potential insanity

A cycle of creative chaos

by frogpondsrock on April 24, 2012

in Arty stuff..,ceramics,Distractions galore!,potential insanity

I have never been a tidy person. I leave a trail of destruction behind me where ever I go. I have accepted this aspect of myself now at the grand old age of 46 and even though I make a token effort to limit my mess making in the house, it is a totally different matter in my studio. I totally destroy the studio when I am making the work and there is barely a surface left untouched. Once the work has been bisque fired, the studio becomes even more cluttered, as I do final stage decorations on pieces that couldn’t be decorated as I made them, either because they were too fragile unfired, or because I forgot about them and the clay had dried out too much to risk applying any underglaze colours.

In the studio I only have to answer to myself and now as we speak, I am at the pointy end of a making cycle. This table with the labelled clutter is actually my main large work table, I finish off my slip cast cups on one side and roll out large slabs of clay for platters on the other side, where that pesky bowl of rocks sits. At the moment the worktable is covered with stuff, that was essential in the making process, but now that I am about to glaze, it is all clutter that is in my way.

As long as there is a dinner plate sized space of clear table left to work on, I can still work happily enough, this photo shows me at the decoration stage of the work. I only have to decorate a few pieces as all the decoration and mark making is done as I am making the work. Once the work has progressed past the “leather hard” stage and onto the “too dry to do anything else” stage, I have generally lost interest in it.

Now it is crunch time, my deadline is looming and both worktables need to be clutter free in order for me to glaze the work. I have to make some new glazes and my standard stock glazes which sit under the table in ten litre buckets all need to be stirred well and then thoroughly sieved. A very messy job.

The studio will be all sparkly and clean for about an hour today and then the process of creative destruction begins again as I make a hell of a mess glazing.

I have procrastinated enough dear internets, and will be (mostly) incommunicado for the rest of the day, as I knuckle down and get ready to fire this latest kiln load of work.

Also for those interested, here are the paint brushes that I make with my hair. I just sticky tape the hair onto a wooden skewer.

And here is a photo of the marks these paintbrushes make on the work.

{ 17 comments }

Worlds Greatest Shave 2012

by frogpondsrock on March 24, 2012

in cancer,Distractions galore!,Fun,good causes,Hope,potential insanity,real life

Today is the day my lovelies.

I am not nervous today at all which is a blessed relief. On Tuesday I was extremely nervous and every time I thought about The Shave my chest would tighten and I would have to concentrate on my breathing until the moment of minor panic had passed.

With the ever useless gift of hindsight I can now see that it was the scheduled trip to hospital on Wednesday that was making me the most nervous, not the impending shave. Though I am having a little hyperventilate now *gulp*

Tonight at approximately 7.30 (ish) I will be shaving all my hair off.

I wont be shaving my hair off in a quiet corner of a locked bathroom somewhere, oh no that would be far too easy.

I will be shaving my hair off in the middle of a roller derby match.

How did I get here? How did I go from thinking, “Jeez I am sick to death of my fucking hair”, to “Let’s shave it all off in an arena chocka blok full of strangers?”

I blame you.

I lay the blame squarely at your feet, internet.

It is all your fault.

You make me feel like I am ten feet tall and bullet proof.

You make me believe that I can do anything, that my harebrained schemes aren’t that harebrained after all.

Every single one of you that reads this blog, or leaves a comment, or sends me an encouraging email.

This is all your fault.

And I thank you from the very bottom of my heart.

Together we have raised over THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS and my total meter thermometer thingy, on my fundraising page is flashing and blinking and saying GOAL ACHIEVED with a shininess that hurts my eyes.

So any Hobartians out there reading this blog, you should come along to the DEC tonight, it promises to be a fun night and all proceeds go to the Leukaemia foundation. The doors open at 5pm (cash sales only though) and the first bout starts at 6.10 pm.

Scott Bacon MP will be wielding the clippers and I will lose my locks at about 7.40 pm.

