It Makes Me Sad

Earlier in the week I talked about the big knit – a knitting masterpiece that is going to cover the bridge just down the road from us.  Well today was the big day, the day that the knitting was going to be shown to the world.  I say WAS because some time during the night some vandals cut the installation from the bridge.  Now instead of it being suspended along the scaffolding it is draped below the bridge and in the water.

14 months of planning, weeks of knitting and 10 days of installation to be ruined in one night by thoughtless, selfish people.   Despite all the damage to the knitting, the festival continued.  Although it was damaged, what was left looked amazing.  In places the knitting was cut and left hanging in tatters, in other places holes were made in the knitting just like a stitch or two had been dropped.

Shredded Knitting

Draped over the River

Still a Place for Fun

There were still a few smaller pieces of work that weren’t destroyed and you can see from them that the concept was amazing.

Granny Square

My favourite non destroyed piece is this one

Fluoro Doilie

 

I would have loved to see the bridge draped in knitting.  It really makes me sad that someone, or most likely a group of someones, would take the time to destroy something like this.  It must have taken a long time to actually cut each and every tie that was holding the knitting to the bridge along the top of the scaffolding.  What pleasure could possibly be derived from such destruction?

Knit Big

I knit, I don’t knit very well, I don’t know how to follow patterns or do anything fancy but still I CAN knit.

Christening Hat

I am slow and get bored easily so I only make small items.  Generally I make, well actually the only thing I make is baby hats.  I like to think they are funky and unique.  This is one of my favourites, I made it for girl-child’s Christening not long after I re-learnt to knit.

I guess what I am trying to say is that knitting is fun but it is time consuming.  At my super snail-paced knitting speed it takes me an evening to make each hat, sometimes longer depending on what is on tv.  I would love to have more time to knit, or be able to knit at a speed that I could make something other than a hat before my fingers feel like they are going to drop off.

Tonight we went for a wander down to the river to see if the rumoured  Big Knit was taking place.  What we found was a group of artists working on their knitting project.  Now this is no normal knitting project, the aim is to knit a cover for the stock bridge that crosses the river.  This bridge is huge and soon will be covered in bright amazing knitting.

Big Knitting

Rolls of brightly coloured plastic were cut into strips and knitted together on pieces of pvc pipe.  The knitting was laid out on the parkland beside the bike path.  It is really hard to convey the sheer size of the pieces that were already knitted.

Hopefully seeing cars and stables in the background will covey the enormity of the knitting.

We sat by the giant knitting, watching the artists working.  Girl-child and her friend had a great time watching and also collecting pieces of scrap ‘wool’.  They plan to make themselves some costumes to wear to a dance party that will celebrate the dressing of the bridge on Saturday.

Fancy Dress

It looks like we are now going to a dance party on Saturday!

Crafty Goodness

For the past week the girls (little girls, not the wine drinkin

g fun to be around girls) have been begging to have a craft session and I have been stalling them.  Firstly my creative space looks like a technicolour dumping ground and secondly I am lazy.  Today would have been the perfect opportunity to craft with the girls but they were busy playing fashion shows and drawing pictures as I procrastinated about being domestic.  It wasn’t until I was getting dinner ready that they remembered that they wanted to craft.  They are becoming masters of negotiation and somehow I was convinced to let them all craft after dinner.  OK, so I am a sucker and gave in easily.

 

As you can see, girl-child has a stunning technique when it comes to cutting fabric – tongue out and twisted.  Of course there was precision and accuracy with all of the cutting.  It should be interesting to see how the projects turn out, they are making Wheat Bag Softies from the Meet Me At Mikes book.  I will post photos of their crafty goodness if they ever finish them.

The 3 girls (girl-child who is 5, a neighbour who is 10 and a 14 year old exchange student) all had a great crafty time.  As they were busy further destroying having fun and creating in my study area, man-child was helping a friend move furniture.  Without any prompting or intervention boy-child put himself to bed!  Fingers crossed he will sleep-in in the morning…

Rewards

I forgot to mention back here that the book I received for Mothers Day is this fantastic book.   The book is a beautiful collection of craft projects with simple step by step instructions.  You can find out more about the book at Meet Me At Mike’s. 

