I had a book out of the library the other day of the most coolest camera obscura photographs by Abelardo Morell funnily enough called Camera Obscura. I can’t descirbe how much eye candy was in this book, so you should race straight down to your nearest library and borrow the book out (Dewy Decimal – 779.092 MOR, Library of Congress – TR268 .M67 2004). Most of the photos in the book are eight (8) hour exposures!
My original plan was to black out one of the rooms at home and observe the world but following what was set out on this page, I just grabbed a cardbord box and some tracing paper/vellum for my first trial. I figured our pretty quickly that I needed a couple of blankets over the top of me to block out stray light so I could see the projected image better.
The resulting projected images whilst simple, upside down and dim are so cool!! Go grab a box, some tracing paper and a couple of blankets and play with it yourself, fun for the whole family!
Mum and I spent went on a little outing this morning to West End browsing, shopping and eating our way along Boundary St, up a few of the side streets and some other places on the way home.
The highlights included: Bent Books, where Mum picked up the LP book – Trekking in the Karakoram & Hindukush (sigh, wouldn’t it be lovely? We both watched a doco the other week called “Karakoram Highway: The Road To Globalisation” and it is also the where “Three Cups of Tea” is based (my top book of the year if not the last couple of years)).
Swiss Gourmet Deli – looking at all the yummy smallgoods and grocery items, so many wonderful things. We stopped here for morning tea where the lady behind the counter was shocked that we don’t drink coffee .. at all! It was a bit of a laugh. Mum had a Friand and I had a Cannoli. mmm yummy.
Now we continued to stroll down Boundary st, seeing what we could see and just enjoying the “scene”, I picked up a recycled Sari silk bag which is just gorgeous I will have to take a photo of it tomorrow.
The next stop was the real target of the day, ara beeka, the most delectable Lebanese(?) pastry shop. My eyes were twinkling and my mouth was watering at all the pretty pastries and biscuits in the display case. I could have just gobbled up the entire case and died in a nut and sugar bliss. (76 Boundary St, West End).
This is a selection of some of the goodies we got, most of them are priced at about $1 a piece of you can buy by the kilo ($22ish) or half kilo which works out much cheaper if you are buying more a couple. The staff behind the counter are great and up for a laugh as well which was nice.
The next substantial stop was at the West End branch of the City Library network, it is the cutest little library I have ever seen, it is a very small one room library that is about the size of our lounge room and eating area combined. It was soooo cute!
Then it was The Language People, a bookshop that specialises in mmm well language books from ESL (English as a second language) to Literacy to learning foreign languages. The first thing I checked out here was if they had any Icelandic books and sure enough they did – Colloquial Icelandic, we then had fun seeing what other “rarer” language books they had, I was quite impressed with the range of Tetum books they had.
We then left Boundary St and headed over to Reverse Garbage, one of the most interesting stores in Brisbane. I picked up three partial Letraset sheets for $1.50! Mum scored some assorted fabric pieces for 90c.
The last stop for the day was Simply Good at Alderly which is a loose bulk bin food store with all sorts of wonderful dried fruits, lollies, legumes, nuts, flours etc all at very, very good prices.
Well the way too short mid-semester break is over and to show for it I have written two essays, caught up on my readings and prepared for an exam this week. As well as a little bit of playing.
Yesterday I made these two headbands and cut out all the pieces for my 21st birthday quilt – Mum paid for the fabric and I am making it. It uses fabric from the Flowershow and Palazzo collections from Benartex.
Between cutting out all the blocks I also made two headbands 🙂
Now that I have played with two different patterns I plan on merging them a bit for the next one as I like the ties on the Heather Bailey pattern but prefer the tapered cut from Katie Sue as I prefer how it sits on my head.
Now whilst I was having fun at home, Mum went out to a little class and made this most adorable little pouch.
The little stone affair in the middle is one of those glass pebbles that people put in vases covered with a scrap of chiffon. How cool does it look!
