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Score for the black sheep

Fresh into the inbox:

Dear All,
CSIRO scouring plant motion passes Senate
The Senate today passed the following motion from Australian Greens Senator for Tasmania Christine Milne:
That the Senate:

(a)     notes that:

(i)     the closure of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) wool scour at Belmont in Victoria will impact on thousands of Australian individuals, small businesses and a number of large Australian companies,

(ii)    the CSIRO scouring plant is vital infrastructure to businesses, researchers and enterprises associated with the Australian speciality fibre industries (ultra and superfine wools, coloured wool, cashmere, mohair, alpaca and commercial processors) and small lot wool processors, and

(iii)   it is the only scour in Australia commercially scouring small lots and coloured fibre and its closure will threaten the viability of industry members and force others offshore for processing; and

(b)     further notes the efforts of the Government to date and calls on the Government to ensure that the CSIRO scouring plant is not decommissioned and, if privatised, is required to prioritise research and development and provide ongoing long-term access to scouring services in Victoria for the speciality fibre industries and small lot wool processors.

Sophie Underwood
Campaigns and Constituents Officer
Office of Senator Christine Milne

Posted 15 May 2008 † littleredhen § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (1) °

Mothers, and their mothers

Getting rid of stuff in the house where I grew up was a funny thing. We were four women, three generations, living in a largeish house with ample storage space, but there was never enough room for stuff. We were always needing to make more room for new stuff.

Of stuff, there was ‘your stuff’, ‘my stuff’ and some loosely communal stuff, which often had a known owner but was always in circulation. Jewelry was communal stuff, Barbie clothes (though not Barbies) were communal stuff, and some items of clothing were communal too, like certain sweaters, LL Bean hunting boots and a ski jacket which still bore the remnant of a pink 1965 Sun Valley lift ticket on its left hood string and was only ever worn for going outside to feed the dog.

My grandmother was well-known (and feared) for throwing away other people’s stuff to make room for her stuff. (From my stuff two things went missing which I still mourn: a friend’s great-grandfather’s WW1 pilot’s jacket—which had a hideous hole in the elbow but was still beautiful and, more to the point, not mine to throw away—and a photocopied lyric sheet from a 10,000 Maniacs album which had been drawn on and autographed by Natalie Merchant herself.)

The rest of us had a few choices: you could give your stuff away, throw it away, or foist it on someone else in the house, and if you were me, usually it was the latter. This meant it was no longer my stuff but it was still close by, and yet I had room for more more stuff. Brilliant!

Books, too, were communal, more or less. They sort of belonged to the house, which had large built-in-shelves covering a living room wall. A lot of the books had come with the house, like classics, old textbooks, and oddities including a whole set of World Books from the 1950s, beautifully typeset in Futura and woefully outdated (though this did not stop my sister or me from referencing them for school reports and probably explains a lot about my teenage worldview).

We were all good readers and the house library did get used. Like a lot of people, my grandmother became a compulsive reader of mysteries and crime novels, and she also would re-read a favourite classic from time to time. These would often be bookmarked with Kleenex, or with an old, folded magazine subscription blow-in card (one of those mailback postcards that snow out of an American magazine the minute you pick it up).

On my last visit home, in 2005 for Gram’s memorial service, I spent two weeks in the house with my mom and my daughter (still three generations, just one woman down, since my sister was living in the UK and was too pregnant to travel). I enjoyed this time at my home in its everyday state, knowing it would be the last time I could be home. I enjoyed walking around outside, visiting with some high school friends, seeing lots of cousins, and I spent a lot of time sorting out ‘my stuff’, which had dwindled over the years, subject to my periodic culling as well as my grandmother’s and later my mother’s.

I wanted to take the whole house back to Australia with me, just fold it down like closing a pop-up book, and take it all away with me, because it contained so much of my memory in it—stuff I’m foisting on you now—but in the end I had to be realistic.

I recognised my useless stuff for what it was and threw it out. The things I could not bear to chuck out (a couple of LPs, Barbie clothes which were communal and could not legally travel home with me, some books) I foisted on my mother. And I had collected new stuff which I needed to make room for in my suitcase: a small stuffed animal for my daughter, a marble game for my son, two duck prints for my husband—note none of them seems to particularly like or appreciate these things but oh well—plus a large teapot, a copper jelly mould, four pretty rice bowls, a little Portuguese cream jug, and a book for me.

