Fixie's Shelf

Hello and Welcome

Hello to those of you who have found my blog through my book series, The Grimstones, through Grass Roots Magazine which I write for, and through my artworks.  Welcome!  It's lovely to meet you.  Do leave a comment to say hello, and thanks to those of you who already have.  Click on my side bar to read a guide to this blog.  There are links to help you find out more about The Grimstones, my gothic marionette show which is now a book series.  And there are links to help you find out more about living sustainably and self-sufficiently, which is my passion.  You'll also find a lot of art on this blog - I'm studying an art course and posting my work here.

Garden Guide 2013-2014

I've just worked out my entire garden calender for the upcoming year. By following this calender, I should have vegies ready to eat every single month of the year (except when naughty critters get my seedlings).  I'm sharing it here for those of you in Melbourne who would like to make use of the dates and details.  If you live somewhere else, you can still use this as a base to create your own planting guide.

To use the planting and harvest chart, click on the image below, print it out, and then in the top row of the table, write down which garden bed you will use for each crop.  Some of my beds are 1 square metre, others are two - in general I try to plant out one spare metre per month, for my family of three.  I'd like more but that's all the space I have.

I sow all my seedlings during the winter / early spring months in a little plastic covered green house.  They are cheap to buy/make, and essential, otherwise you won't be able to start your tomatoes in winter.  Alternatively you could plant them inside, if you have a sunny North facing window.

I have also made some plastic row covers which I use on my garden beds.  I plant out my tomatoes in August, surrounded by spinach, lettuce and baby carrot which will all be finished before the tomatoes take over, and cover the whole bed with a plastic tunnel.  If you don't have a tunnel, leave a space for the tomatoes, and plant them in September instead of August.  If you don't have tunnels for the summer veg bed and summer vines bed, plant them out in October instead of September.

One more tip: once you've planted your seedlings into the garden, PROTECT THEM!  Nets help to ward off birds, chooks, rabbits, possums, rats and other small creatures, and so do plastic greenhouse tunnels.  Snails can be a big problem late winter and in Spring.  Go out on rainy nights and pick them off.  If you can't manage that, use a bait.  In autumn, the cabbage moth is my biggest enemy - mosquito netting over the beds will protect from them.  Or go out every few days and squish the baby caterpillars and wipe eggs from the back of the brassica leaves.

Once you've worked out where you'll plant everything, the next step is to translate that into individual tasks which you'll put in your diary. The list below shows moon planting dates for the coming year.  Click on the image below, print it out, and then transfer the tasks into your diary on the day you plan to do them, so that you will remember to leave time for them - don't book in other appointments for those days if possible.  The specified dates are the ideal dates, according to the moon, but if you can't plant on the ideal date, just reschedule for a suitable day around that time.

Happy growing, everyone.  If you use my guide, let me know how it goes!

As She Stitched

I did this painting recently, and ended up making a little box for it, filling it with sewing paraphernalia.  Something beautiful happens to me when I sew, or do any kind of art or crafting. At first, especially if I'm a bit out of touch, it can be hard to sit still. But gradually as I slow down, my mind sets free, and I start hear a kind of music from inside. Stitching by hand, for me, is the very best way to restore my soul and learn (again) to hear the music within. This piece is a reminder to make time for my creative life as medicine for the soul.

I've taken the plunge and opened an Etsy shop!  So far I'm not (yet) selling originals, but you can download beautiful high quality prints of my paintings and artworks.  Pop over to check it out, and let me know if there's any of my paintings you'd like me to list.

This piece is listed right here.

 

Ankylosing Spondylitis Update - giving up dairy

Since I first blogged about being diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS), I have been experimenting endlessly with my diet.  My goal is to work out a way to eat which eliminates the symptoms of AS, while at the same time getting sufficient energy and nutrition.  Here I'll share with you what I've discovered so far.

After eating a no-starch, low-lactose diet for a while, I discovered that my klebsiella bacteria evolved.  They now seem able to thrive on the tiny amount of lactose that I do eat.  My arthritic symptoms increased again, though not to the level they were before I changed my diet.  I still eat some foods that have a tiny amount of starch in them, such as carrots, pumpkin, and other cooked vegetables, and at present these foods give me no symptoms.   But I worry that should I eliminate lactose altogether, my bacteria might evolve further, and restrict me to a diet of salads without cooked vegetables (which would be heartbreaking indeed).

