Trying out uda

The flower power class has been going on without me, so I need to catch up. There is only one more lesson to come, and then we need to finish (or start) our preferred flower portrait. I want to do a very busy one of hydrangeas in blues, so I am practising the upside down applique technique on a smaller one of two white hydrangea bracts with muticoloured flowers behind. I wasn't sure which sort of stabiliser to use as a foundation, so I used a thin vilene. I think it is too thin, really, as if you have to unpick anything, there is every chance it will tear.

The reason I have missed a couple of lessons is that I have just been to Australia for a 2 week vacation. It's not often that I go away somewhere that doesn't involve seeing my mother at one point, so it was a different experience to just be relaxing and acting like a normal tourist. I flew to Brisbane and picked up a rental car. It was an off-site company, and the car was left with the keys in a coded box. It had a GPS but very few instructions. I couldn't get to hear anything and I tried several menus without success. My first day was on my own, so I planned to go to art galleries and quilt shops so as not to drag reluctant friends round with me. I was fairly stressed on the drive into the town centre, and think a normal map would have been easier. However, I got to the modern art gallery a couple of minutes before it opened. It was an interesting building. There was an exhibition of Aboriginal weaving - baskets, nets, that kind of thing. Brilliantly displayed, but not obvious to me why any particular basket was more worthy than any other. They were fairly simple designs with few obvious patterns. In the centre was a display of about 100 'star' poles, I can't remember the actual name. These were poles about 2 metres long, stuck in the sand, which had bands of grasses and feathers and braids. When you rubbed them between your hands the top part of feathers and braids would spin out and look like stars. Again, I'm not sure which tribes or groups were represented, but they were from Arnhemland.

The rest of the modern art was not for me. There was a huge figure of a woman in bed, about 4 times life size. I usually like a proportion in a modern art museum, but there was little here that would make me return. After that I went to the normal art gallery where there was an exhibition of American Impressionists. It was a good selection and displayed mainly by genre or subject. The landscapes and portraits were my favourites. In the permanent collection there were also some interesting paintings representing most European historical periods, including a few impressionists and pre-raphaelites. Both museums were well displayed, good use of space, and comfortable.

I had a strange spicy bean soup in the cafe there, and then headed by GPS for a couple of quilt shops that had been recommended by 2 people on the AusNz group. They were the Quilt Store, and Sewco. The Quilt Store was very unprepossessing from the outside, looking like a small doorway in a warehouse. But inside there were two large rooms, one with threads, books and embellishments, and one with fabric. It wasn't particularly cheap. Bottom Line thread was $18 Australian, which is about $12 US. I found Margo Duke's book on needlefelting, and another one on ribbon embroidery, that I found irresistible. A few fat quarters and some Colourstreams silk ribbon and I was $150 the poorer (or richer, depending how you look at it!). Sewco was also a good selection of fabrics and the rest.

I got to my apartment in Broadbeach in time to shop for some breakfast and other essentials and a piece of fish and one potato and some frozen spinach for my dinner. I didn't fancy going out. I had got up at 3.30 am to catch the plane, so simple and light was the choice. Apartments in Australia and to a lesser extent in NZ are very spacious. This one had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a laundry, full kitchen, dining and sitting room and a balcony overlooking the pool. Not a flash place, but quietly on a back street, while still being close to the centre.

That was the total of art and culture for the 2 weeks, but I had a great time walking in the countryside, seeing native animals in the wild, and some really nice beaches. Good to spend time with Noriko, Lynne and Graeme, and we laughed a bit, drank not too much and relaxed a lot.