Bushfire Appeal

THIS BAG HAS NOW BEEN SOLD. THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT. (12 FEB 2009)

I was thinking of making a new line of children's drawstring bags for my Etsy shop when the Victorian bushfires made everything going on in my little world shrink to insignificance. Even as I write the death toll is steadily growing and the survivors are doing it tough.

The generosity and public outpouring of people not only in Australia but around the world has been staggering. The international cricket match played yesterday and last night between Australia and New Zealand raised over $6 million. That amount was made up of player match fees, ticket revenues and sponsorship and crowd donations. There will be more major fundraising events on television in the coming weeks, no doubt.

I felt so helpless as an individual, but after researching several options (donate proceeds of Etsy sales, put items up for auction, etc) I decided that I would prefer to make something which would reach a small child and perhaps put a smile on his/her face. So after discovering Beyond Pink and Blue's blog, I knew this it exactly what I was looking for.

Having made the decision, I immediately cut out the fabric for the drawstring bags, put one up in my Etsy shop in an effort to attract attention to the bushfire appeal, and will be sending the balance off to Beyond Pink and Blue, along with a few other items.

I had to turn off the news last night, as the scenes were too distressing. Let's hope those poor people can rebuild their lives and I am sure with the help of the general public, they will see that life can be good.

We can all help

Having survived a bushfire when our children were little, I know only too well the fear and horror that confronts these poor victims. It's something you never forget.

There are ways we can all help and here are a few sites:

St Vincent de Paul Society
The Red Cross

For a more comprehensive list, go to Pro Bono Australia where you will find many organisations offering assistance.

At this very early stage, money is needed desperately, as you can imagine.

If you have any handmade items such as quilts, soft toys, clothing, etc, pop over to Meet me at Mikes where you will find an address for a drop-off point.

Another very worthy cause is the Rainbow Comfort Packs which you can investigate by selecting the button at the side of my blog. I have a quilt and some children's clothing which I will be sending down. Please assist if you can - every little bit helps.

Shadow Shot Sunday # 11

It's Shadow Shot Sunday again and I am cursing that I didn't take my camera to the Leonard Cohen Concert on Tuesday evening. There he was posing for me all night, with a wonderful dramatic shadow of his hat over his face. Mind you, a young lass in the row in front of us spent the whole evening watching the performance through her digital camera. Maybe I should have asked her to send me one of her thousands of shots. Some people don't get the fact that a live performance means occasionally looking at the real person rather than through a lens. Still, she is now smugly sitting at home surrounded by marvellous shots, while I sit here with none!

So there I was yesterday, blithely looking out of the window, daydreaming instead of working on the computer when something caught my eye. A stick insect was swaying across the top of the fence, so I grabbed my camera and ran outside, hoping he would still be there. Luckily he obliged and posed so nicely for me. As it turned out, the fence cast interesting small shadows across the texture of the timber. If you visit Hey Harriet's blog you will find some truly wonderful Shadow Shot Sunday images - they are well worth a look.

Walking back to the house, I passed the garden tap which looked sad and forlorn. We are coming out of a drought which lasted for several years and we have not been permitted to use our garden hoses for so long that I had forgotten that it was even there. Much of the garden has been watered by bucket and quite often it's recycled water from the laundry. Fortunately here in Brisbane the summer has been quite comfortable. I wish I could say the same for other parts of the country.

To the north of the State the population is being devastated by floods. The poor folk have only just finished mopping up and the floods have returned for the second time within days.

By terrible contrast, in the southern-most part of the country, the cities of Melbourne and Adelaide are suffering extremely high temperatures. Today Melbourne hit the highest temperature on record for the city - 46.4 degrees Celsius, or 115.52 degrees Fahrenheit. Of course, there are terrible bush fires which are never far away in such heat.

It all makes the northern hemisphere snow look very tempting indeed.