The book was a funny thing. The Importance of Living, by Lin Yutang (fourteenth printing, 1938), was tucked onto (another) bookshelf in the den, where my grandmother’s stuff had piled up due to the time she spent there watching TV, reading, napping, having meals—so although it wasn’t something I would have expected her to read, I I knew she must have been reading it (and the subscription-card bookmark inside was a giveaway). But the endpaper bears a sticker with my great-grandmother’s name and address in it so I don’t know who was pencilling lines under certain passages and folding down the odd page.

I picked the book up again recently (admittedly to use as a prop in a photo shoot) and in flicking through it and noting the particular marked phrases, realised again that I have a treasure on my hands here. The book itself, and also, the book as a window into the minds of two women who’ve shaped me just by virtue of being alive, passing along their thoughts, their ways of doing things, handing them along through generations (for better or for worse). Here’s a bit that helps explain what I mean, and why I might want to blog about it anyway:

There is a method of appealing to one’s own intuitive judgment, of thinking out one’s own ideas and forming one’s own independent judgments, and confessing them in public with a childish impudence, and sure enough, some kindred souls in another corner of the world will agree with you. A person forming his ideas in this manner will often be astounded to discover how another writer said exactly the same things and felt exactly the same way, but perhaps expressed the ideas more easily and more gracefully. It is then that he discovers the ancient author and the ancient author bears him witness, and they become forever friends in spirit.

Good stuff. Stuff to keep.

Posted 10 May 2008 † littleredhen § Learning curve § Narrative threads ‡ Comments (1) °

My cup (and my rubbish bin) runneth over

I have a rubbish bin full of tissues that needs emptying, and I had two job offers last week. I’m still pinching myself over that. I haven’t had a job offer in, like, forever, because in Adelaide, job offers don’t happen to normal people. Well, maybe that do, but they don’t to me. (Maybe I’m not normal.)

One was a communications job in an arts and crafts capacity, the other a long-term project editing a knitting book for a designer. And I had to pick ONE.

It wasn’t an easy, relaxed weekend. I sneezed a lot, moped around and also whinged at length to husband and to a very wise friend who pointed out: ‘You’re always sick.’

I started to say, Now, I’m sure I’m not always sick, but because she’s one of those people who is usually right, I stopped to think about whether I am always sick. I do tend to talk to her a lot more in times of stress, and come to think of it, I’m usually sick at those times. Do I get sick because I’m stressed, or does stress prey on illness? I’m pretty sure it’s a downward spiral.

Anyway, I have been sick a lot in the last few years. I stay up too late trying to have free time because I chase after family and work all the rest of the time. Something has got to make way for me.

So I have just said no to the communications job. I was almost twisting my own arm to force myself to do it, but I did it. The book job it is. Which scares the beejeezus out of me, but in a good way. It will fit in amongst other freelance jobs and allow me to…

…to go to bed, actually. When I’m sick.

Update: The wool scour is staying open!

Posted 05 May 2008 † littleredhen § Learning curve § Narrative threads ‡ Comments (2) °

Let them ship wool

It breaks my heart to see what is happening over in Geelong with the ‘imminent’ closure of the wool scour serving so many of the small wool producers in this country, not to mention every rare fibre producer (hello alpaca!).

I can all too easily imagine the bean-counting consultative logic behind the decision — very much a ‘let them eat cake’ attitude: oh, just ship your bloody fibre overseas for processing.

But good lordy, how stupid/selfish/narrow-minded do the bean counters have to be to shut this scour? No scour > no need for processing > closure of mills and manufacturing facilities > loss of thousands of jobs, permanent loss of skills … this is a stretch, I know, but sometimes I see a glimpse of a parallel in China’s Cultural Revolution, y’know? Let’s make sure we decimate our skills base, now. And then let’s send the work to China, I hear they need the jobs over there.

I had a rant to my husband the other night — as I sat at my spinning wheel, which seems to get my mind humming along — about the way government infrastructure and reporting has disabled the human capital of a particular primary industry group that I work with. The constant increase in government requirements — which are arcane and terribly confusing — takes researchers away from research, not to mention growers away from growing, and puts them to work as government lackeys, filling out forms and following rules, which must then be administrated by a growing number of … governent lackeys.

Oh, it would be amusing if only it weren’t so serious.

Let’s talk about this industry’s levy, too. It’s structured just like the wool industry levy.

Growers pay a research & development levy based on their harvest. The government body known as the Levies Revenue Service collects the levy, and the LRS is the only group (apparently) who knows who all the levy payers are, and they will not reveal this information. Privacy act or somesuch.

