fiveandtwo

Reading Round-Up

Reviewing my reading of last year I see that non-fiction has been the number-one-player. But, you know, I really enjoy fiction.

This year, I'll read more fiction.

Much of my non-fiction reading has been influenced by Sharon Astyk's  blog. Sharon's book "Depletion and Abundance" ecapsulates many of her blog posts. The book is excellent for those interested in peak oil, sustainability (environmental, household, global). I really enjoyed it - I'm reading it a second time!

Reading Sharon's blog has introduced me to other authors: Dmitry Orlov Reinventing Collapse (he's a good writer, it's engaging and funny), Alisa Smith & JB Mackinnon The 100 Mile Diet (I really enjoyed this, for the food seeking, their far-off house in the woods, and certain insights from Alisa that resonated with me), Michael Pollan The Omnivore's Dilemma and  In Defense of Food,  Rebecca Huntley Eating Between the Lines: Food and Equality in Australia, John Michael Greer The Long Descent.

The Best Gardening Book 2008 goes to One Magic Square by Lolo Houbein. This has to be one of the best Australian gardening books published for a long time. It makes gardening achievable for the beginner and the space, and time, constrained. One square metre is the beginning, you can advance to as many square metres as you desire (or can manage).It's very accessible, plans for the plots, tips and tricks, towards food self-sufficiency, information on food plants, I've used many ideas from this book.

 The revised edition of Jackie French's The Wilderness Garden was also a highlight. I hope this has introduced a new generation of gardeners to Jackie's easygoing Australian gardening philosophy. This lady has enormously influenced me. I think my garden would be much less productive without her ideas.

Biography has featured strongly in 2008. Siobhan O'Brien's A Life By Design (bio. of Florence Broadhurst), The Dressmaker's Daughter autobiography of Kate Llewellyn, Caroline Knapp's Drinking: A Love Story, Valerie Grove's Laurie Lee: A Well-Loved Stranger - can't now reconcile the man with his lyrical writing. Two Women by Laurie Lee was lovely...but, after reading the bio. I 'm cool towards this man.

Fiction. Adult fiction first. I read young adult fiction and magazines when I can't concentrate on anything.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy - bleak, but I like bleak. Tim Winton's Breathe, sigh...he writes so beautifully, this is not a favourite though. I'm not really interested in surfing. However, I imagine an immense sense of freedom out there on the board. Giles surfs whenever he can...if only I could get him to read as well. I think he'd like Breathe.

Helen Garner is one of my favourite authors, from waaay back when I wanted a Monkey Grip lifestyle. I was seventeen and wanted to, um, experience life. Ah, but I was already kind of bound up. Anyway, The Spare Room certainly lived up to my expectations.

Linsey and I went to see Rosalie Gascoigne and Rennie Ellis at the Ian Potter Centre last Sunday (day trip for me, she was going to the Big Day Out the following day). Rennie Ellis made a lovely portrait of Helen Garner (about 1975, I think). And Rosalie Gascoigne is pretty much my favourite artist right now. Not least because she didn't really get going until she was in her fifties. However, she did "make things" and practice Ikebana flower arranging (very sculptural) for years before.

So, back to books. Loved Bel Canto (Ann Patchett). Recommendation courtesy of suse. In my fiction endeavours I want to read more of Ann Patchett's work.

Did you read Year of Wonders? I really enjoyed it. Geraldine Brooks' second book March, a good read too. Now, this year, I want to read The People of the Book.

A splendid laugh/cry book was Debra Adelaide's The Household Guide To Dying. I read it on the train on my first Bendigo trip - I did laugh, and I shed quiet tears, some parts were achingly sad.

I'm not sure where Into the Wild (John Krakauer, oh did you read Into Thin Air, that was chilling) slots in, it's kind of fiction , but based on a true story. The author's current form of writing, actually. I'm glad Krakauer acknowledged his character had some skill in wilderness survival (as well as shortcomings, often deliberate, eg: not taking any maps). The film isn't really like the book.

Young adult fiction now, for a tired adult mind.

Finding Grace by Alyssa Brugman. Feel good with a moral: caring for others means you can find yourself. I enjoyed it, and wanted to pass it on to Leah. It's not cool to read books in her peer group. Shit. She was an avid reader, once. It pains me because I think it's a very important form of information and escape.

Best Mate by Michael Morpurgo (I think it's been published with a different title recently). The main character is a greyhound...what can I say. I loved it.

Cruel Nest by Gary Crew. I'm a fan of Gary Crew. Are they really YA, or short adult novels? Complex and disturbing. I was really taken by The Blue Feather a couple of years ago.

Other books that don't fit into a particular catedory:

Those Tracks on My Face by Barbara Holborow - recollectins of well-known children's court magistrate. An op-shop buy that I found quite moving.

Trading in Memories: Travels Through a Scavenger's Favourite Places (Barbara Hodgson). An impulse buy online, I don't think I'd have bought it had I perused it in a proper bookshop. It was lovely, I liked her descriptions of fossicking in far away places - researching novels etc.. Well, it just didn't resonate.  Barbara's interest in old documents, photos and the like - yes, I can relate, but...

The Unthinkable by Amanda Ripley. Subtitled Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why. I bought this for my husband thinking it would be a magazine-style read (well suited to him), and it is, but quite a complex one. I found it really interesting, well researched, with a lovely human element.

Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping (Judith Levine). Professional middle-class couple, very well-off, examine wants vs. needs, and decide not to buy for a year.. Not a how-to guide by any means. Just try-hard rich people. Disappointing for me, fortunately a library book.

Barbara Kingsolver's High Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never. More non-fiction from an author I enjoy and admire. This is an oldie, but a goodie. Goodness, is such a term still used?

 Two "health" books: The Big Fat Conspiracy by Melissa Sweet. A family health book, I like the author's surname! Second Good Health in the 21st Century by Dr Carol Hungerford. Found this one really interesting. So much so that I now take a multivitamin, a magnesium/selenium/zinc/chromium and a flaxseed oil omega 3,6,9 one each daily. The book is subtitled A Family Doctor's Unconventional Guide, and that it is. I doubt any of the doctors in this town would have the time for this approach, they are so strapped as it is. My original family GP, whom I had for all my babies, is too hard to get an appointmant with. Two months away? Doesn't work. Often it's three or four months. The GP I've been going to recently is now getting hard to visit - three weeks, six weeks? I find it really hard because my medical records are quite complex - it's a chore to go through it all with a new GP, as well as trying to forge a new relationship.

Now, Iv'e made inroads in the Read Fiction 2009 endeavour, thanks to the Bendigo trip and a train trip to Melbourne for Rosalie Gascoigne and Rennie Ellis, both on at Ian Potter now. You'll have to wait to hear of these excellent novels in 2010!

In Progress

So much in progress. It's a bit overwhelming. 

The hearth of our new cooker/heater/hot water heater. I looked and looked locally for tiles but nothing suited. For me, it was an excess of bland and ugly. Driving to pick up Giles from work one day...I  remembered. Ten or more years worth of broken china. I've always kept the patterned and coloured stuff. I'm about two thirds of the way through. Then to grout it.

Then there's the seedlings:

 

Which means I need to spend some time preparing here:

 

And then I need to make some clothes for me. Pants in particular. My last decent pair has been stained by "gardening in passing". You know, you see a weed or something as you walk past, bend to pull it out and before you know it you've been there half an hour in your "good clothes".

 

I'm a bit demoralised, I finished sewing pants that I began months ago. They still don't fit. Even after letting the darts out they're too small. Damn. 

I am really enjoying this book. Really. Much that is useful for me, and I consider myself a gardener with some experience. The magic square is one square metre which is the beginning of a larger garden or a garden that is in a tiny space. Or one that's manageable for a person with many other commitments. Add as many square metres as you can manage.

I read Lolo Houbein's Wrong Face in the Mirror: An Autobiography of Race and Identity many years ago and found it good. Then, recently at a market I found Walk a Barefoot Road. Haven't read it yet though, it's on the teetering "to read" pile.

I'm also in the throes of painting the latest round of built-ins.

 

This is the one in the kitchen, waiting for paint. There's also one in the loungeroom for TV/DVD/Video/CD Player, books and CDs. I'm doing this post while I'm waiting for the first top coat to dry.