New York 1969

AS MENTIONED in an earlier post, I discovered some long-lost slides taken of New York in September 1969. I was on my way home to Australia to be married after spending a wonderful year in Toronto. I was due to fly out in a week, so my brother and I took a whirlwind tour of New York, Pennsylvania and Washington DC.


I had long mourned the loss of these slides which I thought had been swept up in some over-zealous house cleaning exercise. So you can imagine my delight when last year I discovered them in a dusty old box. (Memo to myself: dust more regularly.) Thank goodness for modern technology. I was able to scan them through my colour printer and I admit to spending endless hours pouring over them, marvelling at the fashion and at the vehicles.




These two display windows were in the Rockefeller Centre. You can tell I was a dressmaker's daughter - I had to take a photo of the latest Singer Sewing Machine for my mother to drool over. Such modern technology!





Time for a quick Breakfast at Tiffany's pose. Ah, good to recall that I was a Magazine Queen even back then. My arm to this day automatically goes into magazine carrying mode.






I don't know if Jack Dempsey's Restaurant still exists. Oh, what a shame. I just Googled it and discovered it closed in 1974. Anyway, my brother Anthony and I had a great meal there one evening. I swear they served up a whole side of beef on the plate, with an Idaho Potato balanced precariously on top. I hate to admit this, but if my memory isn't playing tricks, I seem to recall that we squeezed in some dessert.






It was then a quick sprint to see the Broadway production of the Tony Award winning play of the year, The Great White Hope starring a very young James Earl Jones. I daren't tell my grandson (Darth Junior) that many years later he provided the voice of Darth Vader.

I had forgotten that in the Sixties one dressed to the nines to hit the town.






Mayor John Lindsay was up for re-election ...




... and life was so innocent pre-September 11.





I have returned to New York on more than one occasion with my husband and children and have loved the experience, but there's nothing quite like that first time in New York.

Something for nothing

It's true - there are some things in the world that are free. Take for instance the fabulous giveaway on the BrisStyle blog this month.

This delightful little bird could be yours, courtesy of edward and lilly.

So why don't you hop across to BrisStyle and see how it can be yours.

Shadow Shot Sunday # 10

I don't recall reading anywhere in Hey Harriet's Shadow Shot Sunday rules that it has to be a new image, so here is my blast from the past. Why don't you hop over to Hey Harriet to see some more up-to-date shadow shots?

I had been living in Canada for a year and had just finished working at a boys' summer camp and was about to return to Australia to get married. It was September 1969 (!!) and before I flew home my brother, who was teaching in Toronto, suggested we take a whirlwind trip around New York and Pennsylvania.

The first lunar landing occurred on 20 July that year, while I was working at the summer camp. A television was brought in specially for the occasion so that we could all witness the event. Just as Neil Armstrong took one small step for man, a little boy in the assembly hall spied a large moth and there was a rush of kids to see it fluttering against the window. Priceless history.

Anyway, there on exhibition in New York was Neil Armstrong's space suit, which we found much more exciting than a moth.

I had lost my colour slides of that trip to New York for many years and had long suspected that they had thrown it out in some over-enthusiastic clean-up. But last year, nearly forty years after they were taken, they miraculously turned up in a dusty old box. I converted the slides on my nifty colour printer/scanner and will put up some of the other shots during the coming week, as they are a priceless time capsule of a city I have loved and re-visited over the years.

Shall we dance?

OK, so it took longer than I anticipated, but the skirt is finally finished and my sewing machine and overlocker are weeping with relief. Maybe I'll add a few little ribbons or buttons tonight while we watch some Foyle's War episodes on DVD.

I really love making patchwork skirts. Isn't nature wonderful though? I forget each time just how much effort goes into making one, so I attack it with fresh verve before the memories start seeping into the back of the brain. So I am cured for another six months.

At least I have cleared a tiny corner in my work room and can fill it with new fabric (drool) with a clear conscience. Yummy!

Footnote: I will be putting this skirt up for sale in my Etsy shop, but as it's a size 5, with the new Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) commencing 10 February, I will be selling it from that date as a size 12 for the vertically challenged.