A door closes and a sliding one opens...

To my lovely new view!

Well, we are in the new place and it looks like it will suit us just fine. The only thing left to do is to hang the paintings and sit back and enjoy.
Amidst the madness of the big move I did find time to sit down and carve this stamp. (I find stamp carving to be a very calming activity). I thought the image and quote were very appropriate, we have left behind my big fishpond and the week has been a frenzy of cleaning the old place and painting the  new so I made the stamp to send on an etegami to the two mates, Betty and Jan (remember Jan? she bakes) who pitched in and helped us with the final clean up of the old place.

Vale Buster.

Not to go into details but the fact that I havent blogged in so long will give a clue as to how my life has been these past few weeks.
Today is a particularly sad day, our little mate Buster had to be put to sleep, he was very ill with cancer and refused to eat anymore. The vet said it was the kindest thing, so while I was out attending the funeral of my next door neighbour, the Prof took him on his last trip. I have done this kindness to other pets and now it was his turn to do the deed.
The Universe has a strange way of aligning your stars. One of our main worries when we first embarked on the idea of living in a fourth floor apartment  was how  Buster would cope. More to the point, how would we cope! That problem is resolved but I would rather have the problem than the solution any day.
This will be the first time in our married lives since we returned from California to Australia in 1969 that we have been dogless for any length of time. The house feels strange and eerily empty but I am resolved not to succumb and get another little dog, all things change and the big change is coming up for us.
On the positive side, we have the keys to the new place at last and can now start moving things in, the view from the deck is lovely at night with the harbour lights and the tugs whizzing around.
Downstairs in our apartment building there is a Subway franchise, the next  building has a Minimart and there are heaps of restaurants, the favourite of which is "The Salty Squid" so we will be able to survive in our dotage as long as we can crawl to the elevator!
This house is rapidly emptying of almost all of the furniture and everything else that  cluttered up our lives but the problem remains, will my half dozen 6ft by 4ft paintings crowd us out of the new place?
Stay  tuned!
My favourite photo of Buster and me taken late last year in happier times.

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.