I'm not sure if the low level arthritis symptoms I live with now are enough to cause long term joint damage.  For this reason I do think it might be helpful to learn to live without any lactose in my diet, at least so I can choose.  But I have a weird problem: whenever I eliminate dairy altogether, I become very ill.  For the first couple of days I'm fine.  On the third day I feel spaced out and a bit weird, and start craving bread and crackers.  On the fourth day I feel absolutely dreadful - full on nausea, diarrhoea, headache, and my brain flatly refuses to work.  I feel miserably unhappy, totally unmotivated, and cannot see the point in doing anything artistic or creative (which normally I live for).  At that point I always abandon life completely and go to bed and cry.  Usually Paula finds me at that point and puts me back together.  The instant I drink a glass of yoghurt (milk fermented for 24 hours to reduce lactose content), I start to feel better.  My return to normal takes about two weeks, and the worst part of it is the flat, depressed, unmotivated state I get into.  The more milk I drink, the faster I get better.  But of course, the arthritis symtoms get stronger too.

Do any of you reading this blog experience the same problem when giving up dairy?  I have contacted several nutritionists, but no-one has been able to help me.  I have lived without dairy in the past, but that's when I was eating starch.  I have come to suspect there is some vitamin or mineral in wheat (which I used to eat a lot of) which is also in milk, but I don't know what it is.  I've tried taking a mineral supplement, which helps somewhat, but hasn't reduced my utter dependency on the yoghurt I make for myself.  I've worked out I need to drink two cups of yoghurt a day, which seems to be the optimum amount to keep my cravings/misery under control, while only giving relatively low level symptoms.  If anyone has suggestions or advice for how to give up dairy I'd love to hear it.  And I'd really, really love to hear from someone who had experienced the same thing.

 

Ankylosing Spondylitis Update - what I eat

For those of you who, like me, have Ankylosing Spondylitis (AS), I thought I would post here what I eat.  I found this sort of info on others' blogs incredibly helpful in designing my diet.

I can eat:

Vegetables: broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, leek, brown onion, lettuce, rocket, celery, spinach, silverbeet, red and yellow capsicum, carrot, pumpkin, fennel, zucchini, avocado.

Fruits: tomatoes, berries, papaya, grapes, apples, pears, pineapple, melons, passionfruit, persimmon, mango, coconut, citrus fruits (juiced and well peeled are fine but avoid the white pith).

Protein:
All unprocessed meat
Seafood (unprocessed only)
Eggs
Blanched almonds
Pine nuts
Sesame seeds

Dairy:
Butter
Dry curd cottage cheese
SCD yoghurt (milk that has been fermented 24 hours to reduce lactose) (this still gives me some symptoms as it is not totally lactose free)

Condiments:
Sea salt
Mustard
All herbs
Garlic infused oil (remove garlic before serving)
Spice infused oil (remove spices before serving)
Fish sauce,
soy sauce,
tamari
Vinegar
Honey (a little sugar is ok)

Fats: olive oil, coconut oil, butter, lard, animal fat.

I don't eat:

Grains (wheat, rice, spelt, corn, etc)

Starchy vegetables & fruit:
Peas
beans
potato
sweet potato
beetroot
banana

Processed meat such as sausages or salami

Nuts or seeds other than blanched almonds

Dairy products with lactose:
Milk
Yoghurt
Soft cheeses
white cheese 

Thickened sauces such as oyster sauce or ketjap manis, or processed curry pastes

Condiments:
Ginger
garlic
pepper
spices.

 

A typical day of meals:

On rising: 1 tsp cod liver oil, 3 drops iodine, 1/2 tsp magnesium chloride, and 1 tsp austrian minerals dissolved in freshly squeezed orange juice.

Breakfast: SCD yoghurt, SCD cream (made the same way as yoghurt), finely chopped activated blanched almonds, dark coloured fruit such as berries, peaches, apricots, papaya.

Mid morning: Green juice made with kale and beet leaves from my garden, beetroot and apple.

Lunch: big plate of vegies or salad, with some eggs, meat or fish, topped with at least a tablespoon of butter.  Sometimes I have soup.

Mid afternoon: Vegie juice made with beets, carrots, apples and ginger.  Activated blanched almonds and dried fruit.  (If I don't eat almonds twice a day I crave carbohydrates.  And I can't get through the afternoon without a snack.)

Dinner: Another big plate of vegies, often a roast or a stew, with meat or fish, and plenty of butter.

Dessert: I often crave something in the evenings, and when the cravings are high, I eat either a bowl of fruit with SCD cream, or else I have a homemade icypole made with egg yolk, SCD cream or dry curd cottage cheese, strawberries and honey.

