Time …

… at Alice Springs was a blur of activities, people and sights.

After an hour delayed flight from Melbourne, i connected with Janet dB and Phil H. Janet and I did the whole walking tour of the Alice Springs Desert Park – some very interesting displays of birds, nocturnals, plants/flowers and kangaroos.

Phil co-emceed the Eco-Couture Fashion Show Thursday evening that showcased 6 regional artists with their current recycled/reworked clothing. Some very cool work seen in a very cool setting (temps and ambience) as the event was held in the current airplane museum – the actual plane hangar from which they had to push out three small planes while the runway wound under the wings of an old DC3.

Friday dawned cool and sunny and we jumped into Beanie Festival activity early by attending the sponsors’ coffee inside the beanie competition exhibit space. Some wild creations! (See pics below.) And a quick look thru Beanie Central proved to be overwhelming with amount (7,000), color and variety of styles, shapes and sizes.

Janet and I then made our way to downtown Alice Springs, strolled through the mall and hiked to the Pink Botanical Gardens where we had a lovely lunch.

A quick trip back to the Art Centre and I was teaching a random basketry class outsied under the trees. A great group of ladies and they all created wonderful work. We hung around for the official opening of the Festival. Had a deluxe meal (grilled sausage, potato salad and saurkraut all piled into a huge hot dog bun) from one of the outdoor booths.

Saturday was full-on with bookmaking, mudcloth and rust dyeing classes during the day. Phil and I took in the view of Alice just at dusk on top of Anzac Hill, viewing the Macdonald Mountain range that curls around Alice.

Sunday was another busy day with repeats of rust dyeing and bookmaking with the addition of a soft book class. Turns out I have a groupie! One gal came to the Festival just to take classes with me and wound up in three of them. Too funny! Love it, Anne!

A predawn pick-up by a tour bus on Monday heading to Uluru, southwest of Alice Springs. The desert is lush right now due to summer rains and a big storm earlier in the fall. The first large rock formation seen was Mt. Connor which is larger and older than Uluru.

More adventures to come in Uluru!

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Busy in Canbera

Just above freezing nights, but clear, sunny and in the 60’s during the days – glorious! Due to its location,the city has four distinct seasons. And due to its being a planned city, it has a healthy mix of deciduous non-native trees amongst its indigenous ones. That is rather nice, too!

I am ensconced in a visiting professor flat within the fiber workshop which is part of the Art Department and have full access to the dye studio – yippee! Had a pot already cooking within 15 hours of arriving. Here are some of my initial results from the surrounding plant life:

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Loving those gentle colors!

More downed leaves collected – off to the studio for today’s pot!

Passing days…

… here in Perth have gone quickly.

The weather has decidedly turned to fall with a crisp, cool note in the air. We had a lovely day of rain on Sunday that filled the water tanks.

Two days of mud play with 14 lovely ladies resulted in some marvelous work accomplished. Since Perth is predominantly on sand, some creative collecting was necessary to have mud/dirt that was suitable to use. Wound up with some really lovely colors.

On Monday Wendy, owner of the big copper pot, arrived. We filled both the copper and stainless steel/rusty nail pots with cold rainwater, kept a fire going under each pot and had 17 pieces in each pot by the time we were done bundling. Some did go into pots as free and easy cloth, no wrapping involved.

Tuesday was the grand opening of the bundles. The copper pot did well – a nice reddy brown achieved with the addition of eucalyptus tree bark in the yard. The stainless steel pot did super dark stuff as it had been sitting almost a week with things rotting in the pot’s water.

Still not getting many actual leaf prints, but the colors we are getting are lovely. The currajong seeds left a very yellow little spot! Pics will be posted, just not sure when.

Martien and I leave for Lake Grace early tomorrow morning. Will be doing mud and gut workshops there, too. The social scene in the evenings sound really grand: local pub for fish and chips on Friday and watching the local thespians produce Harry Potter and the Terrible Ripoff on Saturday. Can’t wait!

And I will be wearing my newest op shop rearrangement to the play!

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Detail of the top half of the garment – made from the polyester lining of a silk dress that Martien is using plus a tan silk blouse that I found. Rather stylish overall!

Play day

Had a great day yesterday (Wednesday) introducing Perthians/Perthites? to the fun of working with sausage casing. Some really nice items were developed – will post a block of pics on my flickr page at some point, but not today.

Today was spent chillin’ at home, catching up on emails and finances, gathering more olives off the ground, giving Martien a hard time, walking around the block, bundling more op shop clothes. Here are pics of the olives, currajong and lemon gum that I used:

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And here are the lovely things ripening on the back yard:

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Get ready…

… For a fabulous adventure! I will be heading down under early next month for three very full months of teaching, traveling and time with friends.

The piles are growing of things I need and want to take along. Making sure it all fits and comes in within the weight limit will be a trick!

My hope is to keep this blog updated regularly during my travels…. Time will tell!