Generous me (?)

I’m a bit sensitive, I can over-think & sometimes worry about what I’ve said or done later on. I’m a lot better than I used to be and more certain of the “rightness” & “ownership” of my thoughts, words & actions. However, I can get “attacks” of self-obsession when I’m more depressed, but nowadays my victories are far more often than my defeats.

As I reminded a blog-friend [?fiend?], I can be very assertive about discounts when checkout operators ring up the original, non-discounted price- I just say “No!, I’m sure you’re mistaken. Please check.” Always works.

As readers of my blog might have noted a few weeks ago, I have had a rough patch on the artistic side of my life, involving a cafe owner who went back on their word to hang my photographs AFTER I had spent Spotrick’s money on the frames. It upset me a lot for a day or two, I felt so exploited and guilty as well. Then I decided to  take a positive step and approach the local Council Arts Officer, who came up with great solutions for me and I’m fine about all that now.

Two of my sushi dishes

This week I even fought off a gallery owner who had mistakenly deposited $800 in my bank account when they asked for it all back. Previously I had celebrated selling some glass work at their gallery after having zero income from it for many years. I’ve been pleased & happy about the sales for weeks now- told all my friends etc. But THEN I got a phone call from the gallery proprietor saying the mistaken deposits had occurred. Although I explained that I had no job or independent income she asked if I could make an arrangement with Centrelink to pay the money “back to her” gradually! Great idea- except I don’t get any benefits through Centrelink- I’m totally dependent on Spotrick. There was no way I could pay back all the money, although there was half of it remaining in my bank account. I told the woman I was willing to pay back half voluntarily but there was little hope I could obtain any more money for the rest. She called me mean, unethical, a thief & other things, which I felt very hurt about.

However, armed with the mental strength from all my recent therapy, thyroid level correction,  fish oil & Vitamin D oil supplements, endorphins from exercising & renewed strength & less nagging pain in my hands due to arthritis treatment, I was determined to stand up for myself. So I calmly & assertively said to her (after nearly crumbling & bursting into tears),“YOUR MISTAKE LADY! I’m keeping half because I’ve already spent it quite innocently.” Buggered if I was going to make Spotrick pay for their mistake in not being able to distinguish a glass artist from a printmaker who had the same name! And “Perhaps you can let me speak to the other artist and we can come to an agreement that both of us have sold things through the gallery & we can share the losses as well as the sales?” But no, she wanted the whole lot back, without a legal leg to stand on. She told me I would get a call from her accountant but I didn’t. The accountant probably told her she’d done her cash by depositing it in my account! I have voluntarily deposited half the total in the gallery’s bank account & I’m totally happy with the outcome & my own behaviour now.

Two bee rose

 I reckon they are lucky I am a fair person by actually giving half back. I said NO & I’m happy- no guilty thoughts at all. Yayy!!!

PS. You wouldn’t believe it, but the gallery has now rung me a few days later saying they deposited ANOTHER $800 by mistake in my account. I was just about laughing my guts out, but I demurely got online right then, during the phone call & transferred it all back to them. Talk about incompetence- they’ll have to pull up their socks in their accounting department! They didn’t even notice when I thanked them via email for the original unexpected deposit by saying “Wow- thanks for selling another piece of my GLASS” when the stuff they had sold were prints! Any more deposits will immediately be spent on more frames for my photo exhibition!

REPLY

Day 6 NaBloPoMo: Without sight- I wouldn’t want to live.

Which of my senses would I miss most- sight, definitely- I truly would rather die than not be able to see.

All my life I have been a lover of colour- and bright colour, at that. No matter what the fashion or decorating trend, I like certain colours and combinations of colours above others- I love to design colour combinations for just about everything possible. I also love reading and finding things on the interwebs- without sight, all that would be lost to me. Knowledge is a great value for me too and I need my eyes to voraciously devour anything I can get my hands on. My job used to be very much knowledge-based (health research) and I would love to get another job in that area when I finish my Masters degree shortly. Merely filing and classifying things, or doing things using someone else’s ideas soon depresses me so I couldn’t get a job like that. However, when I don’t have a job (and I’m happy enough) I enjoy a myriad of things that revolve around vision.

