A momentous occasion

I worked behind the bar tonight at the Craft ACT Christmas Smash.

I thought it was voluntary.

But I got paid! $50! My first paid work in the creative industries*!!

The $50 note dragged me straight into the Craft ACT shop. Where I was tempted to put it back into the till and take home one of the treasures I've been admiring over the past few weeks.

But I stopped. Tucked the note safely away and came home.

Now I need to make a decision. With my $50 note do I:

a) Frame it?
b) Buy something meaningful from the Craft ACT Shop to mark the occasion?
c) Retrospectively pay for my printmaking course at CMAG?
d) Other?

(* Actually, if you use the list of creative industries in Wikipedia my first paid work in the creative industried was cataloguing records for Radio Active in the mid 80s. But that doesn't really count in my mind)

It takes gumption to become more Australian

Almost a year to the day I continued my quest to become more Australian* by buying my first tub of Gumption.

Unfortunately it's to get crayon off the kids' tables at work, not for my personal use. I still have almost a full tub of (pink!) Chemico from New Zealand to use up before I can buy its Australian (white!) equivalent.

On a positive note, my colleague, who arrived here from Singapore in 2000 had never heard of Gumption so I had the pleasure of introducing her to this wonder of Australian cleaning...

(*Phew: attendance at a B&S Ball put off for another year!)

Tuesday: morning, noon and night.

Morning: Spent at Craft ACT where we were pricing new stock in readiness for the Christmas Smash shopping extravaganza tomorrow night at 6pm*. (For a sneak preview of one of the new items currently under wraps in the back room see here.)I also checked out our new exhibition Art Quilt Australia 09, which I haven't had a chance to see yet: Noon(ish!): I popped next door to Canberra Museum and Gallery for the first of my lunchtime printmaking classes.

We started by looking round the exhibition of prints from the CMAG collection, before a highlights tour by the Curator. The we had to use a viewfinder to select a piece of one of the works to sketch
before heading downstairs to the studio where we were shown how to make prints using the base of foam meat or vege trays and a pencil. Amelia shows us an exampleinks it up and prints it.Voila!We have a go:

Then she shows us how to add layers of colour and pattern. After cleaning the foam and scratching some background design she re-inks in a new colour
and shows us the difference it makes: But the hour's not over yet and Amelia isn't done. She cleans her foam again, cuts out the tree part of it, inks it up in a third colour, presses it down and we're all terribly impressed!
My final result wasn't nearly as striking:

Then I went back next door and spent the afternoon sorting out and loading the photos from Re-loved 2 to our Facebook page.

Night: My favorite night of the year (and better than Christmas):The Canberra Theatre subscription season launch!

(*Are you coming along?)

Almost forgot!

A little something I spotted on a fence in Vivian Street, Wellington...

Bother...

An unexpected side effect of watching Objectified is the desire to buy a Muji CD player, a Karim Rashid Kone vacuum cleaner and pay a visit to IKEA.

Sunday

Time to catch up on housework. But, more importantly, catch up with reading (a library book due back tomorrow and no renewal because there's a waiting list) and catch up with friends.

And tonight I plan to finally watch this which arrived a couple of days ago. Bliss!

Are you sick of random photos from my trip yet?

I hope not, as there's more to come and posting them enables me to try to sort all those boring things out that always need sorting out when you return from holiday.

Stuff like visiting the supermarket to buy groceries (which is a bigger thing than it sounds since Dickson Woolies has decided to turn themselves back to front. So after 12 years of getting the frozens last we're either supposed to get them first or shop from the other end of the store.)

So here's a photo of my favourite (not so) small person:This photo's called Cube on the coast:

And a shot of a bumble bee since we don't have any here:

Stupid o'clock

That's when I got up this morning after realising I wasn't going to get back to sleep.

But my bags are now unpacked. I've tidied my room, put away the dishes I did before I went away. And I've dealt with a pile of random colour inspiration photos I took over the weekend:

Because I suspect the chances of getting through my photos before they're past their use-by date will be a miracle

I'm thinking I should just highlight my faves...

One down, one to go..

Tonight's Power Point presentation on Terence Conran: I can go to bed happy now...

I'm back

I have bags to unpack

I have clothes to wash

I have new treasures to find homes for

I have accounts to balance

I have groceries to buy

I have a kazillion photos to deal with

I have to go to work

But first, I have a Powerpoint presentation to whip together for class tonight.

In the meantime, here's a pretty picture I took of Scorching Bay for you to look at: