It's Spring!

Winter is something of a time of torpor for me.......I tend to stay close to the fire and be a bit inward looking. Which might go some way to explaining why I haven't posted here since April! It's not as if we even get particularly severe winters here - in Tasmania, the coldest state in Australia. Our winters are mild by North American or European standards. No snow to speak of, a few frosts, some rain but also lots of sunny days, but still I like to huddle up inside in winter.

Spring has arrived quickly and greenly this year - things are burgeoning in the garden and I feel more inclined to look outwards. Longer days, warm sunshine and life feels good.

But my winter days by the fire do produce a fair bit of artwork, so here is a sampling from the last few months.

A sweet red-haired girl in a smocked dress and winter woollies:

 

An Izannah Walker-style doll in clothing trimmed with feather stitch and crochet:

 

"Sparrow":

 

"Mouse"

 

                                                                     
                                                     "Juno":

And a doll made to Deanna Hogan's "Verity" pattern. I called her "Patience" because she waited ten years to be made! I also made her a little wooden chair to be patient on.

 And that was about it for winter projects, apart from a few more jobs around the house which you can read about on my home reno blog at http://www.fourteenstepstothebluedoor.blogspot.com.au  

I've started working on some new things now and I promise to blog about them very soon! 

Beavering away.....,...,

In my studio this week.........after an intensive weekend's music making at our annual Winter Music Camp. We workshopped Mendelssohn's Reformation symphony as the major work along with a number of shorter, easier pieces........(Debussy - En Bateau; some bits of Tales of Hoffmann by Offenbach and an amusing Leroy Anderson piece - The Waltzing Cat (complete with miaows and dog barks!)
So it's back to work this week - a lot of finishing off to get done.

Goings on.........

Firstly, it is mid-winter here which means short days and some quite cold nights followed by frosty mornings. So far this year we have had a few colder nights than we have had for many years.......and inevitably, last weekend one of my external water pipes burst from the water inside it freezing. I did what one does in such a situation - I turned off the water at the main and phoned around for a local plumber to come and fix it (it looked like a fairly simple job to me, but one requiring skills and tools I do not possess) After all the phoning around, the soonest I could get a plumber here was Tuesday morning THREE WHOLE DAYS without water on tap. I could have wussed out and gone to a hotel, but I thought that was pretty pathetic, so I confronted the problem of no water head on and stuck it out, carting drinking, cooking and washing water and saving the used water in a bucket to flush the loo...........and because I have a large property with lots of trees and bushes and a trusty spade, I was able to do what bears do in the forest for more serious calls of nature! Please don't ask for more explanation than that! I did sneak out for a shower at my mother's house, I must admit - there are limits!

Well, I survived, but it did bring home to me the fact that for many millions of people in the world, this situation is not just a temporary inconvenience, but a permanent situation and unlike me, they don't have a car to go and fetch water when they need it, but often have to walk great distances and carry it back on their heads. Proper sanitation is also a big issue, I found out, and the death rate from water-borne diseases and disasters numbers in the millions annually. It really made me think and to be thankful for what we take for granted flowing freely and usually cleanly from our taps.

Secondly, because I am known quite well locally as a doll-maker, people often ask if I am able to do repairs on old dolls. This is something I approach carefully, because bad repairs or re-paints can decrease the value of an antique or vintage doll considerably. But sometimes I am able to do it and I even quite enjoy it if I can restore a loved childhood doll to some semblance of its former glory. So when a large Japanese celluloid doll came into my hands a few weeks ago, I was fairly dismayed by its condition and I didn't think I'd be able to do much. It needed re-stringing - that was straightforward, but the worst damage was the chewed off nose and fingers of one hand. This doll needed major reconstruction surgery! I mulled it over for a while and eventually decided to tackle the job. Well, it turned out much better than I could have hoped......I reconstructed a new nose and fingers from two part epoxy sculpting compound and painted the additions with a number of layers of matched paint. It's almost impossible to pick the repaired parts. The face paint had mostly been rubbed off this sad and sorry doll over the years, so I gave her a new face as well. I forgot to get "before" pictures, unfortunately, but this is how the doll looked after her makeover. I hope her owner, who is 88 years old, will be pleased with how she now looks. She's being delivered tomorrow.

