Croftville

Rabbitting on a carrot

latest painting...

handmade shoes

loving these handmade shoes on etsy - and they're vegetarian/vegan.

HydraHeart  seen originally on sweet sweet life.

OMG - UK Pudding Club!

It seems fitting that somewhere like Britain would have a pudding club.

It was founded in 1985 to protect the traditional English Pudding. Thanks to them, Jam Roly Poly, Sticky Date and Gooseberry Fool are safe. Until eaten, of course.

UK Pudding Club

U900 japanese ukulele duo

I saw this on Loobylu, and now it is stuck in my head. I like to share, now it can be stuck in yours too!

Isogaba...

married 10 years...

...and I still love him. Yesterday was our anniversary and we had a wonderful day. He got me the most gorgeous earrings and I gave him a painting featuring his favourite footy team.

We went to lunch at cafe giraffe on Little Lonsdale St and I had pumpkin risotto balls.

Then we went to see the Pompeii exhibit at the museum, then dinner at a new Creole/Indian place in Clifton Hill, which has a lot of vegetarian/vegan on the menu. It's replaced this strange little chinese that never seemed to have anyone in there.

They seem to be doing quite well, though the front door has no handle, and because it was so windy yesterday, they had to keep the lock snibbed. I was closest to the door, so tag teamed it with the waiter to open it as more diners turned up, clutching bottles of wine and trying not to get blown over.

I had a cabbage dish and husband had blackened fish. I also drank far too much champagne. So you know it was a great day.

pineapple palm tree

Opposite the train station is a palm tree that looks like a pineapple.

Making Darcy likeable

One of my friends is writing a novel with a Darcy-like hero, and so a few of us were talking about how to get the balance right - between the character displaying the typical Darcy characteristics - the aloofness, the pride, the reserve towards everyone that the heroine thinks is rudeness - compared to the attraction, the connection between them. How do you show he is a good guy and not some prat?

One of the things we came up with was that Darcy had a supporter in Bingley.

Bingley always spoke up for Darcy, and indeed seemed nonplussed that anyone could not see the good in him. And Bingley himself was always painted as being such a lovely person, that the only way the two could be such good friends was if Darcy was, indeed, misunderstood.

Now that I'm roaring through the re-read of the original P&P in preparation for reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, I'm also reminded that Austen uses type of third person narration called free indirect speech, which gives us glimpses into Darcey's head and so we know how Elizabeth Bennet has intrigued him, and how he resolves to not look at her the next time he sees her.

Which in turn, makes her think he is being even more Darcy-like. It's only a line or two at a time, and his thoughts are quite fleeting, but they are enough for us to share his secret and know that what Elizabeth sees isn't the truth.

So we're Darcy supporters, even when the heroine isn't.

finally framing

I finally got around to framing two prints I've had hibernating in their cardboard tubes for the longest time. So long in fact, that I framed them over two weeks, giving each one a week's flattening on the table, held down by books.

The actual framing happened really quickly, except for those annoying bits of fluff that get in there, so you have to make the decision, undo it all or leave it and be eternally irritated. Both ones got de-framed, de-fluffed then re-framed.

Anyway, here they are:

They may never actually be hung in this house, as now I shall have to procrastinate putting them up and hopefully by the time I get around to it we will be packing up the house to renovate.

As you can see to the left of the photo, the moment the camera came out, certain furry people started appearing. The next shot was this:

I got the calm one from Lark and the panic from Threadless, who mostly do very awesome tee shirts.

I still have a couple more of prints to frame and today I did a mad dash into Ikea to buy frames in preparation. Although these two have been in their cardboard tube EVEN LONGER that the calm/panic mob, so a more concerted flattening may need to happen.