Matters of economy

Because Mr Padge keeps losing his collars and Mr Pooter doesn't, or rather, Pooter does shed them, but in places where they can be found again, Padge is now wearing an old collar of Pooter's, which means that they are now both black cats in blue collars. And even though one is very fat and the other very thin, sometimes, especially when they sit in the Roast Chicken position, it is very hard to tell them apart.

Except when they lie on their backs, as in this shot where Mr Padge tried his most helpfully to be a paperweight this morning as I worked in bed.



Actually, the fact that Padge doesn't lose the crappy old blue collars makes me highly suspicious that someone in the neighbourhood is souveniring his own collars, which have traditionally been red. The last one was Barbie pink (I mistyped oink there, and was sorely tempted to leave it) as a joke on Best Beloved, but didn't work because his red-green colourblindness makes him impervious to shades of pink. Damn. Collars are expensive, and getting little tags engraved even more so. So for reasons of economy, Padge can be Pooter for a while in the wider world. If there's food involved, I suspect he'll answer to anything.

I'm writing this while I print out a little promotional flyer for my wares. With the time and energy and ink cannisters it's taking up, I might as well have handset and printed it, dammit. Up to now, I've been sending out an infrequent but free print newsletter to a growing mailing list. I got back from NZ to find that stamps had leapt to 60c!! Egads, people, snail mail is expensive!

So I've decided to regroup, and now want to offer to people the chance to subscribe to a regular (twice-yearly) newsletter/zine thingy for $5 a year. It will not be all letterpress, because that would blow it out of the water, but it will have a touch of it here and there. Anyone want to join up? I'm calling it SNAIL, since the last batch were called SNAIL MAIL. If you do, fling me an email to ampersandduck (at but I bet the spammers scan for (at) these days) gmail.com and I'll let you know how we proceed with payment.

I've almost, but not quite, shaken off my horrid cold. It started as a sore throat, moved up to my sinus, and then settled happily in my chest. I'm hacking up all sorts of blah, which catch in my throat on the way up & give me a great husky blues voice that sounds very dramatic on the phone. This is one reason why I'm on Facebook such a lot, for those who care, and also why I'm working from home a bit rather than standing in my still quite cool concrete studio.

Mind you, I did find the energy to complete the printing for my latest Book Art Object piece, and it should be dry enough today to finish... huzzar! Then I can send it out, and then, only then, can I share some photos, because the whole point is for the recipients to work it out for themselves. It's a one-trick pony, but I've had fun training it.

Another thing I've been working hard on is helping to rebrand ANCA, my studio complex, with a new logo and website etc. I haven't been responsible for the actual graphic side of it, but as I'm on the ANCA Board, I'm getting my hands dirty in other ways, like making decisions, letterheads & party planning. If you're interested, save the date of the 9th of December for the launch of the new ANCA look. Very exciting!

That's also the date, as well, of the Christmas Party of the Canberra Craft Bookbinding Guild, so I'll be party-hopping. If you are interested in that, it's a Show & Tell, Bring & Buy evening, so everyone needs to bring something to sell or show. Or just come & chat & buy, all good.

Still inkjetting. Might as well get out of my pyjamas and have some lunch :)

Lucky indeed

I received an email today from my lovely Aunty Lou, who often comments here. She mentioned for the first time that her son, my cousin, has a blog that is documenting his and his partner's journey through surrogacy to have a family. I just sat and read it through from the start, and I dare anybody to read it and say that gay men should not have children or that they are incapable of having a solid loving relationship. Especially in this post; if I could write like this about my own marriage (and yes, these two are the most 'married' you could be), I'd be a lot more confident about my old age. Not that I'm not happy, it's just that you can feel the confidence palpably between these gorgeous and open-hearted men. I'm such a slack cousin; I need to be in touch more. And that goes for anyone in my family. If you're writing a blog, TELL ME!!!

This seems like a good moment to say how much I'm enjoying my new feedreader now that Bloglines has imploded. I'm now using Feedly, which compiles and presents all the feeds like an online magazine. It makes everyone's blogs look very important and glamorous, and I love the ease of reading everything! Just in case anyone out there isn't a seasoned blogger, feedreaders are the reason why you think no-one visits your blog. Using a feedreader doesn't show up on your visitor stats, so you might have lots of lurkers who don't comment reading you behind the scenes! I like to dip my toe in every now and again and leave a comment just so that people know I'm appreciating them :)

I'm working at home today, doing a bit of writing and trying to ignore BB's manflu whilst still managing to look after him in a very rudimentary way (tea, lunch, occasional cuddle). I taught a small and lovely bunch of women some book arts on the weekend, which was lots of fun, especially thanks to their enthusiasm. So today is a quiet day, with periodic treats.

