Sky

I know, I know, I haven't blogged anything.

Well, I just wrote a post over there, so consider it a placeholder.

Chosen

I took this photo as a quick souvenir of our bookshelf day, but OMG I captured the moment my son fell in love with this utterly daggy Ktel compilation and it hasn't been off the turntable since... THE CHOSEN FEW.

I must have been around his age when I bought it, and I loved the 'free' poster I got with it. It looks so tough and metal, but it's soft and sweet and very mainstream. Wanna see the playlist? Go here.

snakes and ladders

Gosh, it's been a whirlwind of a fortnight. Sorry, I just looked up and realised that I hadn't even checked my email since Friday night. And working full-time just sucks your life away, doesn't it? Lots of time to do inane Facebook things in the background, no time to do anything meaningful. It just sucks. I remember now why I gave up my full-time office job, there's really no time to be fully-functioning in the world. Mind you, Best Beloved thrives in his job. He loves Serving the Public. Go figure.

Emotionally we've all been thrashing one way and another, with one niece on the brink of death last weekend (conveniently while we were in Sydney so that I could teach a (lovely, if I may say so myself) weekend workshop at Warringah Printmakers, hence we could go and sit by her Intensive Care bedside) and another niece giving birth yesterday to an enormously gorgeous baby, making us all Very Young Great Aunts and Uncles. The Very Young Grandparents are being extremely wise in seeing this as the opportunity to have a Very Long and Happy Relationship with their grandchild. Congratulations to them, and a big sigh of relief that the other niece (from a separate branch of the same family) is recovering. Apologies for all the parentheses, it's all pretty complicated.

This weekend was the big Books-on-Bookshelves moving. Lots of boxes to heave and empty. I worked out a system based on my experience with letterpress. Letterpress takes a long time to set up, with very quick printing. It's always an exercise in patience. So. I emptied all of my boxes (left BB to do his own, always safest) and sorted all the books into A to Z on the floor, and then once that was done, put them on the shelves, sorting further into A-Z within each letter as I shelved, and dissing the ones I just didn't connect with (or had multiples of, having bought them again unwittingly) as I went.



Here's a view of stage 1. This is all the novels, with the bookcase up the back filled with poetry. I had grand plans to enter all the books into LibraryThing as I went (those that aren't on already), having bought a lovely little cat-shaped scanner that works with it, but the scanner is in a box somewhere and I couldn't be bothered working manually and slowly to enter them. Sigh.

Of course, the cats helped.



So at the time of writing MOST of the books are on shelves. There are still lots of boxes of various stuffs that need to be sorted, and a garage sale to be had, and then I can do serious studio prep, like painting and floor coverings. The press move is booked for 22 July, and I'm just about to steel myself to write my official email to ANCA to let them know when I'll be out. Exciting but scary.

Hopefully now I'm going to have more time to write and read blogs. I also want to get some printing done and share it with you, as it's not been a terribly big making year so far. I'll leave you with the brooches that I made for ANCA's PIN WONDERWALL show. it finished today, and was a huge sell-out, red dots everywhere like the plague. There were fabulous pieces, by 70-odd artists.

This lot are called 'Phat Groovers', and they're made from vinyl record shards and rhinestones:



They're an edition of ten, and I think about six are sold. Don't try smashing records at home, kids! Vinyl doesn't smash, it has to be bent & it shatters. I'm still finding little unusable shards around my studio...

And this is a one-off, made from a vintage belt buckle and a piece of video tape (with a single rhinestone around the back). It's called 'Pretty Woman', because that's the movie I used. It sold too! Yay.

More mutiny

I got the family up on Sunday and we ran away to the coast for the day. Not downwards, towards the parental Ducks, but across, ignoring the boganity of Batepersons Bay and then slightly up, first to South Durras and then to our favorite place in the known world, Depot Beach, where BB and I were married.

I just needed to walk on a wintery beach. Beaches, in my humble opinion, are best when you can walk along them with a crisp breeze around you. I also badly needed to scour all the sloughing skin from my post-scabies feet and I didn't feel like booking myself into a solvent-smelling nail joint to do it.

There was greasy salty fish-and-chip eating; there was walking,



with and without seaweed;

there was hole-digging



there was stone-skimming



and there was the time when I thoughtfully put down my book to take a photo of all of us



it was a really good book, too, so that was quite a sacrifice.

Did I say stone-skimming?



I've been sitting and reading in the same spot while Bumblebee stood at that same spot and threw stones lots of times now.





Sigh. Time flies.

By the end of the day we were tired and happy and my feet were silky smooth and craving moisturiser. We went home and cooked up a quick Indian storm followed by apple pie from the Braidwood bakery, and we were all in bed by 9:30pm.

I'm working full-time this week at the Art School, and working all weekend in Sydney teaching at the Warringah Printmakers (feel free to join that class if you're in the vicinity) and then full-time all next week, so Monday will be the only day off I have and that will be spent driving home from Sydney... so I made sure to make that day at the beach count.