Drinks: through the day I drink two glasses of SCD yoghurt, 1-2 glasses rejuvelac, 2 or more glasses beetroot kvass, and sometimes I have a herbal tea such as roibos or the korean corn tea.

 

Do you have AS?  I would be very interested to hear about what you eat and how you manage your diet, and how effective that is.  Please leave me a comment with your story.

 

Sculpting my own statue

My uncle, Mark, is the most remarkable artist.  You can read about him here.  His garden is full of incredible, larger than life statues, each of which he sculpted himself.  I feel this sense of obligation to learn his skill, partly so I can make use of it myself, but partly to ensure that it isn't lost forever, if something should happen to him.  So I visited him and asked him to show me his talents.

He pffted and said he had nothing to show.  But he handed me a bucket of clay and told me to build a rough pile, vaguely in the shape of the thing I want to make.  I started and he told me I was irritatingly slow.  I'd been hoping he might actually demonstrate, so I could watch him at work, but he said he hates touching clay, never does so unless he has to.  Apparently he did feel the need to for the carvings that adorn his home and garden at every turn.

I was quite nervous, actually.  I wasn't sure I'd be able to sculpt anything worthy of my uncle.  But I told myself to pretend I was drawing.  Just get the broad strokes in, but with clay instead of a pen, and then gradually refine, like when I'm shading.  After a while my uncle checked on my progress and I could see he was quite surprised by what was taking shape.  He examined it from all angles, then told me to fill in the lumpy bits of the skirt.  Once I'd done that, and the skirt was a smooth cone shape, he showed me how to make fabric folds.  He actually touched the clay himself, rolled out a cone-shaped sausage, pressed it against the skirt, and told me to smooth it in.  An hour later, I had a skirt, with actual fabric folds.  I would have liked to add in more variations to the fabric, but I was racing the clock, so decided to move on.

I smoothed the torso and added some sausages to be the arms.  She's meant to be holding a fishing rod, so I created a hole between her thumbs where the rod will sit.  I'm not very good at hands so I just roughly carved a suggestion of them, then shaped the arms very nicely.  But Mark explained that water would pool in the forearms and ruin the statue, so I had to fill in the grooves I had made.  "It's an optical illusion," he explained.  "You get the general shape and believe in it."  That's lucky, given the state of the hands.

Mark said the waist was too slim - the concrete would ultimately break.  So I added a belt below her arms, and very thick billowy sleeves, which actually serve to thicken the waist.  I had the same problem at the neck, so I had to give her a hairdo which would thicken it considerably, while still preserving the illusion of her being slender and elegant.  I did everything with my bare hands.  I pressed on lumps of clay, sometimes dipping them in water and massaging them to make them softer, and smoothed them with my fingers and thumbs.  I didn't use any tools except a little stick to draw some lines in the hair.

To make the hair I pressed on more sausages, some of them twisted with one another, or plaited together.  I had to fill in all the grooves, as when we make the mould, the latex won't work well if it grabs right around a sausage.  So each sausage had to be pressed at the sides until it was seamless with the underneath layer.  Then I drew strands on it with my little stick, wet my hands, and ran them over it to smooth the lines.  Even when I thought I'd finished, Mark told me to add more hair here, and here, to make the neck thicker.

I had to take a break overnight so I wrapped her in a few layers of wet tea towels and covered her with plastic bags.  Once she was fully sculpted, next step was to apply latex to make a mould.  I cut pieces of fabric to bandage around her.  I painted a bandage-sized section of her skirt with latex, then scooped latex onto the bandage and spread that out, then pressed the bandage onto the latexed section of the skirt, smoothing out all the air bubbles as I worked.  Once one section was bandaged I began another.  When she was fully covered, I spread latex over a second layer of bandages and pressed them into place.  Then a final layer of latex over everything and she was done.  It helps to work in a cool environment for this, and to have the clay still quite wet, so that the latex doesn't dry too quickly while you're working.

Now I have to wait 5 days or so for the latex to dry.  Mark will do the next few steps for me: 

- build a wooden box slightly larger than she is

- press very thick plaster into the box, and press her halfway into the plaster

- place some cardboard around the her, then press in more plaster.

- after a couple of days, lift off the top half of the plaster, and lift her out of the bottom half

- cut the latex mould down the back and remove it from the clay (recycle the clay for next time)

- set the latex back in the plaster box

- pour concrete into it

- wait about 5 days for the concrete to set.

