catundra

I appear to have lost most of my editing tools in lj - no "insert lj username", no bold, underlined or "journal cut"...anyone else had this issue or know how to fix it?

Remember these patches?



Well they are now a quilt top!







The backing is also done and I just have to make the binding before my class on Dec 21st when we are quilting the lot! I am pretty pleased with the result and particularly like the gold border - the gamble paid off I reckon as it makes the poppies pop. :)

I have just had confirmation that willowgypsy has indeed received her block from me so here it is for general consumption.



To be honest, this is my kind of thing. I love scrappy, I love bright and I love the idea of breaking the rules a bit. : )

I am in somewhat of a dilemma.  I have got my day membership for Femmecon next Sunday and time on the programme to discuss the children's stream at Swancon.  However:

• From what I am hearing there may not be many interested parties going to Femmecon this year who want to discuss the stream and who this is useful for.
• Although I said I was happy to help organise the stream for 2010, I have not heard a peep from the committee despite having approached them some time back.  This leads me to wonder if they are really interested in making it happen as I don't fancy doing it  without support and backing. 
• Should they be interested in making it happen for next year, maybe a separate get together of interested parties might be more worthwhile?

As it is, Femmecon unfortunately has bad timing this year.  I have just spent the past two weekends doing PD for school and am in need of some weekend space, on Wednesday I begin TEE marking and as I have a wedding on Saturday, Sunday would be a good chance to do that too.  Not least because there is a birthday celebration I should be attending then....

I would love to be able to help Calli and M out on the day but to be honest I have so much on that I would be stressed being there and am currently only hanging out on going to get something moving for next Swancon.  I already have ideas and plans for 2011 and that will be no issue because the committee is talking to me about them already (no surprises there though!)

I therefore ask for your comments.  Let me know if you are going and if space to talk about the children's needs at Swancon is something you are wanting.  Otherwise I will look to reschedule the discussion to somewhere and sometime otherwise convenient.  Should the 2010 committee give me some support and should those of you with children, who want a say, get involved.

So in the absence of stephbg , valeskah1 and I flipped a virtual coin and decided on Fame.  

( It had some unusual life lessons... )
End of rant.

For writing, Gaiman and twitter enthusiasts: http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/weblog/comments/with-twitter-you-can-write-a-book-with-neil-gaiman/

Thanks to Smart Bitches...


This is not an ex-parrot.

I watched the Project Runway Australia finale last night and was disappointed.


( Spoilers and rant below... )

Another song I am currently loving and need to remind myself to look out for...


But seriously, how old is she?  She strikes me as a little young to be hanging out at the laundromat picking up guys. ;)

Edit:  She's from Australian Idol?!?

I have had in my mind for a while that I wanted a really cool, modern, funky advent calendar for annual use.  Spotlight and the like always have the traditional style ones - you know, sleigh shape/house shape etc which you basically sew pockets onto but I have never found quite what I was after either made up or as a kit/pattern to make.  Now I have it!  Even more wonderfully I ordered this exact same range of fabric from etsy just recently - it was so adorably retro kitsch I just had to have it for some Christmas project and now it has a purpose in life.  This will be for Christmas next year however as we are getting waaaay too close to this festive season to do a good job of it.  Plus I am only a beginner. :)

For my reference really, to remind me of what they are, until I get around to buying them or get sick of them.   Enjoy them too, if it's your thing...

So angriest was asking for cheery input today and reading some of the replies got me thinking about things I laugh at.  One I would like to share is the Indian nipple song.  I laughed so hard I cried when I first saw this.  Call me childish but there is something the linguist in me loves - the fact we hear what we want to in foreign languages and adapt them to our own ears.  On a less cerebral level I love the stupid lyrics and of course it's bollywood and what is there not to love about bollywood? :)

SYTYCD? has been somewhat controversial for me this week.  First of all it wasn't on at the time I was expecting it, which made me very cross indeed and then two truly wonderful (and one in particular female) dancers got booted out.  Yes, I know it is a competition and that the stakes and standards are very high for the top 10 this year but I could not believe the decision.  The female dancer (no name in case some of you recorded it like I did but haven't watched it) had put in two excellent performances.  The one who was saved had one very mediocre (for this stage in the game) performance and one very good one.

The very good performance of which I speak is what I find rather controversial.  There is no doubt that she and her partner survived on the basis of this dance.  For those who didn't see it, they did a contemporary routine which supposedly told the story of a woman fighting breast cancer and her supportive partner.  There were a lot of angsty moves, there were grimaces, flexed feet etc etc but had I not been told she was a cancer sufferer (and the fact costuming saw it fit to put her in a headscarf and granny pants for some inexplicable reason) I would have thought it was like any other angsty contemporary routine where the partners get tortured with each other.  Having been given the story I did find it very moving and can understand the judges' resposes - everyone has been affected by cancer in some way and in this context the dance was extremely beautiful and moving, but as a dance it was really not much better than some of the other amazingly moving and beautiful routines they have shown.

I find it really sad that sometimes it is luck of the drawer.  I reckon just about any of the couples could have drawn that golden ticket of a tearjerker and had a free pass into the next round - which isn't exactly fair at this stage in the game.  Instead a very talented dancer, who put in two excellent performances that night had to leave, because she didn't get the golden ticket.

My name is Catundra and I am a handbag addict.  I have already come out of the shoe closet (and now I am struggling to stuff the avalanche of shoes that followed me out back into it again) but I don't think so far I have admitted to the handbags.  Unfortunately this company, bragbags Australia, is only fuelling my addiction.  Little did my mother know that her gift of a bragbag to me a couple of years ago would start me off...

