RIP macbook

tis official. I truly did murder my mac.

I got the call at the end of last week.... and basically its screwed. We start at 1800 bucks for the motherboard. 1800! The whole unit didn't even cost that much!

Of course, warrenty and insurance don't cover this. To quote the YarnHarlot - I am now the owner of a lovely white BRICK! Oh.. at least it is a relatively new expensive brick, being brand bloody new in March...

I am currently using my old, dying PC notebook which I thought I had replaced with the mac. The fan doesn't work, so I get perhaps half an hour tops at a time on this poor thing - when I sit it on icepacks to help with cooling. Lets not even think about the fact that all my adobe programs (ie Photoshop, illustrator, acrobat*) are all useless on this beast. (and lets not go into the details about how long it takes just downloading the photos from my memory card, let alone the roadblock it has managed to put in my study!)

I cannot afford the repairs.
I cannot afford a new mac.
And being a student on k-rudd's surf team** I do not qualify for any sort of finace or rental scheme (which really is a last resort as you end up paying double for your computer.)

The good news is, that they managed to save my harddrive... so now I just need a machine to put it into.

If anyone out there would like to give me a poor gal a hand to get back to the macness, there are a couple of ways to do so...

If you have ever popped over to GingerKnits.com and had something take your fancy and not bought it, please consider doing so now - because my mac was rather integral to being able to efficiently run my store all earnings from there will be going into my new project Operation MacBack.

Also - if you want to just give me some money out of the kindness of your heart, I have added a paypal donate button to the top of the sidebar. If anyone does actually help raise funds this way I will dig away in the stash to find some good stuff to give away as a way of saying thankyou.

Anyway- this computer is now having trouble processing my typing at anything but glacial speed, so I will hit publish this post... My time online will be sporatic until I have resolved this problem... excuse me while I go weep over my inanimate macbook.

*the lack of acrobat is why some patterns I promised have been delayed...
**ie - centrelink payments

Textile Tuesday

This week brought to you by my current tapestry project - this is my final assessment piece, and I had to come up with the design for it...

Can you tell what it is? (I'll give you a clue: "it's sideways Miss Pat")
The tapestry I am studying is proper woven tapestry - not needlepoint tapestry. See - I am working with string and the colour actually makes the fabric....

This is opposed to needlework tapestry - in which usually colour is stitched onto an existing 'framework' fabric of squares.The big difference is that for this you use bobbins (not needles) and, as you are creating the fabric, you need to work from the bottom up.
I am really enjoying working on this - I have mixed neutral colours for the background, and chosen solid, bright colours for the subject. I hope to create a fun piece that explodes out of the tapestry!

Sick Sick Sick!

Ugh - I am home from school for today because I am the snot monster from planet mucus!

The absolutely worst thing about taking the happy pills, is that you can not take anti-histamines or pseudo-ephedrines* or any of those other lovely drugs that help you wake up and/or sleep when you have a cold or flu.  So now my head feels like it is trapped inside a high-pressure bubble, my body feels like a whole herd of heffalumps has trampled me, and my brains have been replaced by boogers. There is no way I would make it through 7 hours of classes today plus the 3 hours of train travel - which just makes me feel even lower :(

I am going to anoint myself in vicks and drown myself in ginger honey tea and completely indulge in Dr Phil and Oprah, and then, perhaps a little Simpsons DVDs - and perhaps I'll be able to make it to the Carlton Hotel tonight for the monthly Geelong S'n'B. I could do with a girls night out, so keep your fingers crossed for me!

If anyone has any other good home remedies that work and don't involve gall-bladders of cats or something similar, please, please share!

*Pseudo-ephidrines are actually no longer available in the state of Victoria because they are too easy to turn into speed. So even if I wanted to be norty and mix my drugs I wouldn't be able to. Perhaps I should hang out in some dodgy alley til I find a dealer for speed! 

Exposure...

When was this photo taken? Any guesses???It was taken about 20 minutes after sunset. Yes, that's correct, after sunset. The sky was completely dark! Picture of the street behind South Geelong Train Station.

That bright light you may have thought was the sun - tis a street light. I took the picture with an 30 second exposure, while the camera was resting on my car's dashboard (which is why it isn't really a fun picture - I was just playing) The longer exposure time means that the 'film' (or, as I was using a Digital SLR, in this case the film was really light sensitive silicon sensors) can pick up more detail in low light. 

I had the camera resting on my dash because, even at the best of time, I am not a very steady person. However, with a 30 sec exposure, no-one would be steady enough to take a clear picture - your blood pumping through your veins would be enough disruption to make a blurry shot.

Here endeth the lesson. I gotta get me a DSLR. Perhaps if I save real good I can gets one in a decade or so!

Textile Tuesday

In which I do my best imitation of BrooklynTweed's wonderful photography!