There you have my excuses for posting sporadically. And also that the computer freezes for some unknown reason while I'm using Typepad - the only time it happens. I've learnt to save the draft after each paragraph and photo upload, since the only remedy I've found is to switch the computer off and resart. Anyone have ideas about this? It is very irritating, happening multiple times.

She Finally Posts.

It's been ages, it seems, since I've been here.

So, what have I been up to? This and that. The big thing was a crafters weekend in Bendigo. I came home wanting to knit socks, crochet, sew, make a sock monkey, make felt...it was really inspiring and the women I met a terrific bunch. I was very nervous about meeting them, but needn't have been.

Here is what I managed to produce :

I didn't finish this one:

A little bird with a floss loop for hanging.

This purse is a ring-in. I actually made it some time ago.

I also hitched a ride to the Bendigo Sheep and Wool Show - wasn't going to go - glad I did. All that wool, all those lovely things made from wool...sigh. I even bought a skein of indigo-dyed wool and I'm knitting the Windy City scarf from the Stitch and Bitch book (by Debbie Stoller). It has some nice patterns in it but I get tired of the "funky-hipster-speak" writing that litters the book. Heh, must be showing my age.

I'm winging it with this. The wool is the wrong ply, the needles the wrong size and I have immense difficulty following even simple knitting patterns!

The best stall by far was the one selling old buttons among other things. Now, I really could've gone wild with button purchasing, I think I was quite restrained really.

 I also found four Enid Gilchrist books that I don't have. Bonanza!

I certainly had more to carry home on the train than the backpack I started out with. There were those books I bought in Melbourne too...

Train reading was The Household Guide to Dying by Debra Adelaide. Loved it. Cried, when the main character's son died, and laughed too. The description of visiting funeral parlours while researching coffins was a crack-up. Plus she kept chooks.

When I finished that I started on Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma. I enjoyed In Defense of Food, the Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants tenet is something I strive for. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed though, by all I want to do, the changes I want to make. I try to remember the words of a good friend: Hasten Slowly.

Thursday saw me on a flying visit to Pakenham. Why Pakenham? The nearest Bernina dealer. Well, not the nearest but the one in Traralgon would talk the hind leg off a donkey - too much for me.

I raided my savings and bought a seriously nice new overlocker.

A Bernina 1150MDA. The internet was most useful when researching overlockers. Reading reviews, visiting manufacturer websites and so. I did need to go and actually try the machine myself though, just to make sure all those positive reviewers were being truthful!

What else has been going on? I completed Giles and Linsey's tax returns (ugh) and remedied this:

A very sad specimen of a roman blind. This is what happens after twelve years hanging in a west-facing window. I made a new one. Rather lairy, but sometimes lairy is good.

 I even remembered to take before-and-after photos!

Cheers for now. I will publish this before Typepad freezes up again.

A Very Muddled Week

Ally's description, "This has been a very muddled week". So accurate.

It started last Saturday with me going to the Curves gym (recently joined to deal with stress and apalling level of fitness) and developing a blinding, excruciating headache halfway thruogh the circuit. Carted off in an ambulance. Nausea and vomiting, photophobia. In retrospect, classic migraine symptoms.

It was decided, eventually, that I'd had a sudden migraine. Fortunately, I don't have these evil headaches very often, but in the past there's been some warning: a thudding headache that doesn't go away, thirst and fatigue. One coming on suddenly was rather disturbing. I was out and couldn't get back home under my own steam. What if that happens again?

I'll go back to Curves, but I'm really nervous about doing so.

Oh, and there's nothing like a shot of morphine to deal with pain, and Stemetil for nausea/vomiting (Maxolon didn't work).

Took a couple of days to throw that post-migraine weird, disoriented state.

A long appointment sucked up Tuesday. I did fly in to work and do the pays though - disgruntled employees weren't on my agenda.

The usual routine was thrown completely by now. Transporting kids uses so much time. With Giles, mostly I drop him and some mates at the favoured surf beach, one of the other kid's parents pick them up. It's still a 1.5 hour round trip to drop them off. Sometimes, if the bus timetable works, they can catch the bus both ways. Their favoured surfing area, Red Bluff, doesn't have a bus for them to catch home. V-Line buses = strange timetables.

