Baby pressies

Just before Christmas two very special friends had two very special babies so I embroidered these singlets for them. The one with the bird was designed by Isabella and is the famous 'bird with the golden seed'.

Of Love & War

A Kiss Interrupts the March, Melbourne, 31 March 1943. Uploaded to Flickr Commons on October 19, 2009by Australian War Memorial collection

I have always had a fascination with the 1930s and 1940s. I think it started while watching classic Hollywood movies on TV with Mum when I was quite young. Both my Nanas were also 30s women in a way. Nana Stoner loved the glamour and celebrity of the Hollywood stars while Nana Laffan had more of the 'make do and mend' mentality having lived on the land through the Depression and the War.

My interest in this area has continued to grow over the years so when I came to choose my Masters topic I naturally chose something that would let me immerse myself in the era. For two years I researched the impact that the stationing of American soldiers in Melbourne had on the music and dance styles of the time. The more I researched and interviewed people the more I came to realise just how different life on the wartime homefront was from the period preceding it. Youth was honoured over age, working women became as highly valued as home-makers and public life and duty stole the limelight from life centred around the home. There was also an ever-present tension between the need for public control and the heightened private desires fuelled by the romance of the ballrooms.

One of the things that has peaked my interest in this area again is two new exhibitions about the period. The first is Of Love and War at the Australian War Memorial which looks at the impact of war on relationships and 'the ways in which Australians incorporated affairs of the heart into their wartime lives'. You might like to checkout the photostream on Flickr Commons.

The other exhibition was curated by my thesis supervisor and is called Over-Paid, Over-Sexed & Over-Here?. This exhibition explores the myths surrounding the American marines stationed in Melbourne during 1943 the same peiod I researched and I'm hoping to see it next week.

So what's your secret fascination? What things do you clip out of the newspaper, read about, collect? Do you have a special area of interest that you keep a little secret?

Caz

Dad and his books

Last week marked the first anniversary of Dad's death so I have been thinking about him quite a lot lately. Whenever I think of Dad it is with a book in his hand. Dad loved books. I mean reeaally loved books. So much so that he had some 6,000 of them. Dad was never a collector in the sense that he didn't collect first editions or books on a specific topic or by a certain author. He was more of a book accumulator like me.

How Mum used to despair about all those books behind couches, under beds and in piles beside chairs. And yet, every time we moved house they were all packed up and taken to the new place where the challenge of finding enough space to put them would begin again.

A person's book collection reveals so much about them. This is what I learnt from Dad's. Dad was into Australian history and folklore; Ireland and the Irish in Australia; horse rearing and racing; wool-classing and farming; horticulture and viticulture; boating and aviation; gardening especially herbs; law, religion and lots of other things. He also had lots of fiction, poetry and plays which he re-read constantly. In his youth he read Jack Kerouac and European writers like Alberto Moravia and Francois Mauriac. More recently he liked Australian authors like Tim Winton, Bryce Courtenay and Thomas Kenneally. He had complete sets of works by Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene and Ernest Hemingway. He loved Australian bush poetry.

The bibliomania gene is a strong one and in my house we already have over 3,000 books. Like Dad's books mine are not all be in prisitine condition and cover a bewildering array of subjects but to me each book is a little miracle of someone's creativity and hardwork and I would never part with them. While it was not possible to keep all Dad's books I think we have done a pretty good job of keeping a curated sample. Now all we have to do is make room for them in our own homes!

Caz

Knit One, Save One

As you know I like to knit. It can sometimes be hard to find the motivation to knit when the mercury is hovering at 30C but I think I've found my inspiration. 'Save the Children' was founded in 1919 by an English woman with the wonderful name of Eglantyne Webb. Their aim is to support children's rights throughout the world by providing both long and short-term relief to aid education, health and protection. This year 'Save the Children Australia' has launched the Knit One, Save One project to try and collect 80,000 knitted squares to make into blankets for children in Australia, India and Cambodia. So far they have collected over 17,000 but that still leaves a lot of squares to knit!

Caz

Out of the Mouths of Babes

Three is a wonderful age. When Isabella was three she had a wonderfully eccentric understanding of the English language. I remember one night Tom and I were discussing whether or not a new shirt he had bought was too 'loud' to wear to work. The next morning Isabella said 'Daddy, I don't like that shirt it makes too much noise'. Another time I described a day as 'stinking hot' and from then on she always referred to hot days as 'smelly' but my favourite was the time that she and Henry saw a puppet show together at daycare. When I asked her if Henry had been scared at all she replied quite matter-of-factly, 'oh no, he was full of joy'.

Now it's Henry's turn. His vocabulary is expanding daily and he is always eagar to try it out and there have been a few gems recently. Last week he desperately wanted to sleep with us in the 'big bed'. When I asked him why, he said through his tears, 'because it makes me feel so delightful'. When he woke me up the next morning at 6am he asked if I could get up with him. Bleary-eyed I said I needed a few minutes and he said 'well, it would be magical if you can'.

Sometimes he just makes me laugh out loud. In the car the other day Isabella was talking ten to the dozen as usual and after a few minutes Henry turned to her and said in the most casual voice 'turn in down, Man'. I can't wait to hear what he comes out with next!

Caz

Crime Fiction Sicilian -Style

I'm not a huge crime fiction fan (especially the grisly contemporary ones) however once in a while I stumble across a series I really like. At the moment I am a bit obsessed with Inspector Montalbano of the Sicilian local police. Descibed as a cross between 'Columbo and Chandler's Philip Marlowe', Montalbano is a slightly eccentric, hard-bitten cop who only knows one way to do things - his way. He is also quite the gourmand and the books are full of descriptions of the food made by his housekeeper and the food that he eats while out on a case. There is lots of freshly grilled fish with lemon, olive oil and parsley but there are also things like his favourite snack 'calia e simenza' (roasted chickpeas and salted pumpkin seeds) and lemon ice made from 1 cup of lemon juice, two cups of sugar and four cups of cold water...mmm!