Scott Bacon is the Minister for Tourism,Hospitality and Veterans Affairs and I will be sitting with him before the shave. It amuses me no end that I will have my very own hostage, I mean politician in the box with me tonight. So any questions you want asking of the local member for Denison you have about 5 hours notice to email them to me and I will engage the minister in polite conversation.

Veronica is coming along with me as my personal photographer and I hope to have some photos up on the blog tomorrow.

Thank you all so very, very much and hopefully I will see some of you at the DEC tonight.

{ 6 comments }

I am not brave, I just won’t look.

by frogpondsrock on March 20, 2012

in cancer,Distractions galore!,potential insanity

In four days time someone from the Leukaemia foundation is chopping off all my hair.

I will no longer be able to dramatically fling my plait over my shoulder for emphasis when I am being flippant.

Numerous people have told me How brave I am being, I don’t consider myself brave at all.

It is a good cause and I am losing my hair by choice, not necessity.

My hair will grow back, and in the meantime, if I am too horrified by how my lack of hair makes me look, well I just won’t look. I will look instead at the lovely long list of generous sponsors.

I will avoid mirrors and when I do see myself, I will refuse to think about my appearance. Scarlett O ‘ Hara was right on the money when she said, “I will think about that tomorrow.” As I find that philosophy works wonderfully well, especially when combined with rigorous avoidance of reflective surfaces.

So today, I am determinedly not thinking about the Worlds Greatest Shave, instead I am thinking about food.

I didn’t realise how much food I had scattered about my house. A banana in the fruit bowl, muesli on the shelf, dark chocolate in the cupboard.

Everywhere I look there is some sort of foodstuff.

And I cant eat any of it.

Today I am fasting and purging.

Tonight I will be horrendously grumpy.

Tomorrow I am scheduled for a colonoscopy.

I have been on the waiting list for this procedure since October 2009. My GP joked that if my symptoms were indicative of bowel cancer I would be dead by now.

So there is that, at least.

This week is shaping up to be a big week, all I need for the trifecta is a pedicure and I will have had something done to the top, middle and bottom of my body.

{ 15 comments }

A question of personal ethics

by frogpondsrock on February 25, 2012

in blogging,On my soapbox,plastic pollution,potential insanity,thinking out loud

I would never in a million years deliberately align myself with a brand like Nestle. The evidence of poor corporate practice is far too overwhelming for me to ignore and the thought of supporting a brand like Nestle is anathema to me. I lump Nestle in with my other least favourite brand Monsanto and I try to avoid any purchase of their products. It can be quite tricky trying to work out exactly where their corporate tentacles are tangled. So you might find this post an interesting starting point.

I am an adult living in a first world country and as such I have the advantage of being able to pick and choose my lifestyle choices.

I am standing on my soapbox today, NOT to make anyone feel bad, but to ask questions that bother me.

I am baffled by the silence from a large number of bloggers that attended the bloggers brunch yesterday. I know that there were bloggers at this brunch who I respect and I am interested in their thoughts. Why the silence on twitter yesterday? Did you miss the conversation about Nestle on twitter? Are you still working out how you feel? Or did you respond and I missed it?

The bloggers brunch is now a familiar event in blogland. Bloggers get invited to a brunch. An air of exclusivity is maintained which make the invites to these events highly sought after. Brands representatives turn up and throw buckets of freebies at the lucky bloggers and the blogger in turn goes home and tells their friends and readers how wonderful said brands are.

Everyone is happy happy joy joy.

Except me.

Watching from the wings and tweeting my displeasure about the fact that Nestle was one of the brands at the most recent bloggers brunch held in Sydney yesterday, my thoughts were Nestle? Really? Then I thought that maybe people didn’t know about Nestle’s atrocious corporate record, so as the #bloggers_brunch tweetstream started to flow I tweeted this tweet using the #bloggers_brunch hashtag.

Just to make things easy for the bloggers attending the brunch I tweeted a link to the Nestle Wikipedia page. The controversy and criticism section makes an interesting starting point.

By this time other people had tweeted their displeasure at Nestle being involved.

