A weft yarn

Can I finish this tapestry in time?

I try and work on my tapestry (Baxtergraphix flannel flowers) each Friday and Saturday night. Sometimes I manage to squeeze in some extra time but that is quite rare. We usually watch a kid's movie on Friday night with movie night treats: popcorn and chocolates. Then we put the kids to bed early on Saturday and watch our movie with cocktails and chocolates. For our movie viewing pleasure, we use one of those online DVD services where you subscribe, create a list of titles you'd like to watch and each week they mail you your subscription DVDs, which you then return in the post. Its a pretty nice routine and it gives me some predictable sewing time. Nonetheless, tapestries are pretty labour intensive and I've been working on this one since 2007. My tapestry teacher has offered to display it at the Craft Fair in August if I manage to finish it and have it framed in time.

 

It was really sweet of her because it gave me a deadline.  That red thread in the right hand margin of the tapestry is the half way mark and I was at that point last November. I've made a lot of progress over the past few months and got so excited I've started buying threads for my next tapestry. I've also been bragging at the classes about how close I am to the end. Which on the scale of two and half years of sewing is true, but on the scale of August is ... well.... lying is probably too strong a word but you get the picture.

My teacher doesn't run her classes through the winter so I wont see her until just before the craft fair. I was really optimistic when first we had the conversation but now I'm beginning to have doubts.

I've got to allow for 2-3 weeks for the framing, and the craft fair is early in August. So I figure I've got about 4 weeks of June and maybe 1 or 2 weeks of July. I've marked off the remaining canvas with needles on the left hand side of the tapestry, into 4 blocks of nine rows each. I did that last night while we were watching Stuart Little. Eeks I really only get 2 rows done a night. 4 rows a week x 6 weeks = 24 rows and I've got 36. Gonna have to pick up the pace if I want to meet the deadline.

Can you see the beautiful sunset from my sewing corner? Distracting huh?

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Lace at the Powerhouse Museum

After the star wars exhibition, the boys wandered off to do what boys do and Tess and I went downstairs to the lace room. The brochure said the Powerhouse has the biggest public collection of lace in the Southern Hemisphere. I'm not sure what I was expecting and was a bit surprised to find a small room, tucked away in a corridor on the ground floor. You would have to search for it. I don't think you'd just stumble into it. However, what a interesting place for us people interested in strings and twine, threads and crafts. The room is managed by different volunteers who are rostered on from one of the lace making guilds. Bev who showed us around is a member of the Tatting guild, and was doing a whole day volunteer shift.

You'll see she has a bobbin in her hand, there are examples of her work on the table, a new book from America with patterns she's trying out and in the little plastic box to the right hand side are her giveaways - wee butterflies. We were given a gray one and a pink one as we left. All up we spent the whole of our allocated free time in the lace room, before we had to meet up with the boys and head off to Nana's farm.

We took a look through the dozens of drawers, each organised by type of lace, in a kind of history of lacemaking style. There are pieces of lace that are hundreds of years old. And as usual, you marvel at the skill and time that has gone into these beautiful pieces. These drawers represent a tiny fraction of their collection and presumably those who study lace are able to arrange special viewings. We were fascinated by the metal lace, which is naturally enough at the "modern" end of the timeline.

After we'd looked through the drawers, Bev showed us some of her pieces of work and I particularly loved the bookmarks.

  Though these doilies are rather special as well.

Then we finished up with Tess having a demonstration and mini lesson of lacemaking.

She is being shown the "move them as pairs", can you see how the bobbins are colour coded? And there's and under/over motion that happens as well.  The long ribbon that is being created has all been made by children and visitors to the room. Their names are recorded in that black folder and eventually the Powerhouse is going to make something with the ribbon of lace and their names will be recorded somewhere. Tess was given a little certificate to say she had made lace at the Powerhouse museum. After my visit, I felt deeply curious and wouldn't mind giving it a go sometime - maybe a class down the track. I know there's a guild in Canberra which runs classes. Someday. Maybe.

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Star Wars at the Powerhouse Museum

It was fantastic. We went twice. When we were in Sydney for the April school holidays we bumped into a family on the monorail. There was mum, grandmum and two boys who were playing with their heaving breathing toys - you know the ones, "huh {breath} huh {breath}, come to the dark side Luke". I couldn't help smiling and caught the mum's eye. She replied "Star wars exhibition, its great, we've been twice". So I didn't need to feel so extreme. Tee hee. We went in Jan school holidays then back again in April school holidays. I love the powerhouse museum and the Star Wars exhibition was really special. Two floors of the museum, with loads of really intersting displays of the imagination and creativity that went into making the movies. The kids were really fascinated with the "worlds". They liked the displays of Hoth, the ice world. How the filmakers studied and spent time in Antartica and Finland. How they thought of all the details about how the techology would or wouldn't work in the freezing cold environment. They described how the creatures evolved and adapted to the cold. We were all impressed with the depth of research and thought that went into the imaginary worlds.

 

Then there was my favourite - the Wookie world. I loved how organic their tree houses and structures were. I love the details in this model and how it looks like those lichen, moss things that grow out the side of oak trees have been included in amongst the houses.

The youngest waited patiently in the queue to have a turn piloting the hovercraft and was really rather good at spinning it around. The oldest loved these guys and their light sabres. They were volunteers dressing up and attending for the weekend but they gave the place such a sense of fun. Their light sabres were great, really strong and fantastic colours. Apparently you can have quite a realistic duel with those things!

We also got a photo with the storm trooper out the front. sweet guy, I'm sure.

Aside from the creativity and fun, there was also lots of hands on science, where the children experimented with building robots, making platforms that could stand on slopes and on the flat, learning how to convey emotions in a robot (very hard - we humans are pretty complex). Half way through the exhibition, when we were all getting rather weary with all the walking and learning and we got to sit down and watch the robot show with that highly strung, neurotic C3PO.

Then finally, the highlight for the young master was the computer games. There were three different versions. In this one you need to harvest water from the atmosphere (spooky huh - that was in the original movie way back in the early 70s - so pertinent now). Here's what they do.
 

And here's the result. It's a three minute game and his score was 91% production and 58% efficiency. Not too shabby. We probably wouldn't actually go again if it was still on but we certainly had a good time.

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