Four Seasons In One Day

Having been in Tasmania for a couple of weeks now, and getting Crowded House getting stuck in my head almost every day, I’ve learnt a little something about the winter weather here. It has a serious personality disorder. One minute it’ll be sunny, and then you’ll walk into a shop, walk back out and the sky is black. It’ll start raining, and it’ll clear within a couple of minutes. And oh, there’s the sun again. Hang on, is that sleet? All within the span of a couple of minutes you’ve gone through, yes that’s right, four seasons. And so it continues for the rest of the day. It leads to much wardrobe confusion and a distinct feeling of unease, as you wonder if the weather has it in for you…

Which leads me to my next lesson I’ve learnt – one cannot be too precious about their hair-do here. Having been a slave to my hair straightener for years, it’s been a difficult learning curve for me. But regardless of how much time you put into a do, or how much product you use, as soon as you go outside the weather has decided upon a new style for you. And it generally falls somewhere in between bedraggled and windswept. I just thank whatever deity (or designer) saw fit to put hoods on clothing. I may look like a sullen teenager while strolling the streets here, but at least I manage to retain some semblance of dignity, hair-wise.

I’ve started getting back into crafting after having a hiatus over the madness that was the massive move. I started getting all restless, and as we all know that idle hands are the devils playpen, I thought I should use my powers for good. The first craftiness is an embroidery hoop that I’ve used gorgeous vintage-style fabric in, with a few embellishments thrown in for good measure. I’ve been meaning to do some embroidery hoops for decorative purposes for a while now, and finally got around to it a couple of weeks ago. I have another one laying around waiting for divine inspiration. Soon, my pretty, soon.

And I’ve also done a scrapbooking layout for the month of July. I’m part of a group on The Boxx where we’ve started the year by doing a layout on our goals for the year, and then at the end of each month you do a layout on that month in review. Regardless of whether the month saw good or bad things happening, it’s a way to recognize what happened, and move on to what the next month may hold. It’s a lot of fun, and a great way to keep motivated to do layouts (some may not need motivation, but I tend to slip into lazy-mode if left to my own devices).

With my months in review, I started getting slack with journaling what had taken place during the month, so decided that I’d use the titles to describe the overall feeling or the biggest event of that month.

And as for the papers used… before I moved I stocked up on delicious papers and embellishments from my work (Fred The Needle ), and they’ve been sitting there just begging to be used on something. So I’ve used Echo Park Paper Co.’s “A Walk In The Park” range. It’s just so fun! Add a couple of home-crocheted flowers, and it’s good to go.

At this point I’m a little worried that I may be coming across as some sort of demented craft-salesperson. Or a person doing crafty things with a running monologue, “And now we just add the flower… See how it lifts everything up?!?!?” Rest assured, I’m neither of those things. I’m just a girl with a serious penchant for the hand-made.