The doll came in the clothes she's wearing - it seems to be a vintage crocheted baby's outfit.

Is Winter Ending..........?

We have had serious amounts of rain this past month, after a dry start to winter. Now there is water lying where I have never seen it before, cascading off hills, flowing over roads, flooding creeks, drains and streams. But hopefully, we can soon say goodbye to all this wet - I can't help feeling this is winter's last hurrah. Or am I being too optimistic? Will have to wait and see.
Here is my paddock:

Meanwhile, I'm spending quiet hours by the fire sewing, painting and making music by turns. Not much work in the garden until things dry out a bit. Here's a new little girl, as yet un-named.

And here she is with her "sister", Millie.

I'm hoping things are dry enough for me to start planting things like potatoes and peas in the next week or two......fingers crossed!

It's quite difficult to take a selfie whilst playing the violin!

Winter Cloudscapes

Such a beautiful sky this evening.........

(New doll pics tomorrow - I left it too late to take good photos today, but here's a taster...)

Winter Music

I'm just back from a wonderful weekend making music at our annual Winter Music Camp. With visiting conductor from Melbourne, Willem van der Wiss, we managed to lick Beethoven's Seventh Symphony into some kind of shape over two days of intense work. We also worked on Cimarosa's Secret Wedding Overture. I squeezed my bike into my little Barina and took it with me, so I managed a couple of rides along the Ulverstone shoreline on some very good cycle paths.
Great fun, good music, fine company.......no cooking!

These photos were taken just at dawn this morning (Sunday) with frost all the way down to the ocean. A bracing ride, to say the least!

Making Music

I've just participated in a wonderful Winter Workshop that our community orchestra hosts every year. I had great intentions of taking lots of pictures, but my camera battery was almost flat and - silly me - I forgot to take a fully charged spare. So I only got this one photo of Darren our trombonist extraordinaire before the battery gave up the ghost.

Our guest conductor for the workshop was Willem van der Vis from Melbourne. It was hard work and we attempted some challenging pieces, but it was totally absorbing and a great way to spend an evening and a day. We always end these workshops with an "open rehearsal" in front of an audience - not a performance as such, because the four works are still works-in-progress. We will probably play at least some of them at our end of year concert.

If you've ever been a little tempted to join a community orchestra, my advice would be to just jump in and do it! It's a wonderful, fun supportive way to enjoy making music with others and you might surprise yourself with what you can do! I play second oboe in our orchestra, but I'm also playing first violin with the "Piccolo Strings" which is a training orchestra - strings only. I've been learning violin for about a year and a half from a wonderful , positive teacher who also happens to be the usual conductor of our orchestra.

Viola and the Big Wind

Here is the doll I was working on this week almost done. Her stockings are painted - I just need to make her some little leather shoes, underwear and a little crochet tan cape. Her simple dress has a bit of hand embroidery and the gingham binding at the bottom of the sleeves to liven it up a bit. She's called "Viola Rose" and she has cloth over clay head and lower limbs and cloth body and upper limbs.
We've been having a quite  a "traditional" cold, snowy, wet, windy winter this year - like the winters of more than ten years ago. Recent winters have been much milder with hardly any snow in the mountains and not much in the way of wind. This is what we saw when we looked out on the morning  of July 4th after a night of particularly wild, stormy weather - our little greenhouse blown off its footings and just a mangled wreck of aluminium and broken glass! Fortunately our insurance covers it, so we will be able to get a new one before summer.

Serene little Viola

Viola closeup

After the storm!

Winter Babe's Things

Winter Babe needed some stuff, so I made a blankie, a felted ball, a bear (2" tall and jointed!) and some wooden blocks. She doesn't look any happier....................................................But I love this combination of moss green, bright red and camel.

Baby, It's Cold Outside!

This is what it looks like outside my studio today, but here inside, I have lit a lovely warm fire on this cold, cold Saturday.