Speaking of periodic treats, thank ceiling cat that Halloween is FINALLY over. Although I did go to a ripper Day of the Dead party on Saturday night, with everyone putting a lot of effort into their costumes.

And next time I have any money, I'm going to buy one of these:



An ampersandwich!

OOh! I just remembered that I have a bag-full of purple petunias waiting to be potted that have been sitting there for days. Poor things, I'll do them now. Ciao.

Booking myself

Wow, two posts in a day.



I actually haven't been reading much lately, apart from dipping into some ebook texts when I'm stuck out somewhere. Mostly I've been lying in bed doing 'Codecracker' puzzles -- BB and I have a book each from NZ. I finished the Barbara Hanrahan biography and just haven't felt like following through with anything, not even her books.

But today I read aloud to the Aged Poet the splendid article on Jessica Anderson by Susan Sheridan in September's ABR and felt the juices stir. Tonight I'll dig out my HSC copy of Tirra Lirra, and then I'll keep my eyes peeled for a copy of The Commandant, which sounds good.

As you were.

Except if you're Sophie Cunningham. Does the latest news about Meanjin mean that you're going to concentrate on your writing? Because I've been hanging out for that Leonard & Virginia novel for a few years now...

PS: OMG I just nearly wet myself:

Lazy

Passive aggressive non-art making

Wow, last weekend was exhaustipating.

I wanted to just be in the studio this week, binding a batch of Transmigration to fulfill a purchase order (only buying one copy, so there's a nice fresh batch if anyone's interested), but of course, life got in the way, so while I got the batch done, I didn't get a lot else done. Bumblebee's laptop died, 6 months after purchase, so luckily it's within warranty, but the kerfuffle getting it to the techos and then the extra kerfuffly kerfuffle trying to pick it up again hasn't endeared me to the magical world of PCs, no matter how much I love The IT Crowd (that link is to a fun TIC game). I should have bought him a Mac, the techos are closer to home.

Combine that with the Aged Poet needing extra attention, various chores I had to run and some extra argy-bargy when Bumblebee accidentally took my studio keys to school with him and I had to jump through hoops to get them back because high schools don't like parents just wandering into school to talk to their children (unlike Primary Schools, which think you're an anti-social weirdo if you don't pop in once a week... year 7 is a transition for parents as much as the kids), not much art-making got done.

[breathes in]

[breathes out]

Which reminds me of that fabulous Ben Folds Five line: all this breathing in, never breathing out... (from the song FAIR)

And then yesterday I spent the morning helping Bumblebee clean his room. Five shopping bags full of rubbish, two vacuum cleaner bagless cannisters full of crud and a number of plastic boxes full of toys deemed too young for him (one of which is scrawled over with thick black marker saying DO NOT THROW OUT DO NOT SELL), a window open and the removal of sundry dirty clothes (socks thrown behind the bookcase, etc) and fetid towels, his room has finally temporarily lost its goaty reek and you can actually see the floor.

It was with a huge sigh of relief, then, that I went to the studio yesterday, closed the door on the world, rolled my sleeves up and spent a few happy hours playing with type, paper and yellow ink.

You'd think it would be a simple task, but yellow ink needs very clean rollers to print clean and bright and not a dirty olive colour. In fact, the day before, I'd inked up Kitty the Press with said yellow ink, and been very disappointed, even though I'd cleaned the rollers and all the bits around them scrupulously. I decided to abandon the machine's rollers and went out to the local art store (Maureen's, not Eckers-crap, of course) and bought a brand new spotless hand brayer. It is now my Yellow Roller. Not a spot of anything else will touch it.

And thus I progressed from this:



to this:



And I hope you can tell the difference in brightness and clarity. I was completely inspired at the Print Symposium by Tim Maguire's amazing CMYK work, and am embarking upon a spot of colour play as a result. This particular piece is for the latest Book Art Object project. One layer done, five to go.

Today we decided to have a family day, so I stayed away from the studio, even though I'm longing to get back to play with magenta ink. We haggled all day over things to do together: no-one wanted to ride at the lake, all the good movies were over by the time we thought of it, with no afternoon sessions, and we didn't want to stay home and attack the garden. Then I remembered that the Old Canberra Inn, which is basically our local pub apart from anything in Dickson, has free pool tables on Sundays. Bonus! Within half an hour we were happily playing pool, helping ourselves to the free jukebox with its bikie-inspired playlist (I taught Bumblebee the informal and very rude chorus to The Angel's Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again, to BB's vaguely disapproving look, and fell in love over again with Ian Moss and Don Walker, wishing that Jimmy had choked on his own vomit sometime in the 80s), but still, in the back of my mind there was a 'I could be printing right now' sensation. I swallowed it, but it's slightly bitter as it goes down.