It’s always great to move into a new place as I can give vent to my crazy colour sense. In our current house, I started painting it as soon as I could, although things came to a halt before We had finished. One day soon I’ll get going on it again. The outside of the house is OK as the previous person did it- variegated brown bricks with black window frames and doors. On the inside, it needed some pizazz! It was various shades of cream throughout with puke-beige window frames and skirting boards- blerghhh. I’ve changed the skirting boards and window frames to a greyed sea-green, planning on dark lipstick internal doors (we only have 4). In the front room, where we enter, the walls are a clear pale aqua and we’ve hung some screenprints of sandhills. In our combined kitchen/dining/TV area we have bright wall, the colour of orange peel!

In our previous house (a modern apartment with bedrooms on the mezzanine) we did the whole place in bright Mexican colours. There were 3 areas- one in deep turquoise blue,

another in dark, cool pink and another in terracotta. It looked great together! All the other apartments were bland white and grey- depressing!

I go searching for inspiring colour combinations on the Net sometimes, and on one foray I discovered Kuler. It is a colour-freak’s dream! You can play with the spectrum, using any shade or hue, extract the main colours from a photograph and get ideas from other people’s colour swatches. I have spent hours doodling around there- much to my partner’s puzzlement!

Isn’t this summery?:

Surf ski

Unfortunately I can’t make the images appear in here as Adobe has encoded them for use only in Adobe programs- more’s the pity! However, visit the Kuler site and have a look- heaven!

My hobbies usually involve colour- knitting, sewing, felting, a little painting and drawing, making kiln-formed glass and shape comes second. When I wanted a theme for a new garden after we had built a new house on an empty block, it was colour that came first, then adapting the type of plants for the climate, space and aspect. I tried very hard to obtain plants that would survive in the colours I thought would work. At our second house, once we had arrived for the handover of the keys from the builder, the first person on site was a petition-bearer from local residents objecting to the colours we had the house painted. (!!!) Although the house was the first on a new estate and at least 200 metres from any others, and the road past it was a cul de sac, the residents claimed our colour choices were decreasing property values, were “ugly”, “tasteless” and “too bright!! We had a cream rendered house with deep turquoise eaves, paler blue window frames and a bright yellow front door. Eventually we persuaded people that the colours were inspired by Mediterranean homes (it IS a Mediterranean climate here and about a quarter of the residents originated in Italy or Greece) and we only conceded to change the shade of yellow of the front door. We figured they wouldn’t go to the trouble of getting a court order and so we made the front door a more gentle golden wheat colour. I wish I had a photo- but I’d have to scan an old print and it wouldn’t be done in time!

Anyway, sight wins for me over sound/hearing although I have a degree majoring in music! While I can reproduce quite complex sounds in my head, I’m not nearly so good as with colours and visual stuff generally. If I went blind I could listen to music but I couldn’t produce or consume luscious colours any more. Nor could I read to fill my brain and keep it pulsing! Taste and smell would be a problem to lose, but I’ve had many times in my life where these were blunted by illness and I didn’t pine a lot for them. Touch has never been at the forefront for me, although without the feeling of pain I might damage myself irretrievably, like the crazy brother in the Steig Larsson trilogy. Due to the way I was brought up, it always puzzled me when people hugged each other. It was only when I got to the age of 25 that I found someone who could “make me feel something” when I was hugged! I have no memories of being hugged before that age and there are no baby pictures of me being held warmly- more stiffly or away from the body. So I can certainly live without that again- with some regret, but not devastation!

It seems as though I’ve spent far too much time on this blog, so I’d better do something else- it WILL be visual!

