Little Fish Creations

Quick Post

Posted on March 15, 2005 by

The weekend went well. Much wine and cheese was eaten. I have probably gained 5kg must go back on diet posthaste.

Now onto the exciting news. I have won an Ebay auction for an Ashford Spinning Wheel. Check it out here

It was a thrilling experience. I’ve never tried Ebay before. So I was very nervous and my heart was pumping. I had read, some time ago, about using bidding software so I tried out AuctionInsights.com which worked and was free. YAY!

The only problem now is that I emailed the seller last night and just now and he has yet to reply. I have to assume that since he has a good trackrecord I should just hang cool for a while instead of checking my email every five minutes.

This is the merino wool I spun last night. I’m calling Rhubarb Patch. It looks brown from a distance.

I’m getting the hang of spinning merino with only the occasional breakage now, it feels divine!. Most of the fleece came from my felting stash which was primarily sourced from TreeTops Colours in Western Australia.

And, lastly. Check out this knitted food.

Posted in Linocut | Leave a comment

Little Update

Posted on March 12, 2005 by

Today’s photo is of my Ugly Duckling Scarf. It is definitely getting better looking though, so I’m thinking of changing it’s name to Swan Scarf.

I’m more and more pleased with this scarf as it grows.

There is a big difference between the feel and look of the wool on the new ball. It is a lot skinnier and not as nice feeling. It will improve as I get into the ball though.

**************************************************

This next part in my blog is on behalf of my sister, Megan, who rang me last night to ask if I remembered the rest of this ditty:

Fatty and Skinny had a fight
up and down the toilet pipe…

We could not remember the rest. Riscy looked on the net for the answer. But, whilst there were many other Fatty and Skinny dittys recorded, this one seemed to be missing. We gave up.

THEN

She called me back about 5 minutes after we hung up, she remembered:

Fatty and Skinny had a fight
up and down the toilet pipe
Fatty pulled the rusty chain
and Skinny was never seen again.

******************************************************

I’m losing hope of buying the Tara Spinning Wheel as Bev has not been able to contact the lady who wants to sell it.

There are a couple of wheels for sale on ebay currently, so I’m toying with the idea of bidding for them. I’ve never done ebay before. I’m not sure about the idea.

******************************************************

News of the BAG

The auction was yesterday The bag was auctioned off with a box of chocolates for $70, I’m very pleased by that! Our Environmental Officer bought it for his girlfriend.

All up we raised $4000 for The Worlds Greatest Shave for Care and a Cure. Pretty good for an office of less than 100 people!

I over spent (but console myself that it is a good cause AND tax deductable). At the auction I won a car wheel alignment and a 1/2 hour joy flight. Lets just say that I will NEVER bid for a house at auction. Someone had a bid for $120 for the flight and I was thinking to myself that my limit was $150… then I blurted out “One Hundred and FIFTY dollars!!!”… that stopped the auction dead and I won. Still, I can’t wait to take the flight!

Posted in Photography | Leave a comment

Friday Yay!!

Posted on March 11, 2005 by

Whew! It’s Friday. We are just about to head into a series of 4 day working weeks 🙂 Its Labour Day here on Monday then we head into Easter.

An old friend of mine from High School is coming to stay on the weekend so I don’t envisage that I’ll get much creative stuff done, but I do hope to work some more on the Linocut.

I finished the bag on Wednesday night for the Shave for a Cure auction:

Yay, today this bag will be auctioned for a cancer charity.

I realised last night that I am the worst storyteller EVER! We had some friends over for dinner and everytime I opened my mouth nonsense came out…. I’d get caught up in stupid details, people would look at me with a confused expression etc. I wasn’t even drinking…

How could I, daughter a wonderful and entertaining storyteller and conversationalist, suck so badly. It’s embarrassing I tells ya, EMBARRASSING!

Posted in Knitting | 1 Comment

Slow Progress on the Shave for a Cure bag

Posted on March 9, 2005 by

Tonight I WILL finish the bag for the Shave for a Cure auction. My excuse for it taking me so long is that I decided it needed more quilting than I originally planned.

The fabric is quilted, ready to be made into a bag.

A close up of the quilting for the Shave for a Cure Bag.

The photos don’t show the sparkles caused by the metallic thread used in the flowers. Originally I planned to only use the metallic thread but it didn’t show up enough on this fabric, so I was quite daring and chose to outline each flower in veriagated RED thread!

Today I was utterly astounded by this quilt by Melody Johnson. I wasn’t really familiar with her work until joining the Artful Quilters Webring, however I check her blog very regularly now 🙂 Apparently she is quite famous in the quilting arena and perhaps as a quilter I SHOULD have known of her before now LOL.

Posted in Knitting | 5 Comments

Finger Painting

Posted on March 7, 2005 by

I was feeling pretty bad about obliterating the beautiful leaves on my Linocut extravaganza so I made a tracing of them in photoshop, printed it out then fingerpainted it.

Resurrection of the Leaves

I picked up some very cheap watercolour paints on a whim today, and already I have put them to use 🙂 They do have a funny smell though and I hope they aren’t poisonous, as I’m pretty sure I have managed to eat some (urggg!!).

