the recent past

doing – have kept up drawing habit for 3 whole days!

thenearfuture — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 06:37:16 +0000

doing – start to draw your life

thenearfuture — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 12:19:18 +0000

Sometimes things just come into your life at exactly the right time. Discovering Michael Nobbs has been one of them… at a time when I feel like I really need to remind myself of what I like doing, Michael has launched an eBook called “Start to Draw Your Life” …you can download it for free here. This afternoon I printed it out, put the pages in plastic sleeves and went to read it in the bath, which was lovely by the way. When I got out of the bath, I drew the picture above. I enjoyed it so much that I (hereby!) intend to make this a daily habit. And in the tradition of Michael’s list-making (you’ll see what I mean when you read his blog!) here are 5 reasons why I think this is a good habit for me to develop:

1. Stop me being so goddam precious about “getting things right”

2. Drawing helps me to be present. It’s difficult to think of anything else whilst drawing.

3. It’s a way to record my life – I don’t really take many photos, and I suspect my memory isn’t very good (what did happen to my 20′s?)

4. Hopefully I’ll get better at it!

5. I really like it. And what better reason does there need to be?

thinking – decent baby furniture

thenearfuture — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 08:36:12 +0000

So, baby is due in just over 8 weeks and we have finally started nesting! Having done some research into sleeping options for bub, we are both really interested in the benefits of co-sleeping… but don’t want the extra danger/fear of squashing little one in our sleep. I couldn’t stand the thought of putting a newborn in a room all by itself – after so many months in my cosy womb (assuming my womb is a nice place to be), I think it would be quite traumatic for a baby to be left alone…

Anyway, we found this option – the bednest. The bassinet attaches to the bed and the sides slide down so that you can co-sleep with bub in a safer way. Plus it looks good – a rarity it seems in the baby furniture market. There seems to be so little in the way of well designed furniture for baby – it’s all bloody ye olde fancy pants French provincial or heavy wood which seems really inappropriate for a baby. Of course, the Danes can be relied upon to produce gorgeous stuff… but I’m afraid I’m not going to spend the majority of my fortnightly baby bonus installments paying off a cot… how will I afford my plasma TV?

See how calm and happy and not screaming this baby is?

loving – autumn

thenearfuture — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 07:16:19 +0000

It doesn’t get lovelier than autumn in Sydney.

loving – birthday flowers

thenearfuture — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 07:33:32 +0000

My darling sister-in-law Freya sent me these amazing flowers for my birthday last week – it’s such a joy to find something like this on your doorstep, unexpectedly…my heart leapt. They are from grandiflora, and have such a feeling of luxury about them… I had an abortive attempt at studying floristry last year, but found the lessons so old fashioned and prescriptive. There was no room for letting intuition work its magic, or for happy accidents to occur… don’t you think that it is essential to the nature of flowers that they are a little bit uncontrollable?

I suppose there is probably an argument for learning the rules before breaking them, but when you see floral designers like grandiflora or saipua at work, you know there has to be some kind of alchemy involved. It makes me want to find some of that same magic for my own creative work.

doing – finders keepers

thenearfuture — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 02:24:26 +0000

I’m excited to announce that the near future will be participating in the next Finders Keepers markets in Sydney – 7th and 8th May 2010.

Check out the details and other exhibitors here: http://www.thefinderskeepers.com/