Thursday, March 24, 2011

Edging towards Easter

Edging towards Easter

As we are edging closer to Easter, I can happily report that I have knitted half an Easter egg, cross-stitched a tenth of a Danish Easter pattern and more significantly, will be published twice this month!! How exciting is that?!


First up was today's two-page spread in good reading magazine. Jane and I attended An Evening with Armistead Maupin, and luckily Rowena the Editor was open to my idea of sending her a story about the night in question. Not only did Jane and I enjoy a wine and some nibbles at the Opera House before the event, I was excited to meet one of my favourite authors and be given the opportunity to write about it! Over 1,000 people attended and we all enjoyed devouring every word he read (from his latest book) and said. What a great author! It turns out that he writes very slowly and carefully, which came as a surprise to me. I wish him all the best in the next Tales of City instalment, which he promises will let us know whatever happened to Mary-Anne ex hubby, Brian ...

Secondly, the lovely Ellie of Extra Curricular asked me to interview another artist for Issue - Belinda Kennedy, a Melbourne based ceramic artist. The article is being printed as I type and I can’t wait to see it! The lovely Susie Stubbs of flower press who I interviewed for Issue 4 will also feature again, showing a tea towel design.

Belinda is a very talented 30 year-old who not only creates ceramic installations, functional ware and unique individual pieces, she is a qualified sustainable gardener, loves to dance and is a confident poet. She was very inspiring to talk to and I enjoyed writing the article – thank you Ellie!


Last but not least is the Country Style “South” writing comp (copy of page above) which is due at the end of this month (eek, that is only a few days now!) ... I am VERY tempted to participate but am not sure I will make the deadline ... the germ of my idea is still small, and does not seem to have enough arms and legs to make a run for the finish line! I'll let you know how I go.

On another note and in the meantime, I am being (helpfully) tortured by a local Chinese acupuncturist in his attempt to improve the blood flow in my liver so it can better process the hormones that upset my body every month! Imagine someone taking red hot pokers and sticking them in your boobs repeatedly for almost a week every month - aka cyclical mastalgia - versus being stabbed by sharp needles and being 'bled' for over an hour a week to massively reduce the sore boob issue. A tough decision, but the needles and cupping are better than the sore boobs at this stage! It made a huge difference last month, though I must admit I do dread every torture session ...

Anyway, that is all for now!

IL