The downside of this lack of information about who the levy payers are *also* prevents anyone from getting them together as a whole body to talk about *their* money and what’s being done with it. Isn’t that a neat trick? (Oh, no, we can’t tell you who you are, that’s private. Very Joseph Heller.)

So, I wonder how the talks went yesterday regarding the closure of the CSIRO scour? I admit I’m not hopeful because over the last several years, the government has gotten ever more deaf/blind/dumb towards the enormous difficulties of being a grower and I just don’t see that changing. They shut the scour once a year ago and it’s really just dumb luck that’s kept it open — CSIRO handled it so badly that they were forced to reopen.

And yet because this closure will kill the Australian coloured wool and rare fibre industry, I’m hopeful that someone in power will see the light. Or maybe they’ll take this last chance to snuff it out.

Posted 25 April 2008 † littleredhen § Fibre-rich diet ‡ Comments (0) °

Spot the difference

I met M-H, aka WittyKnitter (or the Sydney Godmother?), and her partner the other night. I love it when ‘knitting friends’ (as my kids call them) come to Adelaide! We get to be all proud of our little town and its lovely offerings (like Good Life’s organic pizzas and Wilkie Estate’s organic wines on this particular occasion) and of course I get to drag out my knitting and bore my family silly. (M-H is lucky in this respect, as Sandra is a knitter too.)

We had a great time, ate well, laughed lots and kids behaved reasonably well. And for non-knitters reading, here’s where the story ends for you. Here’s where you’ll start to get bored silly.

Sandra had left her knitting in their apartment but M-H had hers (some fetchingly simple toe-ups in Lorna’s Laces Pioneer colourway — you don’t need to do much but knit that stuff to make it look sweet) and I had with me 1 3/4 Merino Bambino bedsocks for my daughter.

red socks Mine are top-downs, and as we compared heels/toes (as you do), M-H pointed out that although our short-row toes looked similar, hers used a version called the Sherman toe, which I’d never seen. They were a bit neater-looking and — for me this was the kicker — they don’t require that crazy purl-three-together-through-back-loops manoeuvre that I’d been using. (I mean, I love the short-row toe, but *that* I could definitely do without.)

So, fast-forward about two hours, and I’m home in front of the computer, having looked up this how-you-call-it, Sherman toe (with pictures here) and I’m finishing off the socks without any yarnovers. Wow. Simple. Sweet. The nice thing, for me, is that you can (as with Priscilla Gibson-Roberts’ version) work them with top down socks. This is good as I still prefer an elastic cast-on to a sewn cast-off (which I find finicky to work and, more important, never feels as good to wear).

From this picture, I don’t think you can pick the diff. Think I’ve got me a new technique! Thanks M-H.

Posted 20 April 2008 † littleredhen § Fibre-rich diet § Thought for food ‡ Comments (2) °

THIS WEEK

I’m shouting, OK. Like, “Oy, this WEEK, you would not believe.” It’s so hard to vent on a blog without spending 18 hours writing the ENTIRE saga and then editing it down to something that’s a) fit for public consumption and b) not the online equivalent of hearing someone say, ‘I had the most amazing dream last night…’ But here y’go. Off the top of my head, more or less.

I knocked myself out getting a painting and two prints ready for pre-selection for an art auction, and by the time I was finished dropping them off, I knew they weren’t going to be pre-selected. They weren’t.

This is all right, it’s an expected bump in the road. And I’m happy to keep them, but I wasn’t happy that I went thru all the palaver to get them ready without knowing the odds were that I wasn’t going to get so much as a look in. This is compounded by the fact that I’m very dubious about the wanky academic arty farty factor at the uni. I didn’t cope well with it the first time around. I might cope better this time but only because I’m less likely to be quiet about it, which is probably going to mean I’m not going to cope as well. Hm.

What else? School has been big trouble this term. Son is smart like dad and a pain in the neck like me. He’s doomed. It’s an ongoing saga that leaves me feeling totally wiped out every day, always hating to ask, ‘So how was school today?’ and yet always having to ask.

And today has just been an effing mess. Here was my original plan:

  • Morning: clean. (I slated the morning for digging my way out of the rubble I call an office.)
  • Lunch: end-of-term BBQ at kindy. (Baked cookies last night, sent them with Daughter to kindy this morning.)
  • Afternoon: check client proofs at printer, pick up son early at school, then go home. Relax for a little while. (Ha! Ha! This never happens.)
  • Dinner: maybe look forward to family night at the Central Market (usually a bright spot of my week).

