Making Constraints

'The good craftsman,' writes sociologist Richard Sennett, 'places positive value on contingency and constraint.' 

I'm pretty sure that he didn't have these rabbits in mind when he wrote this.  And I'm pretty sure that I'm not a particularly good rabbit-craftsman. 

But I have a sense of what he means. And these rabbits are the result.

I had only planned to make one of these little fellas for Sophia's first birthday (tomorrow). But when Nikos saw it, he decided to place an order for another. ('Is my rabbit finished yet Mum?', he'd ask each day.)

And, to my surprise, making another one wasn't a problem.  In fact, I really enjoyed it. 

Lately I've found myself compelled to sew and make things. Each day my mind is buzzing with plans of what to make next, and I scribble down quick sketches whenever I get a chance.  

And part of this compulsion comes from working within constraints of time and materials. 

I've realised that I can sit down while the kids are having lunch and sketch out a pattern, sit by the sandpit to hand-sew a detail, or get them involved in playing with materials.

I realised that I can also work well within the limits of my material stash.  I already had the op-shop wool flannel that these bunnies are made from, and the old polar-fleece jumpers that they are stuffed with. The only thing I needed to buy was the thread for their noses.

(As an side: when I make things, I've noticed that my son does too.  He wants to make things rather than go out to look or buy them. He keeps surprising me:  he is becoming his own maker, with his own distinct tastes and ideas.) 

Constraints aren't always the problem I take them for.  They can awaken a sleeping imagination. Contingencies are often opportunities. 

The resulting home-made rabbits might not be everyone's cup of tea, but they work for me. 

Pen Wraps

Yesterday I found myself out and about with a few spare moments: one baby asleep, one toddler in his own sandpit world. I knew I had to make the most of it. I reached into my bag. No journal, but there was its back-up – the tiny, spiral-bound notebook. I started the search for my pen. Ink, yes, a full bottle. A dead biro, yep, but not my writing pen.

I don't think the pen has any special powers. I don't write better with it. It's enjoyable to write with, but in many respects it's a symbolic pen I use when writing for myself.  When I write for others, for pay, I use a robust steel jotter.  I like to mark the distinction between the two modes, to highlight the shift in audience.

Once upon a pre-kids time, this lost pen wouldn’t have been a problem. I’d have gone off to the shop buy a biro, borrowed one, or returned home at a relaxed pace to retrieve the misplaced one. But now such moments are precious. There is no certainty of time ‘later’ when I know I’ll be able to write. And it’s both frustrating and disappointing to face a lost opportunity. 

Especially when it’s my fault for being pen-less.

What did I do?

I wrote anyway. Engraving the page with the dead biro to leave traces -  a hidden message to retrieve later on with the nifty use of a pencil. 

Even if I never look at these words, I feel much better for writing them, to have worked when I had the time.

Now I shouldn’t have found myself in this situation. Afterall, I’ve just spent the last week making these pen wraps. Made of fabrics I’ve collected and gleaned over the years – Japanese and Thai blues, grey wools and navy cotton, roads and cars for little writers doing their letters – they exist precisely so my friends and family have no excuse for not taking their pens out with them. 

And so tomorrow my wrap will take its rightful place in my bag, alongside bibs and nappies, on the off chance…

Girlish imagination

Shortly after my daughter was born, my work colleagues sent her a gift: a very girly, flowery jumpsuit.  It was then that it finally hit me that I had a girl-baby, and this outfit was the first step in my socialisation. 

Socialisation is the on-going process where sex becomes gender. Pink is for girls, blue is boys. Girls like cots and boys like trains. Of course, in reality, it's often far more mixed up than this. But with each pink or frilly outfit that followed, I was reminded of this process.

When Sophia was four months old I came across this little dress in an op-shop for the grand price of 20 cents. It was size 2. I knew she wouldn't need it for quite some time. 

But, suddenly and more forcefully, I could imagine this heavy, snoring bundle as the little girl she might become. I could see, for better and worse, what it would mean to watch her grow - of how this baby would become her own little person. 

Fast-forward 7 months, Sophia's not yet one, but already big enough to wear this dress.  She's no longer the relaxed, casual baby. She's busy chasing her brother around with her crawl-walk, dragging her pretty outfit across stones, through mud, and in wet sand. I don't think I could ever have imagined her. 

Yet I'm grateful for the dress, and the small role it's played.  She's a lilac lightening strike!

Summer nights

One of my most vivid memories of summer evenings is of mowing: the smell of cut grass, 2-stroke, and the neeearrrrgggghhh noise of the machine. 

Like most others living in a bushfire prone area, my Mum was (and remains) burdened by the need to keep the grass short.  As soon as there was a cooling evening breeze, she would be out there in her short-shorts and wellingtons, striding back and forth across that threatening, dry expanse.

I haven’t mowed for what must be a decade.  Metropolitan living,  followed by pregnancy, left me alienated from the garden (even though I’ve enjoyed other gardens: parks and boulevards, borrowed views balconies, and walks through others nurtured gardens).

But now that I have a garden, some deep, almost primal urge to conquer the grass has kicked in: part enjoyment of getting out amongst it, part a somewhat irrational fear of snakes in the suburban grass. (Bit of trivia: my two sisters and I have all been bitten by snakes - each a classic case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.)

All of which led me to buy one of the first brand-new objects I’ve had in quite a while: a hand push (or reel) mower.  I’ve long felt that I didn’t want a motor-mower – a polluting noise and fumes menace. 

But I didn’t feel confident that I’d be up to using a push mower, and treated it as an experiment. I bought the cheapest push mower in the shop, assembled it, and haven't looked back.

