Thursday, March 12, 2015

Adelaide in March

Many folk call it mad March, here in Adelaide, as the city comes alive for the Clipsal 500, the Fringe Festival, the Adelaide festival, WOMADelaide, a Future Music festival, World Cup cricket and possibly some I don't know about, all happening over the last week or two. There are so many great things on, and usually it is a case of 'maybe nextyear'. I made it to WOMAD on Monday - a feast of sights, sounds and flavours. Highlight was seeing Buffy Sainte Marie - I have been a fan since hearing, and buying, her first recordings in the 60s. Her voice is still amazing. I really enjoyed Canzoniere Greciano Salentino too, and the wonderful, colourful Exxopolis, work of the Architects of Air, and a beautiful hand worked woollen stole from Kashmir, said it must come home with me!

So here are a few photos of  WOMAD and the city - decorations and vibrant colours, patterns and forms to inspire everywhere. First the city




 Adelaide Oval (the fans were all inside as a match was underway)

WOMADelaide


and Buffy Sainte Marie

and inside Exxopolis, a huge, plastic building/sculpture



 These panels inspired by cathedral stained glass


Above the queue for Exxopolis, in a gum tree and taking it all in...
a kookaburra. He probably had a good laugh when it was all over.

Monday, March 2, 2015

one more journal cover and some garden visitors

I think this will be the last cover for a while. I used some paper pieced blocks from a workshop a few years ago - one more ufo 'completed'. 

There is some machine embroidery/quilting though that is a bit hard to see. It's a cover for  the journal for a design course with the very busy Dijanne Cevaal  (check out her blog at Musings of a textile itinerant ) Not much to show yet. We've been doing paper exercises - these are somepaper collages.
Surprised:
 
 Lonely:
 Confused:

Have had a couple of visitors to the garden, well actually the fish pond, in the last 2 weeks - 2 blue tongue lizards. They are not really swimmers, but can survive in water for a while as long as they can climb out. Not so from our pond, so I have had to give them a hand. That is with a scoop, not literally my hand. First

This little fellow was about 30cm (1 ft). The green coat is duck weed from the surface of the pond. And then today, one twice the size, about 45 cm - a very rotund and healthy specimen - seen first in close up

I haven't seen many of the fish lately. Don't know if they were dinner, or have just been laying low.
I don't know either if the lizards have fallen in or walked in off the end, but I have stood a pot in the pond so they can climb out by themselves in future.