So, I spent about an hour filling a bin with office junk — and then realised I’d forgotten entirely about the knitting guild exhibition opening tonight, and that I was supposed to give Sarah my shawl and poster to take with her this morning when she went to help set up. Crap! And oh, by the way, What poster?
I replanned:

  • Morning: clean. Design/write poster and email it to the print bureau in the city.
  • Lunchtime: kindy BBQ, collect daughter.
  • Afternoon: Zip over to printer to check proofs; collect poster from bureau in city; drop off shawl and poster on other side of city; race back across city in time for school pickup.
  • Dinner: leftovers or takeaway, then back over to the other side of the city to attend exhibition opening

Made it so far at as the city, where I found out the print bureau had not received my email. Hence: no printout to collect, no reason to drop off shawl, wasted trip into city. Back home again to email printer again. (Note to self, applied heavily to forehead with palm: carry. memory. stick. next time.)

Replan No. 3:

  • Afternoon: Email PDF again, wait around the house until school pickup time, then zoom into the city to collect poster from bureau in city; hurry to drop off shawl and poster on other side of city.
  • Dinner: leftovers or takeaway, then back over to the other side of the city to attend exhibition opening

But no. After school pickup insert impromptu conference with teacher re: school problems, see above. Now running an hour late, but dash into city (again) anyway, collect poster, and then on to the guild exhibit across the city. Get there and exhibit hall IS CLOSED. Realise I’m grinding my teeth now as I herd children back into car.

Last (ditch) plan: Find messenger to shoot, return home with shawl and poster (stopping off at Baker’s Delight for some heavy carbohydrate consumption, hmm maybe a chocolate croissant for extra hit, then crawl home in increasingly heavy traffic, trying not to argue with argumentative son and failing).

Me: Why is this traffic so SLOW? Oh lordy, there’s a tractor up there in front of us.

Son: No there’s not.

Me: What? Of course there is, see, it’s right—

Son: It’s not in front of us. That’s a car. There’s a tractor in front of the car.

Me (Utterly failing not to argue): Is there a tractor BEHIND us? Is there a tractor NEXT TO US? Is there a tractor on the ROOF perchance? No, no there’s not. There is a tractor. IN. FRONT. OF. US.

Son (mutters): It’s a car in front of us.

I did think about shoving the entire 1m square shetland shawl in my mouth—that’s half a pound of wool—and having a really, really good scream at that point. But I didn’t. I didn’t say anything. I just thought to myself: chooooocolate croissssssant….coffffeeeeeeeee…

And now here I am at home. I’m feeling quite a bit better after caffeine. But—like one last little joke on me from the gods who’s stuffed me around all week—that chocolate croissant I brought home? It looked normal on the outside, with little dribbles of chocolate oozing out the sides, but when I bit into it I discovered there was not a skerrick of chocolate inside at all. It was actually kind of amazing. And if there are gods up there looking down upon my little life scenes, I know what they were thinking too:

Ha! Boy, did you see the look on her face when she pulled that croissant apart? Oh, what a hoot. Heh.

(Wiping tears away) Oh, that was fun.

(Sigh) Yeah. What a great week it’s been.

Yep, see you on Monday.

Posted 11 April 2008 † littleredhen § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (4) °

Changes afoot

No, it’s not just that I’m finishing off a couple of pairs of socks, or that I’m soon to put some prints on to my (neglected, cobwebby) Etsy store. I’m fixing up the domain and setting up house in a proper blog.

Back soon…ish…

Posted 08 April 2008 † littleredhen § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (1) °

Finished objects

I knitted through the heatwave. Yes I did. Only socks (small) and my shetland lace shawl (light), and I finally sewed up a project (flat on table, no skin contact). So, no sweat! ; )

Two of those project are done, and what landmarks they are for me. The first one is the Wine and Roses bolero, which I cast on in December 2005 (yep, you read that right) in the car on the way down to Aldinga for a holiday the week before Christmas, about two weeks after Yarn 1 came out. I was test knitting for Yarn 2. Fortunately there was another one in the works, finished on time by another tester (Sophie, who reluctantly served as the garment’s model in Yarn 2, with absolutely lovely results. Take a look back and see what I mean — she looks every bit as elegant as Cate Blanchett). Getting this one off the needles was a real memory ride and a boost to the confidence (Except that I’ve gained/lost/gained again a few kilos that mean I’m not real comfortable wearing it. Ah well, maybe after Easter — chocolate! hot cross buns! — I’ll do something about it.)