I have become obsessed by playing with linen stitch. So much so that I am developing a kind of 'knitted weave' - 

such as twill:

The structure of these stitches makes for wonderful bags - such as this 'mini-clutch', lined with fabric and finished with magnetic fasteners.
And chevron / herringbone:
This one also lined with fabric, but finished with a zip...
Product shoot photos completed today in class. Not only will these be used for my assignment, but also for the dual purpose when I get around to uploading them to the store. I love that my studies are teaching me skills I can use immediately!

And these are a little fun:

I am not sure whether to call this one "feed me" or "Laaaaaaaaaa"...
But this one is definitely called "C is for clutchie, that's good enough for me..."

Sun Shoes day!

Okay - I know that according to the Goddess of Footwear RoseRed that Shoesday is supposed to be the day after Monday, and not the day before, but I spent ages taking product photos yesterday and today, and felt the need to share this shot with you.

Shoe-stylin' stitchmarkers available from GingerKnits.com. 

From l-to-r; b-to-f: purple enamel high heel, high heeled sandal, slingback high heel, 

plain flip-flop, flat slide, floral flip-flop.

One of the aims of the photography class I am taking as part of my course is to be able to take reasonable product pictures. I don't yet have the Digital SLR as part of my kit, but I do have the ability to play with the ISO, exposure, white balance, macro and flash settings on my camera, and can also play with light and the composition. 

I took heaps of pictures, and got lots of over/under exposed shots, blurs, out of focus etc etc - it is very difficult to take nice pictures of teeny tiny little shiny beads and get any detail. And I only used Photoshop for cropping and extending the background colour into the back corner.

kindergarten painting...

Have I mentioned how much I love my course???

One of my classes is colour theory and applications... but rather than learning about radiation wavelengths and frequencies, or doing a whole bunch of heavy reading what we are doing is a lot more fun...

Yesterday I spent the whole day making a colour wheel by mixing primary colours - yes, the same principle that you learnt in kinda...

Okay - perhaps a little more advanced, we were trying to mix exact shades and there was no finger-painting, but do you know how much fun it is to spend the whole day at a higher education campus and and play around with gauche and paint? After spending years reading articles about subversive patriarchal ideologies in literature or trying to write computer programmes for spherical trigonometry there something so freeing about going to class just to paint colours so you can learn by doing....

Of course, one of things I am enjoying most about my course is  difference is pedagogical method between tafe and university. Everything that you do at tafe is so practical, with the theory being taught during or after you have completed the task. Quite refreshing after years of uni where you learn the theory and then, if you are lucky, do the practical (which, when I did physics, I found rather redundant: "We learnt in the lecture about Boyle's law and low pressure - why do I have to waste three perfectly good hours first thing on a friday morning to test it... the guy is obviously right or else it would have been dropped from the course content...") 

Oh - and did I tell you last week we spent a day at the zoo sketching animals for drawing class? You can't get more fun than that! If I remember I'll take some photos of my sketches and see if you can guess which animals we visited!

Tapestry Workshop

Visit to the Victorian Tapestry Workshop 19th Feb 08.... as part of my elective class in tapestry weaving.

This workshop has produced many great tapestries hanging in public places- one of the better known ones being the Parliament House Tapestry in Canberra.

Somehow I can't see myself completing these huge communal pieces that take many much...

but I do love these - they are much more me :)

study in porcelain

One of the classes I am getting quite a bit out of is Drawing.

Week one was 'Drawing the Porcelain Bus'  

First time I had touched charcoal since about year 8 high school - and it was a little bit daunting staring at a toilet bowl with a whole bunch of easels set up around it.

Week two was 'Passengers on the Porcelain Bus'

An exercise in surrealism - we had to integrate a picture or photo into our drawing. Apparently my drawing is okay, but my shading is shite... 

Considering this stuff is all new to me, I am quite happy with the results - however, I am quite looking forward to next week, which will apparently be toilet bowl free.

geek-cool

I'm in photography class and this image came up - it was taken by Muybridge to settle a bet in the 19th Century.

I recently read about it in a book, and mentioned this in class. I actually admitted to finding out about it in "The Science of Discworld"... cue the nerd alarm!!!

However, I didn't feel too much of a nerd - the instructor is wearing a Dalek t-shirt!

All Enrolled

So today I finally made it up to RMIT and I am now all sorted for my enrollment in Diploma in Arts: Studio Textiles and Design. My electives for first semester are Knitting and Tapestry, and second semester will be Weaving and Printing.

It's a rather full on course - I start on the 11th Feb, less than two weeks away. I get to do fun courses like colour theory, Drawing, Design Principles and Elements, Fibre, yarns and fabrics, and Photography.

Now I just need to chase up some arty materials so I'll be ready to go!