I managed to buy some food and pick up Leah from Lakes Entrance, where she'd stayed with a friend. Leah looked pretty crook, she could hardly speak. Criminal sore throat. GP appointment...tonsillitis? All the glands around her jaw were huge. Can only imagine the state of her tonsils. Antibiotics prescribed and duly taken. I worry about her fluid intake. It's so painful to swallow that the poor kid just isn't drinking.

Thursday: buy more food. Take Leah to A&E because she finds it hard to breathe, and looks really "flat". Leah is admitted to hospital, IV fluids perk her up a bit. But only a bit. She's on her third type of antibiotic now.

Ah, but the waiting with Leah in A&E meant reading time! Good progress made on this:

When I read As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, well, I was going to Spain. Never did though. A friend who read it around the same time spent three months in Spain with her baby daughter.

I've enjoyed all of Laurie Lee's books. This one came from the op-shop. How lucky! A $50 book for a couple of dollars. I'm enjoying this biography.

This pre-order came too, last week:

Resisting starting it until I'm done with the Laurie Lee biography!

Back in the early 80's I read Monkey Grip. My impressionable seventeen-year-old self wanted in to that lifestyle. Never did though.

A Number Of Things All In One Post

Where to begin. With The House of Disease, I think. Our usually quite resilient immune systems have developed cracks, crevasses  more like it. First the hacking cough, then the evil gastroenteritis. Poor little Ally had a spell in hospital having some IV rehydration. Vomiting, diarrhoea and a constantly sore throat (even with paracetamol) made it an uphill battle to get her to drink, or even suck ice. Friday morning saw her alarmingly flat. It's quite impossible to get a same-day (or even same-week) GP appointment in this town, so I went to sit and wait, hoping to catch one of them as they came off their hospital rounds. Strike. Off to A&E for IV insertion prior to admission. Admitted to Children's Ward at around 3.00pm - the saga began at 8.30am!

Not one to waste all that waiting time sitting around twiddling my thumbs, I read The Trout Opera by Matthew Condon (recommended), and started Barbara Kingsolver's book of essays, Small Wonder (lovely, insightful, thought provoking). If I could knit with any competence that would've had a look-in too. Ally just wanted to lie down. Poor little chick.

(Giles with dreadlocks, Linsey, Ally and Suska-the-dog)

The difference even a couple of hours of IV fluids made was...well, miraculous. By the next morning she was pretty much her usual cheeky self. I'm grateful to live in this country, to have access to modern health care, to have it low cost (the GP fee is claimed at Medicare), all that was required was hours of waiting (gainfully used). And Ally is well again. It's so important to maintain accessible, low cost health care for all. Free for those on a low income. Same with education. And...now I'll climb down off my soapbox.

Prior to The House of Disease there was The Wayward Daughter. Leah is grounded for the entire holidays. Having a couple of friends sleep over turned into sneaking out when the house was asleep. At 1.30am a phone call from the police to collect the trio. Picked up by the patrol car making a racket and in possession of several Vodka Cruisers. Leah is not quite thirteen. I don't like to swear, but shit. Shit. So, grounded, has to pay a $55 under age drinking fine = no pocket money for quite a few weeks = not being able to buy phone credit = out of contact with buddies = torture for a (not quite) teen.

Actually, she appears to be mortified and embarassed by the results of the escapade (rather than proud). I take this to be a good sign. Ah, she's such a sweetie. May she navigate this adolescent stuff with skill and emerge intact. This stuff, it's me, back in those years. I will fight for (with) her to emerge with a strong sense of self ( because I didn't).

I'll probably edit this post soon. It doesn't need to stand for eternity. I just wanted you to know that I'm no perfect parent.

Several years ago women at my Steiner Playgoup, and later, Kinder, were convinced I was some sort of super-parent. No assurances that I was fine as long as I took my medication had any weight. They only saw that I had five kids, did this, did that and so on. I think they didn't believe I was on Zoloft. I just couldn't shake the super-perfect-parent label.

