WEEKEND WARRIOR (WITH PRUNING SHEARS)

I SPENT a glorious six hours in the garden last Sunday. I clipped, I pruned and I composted. I turned soil and mulched. I pulled turmeric and thyme to dry and am pondering what to do with the olive branches that are drying in what little sun we've had this week.

This weekend I will be sowing seed and tackling another two or three garden beds. I am determined to get this garden under control before spring.

Facebook // Twitter // Pinterest // Instagram

AUTUMN 2013 || PINNING THINGS HOME MADE

The past month of Pinterest pins has a home made feel to it.

THINGS TO MAKE AND DO: I'm not sure I'd use white, but maybe pink, or burnt orange, or green.

THINGS TO COOK AND EAT: Muesli slice is the perfect autumn treat for a mid-morning cuppa.

THINGS TO DROP DOUGH ON: Isn't it beautiful? The wool. The colour. The simple styling.

THINGS TO HANG ON THE WALL: I love my Gocco. I love it even more when people make beautiful prints with their Gocco.

Facebook // Twitter // Pinterest // Instagram

MAY 2013... I'VE DONE IT

Rebekka Seale

Forgotten Fancies

Oh The Lovely Things

Gennine's Art Blog

I KNOW another month has passed when the downloadable desktop calendars pop up in my blog reader.

I’ve posted my favourites for June. I try and give them all a bit of love over the course of the month.

Meanwhile, here’s a rundown of what happened last month.

IN MAY…

I READ: Work reports and data files and the opening chapters of Michelle de Kretser’s, Stella Prize short listed Questions of Travel.

I WENT TO: TEDx Sydney.  Whoa. Plenty there to think about.

I LISTENED TO: Craft podcasts Thread Cult and After the Jump.

I ATE: A double scoop gelato from Gelato Messina. My choice of flavours? Mango and coconut and NYC (New York cheesecake). Both divine.

I SAW: Plenty of sunrises and sunsets. It’s that time of year when I leave for work before sun-up and arrive home well after sun-down. Yawn.

Facebook // Twitter // Pinterest // Instagram

THE THINGS WE FEAR MOST, THEY PASS. THEY PASS

NOT so long ago Pia was feeling sick and overwhelmed and like she'd failed. I have had a lot of conversations about failure, and success, and fear, and courage since I penned this post and then this one. One of the things about failures, and even success, is that they pass. They are but a blip in our timelines. It's true. They pass. 

Pia, Little Treasures: Made by Hand is a delight. The flu I hope has passed, along with the fear of failing. The success, I hope, lingers a little longer but it too will pass and make way for something new. That's the promise of moving forward, of living. Of pressing 'play' to see what will happen. Of having a crack. 

Facebook // Twitter // Pinterest // Instagram

THE HALF FULL, HALF EMPTY BISCUIT BARREL

EVERY Sunday for the past five or six weeks I've been filling a large jar with home made biscuits. I used to bake a lot but as the children grew I couldn't keep up with the consumption and it was easier and cheaper to fill a biscuit barrel with Arnotts Milk Arrowroots. It had the dual purpose of being a sweet treat within easy reach but not so delicious a treat to be gone by afternoon tea.

The full biscuit barrels of recent weeks have been a novelty - too much of a novelty. Once again, what I bake in one afternoon is gone by the next afternoon's tea. Adult dependants at home during the day are like big rats through out pantry. So, the biscuit baking has ceased once more, which, truth be told is probably a good thing for my waistline too.

Facebook // Twitter // Pinterest // Instagram

OP SHOPPING BY INSTAGRAM

IT'S op shopping by Instagram these days. Here's a few things I've picked up in recent weeks. 

The string of colourful beads and coins were part of a fill-a-bag for $5 haul Poppet Hill and I shared. 

The Danish Handcraft Guild Christmas book was $1. My mother had all these guild books and I have a bagged a couple of my favourites from her stash.

This loose cotton JAG shirt was $4 from the Salvos. It's just the right off-white with sleeves that can be rolled up. I have been wearing it with op shop jeans and a head scarf.

I scored 15 balls of Patons Jet pure wool in a glorious moss colour for $20. For pure wool, that's a steal and the perfect '70s pattern for it was sitting alongside for $2. Gotta love the Salvos for its craft stashes.

This bucket hat is super cute, though it doesn't look much here. It was $5 from a stall at Avoca Beachside Markets.

Facebook // Twitter // Pinterest // Instagram

AUTUMN 2013 || PINNING THINGS WARM AND TOASTY

My autumn pinnings have taken on a much more cosy and toasty warm feel. 

