Scribbling

Today was so cold and lovely, I met Zoe in the city and we went to have tea. Then we walked down Brunswick Street and looked in all of the shops. I wore my brand new red cowboy boots, which I will probably never take off. Well when I do, I will be really upset.

&hearts Ruby

Knit, Sew, Hook

I made weird high-waisted velvet pants the other day, and when I wear them I look like a teacher I had at Ripponlea Primary, called Mrs. Rudolph. Once she yelled at me for drawing on playground equipment with flowers. Needless to say, there will be no photos on this blog.

Big Baby

Today I went to the market with Sam and Andrew. We also hung around with Laura at Kids in Berlin for a while. Oh we had the best food all day! We got the most beautiful cheese and spinach pastries and spanish doughnuts with chocolate (chocolate con churros). And now I am soooooo full and happy- sitting with a towel wrapped around my head.
The picture above is of a paper puppet I made last year from one of my spare knitting patterns. I called him Big Baby because he cries and his chin wobbles as well.
I am very excited about Autumn, and the wonderful golden leaves on the ground, although it is going to get hotter, it has been pretty cool the past couple of days here.
It is Easter Sunday tomorrow and I am going to the Witch Hats album launch- which is going to be really brilliant (they put on such a good show every time).

&hearts Ruby

Easter Friday

I got a job last Wednesday as a waitress at the Melbourne Aquarium. I worked my first shift last night.
It was an eight hour shift from 4:30pm. I though it would only be for a few hours, as I had planned to see Sebe play at the Espy, but I was on my feet all night! I got home and crawled into bed, only to be pulled out again by Sebe and his band members almost straight away. Apparently it was "the best gig ever" and they even dedicated songs to me (because I had said I would be there).
My bones hurt and my muscles ache, but at least now I can say I've worked a day in my life!
This is a picture I drew a long time ago in 2006- I found it in a book that I made about manners, when I was angry with some very rude people.
It is now the background for the Ships Piano myspace.



&hearts RUBY

Cartwheel Quilt

Another quilt that I made last year. The girls are screen-printed onto weird hexagon-dancing fabric I got in a Cheltenham op shop. It is machine stitched and hand quilted. The backing is a really crisp white cotton.
It is so hot in Melbourne at the moment, although I think today is meant to be about 30°C - cold compared to the last few days!
I love going to the beach every day- I am lapping it up while I can, as I have applied for about twenty-thousand jobs in the past week. In fact I had to step away from the computer for a second to organize a time for a job interview today.
I went swimming at the beach boxes the other day, and there was a fashion shoot on- for a Winter collection, evidently. I thought all of the clothes were so boring and sooo old news. They were sort of magenta and charcoal drapey knit fabrics with ugly nineties runners. It is so discouraging- the amount of boring designers that break through into the mainstream fashion world. I am very unimpressed with clothes in shops at the moment and it just makes me so happy to know that I can make my own clothes that are original and actually flattering to my figure. I shouldn't be so negative, because there really are some incredible designers and street fashion movements happening. I would LOVE to start a street style blog- maybe even turn this little blog into a part-time one.
I am proud that I have been writing so often- I am such a natural piker that I seem to flake away from everything- even things that are self-made and fun!

St. Flora

This is a quilt I made last year. I built it around an embroidery that I had done the year before that, gosh- 2006! I sewed the entire thing by hand. The backing is a beautiful pink silk. It was so wonderful to watch it grow so slowly. I felt just like a pioneer in America, trapped by snow in a tiny one room cottage in New England.
St. Flora is my favourite saint- not that I am religious. Although I did attend a small Catholic girls school from the age of twelve to sixteen. In year eight we had to do this project on saints, I remember my friend Molly took Saint Elmo because he was the patron saint of stomach ulcers or something obscure like that.
But Saint Flora was really amazing. She lived in 14th century France. Basically she rebelled against her parents and refused to be married. At the age of fifteen, she entered the Priory of Beaulieu of the Hospitaller nuns of St. John of Jerusalem and was bullied by all of the sisters in the convent. She fell into a depression and began to have mystical and out-of-body experiences.
On the Feast of All saints, she fell into an ecstasy and fasted for three weeks- taking no nourishment until the feast of St. Cecilia.
The best mysticism that she experienced was rising four feet from the ground while meditating on the Holy Spirit and bleeding freely from the mouth and stigmata on her wrists and feet while all of the bully nuns watched enviously (think Sissy Spacek in Carrie).
She was also prophetic, sometimes having visions of major events that were still to occur. She died in 1347 and many miracles were worked at the site of her tomb.
I also really loved this other saint for a while- I can't remember her name- she was detained by authorities who believed her to be practicing witchcraft and during her imprisonment, she bit through the veins in her wrists and bled to death. There was another "witch" in the cell who wrote down what she said as she was dying. It was this amazing disjointed poetry- with visions of Satan and "blooming beastie beards" that was the best line that I remember clearly.
Most saints were people living on the borders of society, most of them were probably mentally ill, and experiencing a sort of distortion of the world that many people could never imagine. Without explanation for the way these people lived and interacted with others (if they did at all), they were revered and seen as having special divine powers. I think there is such a contrast in the way that people with severe mental illness are treated in society today, and to the way that they were treated in the years before psychological studies were advanced universally. I think that in a way, the sheer amount of reverence shown to people living alternatively like Saint Flora, is probably lost to us forever due to modern skepticism.

Bon Anniversaire! (trés tard)

So I am an absent blogger most of the time, and and I only just realised that I forgot to say "Happy Birthday little blog!"
But as I always say, better late than never and I have a really nice birthday card...





This is the Front Cover for the New Ships Piano album. It is an embroidery- the dress is made up of more chain stitch than you can wave an ironing board at... and as nobody reads this thing anyway, I will keep it in this clean, quiet corner of cyberspace for a while.

love Ruby