I came up with a wonderful music trivia question, and you're welcome to use it if you have to compose trivia nights or whatever:

What have these three songs got in common:

and you play excerpts of 'Bow River' by Cold Chisel (or 'Saturday Night'), 'Errol', by Australian Crawl, and a third one, which you can make tricky by adding your own third or you can make it easy by making the third one a Ringo Beatles song.

Answer? They are all songs not sung by the band's lead singer/s.

What do you think? Got any better or additional examples?



Sigh. Now Bumblebee looks like he's got some horrid throat swelling thingy, so I've dosed him up with garlicky chicken soup and am mentally preparing to not go anywhere tomorrow except the doctor. Sigh. I'll get back to the studio sometime. At least it's waiting there for me, patiently.

Next weekend I'm teaching a book class at Megalo, and there are spaces, if anyone's interested. I'm trying to rustle up participants, because the more people there are, the more I get paid, and I'm not earning anything regular until I start back at the BookStud next year. So if you know anyone that would love to learn how to make booky things, let them know. My bills will be most grateful.

Best Beloved just said goodnight, as he's having a Sleep Head-start (I've worked out a great system: if he goes to sleep solidly first, I can creep in and read an e-book under the sheets for a while, which beats him whinging at me to turn the light off), and as he kissed my neck he said 'mmm, you smell nice, what is it?'

'Hogget.' I replied. It must be, because I slow-cooked it all afternoon. It was delicious, cooked with green olives that had been marinated in preserved lemon & garlic. I guess there are worse things to smell of, but it's not very romantic.

Sharing the love

I think I've done my bit for the promotion of letterpress as a satisfying thing to do over the past couple of days.

Around the same time (give or take a day) that I was expounding to the printmaking audience at the National Gallery Print Symposium about the wonders of ink and type, New Zealanders were listening to me talking to Lynn Freeman on Radio New Zealand's The Arts on Sunday show. If you hit that link, there's a downloadable podcast of the interview. The NGA talk will be on their website sometime in the near future too, and I'll pass on that link when I get it.

Also, Print Big had around 900 visitors yesterday! Woo hoo! It helped that the weather was lovely and the venue is right next door to the Bus Depot Markets. I couldn't get back there until the exhibition was over, but the big monoprint that the public did looked FABULOUS.



So we had to take everything down. Demolition, after such a frenetic creation, had to be demolished. Well, not totally -- we took apart the panels & it's now sitting in pieces outside my studio.

It went from this



to this



via this



and this



and this



with a little bit of this



and lots of this



oops, look at the time -- have to dash.

Sigh of relief

I'm finally at the point where I can sit and relax for a few hours before going to the NGA Print Symposium dinner tonight.



Here's the 'final' piece, taken quickly at the opening while there was noone in front of it, which wasn't often. What I enjoyed was seeing that people actually stopped and read for a while, instead of floating past it. So if it was difficult to make out the foreground/background areas, that is a good thing.

Here's a couple of crowd shots, taken during the speeches:





It was huge, with all the nice people from the conference, and lots of nice local arty types, and my parents, who seemed to enjoy themselves even though I couldn't hang out with them much.

At one point Colonel Duck was taking people around to the blank wall at the end, gridded up with pencil in preparation for the public monoprint project (that started today) and was telling them that it was his favorite piece in the show, cheeky bugger.

A bit later I turned around to see him in front of my work with Helen Cole, Rare Book Librarian at the State Library of Queensland and Noreen Grahame, Book Artist gallery Owner supremo, regaling them with embarrassing stories about my childhood. GAH! You have to laugh, at least he's taught me that much.

I got home latish and went straight to bed, but woke up extra early to finish my talk for the Print Symposium. I gave that today just before lunch, and it seemed to go down well. My theme (given to me by Head of Print, Roger Butler) was palpability, so I gave a 20 minute account of my passionate love for letterpress in the hope that my enthusiasm was palpable (I almost ran over, but ditched a bit to squeeze in; never mind, it will be published in full on the NGA website soon). It was; I had lots of positive feedback from people who felt the love in the air.

Other highlights (heh, not that I was a highlight :) ) were Luke from Sticky in Melbourne and Mini Graff, poster queen who gave us a lesson in intellectual property from the viewpoint of the victim whose designs were stolen from the web by a big US fashion company.

Oops, have just run out of time (between the last sentence and this I fed Shopping Sherpa's kitty) and have dressed posh for tea. Am waiting for my taxi to the Gallery...