Seeya damorra!

 

Unusual views

I can be a bit hard to take for some peeps with some Unusual Views on some topics, eg. private health insurance (I think it should be illegal!); but the Unusual Views I’m aiming at here are photographic ones.

As I’m the group co-ordinator for the South Australia/Northern Territory section of Flickr Australian Photographers fortnightly amateur competition, I picked this as a topic for the latest episode.
Flickr Australian Photographers SA/NT
The TOPIC for February 1st half is:
Unusual views!

By this I mean photos taken from odd angles, unexpected points of view, tricks of perspective and size, distorted by curved surfaces in reflection, in pools of water, bent by deep water- all those sorts of things that make you look twice to figure out what is going on!

Have fun doing this one- try some experiments and come up with something you’ve never done before. Purely colour changes are not acceptable- it has to be a different VIEW!

Off you go again on your photographic explorations- extend yourself; excite yourself; amaze yourself with your creativity!

Closes 15 Feb at Midnight.’

If you haven’t looked at the amazing pix a few people have submitted already, I urge you to visit.

I always have my eye out for unusual views anyway- here are a few from my photostream:

Blogger's thigh

Odd reflections in an odd water feature

It WAS raining

3D streetart by Jules

Dont sit down

Through rusted wire

Backing up to slam the knockbacks

This last week I’ve actually got a few things started. Even a few finished- the black delustred satin jacket for the wedding last Saturday was a major victory; but circumstances have been knocking me back at a rate of knots. If you’ve read UADLTAE before, you’ll know I have major probs doing anything due to inability to summon up enough motivation- and also that I HATE setbacks (grrrr- need an emoticon…).

OK- I got all fired up (pun…???) and put my dark blue glass into the kiln to finish my friend’s Christmas present from LAST YEAR. I had delayed doing this for various reasons- mainly trepidation that the whole thing would smash if I tried to drill out the large air bubbles in the glass that occurred mainly around the palladium leaf inclusions. So, worked myself into a Dremel frenzy and attacked the bubbles- tool- tick; assembled correctly…after a few tries to get the drill spinning… tick; water flowing across the surface…partial tick- difficult using electricity and glass; danged HARD glass to drill- skidding off the bubbles etc; finally.. tick!!! All the holes drilled and no smashing. Phew! Now- into the kiln…how the hell do I program a slump…Hmm- well to cut a long story short, I programmed, slumped and it was a bit overcooked. However, the bowl looks pretty good and only needs a few drag-trails ground back on the edges due to the slightly long holding time.

Leaf bowl

However, the lovely turquoise segmented bowl with the river running through it got quite overdone and is not good… Would take about 12 hours to redo to the same stage, and I haven’t got any more of the turquoise glass- would cost me a mint to buy at the moment… So there’s  a real knockback. I must go out there and retrieve it from the kiln and put it aside. My time would best be spent making something completely fresh and forgetting about that one, but it’s hard. It looked so pretty before slumping:

Aqua rivers

Now is the time to do something simple again- I might carry the idea of my Riverine tile on into some more dishes as lots of people liked it and it reminds me of my Colin Heaney bowl.

Another hiccup last night when I tried to start a knitted hat for a friend for Christmas- couldn’t find any circular knitting needles- not a sign of more than one spare straight needle in the whole house- what the?? Will try again today.

OK- so I can try to make some felt tree decorations for Christmas- I fancied some small owls and mooses, inspired by some photos on Flickr. Our Christmas tree always has multiple reindeer and mooses, with only a bit of extra tinsel and baubles. No Baby Jesus or Tree Fairy for us- just mooses!

Aha- another problem this year- our little pine trees outside in pots are looking half dead, so we need to buy a new tree or go artificial… I’d rather invest in a new live one, but expensive… hmmm.

I’ll just congratulate myself on having any motivation to do stuff at all and stop right here- I blogged as well- yeeharrr!!!