For all those Canberrites who love to wear brooches, get thee hence to ANCA tomorrow night for the opening of PIN Wonderwall, with around 70 artists making pin work and most of it at very reasonable prices. The show continues for another ten days, but I can't guarantee that there will be much left to buy... tomorrow I reckon the red dots will be faster than chicken pox.

Mutiny

I've had a crappy half a day. Once I realised it was going to be craptacular and I was going to be miserable, I decided to put a stop to the normal day's plan and sook at home with a fire and the cats. I didn't feel well, and then I got a couple of bad news emails. So, as I have already stated on Facebook, I took Paul or John's advice: I lit a fire. It wasn't good Norwegian wood, it was quite hard-to-burn farm wood, but it cheered me up and in the end I got quite a lot done, between marshmallows. The cats had never seen open flames before, and were quite backwards in coming forwards to lie with me on the floor. They snuggled up behind me on a chair, and I rejoiced in the joy of portable laptops and cushions.

In honour of cheering up and stumbling upon it again in my archives, I am revisiting one of my all-time favorite personal posts. Here it is, titled Pride and Piracy, from waaay back in 2005:

It's been an entertaining day, but only on-line. Laura posted her excellent critique of the P&P movie, Pirates of Pemberley which has sparked all sorts of conversations. I thought I'd add another element to the fun: a visual one. Here then, are my P&P vignettes, whipped up with a dash of photoshoppery. All credit for the original images goes to the wonderful pirate image archive.

















Oh la!

Initiation rights

I'm having a weirdness with Blogger, so apologies if I post even less frequently than I have been. It's something to do with the login, they're playing hard to get. But I can get in from the art skool, so I'm taking a break to slip this in.

Two days ago Bumblebee went on a camp to Wee Jasper with his Outdoor Ed class. They'd split into groups of three, worked out a menu (sausages, steak and BBQ chicken for their dinner!) and equipment, were given a list of clothes & things to pack, and I spent most of Tuesday night wrangling him to follow the lists and argued for something besides meat to go into the food bag. I pressed a tin of baked beans into his hands, saying that if the stove didn't work, if an animal broke in & ate their supplies, if they lost their utensils, this one perfect can would save him, since it could be opened by hand & eaten cold with his fingers if necessary.

He took the can, and it came back intact, as did most of the sausages. None of the clothes were touched, as he slept in his clothes overnight (including boots!) and just got up & kept going in the same clothes. He drank the 600ml carton of milk with his dinner, which was lucky because everyone else's milk froze overnight and one person's was completely off, they discovered as they swigged and spat a mouthful. B awoke the next morning with his braces frozen to his lips, and had to get a sympathetic friend to swish some unfreezing water onto his mouth to free them. That's how cold it had been.

But this is by the by. They had a marvellous time caving, abseiling and other fun things, and came home sore and desperate for a hot bath. The main reason I brought this all up is the shock I got when I dropped him off at the school early on Wed morning for the camp.

As we parked, I could see two groups: girls, standing together with their mothers, and boys, standing around without parents. I helped B carry his bags and tent up to the Boyz group, cheerily said hello into the air and felt my greeting hit a sullen wall of WTF. B, to my utter surprise, had curled downwards from the head into a similarly surly slouch and he muttered 'see you later, Mum', almost under his breath. I pretended I didn't hear him, and gazed around at the group, only to find myself being glared at by males of various heights who didn't seem to want to utter another word until the female had left them to their Business.

It was quite powerful; I didn't want to submit to this Wall of Testoterone, but I could see Bumblebee was getting more curled with every second. OK, have fun, I chirped, stopping myself from leaning in to give him a hug, and walked with a very forced air of jauntiness past the smug mothers of girls (who may have been holding a sweep to see how long I'd last) and back to the car. I decided to sit in the car until the bus arrived & they were safely loaded, and then it dawned on me that most of the cars around me also had what I presume were parents of sons, sitting and watching wistfully, like exiles, like people sent to Coventry.

I walked like a ghost for a few hours until my soul warmed up. Of course, when I picked him up yesterday afternoon, he was really happy to see me, and we nattered on for ages, but it really brought home to me that I am now a guilty pleasure for him; he is not allowed to show affection for me in public anymore, according to the conventions of his peers. One part of me wants to shout POPPYCOCK to the world, but the other part acknowledges that this is part of him becoming a separate individual in the world.

The one thing that really pleased me is that instead of sitting around the campfire with his mates all night, he was so engrossed with the book he's reading that he lay in his tent with a torch and kept reading. The book? Up to now, he's been obsessed with Alex Rider teen fiction books. When I went dumpster diving at the Lifeline Book Fair depot recently, I found a Matthew Reilly book (Contest) and gave it to him. He's completely obsessed with it. I console myself that it *is* reading, and that I'm constructing a slow and careful pathway for him, up through various genres, the same way I've been guiding him, Beatrice-like, through music and movies. The true test of his broadening knowledge is that he can now watch things like The Simpsons and South Park and actually get lots of the cultural references.