So, did I manage to learn my uncle's skill during this visit?  Perhaps not in a clear, tangible way.  But I probably picked up enough tips to continue on my own.  I walked through his garden again and looked closely at his sculptures.  I saw that the detail work was only a little finer than mine.  The genius is in the fabulous shapes he makes, capturing every muscle of the torso.  These were all worked by looking at photos, to make them so accurate.

Do I want to continue, make more sculptures?  Actually, I think I do.  I really enjoyed this process.  It took 8 hours to make this fishing girl, which is similar to what it takes me to do a detailed fine art painting.  I had just as much fun from it.  And I like the three dimensional form.

Next step is for me to make a sculture that will be used in the illustrations of the fourth Grimstone book, which will come out next December...

Violet, the contortionist.

A recent page from my journal.  I'm loving Violet, my alter ego for whom nothing ever goes quite right...

 

You have become so dear to me.

This one's for Paula, the love of my life:

We've been together for 15 years now, and our relationship is still amazingly strong.  I'm so lucky to have her by my side, cooking amazing meals, inspiring me with her rustic fences, gorgeous mosaics and beautiful acting.  Everyone falls in love with her when she plays August in The Grimstones, but only I get to take her home.

She complains that in this painting she should have grey hair.  I say that if you want a photo likeness, take a photo.  This one's got all the arty, unrealistic touches I just love about making my own art, as opposed to a faithful photograph.

(And notice my "fixie" stamp in the bottom right corner!)

Rubber Stamps

My rubber stamp collection continues to grow.  I find rubber stamp carving ultimately relaxing, the perfect thing to do of an evening when I'm too lazy for anything else.  And I love my stamps.  I use them over and over and over, some of them more than others.  My self-portrait stamp has had a good workout lately, my text stamp is used in almost every painting, and my harlequin stamp gets frequent use too. The tree has turned out to be surprisingly useful, as have most of the flower stamps.   I'm loving the numbers from my recent paintings so much that I've now made a set of number stamps too.

For some strange reason, my very very favourite stamp is my "fixie" stamp.  I've decided to start signing my artwork, since I feel it's starting to be MINE now, rather than exercises from my art school.  I won't sign the pieces I'm making for my next book, though, because technically they would need to be signed by Piper herself!  But from now on, anything else is getting my "fixie" stamp.  I love the wonky letters and the lower case F.

My new journal

I've finally filled my old journal, and with much sadness, closed the back cover.  But I made a new one and I'm loving it. 

I used my last two paintings as inspiration for the cover.  "I need a revolution" (which I do!  I've GOT to fix my anxiety!), and anxiety girl with all her big numbers and Paris map.

I put to work all I learnt in this course by Mary Ann Moss from Dispatch From LA.  I love her journals, and after reading all her instructions for how to make one, I've adapted it to create my own version.

When you sew up a book, you create a number of signatures.  A signature is a pile of papers folded in half and sewn together down the spine.  Mary Ann makes her signatures from all sorts of bits and pieces: old ledgers, envelopes, scrapbook papers, folders and more.  The pages are a variety of sizes, and I love that, because the artwork on the larger pages form a sort of collage border for the smaller pages.

In my last journal, I experimented by sewing in a few of these wild signatures, and while I enjoyed them, they didn't quite work for me.  So this time I put a lot of effort into planning how my signatures would go, and I've made my new journal with eight of these special signatures.  Here's what I did:

• First was a manila folder with a tab on it.  I'll use this first for planning my life, to do lists, calender etc. Onto that I've sewn a pocket, to hold any notes and paper scraps relevant to my life at that time.  
• Next a pretty piece of patterned paper onto which I can glue photos, words, and other papers with lists or thoughts.  
• Then a few writing pages.  
• Then a blank, full-size page onto which I can glue an artwork.  I think I'll work on sheets of watercolour paper, and glue them into my journal when finished.  This means I can work on multiple pieces at once without having to wait for each to dry before I can turn the page.  
• Sometimes I change my mind and cut my favourite paintings out of my journal, to put on the wall.  Which means on the back of the painting, I want something I don't mind losing.  So, not writing, not photos...  I've settled on my favourite approach: junk collage.  Which is so much fun!  I just stick down notes and pictures from newspapers and magazines, and random words that appeal to me that week, and add stamps from my ever-growing rubber stamp collection...  And what do you know, making these pages are among my favourites, because they are loose and free and messy.  
• Then my signature continues in reverse - more writing pages, another patterned page, and at the back, a stub from the manila folder (because it wasn't big enough for a whole signature.  To that stub I can glue another painting, and do more junk collage on the back.

