Blinking Flights

Bitter Sweet.

Things are good for me right now. I'm a bit of an all over the place, emotionally-rollerly-coasterly type person at the best of times, but it seems at last that things are coming together. When people ask me what I do, I say I make dolls with a little grin on my face, because I know it sounds funny. In the past I've always been in the middle of something that was leading somewhere else, and what I did was either quickly and inaccurately explained, or explained over several hours incorporating quotes and references from the book I was reading at the time. 'The Real World', which I keep hearing about, has never much been my thing.

But anyway, I seem to be making my life as a grown up work. I'm not really ticking any of the boxes that we were brought up to want to tick like marriage, children, career, mortgage, new car, attempt to win lotto and so on and so forth, although I would like to tick some of them eventually... but I'm no longer prone to crippling bouts of depression and/or anxiety, I feel calm, and that's enough for me right now.

The funny thing is, and I don't mean funny 'ha ha', is that some of the most important people aren't here to see me pull it all together, especially since I know they'd be the proudest, the most supportive, and possibly the most useful!

I don't want to make a soppy. morbid post, I just want to say that there are some types of friendship that are so important, and I had one of those. Sometimes I feel ripped off by the universe, and yesterday was one of those days. I just need to remember that some people never make friends with people they really, really click with, and I did. 

Oh Nellie! The things I'd tell you if you were here! xxx.

B.

hopey, changey stuff:

There are so many great blogs out there about being eco and ethical and green, and I've started reading them, like really reading them-- not just looking at the pictures! And the lovely thing about the internet is that whilst a suprising amount of people in my day to day life are quite resistant to change, it turns out that lots of people around the world are thinking the same things I'm thinking... and that's that something has to give... we can't keep living this way...

Aside from the whole sustainability problem, the carbon footprints, and all the environmental arguments for consuming less, the basic human decency argument has to be enacted too... unfortunately, my high standard of living is paid for with the poverty of the third world... if we're not ripping the guts out of resources in Africa, we're getting super cheap labor in Asia... and I'm over here, living like a queen in comparative terms, I have running water, a telephone, and a 2 bedroom flat! It seems meagre compared to what a lot of other people I know have, but it is massive compared to what most human beings around the world have.

I'm certainly not perfect, or above judgment, I have coke in my fridge, I have reeboks in my wardrobe, and most of the stuff in my house was probably made in a sweat-shop, even if I obtained a lot of it from the op-shop, but anyhoo, I'm going to try and be better at this whole thing, and marry my ideological commitments with my everyday life.

A couple of weeks ago, I signed up for this pledge at Isis' blog, and I'm really digging it. Already I've noticed how those cute, cheap clothes I see everywhere are just off limits, they might be cheap, and cute, but they are not worth having. I should also confess that I've been watching an this doco on ABC2 each week, and it's bringing the reality of sweat-shop life a little too close to home, this and reading No Logo by Naomi Klein, are all making for a pretty heady mix of anti-consumption-for-consumption's-sake sentiment around here...

This is the pledge, as copied from Isis' blog:

----------------------------------------------------------------------

E T H I C A L  C L O T H I N G  P L E D G E

I pledge to only wear clothing that is one or more of the following:
1. Pre-loved
2. Handmade (preferably by me)
3. Reconstructed
4. Made with ethical / environmentally friendly materials
5. Made by a company with strong ethical policy & workers' rights

* Companies with environmentally friendly practices (such as cutting down on waste/energy/water) get brownie points
* If I get one little inkling of sweatshop labour, I'm outta there!
* Above all though, I think the most important thing is reducing the amount of things we use in the first place. Not purchasing ANOTHER piece of clothing just for the sake of it is the biggest statement we can make.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

This all leaves me in a bit of a pickle about where some of my doll fabric comes from, whilst the majority is made in Japan and the US, and a lot is second-hand... I do buy the occasional Spotlight fabric for half the price of my other fabrics, and it does clearly read 'made in India' on the roll... I'd love feedback, suggestions!!

B.

P.S. picture via here.

P.P.S. my title is poking fun at Sarah Palin, not Obama!

I do love you, but no thanks.

 
Ok, I lived in Sydney for 8 years, I didn't grow up there, I was transplanted there for uni, where I managed to change courses once, and drag my degree out to five years instead of three, just for the fun of it... so most of my time there was as a starving student, in fact, I went part time at uni so that I could work more hours at my crumby job, a means of coping with my own personal 'rental crisis'-- and this was years before the official one occurred. 

When I left, it was because I had been crying every morning before work because I hated going into the city. I was working on George St as a humble pen selling girl, where I didn't much enjoy the prospect of having business types eyeball me over $700, gold nibbed fountain pens made in Switzerland. Where the men were so blatantly pervy, and the women were so blatantly frustrated and resentful. The fact that I was a vegetarian with a creative arts degree and some big opinions about conspicuous consumption habits got shoved a little deeper down into my gut everyday... and so I left...

And ever since, I have been one of those people who go around complaining that nothing works outside the city. I hate bad food, I hate bad art, I hate when I go shopping and I can't find what I want, I hate the stares you get outside Sydney when you dress ever so slightly differently from the mainstream... but yesterday really put some things into perspective about why I did leave Sydney, and why I'm not about to move back there.

To be fair, it was raining and I know that things are a little hiccuppy on rainy days... but still...

1. Your traffic is a joke, like an actual laughable joke. Nothing works, and I try be to pretty reasonable and relative when I look at things like this- in the scheme of world problems, Sydney's transport network doesn't really rate in matters of importance, but all the same, it is one massive joke, where between the roads, the trains and the buses you just can't seem to get it together. The structure of your streets are so outdated that nothing moves. It shouldn't take 2 hours to get from Concord to the city.

