? but truly isn't the sloth just so cool?).
Maybe a sloth will feature in my next etegami, now how can I get one to hold still for long enough to be painted?
To round off the week, two etegamis of the same duck but different sentiments.

Marking time.

Winter, or rather the cool weather that we have which passes for winter, is my least favourite season. No looking forward to hot chocolate, cold walks or tumbles in the snow in this household. Instead you will find me grumbling and snuffling under heated throw rugs.
Adding to this sense of melancholy is the news that we have had a spill in leadership in the Labor party and our first woman prime minister has been dumped in favour of a former leader who it is hoped will lead us to victory in the coming election. There is an abiding sense in Australia that she has led us into an abyss of debt and has ruined the country, this despite a triple A rating from international credit agencies and an economy that is the envy of the world...what do we have to do? It would enlighten some of her critics if they looked farther afield to see what real poverty, instability and debt looks like but alas the conservative mind very seldom looks farther than its own wellbeing.
Sorry about the rant but the vitriol directed at Julia Gillard by her critics, the personal attacks (many disappointingly by women) and the ongoing campaign by the largely Murdoch controlled press to return us to a conservative government has been disappointing to say the least.
Back to my other passion...etegami!
Looking at these huge luscious California strawberries I bought yesterday it occurred to me that the Beatles were prescient, we do have strawberry fields forever! It is strawberry season somewhere in the world at any given time and they are only an aeroplane flight away...this may not be a good thing but it is a real manifestation of that much used seventies term the Global Village.

A miserable week.

Yes, it's cold, yes, it's wet and yes, I am still chewing on the malaise left by last week's excursion...but there is light at the end....etc.
All of which have left me in a rather philosophical state of mind and wanting to express myself in a Haikuish kind of way. The Prof says it is a bit late in life to start writing poetry, all the good poets died young to which I retorted "not the Haiku masters". This caused a minor choking incident  (tea inhaled can be quite distressing) but a hearty thump on the back got him back to his normal docile self and peace was restored in the household.
Stamp carving is a sovereign way to achieve that longed for state  where one's mind is totally engaged but not stressed...aaah peace!

 

 

As for the intrusively large name stamp, that is a result of ineptitude, not ego, I like the idea (a bean with the 'C' forming the dark embryo of the bean) but shall have to refine my carving techniques a little to scale it down a bit.

Post hubris malaise.

Surely in the handbook of psychiatry there is somewhere a description of idiots who bite off more than they can chew despite years of suffering the consequences of their actions? I would definitely be one such case.
Wednesday, a lovely train trip to Sydney with my good friend Jan (she bakes remember?) to see the biggest,  brightest wonderfullest craft show in the Southern Hemisphere (well, a little hyperbole will get you everywhere I have found). That is; a three hour trip, three hours walking around the show (maybe not the biggest, brightest etc,), three hours back and to top it off, a night out with friends!
Result? predictably, a day in bed, another day in my slippers and who knows what the morrow will bring?
I have done a couple of etegami though, another "recipe" card and a little something to send a friend.

I did have fun making the buzzy bee stamp.

Life after the open house.

Living in a home that is putatively owned by someone else is quite strange. Keeping it tidy and clean is now my job as a kind of custodian and is helping me with the "weaning off stage" so that I can  let my thoughts stray to furnishing and organizing the new space, on paper that is.
I have always maintained that houses are like overcoats, you can shrug off one and move into another that is more suitable without any qualms but with this place I am questioning my own philosophy. Is it ageing, the fact that I did move in meaning this to be my forever home after moving so many times before? It does seem that we are repeating a well worn theme, move in, make a lovely garden and then leave just as our fruit trees are fruiting, hedges hedging and shade trees shading.
This has been the longest we have lived in one place (11 years) in our married life so things are just that much more advanced and harder to leave. I console myself that I leave something to be enjoyed and hopefully nurtured by others.
We settle on our new digs tomorrow but because the current tenants have a lease until October, that is when we will move in. Amazing really when we only started to seriously look at alternatives to our home just before Anzac Day (April 25), to have things tied up so neatly, buying and selling, in only two months.
I have had time to do a little creative work as I have been a "bowls widow" this long Queen's Birthday long weekend, the Prof being absent almost the whole time gallivanting about on various bowling greens. He is a little sad this week though as his home club has closed it's doors because of a burden of debt too big to trade out of. Pity really as the club is in the park across the street from us and allowed him a celebratory (or consolatory) drink after a game without worrying about driving home. Of course this would all have become moot in October anyway and I suspect I will be chauffering  him and his mate quite a bit in future.

My first etegami is in response to a call for recipe card etegami by Debby, so a little humour seemed a good idea.

The second is in response to a call for cards celebrating the Japanese festival of Obon.

A quiet Hurrah!

There are moves afoot and barring unforseen circumstancess, the house is sold! At the one and only open house inspection our agent rounded up 26 couples from his database and of those, five made offers well over the asking price via a silent auction....we were amazed. We have signed the papers to exchange contracts and after the cooling off period allowed to the purchasers we can breathe again.
 It is said that selling a house and moving is one of the  more stressful things in life but so far, apart from the decluttering phase, this has been relatively painless. I guess it helps that we are happy and committed to the move and it is not being done under any kind of duress.
The new owners are happy too and seem to really love the oasis we have created here. The best aspect of the whole thing is that they are happy to allow us to stay in the house until October when our new place will be vacant.
Reading back over this it seems that I have used "happy" more than usual and I am happy with that!
Of course, now I am marking the time that I see each and every flower as the last time and that is a little sad but the new owners have said it is okay if I want to raid the persimmon tree next year so that is a bonus.
Time to get back to a little bit of etegami-ing and forget the constant cleaning and tidying for now!