It was Tom's Mum who introduced me to the Inspector and she also introduced me to Iain Pears great series starring English art historian Jonathan Argyll and his girlfriend Flavia di Stefano of Rome's Art Theft Squad. Maisie Dobbs I found on my own. Maisie was a nurse during the First World War and later becomes a psychologist and private investigator. I just love the tone and atmosphere of these books - so melancholy.

Caz

The animal fascination continues...

Over the weekend we went to the Koala Conservation Centre on Phillip Island and saw these little guys. You forget just how adorable koalas really are until you see them up close like this. My favourites were the two baby koalas but unfortunately they were a bit camera shy.

Caz

Morning Glory

This is what is left of the museli I made this week and this is my beautiful new teapot

I'm a toast and tea kind of breakfast person (let's face it often just tea). I know that cereal would be so much better for me so every so often I make my own museli. Sometimes I make toasted museli and sometimes natural. When I make the natural one I just combine rolled oats, shredded coconut, raisins, apricots, almonds, pepitas, sunflower seeds, LSA mix (linseed, sesame, almond) and cinnamon in quatities I make up as I go along. When I make toasted museli I sometimes follow a recipe. Here is my current favourite.

Orange toasted museuli

1/3 cup honey

1 tbls finely grated orange rind

1/3 cup freshly squeezed orange juice

2 cups traditional rolled oats (not the cut up instant porridgy type)

1/2 cup bran cereal sticks (like All Bran)

1/2 cup shredded coconut

1/2 cup pepitas (pumpkin seeds)

1/2 cup sunflower seeds

1/4 sesame seeds

1/2 cup craisins (dried cranberries)

1/2 cup dried apricots (finely chopped)

1/2 cup hazelnuts

1.Preheat the oven to 160C (or 140 if fan-forced). Line a large shallow tray with baking paper (I always have to use two).

2.Place honey orange rins and juice in a small saucepan over a low heat for 2-3 mins until honey is melted.

3.In a large bowl, combine all dried ingredients except dried fruit. Add honey mixture and toss to combine.

4.Spread mixture onto trays and bake until golden and crisp (anywhere between 10-20 mins depending on your oven) stirring occasionally as the outside bits often brown more quickly than the inside bits.

5. Cool on trays then stir through dried fruit. Store in an airtight container for up to 3 weeks. Serve like regular cereal with milk or use it to sprinkle over yoghurt or fruit.

Enjoy!

Call of the Wild

Maybe it is the after-effect of reading 'Colours' and realising how little I know about the natural world but this week I have been curiously attracted to finding out more about the animal kingdom. I've been reading Gerald Durrell's charming 'My Family and Other Animals' and earlier in the week we went to see Museum Victoria's new permanent exhibition, 'Wild: Amazing Animals in a Changing World'. Talk about bio-diversity! Over 170 mammals, reptiles and birds from all over the world all displayed from floor to ceiling in one big room.

The exhibition works on a number of levels the most obvious being scale. This mass display of animals does more than any book or television show ever could to give you a real-life sense of scale. Where else are you going to see a yak next to a bear next to a wolf next to a squirrel? There is also a certain poignancy about the exhibition with each animal labelled as extinct, endangered, vulnerable, or secure. For me the most powerful examples of this were the now extinct Tasmanian Tiger so beautifully preserved and the Thai dwarf (?) rhinoceros which has been in the museum's collection since 1884. There are now only 50 known adults in the wild. If you get the chance go and see it and be amazed.

Colour My World

Originally uploaded to Flickr by on April 14, 2007by Pieter Musterd

Originally uploaded to Flickr on September 3, 2008by Merelymel13

Originally uploaded on Flickr on June 5, 2009by seanmcgrath

I've just finished reading my beautiful Folio Society edition of 'Colours: Travels Through the Paintbox' by Victoria Finlay which Tom's Mum and Dad gave me for Christmas. Although it weighs a ton I have happily carted it around from room to room as I read compulsively about the author's amazing adventures in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Australia and the Americas. Here are just some of the fascinating things I discovered while reading:

• In the nineteenth century, grey lead pencils were first painted bright yellow for the American market as a subtle marketing tool. The graphite in the pencils came from a mine near the Chinese border with Siberia and and the yellow was a reference to the Manchu imperial robes and hence the mysterious East.
  
• White lead paint was still in common use on/in houses as well as in works of art until just before World War 1 when titanium paint was invented.


• Cochineal bugs live on prickly pear plants.


• The recipe for the orange varnish used on Stradivarius violins has been lost.


• The first analine dyestuff (that's pretty much all we use now) was not invented until 1856 when William Perkin made 'mauve' while trying to find a synthetic alternative to quinine to cure malaria.


• Denim is so called becaused it was cloth from Nimes (serge de Nimes). The pants later became known as jeans after the Genoese sailors who transported the cloth.
  
• The sky is blue because the blue/violet rays have the smallest wavelengths and bounce off the hydrogen and oxygen molecules in the atmosphere whereas the larger red wavelengths sail right through
  

Isn't the world an amazing place? I could go on (and on and on...). It made me realise (again) that there is so much that I do not know about the world and how we have arrived at the point we are today. Many of the places Finlay visited are plagued by wars and proverty. Many of the people she spoke to have lost touch with their own cultural heritage in just a few generations which means that even more of these amazing inventions and discoveries are being lost. Being the good story teller that she is, however, she always manages to track someone down who knows someone who knows someone who holds the answer to the riddle.

If you feel like expanding your historical and geographical knowledge of the world give this book a whirl!

Caz