2. The price of real estate is a joke, like an actual laughable joke, the type of thing which could severely paralyze lifetime dreams and such. Who in their right mind would work a 40 hour a week job to come home to live in a cupboard and spent all day Saturday in traffic? Yummy food and pretty art don't justify this.

Ok, well really these are my only qualms, but they are big qualms! Maybe Sydney when you get this stuff sorted out, we can talk. 

B.

Edit: Some cats are the best people!

Some of you may have noticed from the status updates on twitter, that I have doubled the amount of cats at my house over the weekend... Paco arrived on Saturday night, bringing with her 8 years of cat experience to teach to my beautiful, gentle, INNOCENT & snuggly Henry. It's an interesting dynamic, H is friendly and welcoming, he's trying to sneak her food in a nonchalant sort of way, not phased if you take it away from him, he's very interested in everything she does, he follows her, stares at her, copies some of the things she does. Paco is tiny, she was the runt of her litter, and she is one strange little kitty... she likes humans a little more than H, and she seems to take more to me than Joe. She isn't a daytime cat at all... and I am one tired human being... tired and uncomfortable! 

P has decided that she needs to be out there among the action in the trees, the trees full of birds which she can see from sitting in the window cill. She has spent the last few nights trying to shake the window screens out of their frames, so that in this hot and muggy summer weather, we have had to have the windows closed, and the vertical blinds wide open-- she keeps getting herself tangled in them whilst running along the window ledges. Exhausted and frustrated at 3:30 this morning, we let her onto the balcony for some air, where we watched her trying to calculate the mathematics of jumping off, whilst Henry watched on, with a completely baffled look on his little face. After much hissing and a little scratching, a towel was used to wrangle her inside, and she spent the night inside... much to her disgust...

Lets hope things improve!

B.

Constant Companions...

He's taken to sleeping behind my machine pedal, in between my sewing desk & the afternoon sun... I really don't understand those anti-cat types...

B.

Clutter...

I've been having a completely chilled out sort of week. I've been to Sydney two times, I've been to almost every op shop in the immediate vicinity and I even found the perfect book shelf for $15 at one of those stores. I had some beautiful fabric arrive in the mail from an Etsy Shop I found a little while ago.

I had a great time at Reverse Garbage. $9 buys so much, including a bunch of old school zippers-- I love these ones with the big chunky metal teeth. I have no idea what I will do with them, but I started collecting them a while back. I also managed to get some awesome coffee sacks which I will turn into big tub/buckets to store toy making blankets in (they will be lined!) using this tute. Jess' use of hessian has inspired me, although I'm still a bit apprehensive about putting it through my sewing machine.

And despite adding to my mess, I'm in the midst of a major declutter. Something I do every couple of months, I have no idea why I keep certain things... I've been going through all the random pieces of paper I "file" in random places-- I've found a bunch of scribbles, some long lost pattern pieces and some fabric which I thought I'd used up... 

I've been wanting to make this girl for such a long time!

AND... in a massive bid to really, truly declutter-- which I tried to do with my PIF month, and many, many Toy Society drops, I'm going to take all the old stuff-- including prototypes, one offs, and muck around toys and have a very big sale at my stall this weekend. I will have things priced from as little as $5!! I will of course have my current stuff at regular prices as well, but I will devote one side of my stall to 'old stuff!'.

Someone was asking me how I came up with the blinky pattern the other day... well, if you come and see these 'in-betweeners', you'll see all the work that goes into turning an idea into a toy!

Yikes! I still have some finishing up to do on these ones, but they'll be there!

Ok, well back to the massive pile of fabric on my table I go...

B.

Finally some pictures:

So, I managed to finally find my camera chord, it was of course sitting less than a metre away from my usual work space with all kinds of fabric entwined around it. There are hundreds of photos, but these are just a select few-- some crafty, some not so much, I'll post more soon!

Turning Mum's coffee table into a Toy Society tag factory.

A drop at Corrindi Beach.

And Bellingen-- I like Bellingen! :)

And Woolgoolga.

Stuck in traffic outside Gosford... And handwriting that reminds me of lovely hands!

Almost home... ahhhhh...

B.

I'm Back!

1. vintage thrifty sheets, 2. pin back badges, 3. Lovely Lady--Vintage Sheet Music--When I think I of You--, 4. disguise 2 

I'm home, and so is Henry, and so we are a happy little family-like unit again. Lots of sleeping, drinking tea, eating toasted sandwiches, snuggling, cuddling, meowing, talking, laughing, and mucking around with pretty new things. Unfortunatley there has also been what seems like an awful lot of washing up-- I got used to family members and their dishwashers.

As soon as I find my camera chord-- --that's right, still looking! =/-- I'll share some funny and cool stuff with you, for now, I'm sewing faces, looking at other people's nice stuff on the net, and freaking out that I'll be turning 29 in the VERY NEAR future... eek!

Goodnight!

B.

Good Morning!

So true... and now I'm off to screen print!!

B.

My Christmas Wishlist...

All completely practical, necessary, sensible things that I need to be one of the cool kids...

Relaxing Kitty stamp, available here.

Locket ring... I LOVE lockets! and rings! and little flowers! Available here. It's actuall pretty safe to say I'd happily take anything in this shop...

Does it get cutter than this??? I doubt it very much, and in this loopy weather I shouldn't even be thinking about scarves, but this one is so perfect on so many levels! Available here.

What more can I say?? Available here.

Happy Tuesday-- yay to cool weather again today... shame about the climate...

B.