THINGS TO MAKE AND DO: I’ve long loved Amanda’s clever felt play biscuits and sweet treats. This is her latest felt creation, a flower headband for her daughter.

THINGS TO COOK AND EAT: Rachel has the same tastes as me… in Hornsea crockery that is (and toasty warm porridge).

THINGS TO DROP DOUGH ON: I have been coveting these brogues for some weeks. I have a similar much-loved pair of flats bought from the op-shop but fading fast.

THINGS TO HANG ON THE WALL: Pippa makes beautiful wall hangings and I am betting she doesn’t have to beg people to use a coaster or take their feet off her Parker coffee table. I do. Grrrr.

Facebook // Twitter // Pinterest // Instagram

APRIL 2013... I'VE DONE IT

THE fact I’ve only written a handful of posts in April and this post is 12 days late is testimony to how busy things were and still are, but oh, what fun. Work’s been busy, there’s plenty going on in Girl Guide-land and there’s always plenty with the brood.

It’s been a month of lots of thought-provoking conversation – again, at work, at Guides and around the dinner table.

I hope it was a great month for you too.

IN APRIL…

I READ: Winner of the 2013 Stella Prize and a nominated title in the Miles Franklin Literary Awards, Mateship With Birds.

I WENT TO: Ideas at the House’s All About Women event. If you click on the link, you can see me at 37secs. I am the one on the left. I probably should brush my hair more often.

I LISTENED TO: I’ve been reacquainting myself with a back catalogue from my younger years, when music was on tape, or even better, mix-tapes. Paul Simon and Alanis Morissette have been on high rotation.

I ATE: A rare Friday evening when we weren’t so tired not as to collapse on the couch in front of Silent Witness or the Dr Blake Mysteries, we enjoyed a shared pizza at Garden 2 Plate, Killcare. I’ve been meaning to get back there in daylight hours but it just hasn’t happened yet.

I SAW: A couple of mending projects leave the bottom of the washing basket. One of them, a pair of thrifted woollen Country Road pants had been there since last winter and the vintage dress pictured had been in there from a summer ago.

Facebook // Twitter // Pinterest // Instagram

CAN YOU TEACH SOMEONE NOT TO FAIL?

SINCE writing my last post about failure I've read writer and broadcaster Sarah Macdonald's own post on the very same All About Women panel discussion and Marcus Westbury's post on his own failings and failures. Marcus and I attended many of the same lectures in our respective bid to gain a degree in communication from the University of Newcastle, so it was interesting to read his take on that time and the impact of one of life’s significant failures – failing at your studies.

In fact, it’s this formative idea of failure that I am interested in. When I was a student the notion of failure was very real, as were the consequences. I can remember children were held back years and lost to the group of peers who progressed to the next year level. Report cards home were clearly graded and there was no ambiguity between an A, through to a D and the unmistakable F. Teachers had no qualms about pointing out your failings and if memory serves me, there always seemed more evidence of these than any of my admirable qualities.

“Could do better” was a common report card comment, echoed by parents who tsk tsk’d if there was even so much as a B-.

Now, I'm not going to pretend I was a dunce. I wasn't  I was a bright student and I liked my studies but failure here wasn't something I was familiar with. Those lessons came by way of life and I defy any parent to tell me they've had an easy road of it: success all the way. Hmmm, didn’t think so.

I was though, I think, a reasonably resilient and independent individual, well supported by my parents and the adult influences around me to test myself and have a go.  But the question I have been asking myself, and peers and colleagues of the same age, is whether we were just the last of a generation that had to create our own pathways in life, and that meant ‘having a go’, or whether the pathways in life were so much simpler then than they are today.

I am watching my own brood get on with life and one of the four has understood her path in life and moved toward it easily and without any real fear it was not the path or that it could fail. The others have struggled to make those decisions in life, and I do wonder, both for them and others I see making those steps toward independence, what part fear has played in that.

So, the question is, does failure have to do with a rather large presence of fear? If so, the converse must be that success is to do with being brave. Hmmmm.

But how brave and can we teach it? Is it possible to give children an understanding of the difference between real fear and real courage? Does it have to be learned as a young person, or is it okay to come to it later in life?

I recall, halfway up a very tall mast on the sail training ship The Young Endeavour, on a cold, windy and wet night being yelled at from the deck. Against the wind and rain I heard: “don’t worry, fear makes you hold on tighter”. No shit Sherlock. I was holding on to that mast with all I had and wondering why an inland girl thought tall ship sailing was something she should ‘have a go’ at. It took me years of applying for a berth and saving my pennies to make the voyage and here I was, quite literally at half-mast and pondering my imminent death.