What do I like about it?

First, it’s just so incredibly simple, almost elegant. There’s no need for petrol, no fumes, no winder to pull. While it’s more noisy than I expected - like a bunch of scissors taking turns to snap - that doesn’t bother me as it stops whenever I stop moving. 

Second, it works, which I hadn’t expected. It churns through long clover, and is very simply to use. It does struggle with the long weedy, thistley grass and gets stopped by the liquid amber ‘conkers’, but I think that’s just a matter of getting it the grassy areas under control. I can already see improvements.

Perhaps it’s the novelty of having a new toy, or the fact that I’m on holidays, but I’m loving getting out there: mowing.  I reckon that the very physicality of gardening is crucial to my enjoying it so much  - it feels like a liberation from sitting at my desk, deadline looming, manipulating words on a screen. I feel out in the world again. 

Who'd have thought it possible: mowing as a liberation rather than a burden!

(BTW: Please excuse the work-induced blogging hiatus.)

One Perfect Day

I've never owned a cake-stand before. I didn't think I was the kind of person who would ever need to own one. In fact, I thought I was quite the opposite. At best, I'm an informal host, quite happy to serve up rice crackers or dips from the packet they came in.

So when this tiered cake-stand arrived recently in our home as a gift, I never expected it to bring such glee. But by some strange alchemy of its delicate floral print and candy stripes, it set my imagination to work. In an instant, a whole world of afternoon teas and leisurely bohemians, complete with cucumber sandwiches, dappled light and spring blossoms, sprang forth. The perfect picnic.

Of course, the imagery isn't particularly original. I can see it's drawn out of a hodge-podge of paintings, books, films. It's my imaginary take on the creative Bohemian crowd, without their private miseries, feuds and mortal pains; the photo of their one perfect day.

The point of this: sometimes an object is less about what it is for and more about what we make of it. For me, this cake-stand is an opportunity, an invitation to play. Rather than simply refuelling on coffee and biscuits, stopping for afternoon tea re-enchants the unforgiving late afternoon - when it is impossible to properly finish or start anything well, except cucumber sandwiches and tea.

Blue Solace

This winter we've done our very best to avoid getting sick: flu vaccinations, furious handwashing, eating well, and getting plenty of sleep (as much as a new baby will allow).  

But this wasn't enough.  So, in the same week, everyone had a fever: flu, tonsillitis, and one mysterious baby-temperature. Luckily, except me. 

Instead, I was kept busy doing all the regular household, kid-wrangling, run-of-the-mill stuff that my husband and I usually divide 50/50.  (I know some mums do this full-time, full-on day in day out, and I don't know how they keep it up!)  I was exhausted, worried, harried.

Yet, when everyone was comfortably snoring, I found solace in this blue-glazed, hand-potted bowl.  

This surely must sound odd.  What on earth could be consoling about a bit of mud and glaze?  

To start with, there's its simple beauty.  While the sun may have been busy shining outside, I didn't have much time to appreciate it.  In a week devoted to necessities, it was easy to overlook beauty, to see it as superfluous. 

Yet, it was precisely the everyday beauty of this bowl - its arabesque lines and limpid glaze -  that I needed.   It was this beauty without obligation that lifted my spirits out of the daily grind.  

Even if I was just having cereal for dinner (which was more often than not), it transformed eating from simple nutrition to an experience - the tactile, smooth curves of this bowl making it the perfect partnership of weight and form.  It revived senses with its combination of pleasure and surprise - a match rarely found in uniform, mass-produced products.  It rests in your hands so comfortably.  At first, you barely notice it, but over time, you realise how it's giving you something more.

What's more, while the potter might have made a 100 or a 1000 in this style, I know this pot's distinctive - like it has its own personality.  How do I know this?  Well, once there were two, and I swear I could tell the difference: a little bit more glaze here, a slightly heavier base there.

Then there's the glaze, which this photo doesn't quite do justice to, which calms the eye.  It's limpid blue-flecked sheen is more like gazing into the sea than at a block of solid colour.  It was this blue that first drew me to the pots.  The blueness reminded me of the John Campbell vases of my childhood home, with their glazes so rich and thick that could get lost in.

For these reasons, this blue bowl is not just another functional object, or faddish consumer product.  Even when I was dog-tired, its physical presence was able to comfort me, to wake up those senses dulled by everyday work and worry.  It reminded me that, even in difficult times, comfort can often be found close at hand.

The Ethics of Things - ABC Unleashed

I've an opinion piece up online today on ABC's Unleashed, 'Charity begins at the cash register'.

And behind my op-shop ideals is a story.

When I was little, my parents had an auction room.  It wasn't anything fancy - not a Sotheby's or Joel's.  It was a big, dusty corrugated iron shed, in a suburban market where every Monday something wonderful happened.  

My dad, as the auctioneer, was a like conjurer, the slight English strains in his accent, keeping the show running.  People would bid frantically - possessed by the urge to possess, you might say.  Some went there looking for a bargain. Others were searching for treasure amongst the boxes of sundries.  

It was there that I learnt about the thrill of discovery.  About finding a Barbie townhouse in box of junk.  About people who'd pay any price because they'd fallen in love with an object.  I also formed an ethics of buying and selling: about making a fair profit, about not seeking a bargain at any cost, about going home empty-handed.  

I still love the thrill of discovering some old object hidden amongst the clutter of an op shop, but I'm often disappointed in my fellow treasure-hunters.  In my piece on Unleashed, I'm arguing that often finding something rare and beautiful is reward enough in itself - we needn't wreck it with greed.