Thursday, February 28, 2013

A change is as good as a holiday





Here are a few more photos from my trip to Castlemaine, back in January. It's hard to believe it's only been a month since I was up there. I rather miss it; it's a great town full of heritage, antiques and vintage. Not to mention the most amazing supermarket I've ever been to. 




Those two rooms above (and the kitchen in the second image) are from the local historical house- a beautiful old place set up in modest Edwardian style with lots of lovely natural light.




This one's not Castlemaine but a nearby town of Kyneton. They really need to paint over this sign with a new one- 80% of those shops are now gone! Which was a real let-down, the whole street is billed in tourism circles as being an antique shoppers paradise. Not so! Only 1 antique shop that I recall (or at least the only one open) and it was the kind of place where the cheapest item is 3 figures. We went to Kyneton to see the steam-operated flour mill and bakery, as well as the historic house. The house was shut that day, and the mill completely gone! Just a big empty building doing nothing. There was a cafe but it was drowning in 'bull nosers' - upper class older people from the city, who live in large Victorian house (with bull nose verandahs, hence the term) and seem to only dress in white. No surprise as it's apparently an award winning cafe. Which I take to mean 'no ginger beer'.


There's something so relaxing and peaceful about holidays- I suppose because you're away from everything, there's no responsibilities or jobs to do except have fun and spend money, both of which I am very good at! I really need that sense of home though- I don't like hotels and I can't stand camping, I like having a little cabin or cottage where we have the run of the place, I can pretend I live there. I really need a proper kitchen in order to be comfortable.



I'm not doing anything here worth reporting- making, listing new things in the jewelry shop, asking the big questions about my life and getting a half-hearted shrug from myself in return. I'm not taking that as the definitive answer though, and will be spending this weekend forcing myself to answer a few things! I want to revamp the jewelry shop and pump some new inventory into fagin.

Asterion - salvage tribal earrings - faux enamel metal - antique beads

Speaking of the jewelry shop... here's a secret sale for all you dear blog readers out there. Use the code JUNKYARD in your checkout cart (put it in the coupon box or it won't work!!!) to get 50% off your order. YES! 50 percent. Hurry up though, cause it's only good till Sunday night. Which is the Australian Sunday, so probably your Saturday afternoon. No reserves, no lay aways, no minimum purchase required - just half price!

Saturday, February 16, 2013

The Nasty No good Week of Whining

This week has been a toughie. With the triple threat of hot weather, my lady curse and post-traumatic, keeping calm and carrying on has been somewhat of an uphill struggle.

  Pretty things, evil summer sunshine

But I do it, because I'm a warrior of life and all that. When I get too overwhelmed by the feels, I do two things. The first is have a swear and go lie down for an hour (beats crying into your lunch, always a bad look), the second is to 'organise my mind'. Figure out what it is that set me off, even the tiniest little thing contains the seed of reason. 
Then I take that and stretch out, find a solution for it. Today's straw on the proverbial back was the chaos of the deep freeze- yes really. I'm a bit of a control freak now the PTSD is here, and any kind of messy, jumbled or otherwise out of alignment storage area gets me all antsy. So I cleaned the mudder out, defrosted and sorted. Then I went to lay down again for a moment and I realised my desk is shameful, utterly chaotic and generally something I avoid looking at, which is hard because it's across from my bed.


Yep, that's my idea of 'chaotic shame'. I hate working on a messy desk- I must have pristine surfaces. Most artist's tend to work better when they are knee deep in the cast-offs of their imaginings, me I can't think straight unless everything is stored in it's own little box. Conflicting because if I can't see something I don't think about it, which means I forget about most of my supplies; on the other hand when I can see stuff I get distracted and end up achieving nothing. So I started getting that under control, which - as I cast my eye over it now - didn't get very far. But you know, baby steps. I need to pay a visit to the local discount emporium and get me some stackable boxes. I'd like these:



 Giant Lego storage box! But I can't seem to find them in Australia. I can import them from the UK but they'll cost $25-30 a piece, and that's a wee 'spensive for something to keep junk in. Even if they would look super cool (and very neat) stacked up on my desk.

Other than that I've been trying to do my best despite it all, engineering a better future for myself as is always the case. The circumstances resulting from my car accident have left me feeling like life has just shoved in a corner of the spare room (literally, with thanks to the ever-accommodating Dad), but I don't intend to sit here gathering dust. Oh no. I have a life to build, and it's gunna be better and stronger and more shinier than before. As part of it, I began two new projects recently, one is this:




It's a vintage shop! Where I can sell candy coloured and glamorous retro vintage things, because Fagin wasn't sitting right with that stuff- I like to keep Fagin in the tatty antiques realm, but I do have an awful lot of pretty vintage to let go of in order to move into an apartment or small house and not look like an episode of Hoarders. Also one of these days I'm going to have an actual bricks n mortar antiques shop, and it will specialise in 20th century, because that's my true passion when it comes to old junk, so this shop is a sort of seedling place for that. My real shop will have gold wallpaper and shag pile carpet.

The other project I'm not going to tell you about just yet, because it's not quite ready. 

 

Sound advice- can you believe I haven't even started watching this yet?! I'm waiting till I move in a couple of months, so I can see it on my giant TV, who I don't have room for here and who I miss. I don't care if that's sad- I miss you giant TV!! 

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Wagons ho


A week or so ago, I went on a bit of a road trip with my Dad and brother, up to the goldfields area of rural Australia, where we all feel wonderfully at home (despite having no connections there).


we drove.
and drove

 

and drove...

got lost by trusting the GPS

but it was a good kind of lost.

mountains followed us for most of the way

snaking along by the side of the car

rising up in front of us



It was rather comforting- this great, flat dry expanse that seemed to go on forever, but contained and watched over by the mountain monsters. Though I have little to no connection to Australia, I was happy to drive through it and know I wasn't a part of it- and that was okay. I'm just a traveler from another world. 



anyone else out here? No...




oh look, another car! We couldn't see the driver though, and assumed he was off bushwalking.


At last we get to the place we're going- Castlemaine! Oh how I love this place- a city that feels like a country town, rows of gorgeous old buildings, friendly people and a killer supermarket! (You know sooner or later this is about food.)

Here's the view from the caravan park- the one we always stay in when we come up here. It sits next to the botanical gardens so it's like camping in the grounds of a fancy mansion. I wasn't camping though, let's make that quite clear. I am not a tent person, I'm barely an outdoors person. We had a big trailer with walls, electricity and running water, because I am not a hobo. Also I like caravans. I like the smell, the outdated decor, the scaled down accoutrement, the tiny windows by the bed.


Here's the view from the front gate of the antiques fair- yeah that's why we drove 9 hours! Never let it be said this family doesn't go out of it's way to get to some good old fashioned junk diggin'.

Tiny little cottages in tiny little 'barely there' towns

some painted sunny colours, proud and fresh

Some still wear their first ever coat, and sit alone in quiet hills.

Castlemaine is apparently the hot rod capital of Australia- we didn't see any, but there was a fab Valiant owned by the people next to us in the caravan park.


I have more photos, but you can only put so much in one post. So they can be for next time. And yes I bought a criminal amount of stuff!