This way, each signature represents a block of time in my life, and while I'm working on that signature, filling it up, I'm moving back and forwards between the pages, adding artworks, collage, writing, photos and so on.  Then I finish up a signature, make a plan for  the next bit of my life and write it on the folder page with the tab, and start in on the next one.  So far I'm loving it, and it feels a good fit for how I like to work.

And my favourite quote from Mary Ann, which she mentioned in her course: "Perfection is visually boring."  Yes!  Oh yes!  That's my new mantra.

Writing page and patterend page, waiting to be filled:  I added a little foldout flap to the patterned page.

Another patterend page and writing page:

Junk collage, which forms a background for the small page onto which I pasted a plan for my ugg boot conversion:

Here you can see a bit of the entire journal.  I've only just started it here.  There are lots of inspiring pages calling me to fill them.  In the past I've always had blank white pages, all of a uniform size.  This is inspiring me no end.

I need a revolution...

I'm experimenting with art styles that could work for my next book, the one set in the future.  Maybe some elements from this?  I'm loving my self-portrait stamp on the girl's dress.

Homemade Shoes

I've been interested in shoe making for a long time.  My first attempt was a pair of felted ugg boots, which are hideously ugly but now officially win the prize for the best shoes I've ever owned.  After wearing them every single day last winter, they show no signs of wear and tear, have been the warmest, softest, most appealing shoes ever, and I never wanted to take them off.  Unfortunately though, the soles aren't very good: I made a thick piece of felt and rubbed some silicon into the bottom for extra grip.  They haven't worn out, but I've been careful to only wear them indoors and on the occasional trip to the garden.  When I do go into the garden, everything on the garden path sticks to the felt, which is very irritating.  And if it's raining, they get wet and take ages to dry out.

But every single time I went out, I felt this little sad sigh as I pulled off my lovely boots and put on my outdoor boots.  And this has motivated me to learn enough about shoe making that I can make the perfect shoes for myself: with all the warmth, softness and comfort of my ugg boots, and outdoorsy enough to cope with a bit of rain and the junk on my garden path.  Ideally, outdoorsy and attractive enough to wear when I go out socialising - that would be heaven! 

I don't want to invest in a whole lot of fancy shoe making equipment though, so I felt I'd finally struck gold when I found this tutorial, which explains how ordinary people with no special equipment can make ballet flats.

Following their instructions, I spent an entire day making a test shoe:

I know this doesn't pass any attractiveness test, but the point of this shoe is simply to test my pattern.  And it felt good.  Firm around my ankles, no flapping, but roomy around my toes, and comfortable for people with weirdly wide feet, like me.

So I gathered together bits and pieces to make my first actual pair of shoes:

• Some men's shoes from the op shop, from which I removed the rubber sole to reuse
• A canvas bag to use for the upper
• My pattern and my test shoe.

In the interest of making these shoes warm and soft, I made some felt from the fur of my pet rabbit. Freshly cut fur, with carders, the special brush you use to tease up the fur before felting:

Fur all carded and laid out carefully in layers on this plastic sheet.  It would have been good to use bubblewrap, but I didn't have a piece that large, and I did have this plastic.

Next I drizzled it with detergent, ladled hot water over it, rolled it up and began massaging the tube:

Eventually it held together enough that I could remove the felt from the plastic, and boil it in the pot.  Unfortunately I did this a bit too soon in the process, and as a result, ended up with some holes:

But there was enough decent felt there to cut out my shoe lining:

! also cut pieces from the canvas bag, and cut the rubber soles to size.  You can see here some black elastic too.

Next I sewed the pieces together to create a pair of uppers.  I inserted a little elastic V:

I bought some shoe glue from Bunnings, and set about glueing the uppers to the felt sole:

Finally it was time to glue the rubber sole into place:

And then.. after waiting a very impatient 24 hours.. I got to wear them for the first time:

I'm pretty pleased with them.  They are far more stylish than my ugg boots, even if they aren't the most gorgeous shoes ever, and they are soft and warm.  One drawback though: they have already stretched a bit.  I think the canvas bag may not have been a sturdy enough fabric for this. The other thing is, all those lumps on the sole actually sit strangely beneath my foot.  I think I will pull off the sole and glue on a new one.

I've now bought a sheet of soling rubber, enough for several pairs of shoes, and I'll replace the soles on these to see how they do.  When I've had a bit more experience, I'll try doing a makeover of my ugg boots, to see if I can turn them into something attractive and outdoor-worthy.

Anxiety lives here...

