Gingerbread Birdhouse

I'm in awe of people who make their own Christmas cakes and puddings.  It's not just gathering all the ingredients, soaking the fruit, measuring, mixing, baking and checking for readiness, it's being organised enough in October or November when thoughts of Christmas are aeons away.  Needless to say, I'm not a pudding maker although the store-bought varieties, at whatever price, are never as good as Nan's or Aunt Flo's.

The holidays do put a certain pressure on you to come up with some Christmas baking, so this year's effort involves cardboard, scissors, ginger, cinnamon stick, some sliced almonds and few other things.  It's tempting to put it outside on a tree to see if the birds find it tasty.  In the meantime, it sits in sugary splendour, testimony to my home-made efforts.

Teenage Stories

Last week I rescued a little red table from a rubbish skip.  In its former life it stored books in a school library.  Initially I thought it would be useful in the studio to hold paints and brushes, but after a little bit of scrubbing to remove old labels and calcified chewing gum, it found its way in pride of place in our main bedroom.

I like to think that this table has a story or two to tell and not just from the canon of teenage fiction it once held - novels from the likes of Robert Cormier, Diana Wynn Jones and J K Rowling, amongst others.  Over the years countless teenagers gathered around it in whispered conversations, sharing secrets, making friends.

Raspberry Ripples

December is raspberry month where we live.  This year our canes are covered in flowers, abuzz with hard-working bees.  It will be a bumper crop, ready for picking in a few weeks. 

As usual I've collected an assortment of jars in readiness for jam-making.  In truth, raspberry jam is the only jam I know how to make.  Some of it will be eaten straight from the pot smeared on crusty white bread or warm buttered toast.  Several jars will be given to family and friends and the rest will be pushed far back into the pantry to be enjoyed on cold winter mornings.

In the past I've not bothered much with labelling but these jars of beautiful dark glistening fruit deserve a little attention.  Here is my label design for December 2010:

Par Avion

Sadly, writing letters seems to be a thing of the past.  Emails, text messages, Twitter and blogs are just some of the new forms of communication.  While social networking has the advantage of being immediate and will no doubt eventually change the world, there is something to be said for the simple pleasure of opening the letter box and finding a letter.

My love of letter-writing began decades ago when, as a young mother, I would write to my family overseas.  These letters would fly across the world and reach their destination 10 days or so later.  The anticipated reply would take another few weeks.  My father kept the letters for me in a bundle tied with ribbon.  Reading them now I am awash with nostalgia.  They give an unexpected record of our family's life:  Children's milestones, special occasions - the minutia of everyday life long forgotten.  The tone is surprisingly upbeat but I am sure my parents could see the homesickness hding between the lines.

Of late, I've been sketching designs on the envelope, as an artform in itself.  Usually they are watercolour drawings of birds and butterflies.  I try to match them with some 'vintage' stamps my daughter and I found in stamp shops.  The stamps are still valid for postage but no longer issued by the Post Office.  We found that some post offices have commemorative hand-franking stamps that they will happily use to frank your letter.  Above is a beautifully hand-painted postcard from Jarek in Poland and an evelope with a sketch of the Superb Fairy Wren.

Angels and Insects

I've titled my latest sculpture 'Metamorphosis'.  It's loosely based on Gregor Samsa, the character in Kafka's story 'The Transformation'.  Gregor is unable to cope with the hustle and bustle of modernity and wakes one morning to find himself transformed into a monstrous insect.  In many ways this sculptural piece is not unlike my gentle-looking 'bird' people.  I wanted to convey the transformation of human to insect with a sense of dignity and grace without the Kafka-esque monstrosity.  I must be in a literary frame of mind because I've taken the title of this blog from my favourite author, A.S. Byatt.  Her novel Angels and Insects is also about transformation and incidentally has been made into a beautiful film. 

For many years at this time of year I've sent an angel to my sister-in-law who lives overseas.  She must have quite a collection by now.  Usually they are made of materials that are unbreakable and light enough to post:  fabric, wood or  metal.  It's always a challenge to find something different.  This year, I've decided to make my own.  This little angel is made of balsa wood.  Although the concept is not original, I've made this one to reflect my love of birds and, yes, red shoes.

Spring Cleaning and Kookaburras

For several weeks we've had a pair of Kookaburras in our garden.  They make their presence felt by their raucous laughter and occasionally will come and sit on the side fence.  They sit there for quite some time staring at our compost bin.  I suspect a family of field mice have found a nice warm home there and have been spotted by these noisy birds. 

Last week our daughter was visiting from Melbourne.  We decided to clean up the attic space and found both trash and treasure.  Vogue magazines (every issue published in the 90's) were boxed and put out for recycling; soft toys and dolls, including two Cabbage Patch dolls named Ruby-Marie and Bronwyn-Meryl, were tidied up and packed away in storage boxes.

Amongst the treasure were several photo-albums that will need more attention as well as boxes of old correspondence from family across the world.  We also found this interesting vintage hat pin with a little gold-coloured Kookaburra.

Cherry Trees

Today we had a visit from my favourite one-year old - and her parents.  When this beautiful little girl was born we gave her a book that I wrote and illustrated just for her.  The story is about a little girl who watches the birds in the cherry tree and wants to fly like they do. 

Around that time we planted a cherry tree in our garden and her parents planted one as well.  We have 15 little bright green cherries on our tree!  By January we should have a few to eat, if the birds don't get to them first.  This is an illustration from the book: