Guests

Easter is a time of gathering with friends and family or puddling about at home fixing up the garden or the house...here is a photo of cousin Joe who has come to visit..he looks twice his size because he is trying to make Tweetie notice him....which she steadfastly refuses to do....as you can see here....

Back to back they faced each other....etc...

Cousin Hoss is here too....and he dearly wishes I would take him for a walk....

But I am about to participate in a Readathing on Librarything......

and read some more of Su Tong's Boat to Redemption

...and then figure out what to do with the fruits of our harvest......

Maybe tonight Hoss, when I feel sufficiently guilty about the amount of chocolate consumed....

Happy Easter in blogland everyone!!!!

Plus or minus one ear....

Have you ever heard of a Smoot?  I hadn't....until Librarything wrote to me this morning and told me that they had added some new measurements to our collections, bless them. 

I am happy to report that, of the ones I have catalogued (which I calculate to be about half of our collection), we have 45,215 Smoots worth of books - that's if you laid all the pages in all the books end to end.  "What's a Smoot?", you may well ask. As I did.  Smoot, according to Wikipaedia, is a non-standard unit of measurement.  Back in the day, before I was born, Oliver R Smoot Jr obligingly lay down on the Harvard bridge and let his fraternity from MIT measure the bridge in Smoots.  It's about 1.7 metres or 5ft and 7 inches - plus or minus one ear.  If you don't like that measurement, Librarything have obligingly provided other comparisons - blue whales, elephants and bathtubs.  I am happy to say that we are 0.02% of the way to the moon with our books. 

Our book stack is somewhere between the Taj Mahal and Big Ben. We would need 69 U Haul boxes to pack them up or 16 Ikea Billy bookcases to unpack them. 

I do like counting and indexing.  Do you?  It has become a tad obsessive lately and the family is becoming worried.  I catalogued the pantry this week in an effort to demonstrate to hubby that we needed no more noodles.  So far, it hasn't worked.

PS My book review of James Kelman's How Late It Was, How Late: A Novel made it to the front page of Librarything - hooray! I also posted it on the Complete Booker blog which is a great blog site for reading up about Booker Nominees and Winners.

Where the Sky Meets the Sea....

I don't know about you but I like to try to colour coordinate my icecream with what I'm wearing.  You can't really see it in this photo but I assure you that there is pistachio icecream in this bucket...together with yummy meringue and amaretto icecream.

Here is my good friend  at the scene of the crime... a rather good icecream shop at Noosa called Massimo's - check it out next time you go there.  

We did walk some of the icecream off by going along the boardwalk and looking at the beach...check out this amazing cloud formation....very Bali Hai don't you think?

For those of you not familiar with the term Bali Hai...here is a link to the seminal video from my childhood....

Thank you for a wonderful 24 hours dear friends.... 

Julian cooked up a most fabulous meal...without fail, everytime, he exceeds my expectations...such a good cook....the Queen of the Tea Cosies is one lucky gal :) ...as indeed am I to have such a generous friends....my special islands....

Knitting with Millamia

The Queen of the Tea Cosies is heading home and so one should get cracking on knitting projects to have something to show for all the time one hasn't been in paid employment. 

I am knitting a vest for someone's baby....it is a Debbie Bliss pattern but I am knitting it in Millamia wool which I discovered at Threads and More.  My first ball of wool was a disaster but the lovely people at Millamia replaced it straight away in response to a post I made on a Ravelry bulletin board. Millamia are Swedish sisters based in London.

I am really enjoying knitting with this wool now.  Its very springy to the touch and I think will make a good vest for the baby.  It is 100% extrafine merino made in Italy and machine washable.  Fabulous stuff.

The colours I have chosen are midnight and putty. 

This pattern incorporates cabling with a bit of intarsia.  I will have to teach myself swiss darning to complete ...let's see how I go....

The lovely piece of pottery in the picture is from my dear friend Deborah in Melbourne.  She gave it to me yonks ago and I had it on my windowsill at work.  Now it's on my new study desk in our bedroom. 

Man Booker International Prize 2011

I've set myself a mini-challenge...to read at least one book from each of the Man Booker International Finalists for 2011.  The winner will be announced at the Sydney Writers Festival 18 May.  The shortlist can be found here.

The Brisbane City Council library has come to my aid with most of the authors.  On Thursday night I snavelled up Anne Tyler's the Accidental Tourist and Su Tong's Boat to Redemption.  

 John Le Carre has pulled out of the running already, saying that prizes aint his thing.  That leaves 12 writers in the running for 60k quid - not to be sneezed at.....including our very own David Malouf.  Here's a link to a recent ABC Radio interview recorded with the lovely Richard Fidler talking about Happiness.  He would be happy if he won the prize, yes?  I've just realised I still haven't read Ransom ...I've only read Johnno...oops...better get onto that quick smart.

Anyway, today I finished Anne Tyler's the Accidental Tourist which was great - easy to read and laugh out loud funny.  Nick Hornby endorses it which is probably a good thing but I still haven't read Nick Hornby...sigh...so much to read...so little time.

Anne Tyler has written heaps - Digging to America was one of those ones I meant to read last year, but never got round to doing so.  It was shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2007.

Anne has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize a couple of times including for the Accidental Tourist and won it in 1989 for Breathing Lessons.  Yes, Accidental Tourist was made into a movie starring William Hurt and Geena Davis but I haven't seen it...I think.  Has anyone else?  Was it good?  I think it would make a great movie.

Here's a nice bio of her in the Guardian.  I will definitely be reading more of her stuff.

I particularly liked how the dog was such a big character in the book.  We humans are often defined by our pets I think and they deserve more recognition in our fiction.  So there.

 

Not happy Jan!

Third Daughter by John Brack (1954) drypoint National Gallery of Australia purchased 1977 copyright Helen Brack 

Look at this gorgeous card sent to me by my colleagues in Sydney on the day of my departure!

It was a perfect choice and I appreciate the effort that went into finding just the right card, don't you?  I do like a good card and this is an excellent one.

I love John Brack's work though I must confess I did not recognise this piece.  I am probably more familiar with works like Collins Street et al. I will enjoy hunting it down in the National Gallery next time I am in Canberra.

My last day at work was a bit frantic...colleagues from Sydney flew up to help me complete paperwork and tidy up odds and sods.  There were lots of drop in visitors and banking and re-direction of mail and quick orientations for those left behind.  Former colleagues and industry members met me for a drink after work at the very pleasant Merthyr Bowls Club.  We used to use this as a venue for Christmas parties and other occasions when our office was in New Farm.  There were shrieks of joy as I placed the box of old photos on the table and I was spoiled rotten with fine food, drink, pressies and companionship.  People very sweetly listened to my five page speech (I kid you not!).  I have, as they say, closure :)

And so it's on to new and interesting stuff....a librarianship course through University of Canberra which I hope will make me a better researcher.  I am frightened, and excited, by how much I don't know, if that makes sense. 

So stand by for some no doubt tedious discursives on information seeking behaviour and collection management...sprinkled with the odd bit of knitting, sewing and book reviews.

I will miss my friends at AFTRS more than I can say...it is a special special place, that's for sure.  The good thing though is that there is life after AFTRS and I can still keep in touch.

Everlasting Cupcake

One of my more tedious tasks is to fetch the mail from the post box every day. 

I try and do it first up in the morning to get it out of the way...the walk to the post office can be quite a challenge at lunchtime - past the buskers, the bewildered and the desperate in the Valley. 

In the morning business is a bit brisker but can be depressing where I park around the back.  Broken bottles and evidence of homeless people sleeping in the alley the night before.

It's been a bit of a challenging week.  I've made the decision to leave somewhere I've worked for a long time.  I feel a bit like I'm standing on the edge of a precipice.

So what a delight to find a wee giftie from a colleague way way down south in the Apple Isle.  An everlasting cupcake to make my day.  It's really a very useful pincushion beautifully made by some very clever embroiderer.  And such a beautifully designed and hand made card from the house of Little Snoring. 

Dear Edwina, what a fabulous colleague and friend you are.  We only got to meet in the flesh a couple of times on rare, feel good, love-in sessions in Melbourne or Sydney.  What fun we had and what stories we shared.  Thank you for your beautiful gift and most importantly the gift of your friendship.