Highlights From My Recent Trip

                           

Mabel.........and other stuff.

Meet Mabel, my brand new great grand-daughter born last week!
She's tiny and perfect......

Here's the old faithful moon........the twenty-fourth.

...........and something I started working on this week:

Twelve Moons

It has been almost a year (eleven months, to be precise) since I lost Bob. In the evening after his funeral, I was driving home and I noticed that there was a big, beautiful full moon. So I took a photograph of it. Astoundingly, every full moon since has been visible in all its glory, and I have photographed each one - twelve in total. Different cameras, mixed results, but they are all there. I say astoundingly, because this was right through a Tasmanian winter, when the sky can be clouded in for days and weeks. So here they all are - April, May, June, July August, September, October, November, December, January, February and March. You might count thirteen moons in this collage - you are right - the big one in the middle is a duplicate of the twelfth moon.

So twelve moons and a year of change; of learning to live with loss; of finding my feet again and creating a different way to be. I've been sad, happy, triumphant, despondent and filled with feelings I have no name for. I've written poems and stories and made lots of art - these seem to be the best ways for me to comprehend a sometimes incomprehensible world.

TWELVE MOONS

Sunday, Peaceful Sunday

Painting plinths on a Sunday evening to fabulous sixties music......Byrds, Jefferson Airplane, The Band etc, etc. Full moon tonight.....the eighth moon.........for the first time I feel uplifted, not saddened by it. 

Everything is lining up to be ready for delivery to Hobart for the exhibition on December 11th. I can't remember ever being this organized and on track to meet a deadline! What's happened?

Still a few more pieces to make, but having got the plinth problem dealt with, I can relax into getting them made.

Next Sorrydoll on the go....and pretty poppies in my garden, just because.

Miscellany........

Firstly, this was the spectacular moon last night, veiled with a thin layer of cloud. Wintermoon.

Almond and orange friands baked a few days ago.....so yummy, especially with the citrus sauce and double cream I served them with!

Black swans on the river - yesterday's bike ride (35 kilometers).

And finally, a new little something I'm working on - using the same pattern as I used for "Millie".

A Day At A Time

When something truly  momentous happens in your life, it takes time, lots of time, to regain your footing, to right the boat, to find the path again (or whatever metaphor you'd like to use).
Just taking each day as it comes seems to help.
Music - that most existential of activities - is also helpful. No matter how bad you are feeling, a few minutes of making music will invariably make you feel a whole lot better. As will doing something quite physical every day - I've been cycling a whole lot.
My friends with the olive grove gave me a bucket of olives to pickle......here are three of nine jars. they are "maturing" in their pickle baths and I can't wait to test them in a month's time! Hope they taste as good as they look.

After the flurry of activity making the recycled/trash sculpture I blogged about in my last post, studio time has been a little sporadic. But I'm feeling more like getting back into a normal work routine every day. Here's a little doll I finished a few days ago......her name is "Tansey Meadowsweet".

In the early morning after my Bob's funeral, I took a photo of the full moon......here's one of the "month after" full moon. It looks an odd shape.....I think I may have moved the camera a little........it is what it is!