Recently I've been having a weird spate of anxiety.  Anxiety hasn't played a bit part in my life over the last several years (though I'm no stranger to hideous panic attacks from long ago).  But a stressful project I've been working on has brought it back.  And my outlet is this painting, anxiety girl:

I'm actually really loving her. Definitely on the path to the style for my next book. The big numbers as a grounding background texture is just what I like.  And the collage skirt appeals to me too.  There's a map of Paris in there, that I saved from when we toured there.  I used a piece of tulle Paula cut off a dress she bought at the op shop, and I love the texture that adds too.

So last century.

I saw this conversation on Facebook and it made me laugh.

Another book

I've had this idea for a book.. something I've had in the back of my mind for a long time. It was always to be a book set in the future about living through a time of collapse, but every idea I had to flesh it out was completely naff. But I've been studying writing techniques lately, to improve my skills for the Grimstones book series, and as I've been doing so, little ideas have been popping up about my collapse of civilisation book. And then, in the night, it came to me, and I suddenly had both a main character and a clear plot.

With a big bout of nerves, I emailed my publisher and mentioned the concept. I have to say how brilliantly lucky I am to be able to do this. Because to get a book published from scratch was an exercise I planned to do at some point in my life, but knowing how damned difficult it is and how many rejections the average author has to go through, I thought it was a challenge I wasn't ready for yet. But then the Grimstones books fell into my lap.

Or rather, I spent 18 months making The Grimstones, then 5 arduous years touring with them, and somewhere along the way attracted the attention of my publishers. Someone there had seen the show and thought it would make a good book. I can't quite believe I've managed to sidestep the whole trying-to-get-published saga. And I also can't believe that my publishers have given me the most amazing editors to work with me, to turn me into a much, much better writer than I could possibly have been just from reading books about writing.

Anyway, I couldn't believe it when my publisher emailed straight back saying she loved my idea, and I should put together a proper proposal - outline, sample chapters and sample artwork (because it's to be the art journal of the main character).

So I dived in. Here's a pencil sketch of the main character, Piper (top) with her boyfriend, Marley.

And here they are again, in full colour...

Like me, Piper is deaf.. and this gives me the opportunity to do what people always say writers should do: write about what I know.  So, it's going to be a book filled with a whole heap of stuff I know and love: art, gardens, food, the collapse of civilisation, and deafness.

I wrote up my outline and a sample chapter, showed my publisher a pile of artwork.. and guess what she said?

"Please start writing."

So there we have it.  I'm officially in heaven.  And I think I've just struck upon my next big project.  Funnily enough, about this book I have that all-absorbing-inspiring oomph that I felt when I just started out with The Grimstones...

More colouring book dolls

I really can't get enough of these sweet dolls from my colouring book.  To think I used to believe colouring books were for kids.  Not so.

Colouring book dolls

I've been colouring in dolls from the colouring book I made, cutting them out and sticking them into my journal.  I am having so much fun with this.  I just can't get enough of these sweet little dolls and all the different things you can do with a simple outline.

Some pages from my journal

You don't have to lose your hair with chemotherapy.

Meet my mum, Jan.  I gave her this painting for Christmas.  It's not meant to be a perfect likeness but it is a very lovely representation of her.  And her hair really IS like that, even though she's 62!  Happily for me, I think I've inherited her hair genes.  Her mum (my grandmother) didn't go grey until she was about 70, and if nothing ruins my mum's hair, that will probably be her story too.

A couple of months ago, Jan was diagnosed with breast cancer.  She went straight in for a mastectomy and was frightfully brave about it.  She started anti-hormone treatment, which reduces the chance of a recurrence of her kind of breast cancer significantly. Then for the very difficult decision about whether she should have chemotherapy or not.  Chemo does reduce her chance of a recurrence by few more percent, and eventually she decided she'd have to do it.

Jan is not a vain person.  It's probably her influence that I've no interest in shaving my body hair, wearing make up or perfume, or restocking my wardrobe every season with the latest fashion.  But Jan does love her hair, and for good reason.  It's gorgeous, naturally gold, silky, shiny and it always smells good too.  She doesn't mind "feeling shit for six months", as she said about the chemo, but she does mind about losing her hair.  However, she figured it'd be better to be alive and sans hair than dead in a few more years from a recurrence, so she took a gulp and signed up for the chemo.  And she bought a wig.

