New memories and old friends

These have been my two last full days in Sydney, so I've packed in a lot of last minute memories: visit to the Archibald Prize; ferry trip to Manly ; walk over to Shelly Beach and up the headland; views of Wednesday afternoon sailing, including AUS21 in full flight, on the way back; iced coffee at the Opera Bar. 

My sister also made last night incredibly special with front row tickets to Strictly Ballroom, the musical.  Outrageous , over the top and fantastic fun.

I'm packing up soon, but just time to get a few photos of quilts that I made before I started blogging.

Panel and border by Laurel Burch.














Australian charm pack

I can't remember the name of this block, but it was good to be reminded of what an effective quilt this makes.

Water, water everywhere...........

What an incredible 10 days, from Bundeena to Noosa, with several changes of temperature in between, never mind the change in wardrobe.  I am so grateful to my sister and her partner for arranging these wonderful experiences during my stay in Australia.

Bundeena.  Water and cliffs. The sky varied hugely during the three days.

A freezing southerly meant that we needed the open fire every night.

There was no eating outside, so the wildlife had to go hungry this time.

Lovely sunset

Then off to more incredible beaches, with a substantial difference in temperature, with water temperatures of 20 degrees C which seemed chilly to my sister, but almost tropical to me.

I was mesmerised by the colours of the water, the effect of the light on the rocks and  the patterns of the waves.  Too many photos to show but some key memories are below.  Animal encounters this time were: brushturkeys catching an enormous worm; shoals of fish in the shallows as we swam and tumbling through the light shining through the back of a rising wave; and a highlight of finding a pair of sea eagles up a quiet creek, seeing one of them catch a fish and then eat it in front of us.

Work of an anonymous beach artist

 Stitching on the beach

 Stitching and painting with ochre from the local cliffs

Walks, wildlife, and well...... too bad

A bushwalk yesterday to the idyllic Flint and Steel Beach at West Head.  One of the advantages for me of being here in the winter, is being able to do these hikes without being too hot or being bombarded by flies.  Once on the beach, I was again amazed by the colours, shapes and sculptures in the  sandstone.

Sitting quietly on the rocks, feet in the water, half-eaten roll in hand, I then had that apocryphal interaction with Australian wildlife, when a kookaburra flew over my shoulder and grabbed the remainder of the roll out of my hand.  It was so quick and quiet, astonishing.

Sea eagles then flew overhead, helping with the very steep climb back to the top.  A drive over to Palm Beach followed, with a delicious snack at the Palm Beach Boathouse, where the flowers, view and coffee decoration were quirky and fun.

The "well....too bad"  part, is that I heard that  my entry for "Dislocation" was not juried in to the exhibition.  There's always next year.

Blue is the colour - football is not is the game

There had to be a world cup reference today, but I'm not a fan, so the reference is in song.  Every day, for the past 9 days, I have pulled back the curtains to cerulean blue skies - except for yesterday, when we met the dawn on the way to the Bold and Beautiful morning swim at Manly.  Since the air temperature was about 7 degrees C ( although I was assured that the water temperature was a balmy 17 degrees C),  I was on photography and coffee duties only.

As the sun came up, the sandstone on the walk to Shelly Beach glowed with warmth - which had not manifested itself yet in my fingers.

The scene on the beach on the return walk was full of colour, interesting shapes and shadows.

Blue has also manifested itself in a previous day's bike ride  ( my sister is very fit, luckily enough she had a great bike for me to borrow).  View from the top of the Gladesville Bridge.

and in a wonderful sunset, seen as the ferry home was leaving Circular Quay.

I am saturated with inspiration, from visits to the Art Gallery of NSW, where there seems to be a much greater representation of women artists that in comparable public  galleries in the UK.  I really enjoyed the woodcuts of Margaret Preston, the award winning portrait by Ben Quilty ( who has a show on in London until 3rd August at the Saatchi Gallery).  The paint is spread so thickly on this painting, it feels edible.

Awe-inspiring Chinese contemporary art at the White Rabbit Collection, particularly their wall of paintings, which they name the Great Wall of China.  There is a terrific review of the current show here.  Thought-provoking in the extreme.

A walk across the road to see Halo, an amazing collaboration between art, engineering and science, and Sea Mirror.

In between, inspiration everywhere, from colours at food stalls

to vending machines that seem bizarre to the British eye - flip flop emergency?  No problem.

Wonderful origami gallery at Kinokuyima books, but no photography allowed inside.  In between all of that I've been doing some sketchbooking and some stitching, but that will need to wait for another day, as we are about to go to here.

NSW Quilt Show 2014

Any day at a quilt show that starts with these blues seen from the boat to the show is going to be good.

The NSW Quilt Show certainly was a great day out - although the new venue was very cold.  I took too many photos, so have linked to them here.  Not surprisingly, many of the quilts featured incredible applique, Australian plants and Australian birds.  The winners are shown on this link.  Many of the quilts, although not many of the winners, used paint and pencil techniques on their entries.  I was particularly taken with one of those, by Lois Parish-Evans,  in the "Living Colour" exhibit, curated by Brenda Gael Smith, which had been quilted, and then coloured after the quilting, leading to incredible contrast between the quilted and non-quilted area.

I got a chance to say hello to Kathy Doughty of Material Obsessions fame, and to meet the fun and charming Mollisparkles, who has a great free tutorial on how to make a pieced Union Jack block.  Too bad I don't have my sewing machine here.

Australian Art Adventures

It is still incredibly sunny here, so the temptation is to be outside as much as possible.  However, I spent some time indoors yesterday at the inspiring Museum of Contemporary Art.  Unfortunately, I had just missed the exhibition about Game of Thrones - would have loved to see some of those costumes.

However, the immersive video art of Tabaimo more than made up for that.  It was really special to see the drawings that made up some of the videos, and to see those drawings further extended to become new drawings on the actual wall of the gallery.

The lower pieces were firstly an ever changing array of coloured cards, by Rebecca Baumann, mesmerising to watch, and then an array of tiny slippers decorated with shells, each one a different pattern.  Made by Esme Timbery, the story behind it is very sobering.

More hand stitching from Australia

This is another of the embroidered pieces that I did in Australia.

Hand stitching..........me???

In Australia , I had no access to a sewing machine, so needed a portable project that could be done by hand. I took some Moda Marble squares in bright colours ( to match the sunshine) and used some of Jenny Hart's embroidery designs from her travel themed pack.

Stitched in stem stitch, these were lovely to do. I'll post a few photos of these over the next day or so.

Coincedentally, Jenny is featured in a new online magazine, " Needle" that I saw on another blog today. Some lovely articles in this .

Hope you are all keeping warm

Very, very sunny here in Sydney, so I hope all UK readers are keeping warm. If you need to send someone a last minute card to keep them warm, stick a tea-bag in one of these and hope it gets there in the post.