Joking aside though, they do the most fabulous bags.  Jenny who is the owner and designer gets her bags made in an ethical fashion and not in sweatshops to cut costs.  She also does not cut corners with fabric choice and all her bags are stunning in their execution, fully lined and with all those extra little holders and pockets for keys, mobile phones etc.  She even makes a bag insert for other, less practical bags.  Yet her handbags are not stupidly expensive and at the moment, many of her latest Winter range is on sale.

Apart from their lusciousness, what I love about the bags are the straps and handles.  Sounds stupid but I like my handbags to sit over my shoulder just so and her handles are the perfect length to be comfortable.

This is one Australian, and even better, Perth based,  business to support and look out for.  I think she might be going places.

I haven't appreciated anyone (female and artistic) lately so thought it time to drag myself from the kitten and do so.  However this person is a little different in that while she was an artist, she is better known for being a muse to the Surrealist movement.

Nusch (or less mysteriously Maria Benz) is somewhat of an enigma.  My first port of call for these ramblings (my brain) recalls that she was married to French Surrealist poet Paul Eluard but this being France and the early 20th Century she was also involved with to greater and lesser degrees with artists like Pablo Picasso, Man Ray and I believe, Salvador Dali.  She was their muse and model - her image appears regularly in their artwork.  She was also a Surrealist artist herself although not a particularly outstanding one.

My second port of call, the almighty google, does not throw up much more than this.  She was apparently 40 when she died. 

What I find intriguing is that such a woman, who was immortalised by Man Ray in photographs, in paintings by Picasso and by her husband Eluard in poetic form, just seemingly vanished.  To me she really epitomises the malaise and tragic beauty of Europe between two wars.

I love the sound of the 60s and singers like Dusty Springfield so I was very excited when Welsh singer Duffy came onto the scene.  She has managed to revive the soul of that era and put a modern twist on it.  She has an awesome and haunting voice.

"Stepping Stone" could almost be Dusty...


"Mercy" is probably the most modern sounding of her songs although it still has that 60s sound to it.

Two wonderful afro'd divas here. 

The first is a favourite of my husband but I love this song too and want to cry and shout every time I hear it.  It is such a beautiful description of separation, clinging to hope and desperation.
Billie Myers - "Kiss the Rain" (crappy homemade vid courtesy of disabled embedding...)

Another favourite of mine, which reminds me of hoping for love in a big city is Macy Gray's "I Try".

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books had a post today which amused me from a site called www.harkavagrant.com.  Click here to find out what it would be like to check out the chappies with the Bronte sisters!

Today I appreciate Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt, two very talented Impressionist artists.  Impressionist art cops a lot of flack about being chocolate boxy, overrated and overpriced.  It can be all those things but there is a lot of historical value in much of the work, commentaries on the changing world to industrialism, the loss of the innocent countryside, the cynicism of the modern age...but I digress.  The biggest criticism I have of many (not all) Impressionists is the misogyny.  Renoir was the master of objectifying women.  Yes it was a statement about the time - women were there to be looked at while men were there to look.  It was the age of the flaneur, the gentleman stroller who walked and looked and owned all with his gaze.  But I still find it creepy.

This painting "La Loge" by Renoir is wheeled out regulary to demonstrate this theory but it is a spectacularly good example:

Note the striped dress drawing attention to her body.  Her useless, decorative opera glasses, her vacant stare.  Contrast with his determined gaze (at someone else, not the stage) and use of binoculars...We are in the place of the male viewer, we are voyeurs here, looking through our glasses at the woman, who is there for our taking.  Even more voyeristic is this "through the keyhole" perv at a woman drying herself by Degas.


Because all women dry themselves after a bath like this.  Feel uncomfortable much?

Anyway this isn't about the men.  This is about the women, Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt.  I have included these two images to provide a foil for them.  Both these ladies provided a totally different perspective and commentary to public and private life.  They provided the female gaze in an environment and movement dominated by the male gaze. Even better, they were acknowledged by their fellow artists, so the Impressionists weren't all sexist pigs, just mostly. :)

First of all let's revisit the opera.  Here is Mary Cassatt's take on the same subject:



The painting speaks for itself really.  The sitter is dressed modestly and is obviously at the opera to watch it (unspeakable!)  She is using masculine opera glasses and her fan, an important feminine attribute (there was an entire language of fan flirtation) is being securely held and is folded.  Her gaze is on the stage.  Our gaze is on her, yes, but not in a voyeristic way.  It feels like the viewer is in the box with her, a companion looking on slighly amused maybe, at her so lost in the performance.

Cassatt's version of a bath in "The Child's Bath" is the opposite of Degas' painting.  Here a mother tenderly washers her child.  It is a domestic scene and entirely of the female sphere.  Here the viewer is obviously a part of the intimacy of the scene and welcomed in.



Morisot too executed a number of toilette scenes.  Here are two of them "Woman combing her hair" and "Woman Powdering herself"

                         

In the former the sitter is directly gazing at the viewer, almost as if she has been disturbed by us entering and catching her mid hair do.  In the latter, while the sitter is not gazing at us, we are clearly in the room with her as she powders her nose.  There is no feeling of intrusion or voyerism here, nor are either of them (unknowingly) displaying their bodies for the viewer's pleasure. 

Compare the painting of the lady powdering her nose with Seurat's version of the same topic.  While strictly not an Impressionist, (Seurat was a Pointillist) he was working at a similar time and the comparison really is there for the making!



So there you have it.  Two women painting at the same time as some of the most famous male artists in Wester art history.  They weren't overlooked and did enjoy success and interest at the time but nowhere near as much as their male counterparts.  Still, who wants to buy paintings of babies and children and mothers and ladies in their nighties and boring spinsters at the opera when you can have boobies and bums and silly floosies and....