dreams of another...

silly season

This year N and I decided that after being christmas-shopping-zombies last year, running round trying to find salad servers, a whipper-snipper and explorer socks, this year we would MAKE everyone presents. I know, crazy right?
We started in earnest last week, and this weekend we're putting the finishing touches on all our little hand-made goodies. I was lucky enough to be gifted the Zakka craft book for my birthday, so I've had plenty of ideas for little things to make. Today, however, N surpassed all my efforts with these super-sweet hand-made wooden buttons! Yes, he made them! With his own two hands! I can't get over them, they're sooo sickly adorable Japanese shabby chic!

freedom

There have been a few kinda scary uses of the word "freedom" this week in the pokies debate and occupy thingies. Maybe I'm getting old and cycnical, but I distinctly remember the saying went
"liberté, égalité, fraternité".

So many words, so little time...

Just over 1 year ago I went up to Brisvegas for the inaugural Allen & Unwin / Queensland Writers Centre mentorship for Children's Literature. After a week of talking with editors, publishers, booksellers and other amazing writers, the idea was that I would go home, finish off my manuscript and resubmit. Well, at least that was the plan! Then I overloaded with uni, got an extra day's work, got involved in a campaign to end coal power in Victoria and lo and behold it was October again, and I still hadn't finished!
I had loadsa drawings, ideas and words, but I'd yet to sit down and finish piecing the darned thing together.
Then, amazingly, I sat down at a desk and finished it off. I know. Crazy. I just sat down and wrote. After doing 'plot-plans', brainstorming, drawing and boring my boyfriend to death about it, I worked out the suprising fact that writing is the way that books are written.
Huh. Who would have thought?

road trip!

This weekend is going to be all about my boy, my bike and my book. We're road tripping up to Castlemaine, courtesy of V-Line, before hopping on our bikes and heading south to Daylesford where the weekend will be spent. Although, the prospects aren't looking promising as I write this, with rain pouring down, and N on the veranda, cursing, with my bike in pieces. Fingers crossed we make it!

awoooo

Ever since my true-love bought me Pablo Holmberg's delightful Edén back from the USA earlier this year I have been percolating, slowly, softly, some ideas about a strange place all of my own, constructed only in sets of four square panels.

bon temps!

N and I just returned on the o'ernight train from Newcastle: sleepy, stiff and satisfied. From the moment we stepped into the home of Newie's finest activists we were made to feel welcome, and it was a shame we didn't get to spend more time hanging out at their inner-suburban californian bungalow compound-cum-activist lair. But there was a festival to enjoy, and a city full of grand broken-down buildings to explore and grumpy service-people to annoy!
Despite warnings from some locals we actually managed to enjoy our time at TINA - though some of the events we went to were pretty average, there were many that were simply stellar, and made the long journey worth it. The zine fair too exceeded expectations (mine were pretty low to start with, after being billed $20 for a stall). To help justify the cost I decided I would lower myself as a zine-maker and do some 'crafts' to sell... I made these super-twee mushroom chains, and someone actually bought one!

who am i kidding?

In less than 2 weeks I will be a qualified Librarian. As well as making comics, I'm finding cooking elaborate dinners is an effective way of distracting myself from my studies.

safety first

Tomorrow is Moving Planet day and I'm facing the dilemma of what to wear! Every time I get on my bike I feel the weight of this responsibility: try hard to look normal or try hard not to die? It usually ends as a compromise between the two. Tomorrow I'm lucky enough to be on team Bikezilla, which is pretty much where its at as far as pedal-powered travel goes. So's... I guess I'd better look my best. Who said lycra can't be attractive?

wound up

I gotta new wind-up radio last week (yes, it has a little handle!) So, I've been tuning into 3CR, which is Melbourne's coolest radio station in case you didn't know, and getting an education (it has a comics show, need I say any more?) I was lucky enough to catch a broadcast earlier in the week by Karen Healey, speaking at the Tights & Tiaras conference at Monash Uni this month. You should definately listen to it, even if you hate super hero comics (like me!) And if that gets you going you could read Karen's now defunct (but archived none the less) blog: Girls Read Comics & They're Pissed.
Who knows... maybe I'll even try reading Wonder Woman?

forest place

At the weekend we went up to Toolangi, to witness the shameful logging that has been ripping right through the heart of this gorgeous wet rainforest. Some of the brave folk who have been risking their lives to stop the logging going on briefed us on the woeful situation. Toolangi, which missed the brunt of the Black Saturday fires by a hairs breadth, forms some of the only remaining habitat for the now critically endangered Leadbeater's possum. Volunteer surveyors have found two live leadbeaters nests within the coupes, but due to the absurdity of the Government's guidelines it is their habitat which is protected, not the actual possums themselves. And "habitat" according to government guidelines must cover an area at least 3 hectares - the coupes conveniently cover only 2.

The situation is made all the more upsetting for those who braved the fires two years ago, because once the forest is logged it will be replanted with highly flammable eucalypt saplings, increasing fire risk in the future.

When the next fire comes, we'll know who to blame.

new zine deluxe

I was very excited this last week to sell-out (not in the bad sense) at Sticky once again. It does, in some ways, make me feel entitled to make zines instead of doing boring things like my homework or my share of the dishes. And that is what I have promptly done, with an old story and some old bits of fabric and my printer and my sewing machine. Adeline the Awful is a story I wrote a while back and drew some pictures for more recently, and it will be very soonly available for a reasonable price - and, I must add, in limited edition! The edgings have been hand cut and sewn, and with poor sewing skills like mine, its simply an offer that cannot last!

trunky

Sad news this week, with VicForests (the State Government's logging arm), smashing up pristine forest at Sylvia Creek, despite opposition from locals and greenies alike. Boo! What a bunch of meanies! I was in the mood for drawing trees this week, but this stinky news made it all the more pertinent.
The forest forms part of the ever-dwindling habitat of Australia's cutest marsupial and also Victoria's faunal emblem: the leadbeaters possum. VicForests bozos claim they have left a habitat "island" within the forest (in light of conservationists concerns, not their own black hearts), which they say will ensure any possums in the area survive (they also say there are no possums in the area, which may give you some insight into their skills of reason and analysis).
Anyway, I'd like to see how well folks here in Melbourne would survive if VicForests, say, smashed up a few hundred hectares of freeways. Starvation anyone? Rant ends here!