From Melbourne to Brisbane, and back to work.

My last days down south were very rushed as I tried to see as many people as I could.  Unfortunately, I missed seeing many of my family and friends, but at least I spent some time with 2 of my grandkids.  It was such fun - if exhausting!  They are really full of love and laughter.

They enjoyed their "add water to paint the picture" sheets. I was fascinated to see their different techniques. Will liked the "dab with the brush" method, but Jac preferred applying the paint with a sponge squeezed onto the paper, or her hand. I discovered a liking for finger painting.

I tried to use them as child labour to clean my windows by giving them sponges and paintbrushes to "paint" the windows.  They were making great progress, but unfortunately lost interest before I got the whole house done.

I was also spoiled by my good Jamaican friend, Derica, and my son-in-law preparing a Jamaican lunch for me on the last day.  We had a delicious meal of

 ackees and saltfish:

johnny cakes:

jerked chicken:

accompanied by a salad I made up, which is sort of Vietnamese in style, but tropical enough to go with the food:

So good!!!!! My daughter is going to describe the process of cooking the ackee, saltfish and johnnie cakes on her blog ( www.kaetoo.blogspot.com.au).  Check it out!

And then it was home to Brisbane with the dogs, where we were greeted by Bridie, the cat, who seemed rather repentent for having run away and missing the trip down south.  She is voluntarily staying in the house and sticking close to me (which means that I am continually covered with her hair, and have little needle holes all over from her kneading), so she obviously missed us.  She is very lucky that our kind friends offered to feed her while we were away.  She has always been a very thin cat, in spite of the amount she eats, but she would have been a skeleton without them.

It is humid and warm here in Brisbane, but I have resumed my morning walks  along the creek with the dogs.  I find the time outside not only improves my health, but gives me time to think and get ideas for my art work - and gives me the opportunity for scavenging.  On one of my walks, I collected a lot of feathers, which gave me an idea about decorating some books.  Cooled by a combination of air-conditioning and fans, I made up some little artist books from my pile of eco-dyed papers.  I decorated one of them with feathers and some of my photocopied gum leaves.  The inside of the booklets consisted of a mixture of writing paper made from a roll of paper I bought in Japan, and a variety of eco-dyed papers with the prints and stains of leaves and flowers and fruits on them.  I bound them with coloured threads and the flattened and rusted bottle tops I found in Lake Bolac.  I  really like the results and can't wait to write in some of them.

I have also continued to work on embroidering my sampler quilt.  It is coming along well, but it is going to take a lot of time!  Here are some views of it:

I am going to take advantage of being inside to catch up on ordering supplies of dyes  from Batik Oetero ( www.dyeman.com ) and Kraftcolour ( www.Kraftcolour.com ).  Hopefully, there will be a break in the hot spell so I can go outside and do some more dyeing.  I need some more fabric dyed to make more fish and birds.

In addition, I want to cut some more lino to do more printing this year, and do some more watercolours and oil painting, and do some painted thread pictures.  Plus, I have lots of ideas and fabrics for quilts.

So many ideas, so little time!