It has only been in my hands for a few days but I have been itching to get to work and make something.  Before I could start on something new, I needed to finish the projects that I had started last week before I could let myself start anything new, but more importantly I needed to clean my work space.  Now realistically that shouldn’t be too hard to do but in reality it was a nightmare.  

My work space is a study alcove off our bedroom.  It is large enough to house a work desk and an L shaped sofa bed (that I am proud to say I enjoyed a nanna nap on today) along with a couple of book cases.  It is also home to all the crap that doesn’t have a home anywhere else in the house, about 8 boxes of such crap.  After much sorting I found tools that belonged in the garage, lunch boxes (fortunately of the clean variety and not filled with unknown food items/science projects), random toys, dvds, phone chargers for phones that we no longer have, books, nail polish, craft items and hair accessories.  I could easily fill a page detailing more of the crap I found, but I think you get the picture.

Eventually all that was left was the huge pile of crap that belonged nowhere other than in the too-hard basket.  In my procrastination and immediate distaste for dealing with the mess that was remaining, I began doing ridiculous things like detangling the balls of wool contained within a storage crate and then re-rolling the wool until I had a pretty neat and organised pile.  

Look my pretty stockpile of wool, anyone would actually think I knew how to knit properly!

Anyway, eventually I managed to sort out most of the room (with the exception of the single crate of stuff that is now the one and hopefully only too-hard basket), including building a new storage shelf for more stuff so I can try to remain organised, neat and hopefully tidy.  

If I had taken before pictures I would have probably been too embarrassed to post them, the work in progress photos of clutter strewn about everywhere were even worse, but here are some happy pictures of my ‘creative space’ before I have a chance to destroy it again.

Finally it was time to get to work and make.  This is what I finished, a ballerina moopy and a hat for one of the baby girls born into my life in the last few months.  

I still have to create characters for the final 3 girlie moopys, but that shouldn’t take too long.  

Next project?  I was thinking of making a softie wheat-bag friend to ease away the aches and pains of winter by loobylu or some yoga pants for happy babies in anticipation of Baby Billy by auntycookie.  Perhaps both, any suggestions?

My Babies in Blue

The kids were totally crazy tonight, it was like they had been filled with red cordial or coke or some such hyper making kid juice and I was dreading bedtime.  After reading a few chapters of James and the Giant Peach, they promised they would be quiet and go to sleep quickly.  I kissed them goodnight and wandered down to the study.  I could hear them talking for a few minutes and then all was quiet.  I really should have thought more about it then – hyper kids being quiet, too quiet can never be a good thing.  Unfortunately I was more interested in getting my own dinner ready so I let them be.

Man-child went to close the window in their room and look what he found.My Little Boy Blue

His Partner in Crime

There seems to be a theme to my kids and blue…

Boy-child had another night time adventure with a blue texta when he was younger.

Another craft project gone wrong ended up with girl-child being covered in blue oil paint.

What it is about blue and my children?  Should I just get rid of all blue craft items?

Heart Shaped Faces

In a bout of domesticity the other night (I can’t remember which night as it is something I would generally not like to remember) I actually moved the couch to sweep and mop, as opposed to cleaning around them and hoping no one would ever look remotely in the direction.  

Anyway, I moved the couch back into position, unable to further contribute to domesticity due to clean but wet floors, I pulled up a seat in the corner of the couch.  I reached over to grab the remote to start flicking through the channels and saw a mark on the couch.   Being a mum and ever so practical, I tried to use a glob of spit on my finger to wipe off the mark.  When I looked closer, the ‘mark’ was actually a beautiful picture drawn on the brown leather, with pen!

I was pissed off, but the drawing was there and I couldn’t do much about it.  It was clearly girl-child’s drawing as it was a heart head person, drawn in the style she was ever so fond of a few months ago (does that give you an indication of how often a chocolate coloured leather couch needs cleaning?).  I thought about getting out the cleaning products and trying to get rid of the ‘mark’ on the couch but quickly changed my mind.  