I think this label is starting to creep in to the impression people have of my blog. Nooo-oo. Hence this divulgence of family shit.  It's all here, but I just don't post about it. Mostly I just want to post about nice things, and keep the other stuff out of the picture. It occupies my daily life, and I don't want my blog to be a constant reflection of the daily stuff. I can't write about it eloquently like many of my favourite blogs (see sidebar).

Ok, scale down. I got a "Sewing Susan" needlebook from a garage sale on Saturday. I'm attracted to these because my name (formally) is Susan - and I sew!

This is the third I've bought. They're all different.

But similar. Lovely.

Kathie Winkle

I got a most interesting book from Amazon today, ordered some time ago.

Very occasionally I would come across a lovely and unusual plate or bowl at the op-shop.  I posted a photo of a bowl a few months ago, and librarygirl (who doesn't have a blog as far as I can tell), alerted me to Kathie Winkle. Never really paid much attention before - bought china if I really liked it.

Now, I'm an enthusiast, and my interest was sparked. Who was Kathie Winkle? Hence the book, discovered on a Google search.

Kathie started work in the Staffordshire  pottery industry in the late 1940's, as a lass of fifteen, as a "paintress".Primarily women who hand-coloured the designs stamped on in black by machine. She worked at Broadhurst & Sons from 1950 until her retirement in 1992.

Around the late 1950's Kathie was asked if she could draw, "...a little", was her response. Her design career began. Kathie's designs were very popular, this was recognised with her name on the backstamp (on the back of the piece). Apparently, at least 122 of Kathie's designs were put into production.

I love the picture of her on the front of the book, so...unstyled.  Kathie had no art training. I think it's wonderful that her talent was recognised.

The book is only 32 pages, it's a bit like an exhibition catalogue but Peter Leath's  writing gives it livliness. I have to share this excerpt.

..."Last year we went to a table-top sale in a small village hall in the Isle of Wight. I spotted a Kathie Winkle plate on a radiator. "Oh it's not for sale", I was told, "it's part of the hall's china". "Is there more of it?", I asked. "Lots", was the reply. Eventually, the woman in charge arrived and I managed to buy thirty-two cups, saucers and plates, including those I retrieved from the washing up bowl." ...

It was a chance find by his wife at a car-boot sale that started Peter Leath on his Kathie Winkle research.

My meagre collection! The cup & saucer is Broadhurst but not marked Kathie Winkle. It is so much her style that I think it is. Once I had a couple more bits but, dang, being in general circulation they got broken!

How Do You Know If It's Wool?

This question was asked after my last post and my pic. of wool fabric, an op-shop find. So, how did I know?

It felt "woolly". Vague description, I know, but after years of fondling the stuff it becomes familiar. Acrylic/synthetic, or a high wool-to-synthetic ratio feels "squeaky". I am very technical in my descriptions.

If the fabric is really lovely or potentially useful and I'm confounded by the fibre content I bring it home and subject it to the burn test: snip off a small amount of fabric and hold it to a candle flame with long tweezers. Wool smoulders and doesn't burst into flame readily. It also smells of burning hair. Synthetic fabrics melt when burnt. I have a chart from Threads magazine, Feb/Mar 1999, that lists the types of fibre (or fiber, since it's a US mag) what happens approaching the flame, in the flame, removed from flame, odour, type of ash.

However, if it feels like wool that's good enough for me.

Change of subject entirely.

I've really enjoyed this book recently.

An amazing house, highly decorated by  two of those living there: Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant.

These two were part of what is known as the "Bloomsbury Group" something that's fascinated me for years. Their appearance of arty bohemia perhaps? Unlike my own life? They had their petty squabbles, their rivalries and griefs though.

I would wonder how Vanessa Bell had time to paint, then I read that there was a cook and housekeeper, as well as a gardener. And often someone to tutor the children. I'm glad of that, for her, otherwise she may never have painted.

Now I've started on The Art of Bloomsbury by Richard Shone, which is about the painting of Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. Lots of colour plates - mmmm, lovely.

Change subject again.

Appearing in my stats is a lot of images.google.com/imgres.  When I click on them a photo from one or other of my blog posts comes up. Can anyone tell me what this means? Am I being paranoid in thinking my photos are being "lifted"? Would appreciate any feedback you can give people.