Category Archives: Spinning

I’ve been practicing taking photos in low light without a flash. In other words, I finally got the tripod set up.

Here are the best ones

Sam Javanrouh from Daily Dose of Imagery did some wonderful long exposure night shots recently, Link, Link. Shows me up as the crap photographer that I am, maily due to ignorance and lack of application on my part. But I try and thanks to digital cheapness, I can click merrily away and occasionally get an OK shot.

Riscy’s dad Jeff Jennings is a great photographer and a very experienced sea kayaker. His photography lends us a unique and insight into Tasmania’s georgous marine landscape. Continue reading →

I had cut snippets of images from an edition of the ArtAlmanac (Byline: Essential Guide to Australian Galleries. $3.00/issue, great value). I assembled the snippets on the bed of my scanner then mucked around with the image in photoshop.

I came across a filter called Pattern Maker, mostly you get crap, but there is an ocassional good one 🙂

Karoda asked what spinning in the grease is, and perhaps some of you are also wondering the same thing 🙂

Spinning in the grease is spinning the wool unwashed, with the lanolin still present (or adding grease back in after washing). It spins very nicely as the lanolin lubricates the wool. It smells great too! If you have a dirty fleece with lots of poo and dirt, then it’s probably best to wash first. The fleece I’m working with is very clean with some dirt particles and a little bit of weathering at the tips but virtually no vegtable matter.

I’m planning to heading over to Bendigo for the Australian Sheep and Wool Show next weekend. If any of my readers are also going, please drop me an email or a comment. Perhaps we could meet up for a cuppa. I haven’t organised accommodation yet. That’s on the list today.

Looks like I’m heading for another period of not watching TV. I just can’t stomach the never ending, over the top, sensationalist coverage we get of terrible events. I’ll take my chances with Triple J, they’ll tell me anything I need to know I’m sure.

Here’s another piece of photoshop art:

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I’m back from Melbourne. We had a wonderful weekend, the highlight for me being the Opera and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.

The opera was packed out. We saw Opera Australia’s production of The Magic Flute by Mozart. I thought I wouldn’t know much of the music, but actually I knew heaps of it, probably from the film Amadeus. I kept on singing Papageno and the Queen of the Night aria on the tram afterwards.

The next day we caught the Bill Henson Exhibition at the Ian Potter Centre at Federation Square. WOW, some of it was pretty confronting, but WOW!!! We also caught the Top Arts show of work from students who completed yr 12 Art and Studio Art in 2004.

On the southbank promenade there was an art/craft market. Riscy and I call these things ‘crappe craft’. Most if the stuff if pure junk. Whenever I show my stuff to people they invariably tell me I could go to craft markets and sell it. NO NO NO!!! If I was looking for a way to kill my creativity stone dead, that would be a sure way of doing it.

Yesterday I was woken up by bagpipes at 5am. Yes it was ANZAC Day. We ended up catching a few hours of the big Melbourne parade. We were nicely positioned on the corner of Flinders Street and Swanston Street right in the thick of things. It was difficult to get good action shots, and this really was the best we could do:

I usually can’t watch the parade on telly as it makes me cry, yesterday was no exception. It’s just something about those old blokes … and even worse, the ones where the family member marches with the photo and medals of their dead relative. It just sets me off.

My Pop is 91 and still kicking. He went to Papua New Guinea and the Middle East in WW2. He never marches in the parade or talks about the war, I don’t think he likes the RSL. I wish he could live forever.

This was the best photo I took, this is the leader of a pipe band:

After the parade we headed to the Melbourne Cricket Ground for the big Footy match. The Bombers beat The Magpies, it was a poor display of ball skills and a very scrappy game. However, this was expected given the poor perfomance of both teams so far this season.

In fibre news (congratulations if you got this far!), I’ve got heaps knitted on the orangy scarf. I’m going to have enough wool for a matching beanie!!
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A big hello to you from the back seat of the little plane I flew in this morning:

The flight went well. Although it was a beautiful cloudless sky, there was a lot of smoke in the air due to various bushfires/burnoffs around the area, not least of which being the fire at Wilsons Promontory.

It was a treat to see a plan view of the Latrobe Valley with it’s power stations, coal mines and paper mill. The townships were very interesting to see too. We headed over the Strzelecki Ranges towards the coast, where we could see the new (controversial) wind farms and the coastline off in the distance.

The plane we were on was very tiny(4 seats), and very old. But I felt pretty safe the whole time. It’d be wonderful to have a licence and access to a plane so we could pop over to Tasmania whenever we felt like it. (If money were no object, of course!!). Continue reading →

I decided to show you some photos of our picnic yesterday. I’ve been sewing, but I can’t show you yet, because it is for my swap with Sophie.

We decided that since our camping didn’t happen we should at least have a picnic, so yesterday we packed a couple of salad rolls (made up with lettuce, tomato, Tasmanian Smoked Salmon (check out the link for some yummy looking receipes) and King Island Dairy Blue Cheese and some Cascade Apple Isle (no link, sorry LOL)

This is the lake at the park

This the predominant type of bird residing in the lake and surrounding wetland. I don’t know what they are called, but they are quite handsome.

Our dog, Reuben, thought the birds were handsome too. This was pretty funny to watch, Riscy didn’t find it amusing.

I am very excited by the quilting I did on Sophie’s bag and I’m keen to try something similar on a larger piece of wall art for my dining room. I’m not sure if it will translate sucessfully into a larger piece though, but I’m definitely gonna give it a try.

Sophie, I would have declared the bag finished, but there is a problem with the handle, its the wrong length. Too short to cross shoulder to hip across the torso, too wide to work as a straight handle just too tooo tooooo….. I’m sure you understand. I have to unpick and rethink. I took it to work for a second opinion (we’re a bunch of engineers, but we still like our accessories!). I think two short handles would be best for this bag and will allow the (pretty intense) quilting to be shown off best. I’ll do that tommorow night.

I returned my borrowed spinning wheel tonight, allowing me to have another chin wag with Bev and Ian. Bev had knitted up a heap of these Ear Flap Hats with Colinette yarn. YUMMO One day I’m gonna be a knitter of THINGS THAT FIT.

Did I tell you that the beret doesn’t fit anymore. I washed it and it got huge. Then I tried to felt it and its still huge. I’m gonna have to sew some elastic in the rim to try and make it work.

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We’re going to be beach this afternoon. First time this summer.
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Computer innards look pretty fascinating to me. I was admiring an old graphics card today, I love the minature roads and houses and decided to take a photo or two.

I need to get a few skills in photoshop, but I like what I achieved even with some basic filters.

I have heaps of ideas floating around at the moment. It’s just a matter of getting into my sewing room and creating some stuff now 🙂 how exciting!

I feel that my diversion into spinning has given me a needed break from quilting and now I can approach my work with a fresh outlook.

My new job is cramping my artistic style somewhat though, too bloody exhausting! Who would have thunk it? 🙂
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I had to go to Buchan today (yes it rhymes with the swear word and I get a jeuvenile pleasure from saying it). On the way there is a town with this in the main street:

I also took the opportunity to drop into Jumbuck Wools. The lady was once again very helpful, I bought about 2kg of unprocessed fleece (white and grey), some landscape dyes, a Niddy Noddy, at carding brush and some 5mm knitting needles.

We had our new scanner delivered today, so no doubt I’ll be playing around with it over the next couple of weeks.

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