The other project was cast on a year later, in January 2007, during a holiday at a beach house on Lake Alexandrina. I was in a very different state of mind, probably already thinking how well over my head the whole Yarn thing was getting. I carried an entire flock’s worth of wool in the car and then couldn’t decide what to cast on when I got there. I don’t know why I thought a large, square, lace shawl was the thing, but I cast on, and carried on…and on…and on…until I finally cast off last week during my daughter’s swimming lesson — one day after the heatwave broke. She was able (and willing!) to wrap up in it and model straight after drying off. With a different dress on, she’d look just like a wee little Scottish sprog, too.

So the knitting dam has burst, I think — I’m so close to finishing many projects, and no longer feeling pent-up and anxious about casting on anew. Maybe now I’ll finally get to some of those knitted gifts I’ve wanted to do for so long…

Posted 21 March 2008 † littleredhen § Fibre-rich diet ‡ Comments (4) °

It was a pile of…fridges

Installation art bugs me, but I’m aware of this preconception. I’m fully prepared to be surprised and delighted by an installation, but it’s going to need to do more than make me nod my head at the artist’s sheer effort in bringing the thing to life.

The photo of Thomas Rentmeister’s installation in the Adelaide Festival Artists’ Week Guide looked for all the world like the last day of a scratch n’ dent sale at the Good Guys outlet. Why would the festival organisers ask a European artist to come over here and park some fridges in a room and smear them all over with cream when we’ve got a whole city full of perfectly good blokes with hand trucks (and probably dead fridges in their sheds) who would have been happy to lend a hand. (Although I’m not sure what they would have made of the cream bit.)

But then, I guess we still would have needed an Artist to say, Hey, let’s stack up these fridges in the corner of a gallery! And by the way, my airfare invoice is attached below.

So I went to see what kind of a pile we were talking about here. It wasn’t quite the pile I expected:

As the title says, Nearly 100 fridges stacked in a corner. Aaaaand?

Visually, it’s definitely interesting. I can see there’s order here, that the ‘forms’ are arranged with care and consideration. Plus, as a bonus, they’ve all been coated in some kinda cream that looks like spackle but remains soft. (Yes, I know this first-hand.)

But the only difference between this and using a bunch of white foam core to achieve the same effect is that the fridges more or less are passing judgment on us privileged gallery-goers for living in a society where fridges themselves have a use-by date.

But didn’t you know that before you even heard of Thomas Rentmeister? Most people I know are already consumed with worry about the world, the environment. I’m personally kind of tired of art that requires an enormous amount of effort to make a very small statement (if it can even be said to do that) and still doesn’t do what art is really, really good at: being beautiful, giving us hope, optimisim, glory, joy.

I think it’s wonderful that even a small piece of decorated paper in a little frame hanging humbly in a kitchen can do that, and yet the best a towering stack of high-art whitegoods in a gallery can do is echo the daily newspaper’s confirmation that the world is messed up and it’s all our fault.

Posted 20 March 2008 † littleredhen § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (2) ° Tagged: , , ,

Arts tart

The Adelaide Festival and Fringe have wrapped, which is just as well — between them and the heatwave I’ve got nothing left.

It was a little tough to get babysitting organised for everything we’d have liked to see. In the end, we wound up seeing mostly comedy events, interspersed with exhibits and installations. The last two days we squeezed in two performances each night, and I thoroughly enjoyed Daniel Kitson, who was more funny  monologist than comedian, and David O’Doherty, who had that really good blend of insight, IQ and class.

I’ve never reviewed a comedy show before, and I think I probably won’t start now (”…observant, sharp, funny! Look out Steve Carell!”—The East Outback Rag) but it was a very smart, funny set. (And where would he have been without negativity, may I ask?) The audience may owe him an apology, however: after a brilliant segment about childhood nightmares and the adult inability to get up in the middle of the night to investigate noises which demand investigation, we neglected to offer some extra applause beyond a bit of polite ‘nice golf shot’ hand-patting. I was too busy weeping with laughter to applaud, actually. (I think he forgave us—we got a half hour encore.)

Anyway, I think the Melbourne Comedy Festival is up next, so if he’s on the bill and comedy’s your thing, give it a go.

I have tomorrow set aside for visiting the major arts exhibitions of the festival before they close — and thank god it should be cooler by then. Still have to get in to visit those Rentmeister fridges…

Posted 16 March 2008 † littleredhen § Uncategorized ‡ Comments (0) °