Sunday 5 February 2012

Crutch club newsletter

It has been a few days since I wrote anything. Not much of interest happens when your world shrinks to being in bed 23 hours and the other hour is spent hobbling to the bathroom and back....

I did have a delightful visitor yesterday afternoon when Charlotte from down our street dropped in and bought a yummy homemade chicken casserole made by friend Meredith. Many thanks! My sister Kerry rang from Sydney this morning to commiserate and give me some helpful tips on membership in the crutch club. Perhaps its a hereditary weakness but she also broke her ankle last year so she had lots of legs on advice from personal experience.

Fortuitously some books I had ordered from ebay a few weeks ago arrived. I love my craft books and have 3 bookcases to accomodate them. As wonderful as the ebook technology is I can't ever imagine it replacing the usefulness of having hardcover reference books. The oldest books in my collection I've had for about 30 years and I think I buy around 10 -20 books a year. Craft and art books usually reflect contemporaneous interests and are usually out of print within 2-3 years and are rarely republished so the vast bulk of what I own wouldn't be replaceable unless I found them second hand. Often I come across ideas and inspirations just through the serendipity of pulling a book off the shelf when I've just been standing there idly perusing. An ebook collection could never work like that!


One of the books I bought off ebay was "Shaped Beadwork" by American Diane Fitzgerald. It has been a rarely experienced indulgence to immerse myself in this book to learn a new technique for the last 3 days with hardly any interruptions. The technique is loosely based on the peyote stitch which is my all time favourite beading stitch and the one I'm most adept at. The beadwork is put together in a modular way as the motifs are constructed as separate pieces then collaged together. Pictured above is a necklace I just completed a few hours ago. In this work I have only used the motifs as flat items, rather than using the potential to make 3 dimensional constructions.

I got Rodney to drive me down to the Pearl Red Moon Gallery and opened it for 5 hours today. I figured what I was doing in bed at home - sitting there with my leg up and beading - I could do just as comfortably down at the Gallery while also doing something useful in having it open for the public to visit. If there is anybody in Murrurundi actually reading this blog who would like a free introductory lesson on Peyote Stitch I invite you to the Gallery any time between 11am-2pm next Sunday. All materials, tools and tuition provided for the cost of bringing me a cuppacino! (no sugar please)