But the day before her first chemo treatment, someone mentioned on the phone, "Did you know if you put ice on your head during the chemo treatment, your hair won't fall out?"  Well it sounds like just another lot of spin, but my mum was definitely interested enough to give my dad a poke.  He jumped online to try and work out whether there was any truth to this.  He ended up staying home from work, and spent the whole day on the net.  What do you know - it's for real!  Some hospitals overseas actually use this method.  You have to apply ice packs for about half an hour before treatment begins, and replace them every half an hour with a fresh pack, until four hours after the treatment is finished.  Most people can't stand it and give up after the first or second time - you have to do it every time you go in for chemo therapy.  But if you can hack it, there's an 80% chance of keeping your hair!

You need special ice packs though.  You can't just whack some freezer blocks on.  You have to cover every single part of your scalp completely, evenly, for the entire time.  Luckily, special head-gear has been manufactured for this purpose.  My dad jumped on the phone to work out where he could buy some, but unfortunately the only company selling them in Australia was in Perth, and we are based in Melbourne.  (To give you perspective, if we were to drive to Perth it would probably take us nine days.  Others would manage it quicker, but that gives you an idea, in case you don't know Australian geography.)

My dad got a quote from a courier - $1800 to ship them overnight, to get them in time for the first chemo treatment.  Ouch.  But my brother had a better idea.  He put an ad on Gumtree: Free return flight to Melbourne from Perth, plus expenses, for someone who will deliver the icepacks.  He got a call within ten minutes, and several hours later a girl walked in the door of my parents' place, carrying a large box of head-shaped ice packs.  My mum sat up late, chatting with her, and ended up inviting her to stay the night.  Next morning, as my mum left for chemo, the girl was poking around in the kitchen, helping herself to breakfast.  You got to love my family and their problem-solving skills.

Luckily my dad is the ultimate problem solver, because when he rocked up at the hospital with his chest of icepacks and a huge box of dry ice, ready to administer to my mum during her treatment, the hospital wouldn't let them in.  Health and safety: someone could burn themselves on the dry ice.  Too dangerous.  Two and a half hours of arguing later (my dad is not one to give up - he always sounds perfectly reasonable and respectable, and I would hate to be his adversary.. he probably just wore them down) they finally conceded that my dad could keep his dry ice in the car, and he'd have to go out every half an hour to fetch the replacement ice pack.

When I visited later in the day, it was as if my mum was giving birth, and my dad was timing her contractions.  He was watching the clock, fiddling with his thermometer to make sure each ice pack was exactly the right temperature at the time he applied it, flexing the packs to make sure they weren't too rigid.  As I walked in the door, my mum said, "I can't talk for the first five minutes - it hurts too much.  After that I'll say hello."  I made myself scarce and my dad fitted the fresh icepack.

Two weeks later, her hair was scheduled to fall out.  But it didn't.  She's still got it.  She'll have four chemo treatments all up, and each time she'll have to do the icepack rigamarole, and each time she'll have a 20% chance that two weeks later her hair will fall out.  But I'm crossing my fingers, for her sake, that it holds.

So.. the moral of the story is this: if you are having chemo and you really and truly and deeply don't want your hair to fall out, there's something you can try.  The hospitals and doctors here should be telling us about this option, but they won't because they don't want the hassle of icepacks and dry ice cluttering up their chemo rooms in the hospital.  If you want it though, you can make it happen.  But I'd say it gives a new meaning to the term "icecream headache".

Bees in our top bar hive

Just before Christmas, on that stupidly hot day, one of our meat chickens died.  It just got too hot.  Paula and I thought we'd better cool off the other chickens, by spraying them with water.  Only we couldn't agree on the technique: spray directly, or squirt water into the sky and let it drip down like rain.  Instead of sorting this out rationally, we started up the hose and then kept grabbing it from each other, blasting water absolutely everywhere in the process, including directly onto our poor little chickens.  Unfortunately, we managed to forget that we were standing right it front of our bee hive.

The bee hive has been out of action for some time, as my queen absconded.  I bought a queen over the internet (the things you can buy on the net!) but even she wasn't happy in my hive, and eventually all the bees left, right at the start of winter.  Martin, the bee man, has finally got me sorted with a new swarm, so I'm trying the whole bee venture again from scratch.

Paula and I were standing right in front of the hive, in the flight path of the bees, who have never bothered us before now.  We're pretty relaxed with them.  Maybe too relaxed, especially while blasting water everywhere on a really hot day.  The bees were stressed from the heat already, gathered around the entrance to the hive and fanning like mad to try and cool it off.  When we blasted them, they made their displeasure absolutely clear.  Two stings each for Paula and me.  One of mine was right in my eye! It would be funny to watch us, if you could play it back on video now, though it wasn't much fun at the time.  Both of us were falling over each other (literally) as we tried to hightail it back to the house to get to a mirror, so we could find and remove the stingers.  And then of course we ended up scrabbling blindly over who would get to use the damned mirror!

Once we'd caught our breath, and cooled off the chickens from a safer distance with a gentle rain-like drizzle, we were left with hot throbbing stings - even the ice didn't help much.  Then I remembered that plantain (very common weed you often find on the nature strip) is supposed to be good for bites and stings.  We wandered down the street until we found some, then created a spit poultice.  You wash the leaves, chew them up, spit them out, and apply to your bite.  If possible, hold in place with a bandage or bandaid.  (Not possible in the case of my eye, but happily it stuck there unassisted, looking like wild green eyeshadow from A Midsummer Night's Dream.)  I tell you, within five minutes both of our stings had stopped throbbing.  Each time we took the plantain off it got worse again, but when we reapplied it, it was definitely soothing.  I'm sure it wasn't a placebo effect.  My eye didn't swell up until the next morning, when I hadn't reapplied plantain on it overnight.  The itching and pain of the stings was entirely gone in three days, which is quicker than last time I had a sting.  Plantain is my new best friend!

I've got an art studio!

After years of working entirely out of cardboard boxes and little art bags, I've finally got an art studio!  And I've got Paula to thank for this.  A couple of months ago I had a complete meltdown.  I can't remember exactly what it was about.  Not art, at any rate.  I think I was threatening to leave.  All the details are a bit fuzzy now.  Poor Paula and Jesse were at a loss for what to do with me.  Paula, on her morning walk, mulled over it in great details, and eventually came home with an idea.  "I think you need an art studio."

Well, yes.  I'd love to have one.  I had been trying out various ideas: art at the library (no interruptions!), art at friends' places, looking for a room to rent one day a week... but there were problems with every idea.  Paula was fed up with me taking over the one and only table for hours - days - at a time.  I'd tried setting up in Bertha, our campervan, but the bench seats gave me a backache, the table wobbled like mad, and it was way too dark.  Paula suggested Bertha again and I dismissed the idea.  But she dragged me out there and insisted I tell her everything that was wrong with the place.

One by one, Paula worked out solutions to my problems.  She pulled up the bed at the bright end of the space, and turned it into a secure, non-wobbly, light-filled bench.  She offered to build me an ergonomic chair exactly the right height for the bench, since it was a bit low for a normal chair.  She told me to go to the op shop and get a lamp and a heater (it was still cold back then).  I did as instructed, and believe it or not, there I found a child's office chair, exactly the right height for the bench and perfectly comfortable for my very dodgy back.  The actual desktop came some time later.  I used a small wooden table top in the meantime.  Paula and I were starting to despair of ever finding the proper desktop, but one day when I was out on my bike, I saw someone had chucked out a desk the perfect size.  Paula and I raced back to fetch the top, and my studio was complete.

This is the best thing that's happened to me in a whole year.  The very best.  I love my art studio, and every week when I write in my journal what I'm grateful for, my art studio is the main thing.  I love my set up - everything within reach.  I stick notes and little drawings to the wall, and then when I need a collage paper, I rip it down and glue it into my journal.  So often, before, I wouldn't bother to use paint, or a rubber stamp, or something I wanted, because I'd have to lift a cardboard box down from a very high shelf and rifle through it to find the thing I needed, use it, and then return the heavy cardboard box to its high shelf.  I've done that patiently for years, or not done it when I can't be bothered.  And now I don't have to.  Within arm's reach is a tin of rubber stamps, ready to dip into.  My paints are right there, my water jar is kept filled with fresh water, my reference materials are at my elbow, ready for a quick look up.  I've finally bought a small guilotine, which really helps with the amount of cutting I do.

I make an effort to return everything to it's proper place as I work, or at least at the end of a session, so it remains functional and appealing and inviting.  Jesse is drawn to the space and my materials, and quite often sits there to create something, these days.  While I work, Paula and Jesse visit me from time to time.  We've converted the wobbly table and uncomfortable bench seats into a bed, so it's a lovely place for them to lounge while chatting to me.  Or I have a nap there and then continue to do art.  It's such a treasure to me to have a space I can go to that's all about art.  And when I'm there, I just focus on what I'm working on, no distractions... it's heavenly and amazing and magnificent.  You don't need a studio to do art, but if you DO have space for a table like this, I can't recommend it more highly!  Lucky me.