 

Why would I not attempt to cleaning the drawing from the couch?

 a) it would be hard to discuss with girl-child the implications of drawing on furniture if said drawing was removed,

b) the floors were still wet, I don’t want to undo all my cleaning work

c) what cleaning products (how do I know how to clean leather without first googling?)

d) why clean, the couch is still comfortable, and besides there is an interesting tv show about to start

e) all of the above!

 

Naturally, response E was the winner!  So for the days following the discovery of the heart shaped face on the couch, I have tried to discuss with girl-child why the drawing was on the couch and how it got there.  She was very aloof and didn’t want to discuss what she could clearly see was drawn on the couch.  Instead of being hysterical about it (and I had every damn right to be hysterical – the couch is the most expensive piece of furniture we own) I tried to calmly discuss why drawing on anything other than paper was inappropriate.  That seemed to work, girl-child could list all the places she wasn’t allowed to draw, that she has in the past drawn on – her pyjamas, her body, her bed, dolls furniture… the list was quite extensive.  She was able to say that drawings are best on something that isn’t precious and that can be kept and displayed for everyone to enjoy.  

I was feeling positive, as she was recognising the errors of her way I asked the most important question – “so how did your heart shaped face get on to the couch?”  The responses varied from the fairies put it there to it was magic or my friends did it.  This changed the discussion to the importance of telling the truth.  Trying to explain to a 4 year old that I am not upset about the picture on the couch (at least not visibly and audibly in front of her) but I am very upset about her not telling the truth.

Around here, not telling the truth results in the loss of a gem (I will explain more about that in another post at another time).  For 3 days, girl-child resisted telling the truth, the gems weren’t working.  She would say that she was tricking me.  Whenever I asked if she wanted to discuss the couch, she would go into sullen mode.  She was unable to speak due to trying not to cry.  Instead she would squeak or grunt a response.  It was amazingly difficult not to laugh in her face.  

Eventually we decided that gem bribery or deprivation wasn’t working, we had to take drastic measures.  It was time to cancel all home craft projects.  I was excited, it meant that there would be no more paper scraps, beads, pens and string all over the floor.  

This afternoon, shopping for a birthday present for a friend of girl-child, she realised the errors of her way.  We were buying a giant package of art and craft items and for the first time ever girl-child didn’t get any new craft stuff.  Finally, on the way home from the shops, girl-child told me all about drawing on the couch.  She told me all about how she drew the picture and then tried to rub it off.  It wouldn’t come off no matter how hard she tried.  She was really upset and I could barely contain my smiles – girl-child finally told the truth.  

The picture remains on the couch, as a constant reminder of being honest and of knowing where it is appropriate to draw.  Besides, the picture is kind of cute!

 

Little Boy Blue

I was reading another blog (Zoot again) that was questioning what makes little kids stay in bed, when there is nothing physically stopping them from getting out.  It reminded me of the adventures we shared when boy-child graduated from his cot…  

Boy-child moved to a junior bed when he was 14 months old (around the time we knew we were pregnant again). We didn’t want to have to deal with jealousy issues of boy-child not wanting the baby to be in ‘his bed’, so we converted his cot early. We were really lucky, despite being able to climb in and out of bed himself, he never climbed out of the bed until it was really morning, when we told him he could get up. We would leave a few books and a toy on the drawers by his bed and he would quietly entertain himself, it was fantastic.

This lasted for about a year, until he realised he could get out of bed. Then he would get out of bed, play for a bit, then return to bed when he was tired again. We really never had any issues until the time he found the texta… Unfortunately he never found any paper to draw on. He did however find the walls, cupboard doors and his entire body (including under the nappy he took off and then put back on when he was sufficiently blue)!

AJ’s Art, originally uploaded by superRelish.

I still love looking at these photos, boy-child is so pleased with his creation! It was really hard to impress upon him that it was important to only draw pictures on paper when I insisted on taking photos of the evidence. Fortunately this was a once off night time art expedition.

We have had similarly colourful results from other art experiences, but I will write about them another time!