Calls from the deck were supposed to be encouraging but in my freaked out mind I was thinking holding on tight was neither going to get me to a height of the mast where I could start wrenching the sail in, nor get me down. I was, despite the assurances of my crew members, going to have to let go and I did. I let go, I climbed, I hauled and then I got myself down, shaking like a leaf and near to passing out once I hit the deck. I wasn't the only one. It took three of us to get the sail in and we were white-faced but, in the face of adversity, we had triumphed.

It took courage and, yes, fear, to get the job done but one had to override the other. Courage one out. Did I learn anything? I think I did: to let go. Could I have studied that? Could it have been delivered to me in a curriculum designed to extract a fair and measurable result from all?

Can success be graded? Really?

PS: Am I making any sense, whatsoever? Have I at least given you something to ponder?

PSS: Please, keep adding your comments. Aside from what’s written on my last post, I’ve had emails and Facebook messages, so do keep them coming. 

PSSS: Photo taken at the Rotary Club of Woy Woy lookout overlooking Umina Beach. 

Facebook // Twitter // Pinterest // Instagram

CAN'T ANSWER THIS ONE? T.R.Y.

WHAT is so wrong with having a good old, ridgey-didge go?

I have been boring my friends and colleagues with this question since attending All About Women at Sydney’s Opera House a couple of weekends ago, so I figured, in the interest of wider debate, to put the question to you.

As a child and on a long visit with my grandmother I was bored, restless and probably a right little prat and I whined a horrid, drawn-out “I cannnn’ttt” in her earshot. Quick as you like she bailed me up and shot back; “Spell can’t”.

Ha, who did this woman think I was? Of course you weren’t going to be able to trick me with this one. “C.A.N. apostrophe…”.

“No,” she said, stopping me before I could get to my grand finale of ‘T’. “Wrong. You spell can’t T.R.Y”.

With that she resumed whatever she was doing and left me starring, slack-jawed at (a) her terribly bad spelling and (b) the fact I’d just had a right ticking off, and (c) sadly for my bored whiny self, my grandmother, bad spelling or not, was onto something.

I can remember that conversation as clearly today as the day we had it and, between you and me, have rocked her line out a couple of times.

I raise this childhood memory because I felt my grandmother’s gee-up to get over myself and get on with it was the elephant in the room throughout all the sessions I attended at All About Women.

The program of speakers and panel debate designed to tease out issues impacting and informing feminism (my take on the day, not the advertised theme) was wide and varied and the first session I chose to toddle off to was titled “How to Fail”.

Now, I’ll lay it out there. Last year I made a decision to leave a job I loved and a career I’d built up over the past 18 years. I left almost two decades spent in a newsroom and 10 years at News Limited to start working for UNICEF. I know. I know. Bloody big gap in organisational philosophy there, right? Hmm, let’s leave that one for another day.

Anyhoot, as far as career changes go I thought I’d faffed it. Things didn’t seem to be going well and I was ready, several weeks in and well before my cursory three-month probationary period was up, to declare defeat and admit I’d failed.

As it is, I’m still plugging along and, looking back on those first weeks in the role, it was a period of transition I was just going to have to go through. My response to it and unexpected shock of the upheaval did, however, shift my expectations and in choosing to attend a panel discussion titled "How to Fail" I think I was looking for recognition that failure is a real, tangible and even necessary part of change.

The women on the panel were amazing, don’t get me wrong, but as I listened politely the curt tone of my grandmother was ringing in my ears. Why were we talking about failure simply as unrealised success and just calling it what it was? A fuck up. Yes, they happen and honestly, for me it was a breakthrough. To have failed was to be put on the other side of a very comfortable comfort zone, to take a look around and wonder at what I’d been missing out on and find a path through it.

It’s not far from what the panel was trying to say, but, glory be to Jesus, I was a little gob smacked to hear women actually say they don’t allow themselves to fail and suffer an almost crippling fear of it. Because, dear reader, it’s that crippling fear that keeps us women on the comfy side of whatever we’re all doing. Ah ha. It is. We all know it so why aren’t we "feeling the fear and doing it anyway"?

So, I ask, what is so wrong with having a ridgey-didge go?

PS: I’d love you to comment if you saw the discussion and tell me whether you felt the same.

PSS: If you didn’t see the discussion, maybe you’d like to comment anyway. 

PSSS:  There’s more where this came from. 

Facebook // Twitter // Pinterest // Instagram