1950's wooden pull-along toy dog
espresso cup
new ticket system for cityrail! hooray!
1980's wooden car

old signage revealed during building demolition in the historic city centre of newcastle.

door stop.

this was a good bye gift from jody wong as she left for japan late last year...
usually it's the goer-awayers who receives gifts, not the stayers-behind, but nothing is ever straight forward, especially when ms wong is concerned.

anyway, it wasn't long before there was some travelling of it's own to do...
first is was framed then
carefully packed into a box in another box in a big container to transport from fremantle wa to newcastle nsw along with everything
then it got unpacked
then adjusted in it's frame
then finally hung on the newly owned wall (well, the paint anyway, being strata)
in a cluster of other interested collected pieces (below)

an old rugby number
+ an off cut from a florence broadhurst print
+ a piece of retro red

= a new seat cover

two pages of a soft book made for 'a' in NZ
it was inspired by one that was made in the 80's...
the pages were made out of curtain backing material, it has an inbuilt stiffness which is perfect for a book

it is full of texture and as much colour as possible.
rick-rack... i've never before found a decent use for this weird kitschy stuff.
it's kind of appealing and appalling all at once. a very strange haberdashery trim

these are the sort of details that make a city special...
it is only a vent of course.
but look at the detail...
would the city council/developer/strata committee of today actually take the care to include these kinds of art and design into the final finish of buildings...hummm?

Athcourt building
this little apartment has genuine art deco features in the old bathroom, complete with a terrazzo floor.
what a special find

the milk jug
the water jug
the sauce jug
the crystal jug
the fat jug
the tall jug
the blue jug ...

the gravy boat



all of these belong to one collection
it grows over years, some of them gifts, some inherited, some bought old or new by alison

after a conversation about the multitudes of jugs in her house and the irresistible shape they have i pulled them all out of their cupboards, shelves and nooks to photograph them all

last count there were 25... but perhaps more

a frontier of jugs

time
ocean
coffee
magazine ...notebook...pen
thoughts

it's been a while since there has been any of these
today all of them came together

a confession of my own
i wasn't quick enough to get photos of all the things that city switch completed around the city.
there is one blurry photo of the 'sticky streets' project

City Switch Lab has just started it's first day of workshops in newcastle.
the introduction and presentations last night were exciting and it feels like a well organised initiative.
i'll post the results after saturday.
until then read more about it at the city switch website and the renew newcastle site

ok, so this has been done before, much better than i've achieved here too.
but i promised i'd do it, not here in freo, but somewhere down south while camping. but i didn't. even though it was a very long camping trip, it was never the right time. so there they are; now on a very snug elbow of a freo plane tree.
stitching while reaching up is not easy for long...

seeds from the wattle trees in shannon national park.
they are small and delicate, and hard to collect from the heavy leaf litter... not sure what sort of wattle, there must be hundreds of species in this nationl park alone.

on and early morning walk this was found in a rock pool. an entire eco system spewed up from the depths to perish in the summer sun...

on the way out from parry's beach campsite on our way towards peaceful bay we passed these postboxes. a little letterbox village

the tip shop
denmark wa, australia

every tip should have one. look at all the wonderful things that get trashed every day of the year....and here in denmark on the south west coast of australia you can come and buy bits and pieces of another persons junk.

it was acually a bit much after a while...but when you have a project in mind, what a great resource to have near by!

this 1950's round house in mt barker, wa, used to turn around depending on where the sun was, a breeze or favoured view...

in recemt times when a new road was being constructed the house was due to be pulled down to make way...but luckily the heritage council came by and listed it. now it's safe for ever.

car paste-ups... we realised that the paste up idea would work brilliantly on the car... the theme became 'birds'
it's addictive. any unadorned surface now seems in need of a paste-up

wildflowers on the windy edge of south wa, just near albany. a very beautiful part of the country

how is this for a wedding gift!
instead of a platter or a dozen wine glasses how about a branding iron? only the counrty folk could come up with such an awesome gift.

apparently the bride wanted to brand her butt and her new husband advised against it... see there big trip here

fyi, the tree was only toasted on the outer layers of paperbark...it is not an eternal vandalisim as it will peal of without a trace in a few months

ok, these have been blogged for a few days now, perhaps a week without a word about why or what it's all about. that comes with territory of being on the road with limited access to power and technology.

the paste ups where a last inspired moment of living on wray ave in fremantle... our lovely friends from newcastle (or do they belong to sydney or tamworth? anyway, other nsw troups) came by for a paste up party.

looks much nicer than the old blotchy wall that was there before.

this is a bowl crocheted from scrape fabric by Robyn Shapiro.
i swapped a doll so i could own one of her creations, and this is what came home.
divine!
Robyn also put together the colourful couch upholstery at Wildpoppy from a few posts ago.

with some remaining scraps of passed on fabric this old oak chair scores a new colourful cover

this lawn is apparently registered?... to whom or what it does not say,
but it is very green and lovely looking
although the sign is very unofficial
perhaps it's only irony

some amazing guerrilla crafting has sprung up in fremantle. someone has crocheted about 16m of wool and stitched it in place along the middle rung of this railing on cnr of wray ave and south tce, right out side the new favourite cafe wild poppy.

six new camouflage collars for counter at craft victoria sent off on monday. they are part of the white christmas theme this year.

white, bright, crisp, cool, clean

everything that this humid west coast summer day is not!
(well, perhaps clean is the exception. the unusual humidity is due to the rain, so at least all that summer dust will be washed away)

finally this crocodile handbag has been reappropriated into a more usable design.
it was sent to me a few year ago by a friend in france...apparently she bought it in a porch sale from an old lady who'd had it from a long ago trip to australia.
so it has returned to it's place of origin.

the old handle was quite worn and not of the length i would use.
so i found this sturdy piece of leather and fitted it to the bag, which is in excellent vintage condition.

here are two images of the installation i put in the window of remedy leederville on sunday.

it took ages to make the back ground!! it's very delicate and difficult to handle. at 1.7 mtrs long it was scary taking it on the train at 7.30am with all the still-up-from-the-night-before travellers staggering home.

'I'm here'
Remedy footpath gallery Leederville, 2009
rescued fabric, fly screen, vintage buttons & buckles, found objects, paper

concrete art in a fremantle car park.
how is there no other 'street art' or graffiti all over this graphic arrangement of colour?

reappropriating old signage into messages.... fremantle