So, sigh. Many more milestones to go, and most of them in the face of these stony young men who don't want to look adults in the eye. At least we have fun at home, where, to quote B's latest friend, things are really Ninja.

Books.

I've been thinking a lot about books lately. I know you all think that I think about books all the time, and maybe I do, but as I keep telling anyone who will listen, the world of books is a very large one, with a lot of various crinkly little islands to explore.

I realise at this point that I've been WELL this week, which is why I'm thinking about something besides feeling unwell. You only feel well in hindsight, don't you? Takes something like a beach or a sunset or a smile to make you realise, but there you are, caught out, feeling well.

Anyhoo, books. I've been thinking about artist's books, but that's another post in draft form because I've been looking at the Megalo BOOK members' show.

I've also been thinking about 'real' books, the books people have in their houses, only 'real' in the disrespectful sense that 'normal' works in most circumstances. What the hell does 'real' mean? What the hell is 'normal'? Why do people always want simple answers from me about books? What the hell is 'simple'?

Rick Gekoski (I keep spelling his name wrong, but that's ok because today he spelled mine wrong) is one of those people who can seemingly pull out simple statements about books and book-buying and reading and his distaste for the internet, but often simple (or trite) statements come from unshared deeper thinking. I saw him this afternoon at the National Library, in 'conversation' with Colin Steele, and the most lasting impression I got is that he entertains the masses with the tritely amusing, and saves all the best bits for over a glass of something in front of a fire, maybe with a cat on his lap. He'd be a much more entertaining person one-on-one, unlike myself, as I'm vastly entertaining en masse and quite dull in person.

I love the National Library as an institution, and am a Friend of it, but when I go to events there I get quite smothered by the thick fug of Smug in the air. You know the stuff: an entire theatre of people who Know They Read The Right Stuff. It's probably gathering about Sydney Harbour as I type, as the various venues prepare for the writers festival. I'm not complaining about ALL readers, or even people at festivals, but of people who don't like Genre Writers (although a thriller/murder mystery every now and again is perfectly fine, darling).

There were two moments of audible crowd reaction this afternoon. The first was when RG -- no, three! three moments of audible crowd reaction. Nobody expects the Spanish -- was giving us the red hot dirt on the International Booker Prize judging: "Carmen said she would ferret out some Chinese writers, came back with twenty novels. A ferret on speed, more like it." {{Titter}} went the happily scandalised audience. ("Bet someone's going to tweet that, damn them." No, just blog it, Rick.)

The second moment was when he said that reading good books didn't make you a better person, it just made you a better reader. That got a shockwave of disapproval; he obviously says that at every gig to get a reaction. He rationalised it beautifully, spoke of Leavis and the canon, but for me it was a DUH moment. I always mix my oats with some fruit. Last week I was reading Jackie Collins, this week Ruth Park, next week, who knows?

The third was when he stated that the internet had killed the antiquarian book industry, and got a sympathetic tutting and nodding of heads. Well, yes, because it meant a sharing of information that killed the inflated prices that suppressed information allows. But, as I pointed out in question time and afterwards in private, you won't totally lose secondhand booksellers and dealers because people need to see and feel what they're buying, and while people are buying more new books online, or secondhand books for basic reading, the need to inspect and feel will always be there for collectors.

Now that you can easily buy e-books for reading, publishers are falling over themselves to make collectable editions of both new and reprint books. They are setting up the future book collecting industry, where you will be able to collect all the various chicklit editions of Jane Austen, or only books with 'American' bindings (the ones that keep or manufacture a deckled edge on the pages). Books are shifting in the same way that all obsolete technologies go: to the scrapheap, or to the collections. Some survive, many don't. If they all survived, how boring! The hunt, the thrill of the chase, continues, and will continue on into the so-called paperless society everyone keeps banging on about. When/if there is no more paper, paper products will be fetishized, even more than they are now.

So there. That's another two cents from me.

Later I also asked RG, as he signed my sketchbook (my copy of his book is in the garage waiting for the bookshelves. He signed it 'For Karen, and Karen's book in the garage. Liberate the Books!') about the difference between the Fine Press book trade and the Rare Book trade, and we nattered on happily while the person in line behind me scowled and sent hate waves into the back of my neck. RG said, 'I always know when I meet someone who prints fine press books that I'm going to dislike them; they're always softly spoken with weird little beards, sandals, and fishy handshakes.' I laughed and shook his hand firmly and said goodbye, resolving to make fewer absolute statements in the future.

I've failed already, haven't I? Oh well.

One thing I do know -- I'm painting our bookshelves this weekend, and by the end of it, I'll be wishing I could never see a bloody book again.