I was at work at the time so I wasn’t following the twitter stream too closely, but I was very surprised by the absolute silence from the bloggers at the brunch.

So I started to poke at the organiser a bit by responding to her Nestle tweets with rather provocative replies of my own.

Deathly silence.

poke poke poke

I am sure there are bloggers out there who don’t want to ripple the bloggy gravy train by saying anything negative about the wonderful brands who were at the bloggers brunch. And from some of the instagram photos the brands were very, very generous. But I do wonder, is a bootload full of plastic product and free samples of milo and tim tams really worth that much? Is it that easy to become so caught up in the hype and power of brand events that it doesn’t matter what companies are giving away the free stuff as long as it keeps on being free?

I would like to finish up by stating very clearly that it is not my intention to start throwing stones, or to make people feel bad. I am trying to start a conversation about how we consume, not just the products but the message from our corporate masters.

The message I get from all these brand events is one of rampant consumerism an any cost and honestly people the planet cant really take much more punishment, but that is a post for another day.

{ 58 comments }

The Greatest Shave Adventure…

by frogpondsrock on February 8, 2012

in cancer,Family,friendship,good causes,potential insanity,real life

I would like to start this blog post by thanking you. The words thank you seem so small when I write them down, they don’t really capture the enormity of grateful emotion that swells in my chest every time I receive help from you.

As each email telling me of a donation comes in, I feel an excited *squee* bubbling up and I am so very, very grateful to you.

The section of the internet that I frequent really is filled with lovely, lovely generous people. And due to your help in spreading the word of my shave we are going to be able to help the Leukaemia Foundation help families who are facing the darkest battle of their lives.

Cancer really and truly does suck. It is a terrifying reality to have to face.

It is the little things with cancer that you don’t expect.

I wasn’t prepared for how much I spent on petrol driving to the hospital over and over again, the car seemed to be continually running on empty(as was I) and all other household bills were put on the backburner as the costs of Mum’s cancer came first.

When you live any distance away from the hospital, appointments seem to take up whole days. I don’t think I cooked a meal for my family in the last few months of Mum’s life. I know I certainly didn’t do a scrap of housework.

Small things internet, small things that build up and can cause huge stress in a family.

It is my own experience of cancers destructive impacts upon a family that made me decide to join the Worlds Greatest Shave. I was grumpy with my hair and I saw an ad somewhere for the Leukaemia foundation and BAM just like that I signed up.

Now of course I am shitting myself and trying not to think about the impending haircut, as each time I think about it I start to hyperventilate a little bit.

I am impulsive and I never ever think about the consequences of my actions. I just decide to do stuff. I certainly hadn’t thought about the logistics of actually shaving off my hair until a conversation happened on facebook and I was given a link to this page, Miss Be Shavin’

And before I could say “Roller Derby looks like fun” I had joined up with these girls and the logistics of the shave are all being taken care of for me.

	Tasmanian Roller Derby meets ‘World’s Greatest Shave.’

	Tasmania’s Derby Leagues will be coming together to support The Leukaemia Foundation’s ‘World’s Greatest Shave’ in Miss-Be-Shavin’.Convict City Rollers will be facing off against Devil State Derby League, followed by South Island Sirens taking on the Van Diemen Rollers Join us on Saturday the 24th of March at the Derwent Entertainment Centre in Hobart as the North and South leagues take each other on in two rounds of this unique sport in a family-friendly event!

Tasmania’s Derby Leagues will be coming together to support The Leukaemia Foundation’s ‘World’s Greatest Shave’ in Miss-Be-Shavin’.Convict City Rollers will be facing off against Devil State Derby League, followed by South Island Sirens taking on the Van Diemen Rollers

Join us on Saturday the 24th of March at the Derwent Entertainment Centre in Hobart as the North and South leagues take each other on in two rounds of this unique sport in a family-friendly event!

I just wont think about the venue, or the hundreds of people that will be there.

I will do my best Scarlett O”Hara impersonation and think about that tomorrow, internet.

On my birthday Veronica took some photos of my hair for me.