Tonight I must make a bag. A wonderful, seductive, gotta have me bag that will sell for big bucks at the annual Shave for a Cure (for cancer) auction at my workplace.

I saw an exhibition of photograms by Susan Purdy on the weekend at the Cowwarr Art Space. It’s the second time I’ve seen these works and I really love them.

I’m sick of feeling dissapointed everytime I see work that I love and can’t buy so I’m thinking about setting up my own little fund for buying art. If I put aside $30 per week, I’d have around $1500 per year to spend on art. How cool would that be?

Also check out Clive Murray-White who lives in Cowwarr and runs the Cowwarr Art Space with his partner Carolyn. Clive does wonderful marble sculptures. When I met Clive and Carolyn at their gallery a few weeks ago I was blown away by their friendliness, Clive showed me through his workshop and it was great to get a feeling for the logisitics of dealing with those huge pieces of marble. I’d need to put away a good deal more than $30/week get one of his big heads.

Posted in Painting | 1 Comment

Linocut progress

Posted on March 7, 2005 by

Righto. I’ve probably gone overboard, I’ve certainly lost the effect of the beautiful leaves… but I couldn’t just leave them like that since this was intended to be a linocut learning exercise.

I don’t know where to go from here

As you can see I have toyed with the idea of putting a basketweave pattern in next… I don’t think it will work though.

I was at a dinner party on Saturday night with all sorts of arty types and one of them gave me some hints for dealing with the ‘busyness’ of the piece…. take prints then cut more away, print, cut, print cut etc. I’m concious that I don’t have a press so I may not be able to handle big white areas too well. But this is a learning piece, so I’ll give it a go anyway.

Since I got a bit stuck with the linocut I retreated to my spinning wheel where I spun some frustrating merino (but oh so soft) and did some more cutting on a reverse applique piece I’m making (and I’m not too happy with it)

Posted in Painting | 3 Comments

The Great Linocutting Adventure

Posted on March 5, 2005 by

Last night I Linocut ’til I couldn’t see straight. This is my progress so far

This is my linocutting so far. I have decided to use the huge piece of lino in one big linocut extravaganza.

I’m at the stage now where I need to make decisions about the structure of the piece. I started out just doodling around the edges until the big leaf thingys happened. Now I’m starting to feel precious about it and I’m worried about stuffing it up… a sure way to stiffle my creativity.

I have also hit upon a brilliant idea (ahem!):

In Photoshop, I removed colour then played around with the contrast tool to get this ‘imaginary print’ from my linocut. Sure is easier than squinting up my eyes to try and see the negative image.

We had lots of things planned today; Car shopping, attending the Boolarra Folk Festival then going to an opening at the Cowarr artspace tonight. But it’s raining in a seductive kind of way, its 10:30am and Riscy is still asleep, I’ve got Cowboy Junkies playing on the Ipod…. maybe we’ll just stay home 🙂

Posted in Painting | 4 Comments

Birthdays are Great!

Posted on March 4, 2005 by

It was my 28th birthday yesterday. I’m now a hop, skip and a jump from 30, my main panic is that it is getting scarily close to the age I was sort of thinking about having children and the maternal urge seems further away than ever!

We spent last evening thus: Chris came home with flowers (lilies which haven’t opened yet) and a card (a naughty, but funny one), we had a very very long walk with the dog. A lovely steak followed with beans, carrots and potatoes (yay for meat and 3 veg) and my second piece of yummy carrot cake for dessert.

We then went to see a play called Odyssey, I really had to sell this one to Riscy as he preferred the movies… but I am SOOO glad we went, it was wonderful wonderful wonderful. A very personal show with one actor interweaving Homer’s Odyssey and the story of his parents’ migration from Greece to Australia.

My present arrived in the mail today:

Linocut supplies. Note my foot in the shot is to give some scale to the HUGE pieces of Lino I got. It was a total mistake, Riscy thought he was ordering in centimetres (as shown on the the website) and they thought he was ordering in inches.

I rang up the supplier and we are rectifying the problem, but I have told them to charge me for one of the big pieces so I can experiment this weekend. 🙂 I’ve already cut into it hehehe

Posted in Painting | 6 Comments

Straight and Narrow Challenge Quilt

Posted on February 28, 2005 by

Ahem. This is the quilt for QuiltArt Straight and Narrow Challenge. I’m on a high from the glue spray I used => why don’t I ever follow advice? Don’t breathe this stuff friends of Little Fish, it is not good for you.

Seven Little Pears. My Straight and Narrow Challenge Quilt. I took a few liberties with the definition of quilt (as opposed to quilts LOL).

A close up of the quilt

Here in Gippsland we are being devoured by mosquitos. I’ve never seen them this big, or this bad. I even got bitten on my ear on the weekend, it wasn’t itchy, just sore.

Mary Fever has hit our shores. Mary married a prince. Now we all want to know her (I’m currently filling in time, blogging, until her interview with Andrew Denton airs in 15 minutes time).

So you can claim seven degrees of seperation. Her dad taught me Mathematics at University in Tasmania – if my memory serves me correct, Calculus and Linear Algebra 2 in second year and Numerical Methods in third year, sends shivers up my spine just thinking about it. All of it is totally useless to me in my engineering practice – of course LOL

Tally Ho

Posted in Knitting | 1 Comment