Don't smoke in bed

Never tried it, but it's the name of a Peggy Lee song and also I was very upset when I found some stale cigarette butts in my pale pink bakelite smoking table that is never supposed to be used for it's original purpose! Also, I didn't even have a glass ashtray in the little bulby-bit! It was bare and gaping, ready to be defiled by any wandering hand, with pinched cigarette!
My wrists really hurt because I was working for da weekend. As in working the entire weekend. BUT I got to go to cocktail school and learn all these neat little drinks, so now when I get to Québec, I will waltz into a bar and say "Gimme the best job you got!" and they'll say, "Why, you look tougher than a 65 cent steak and we'd be pleased if you would be our barmaid."
And I'll sparkle and shine and do a little dance like our good friend Josephine Baker, you know. I don't remember where I got the picture from, I am trying to be a good blogwriter and not spoil things by using images without credit where credit is due, but it is incredibly difficult, it seems!
Okay, so I am absolutely ridiculously at the moment pro---crastinating because I really do have to go and do a little bit of housework, or chores if you will, so if you don't mind I'll just begin to end this post by finishing my sentence, it shouldn't take too long...
Maybe I'll just go on a healthful walk instead.

wrapped in plastic

This is a picture of my disgusting ventriloquist dummy's head. I made a body as well, but I only took photos of the head-as it is fully operational. Her eyes move from side to side and her mouth opens and shuts (if you are willing to stick your hand into the back of her head).
I made her with silicone and lots of other things, pink silk eyelids, brown wool for hair, ridiculous suede eyebrows. I really like her, but that is only because she's practically my first born child. I know that she is deranged looking, and I have set her up for a life of people telling her that she has a warm personality, but with a face like that, how could you develop a cold one?

ANTH

I just bought a one-way ticket to New York, because I am moving to Montreal to study Fine Art.
I just wrote it- but I can't believe it! I am going to stay with my friend, Celine in her apartment and then catch the train to Montreal a few days later.
I feel really sad about leaving my friends and family, and that sadness was really compounded when I celebrated my nineteenth birthday on Saturday. I think that it will be the one of the biggest most amazing things that will happen in my life and I'm not surprised I have mixed feelings about it.
Last night I went to a viewing of America's Next Top Hoe, which is a project my friend Sam Cremean has been working on for a good chunk of this year. It was really hilarious and wonderfully layered- I can't wait until Sam is a successful director, maybe even achieving the same recognition as that boy from the creek, Dawson Leery. Well, at least he can dream.
A notable performance last night was from Andrew Truong, who donned an oily black wig and became a woman (with great legs) for art's sake. His character's heart-breaking decision to leave the house was probably one of the best examples of dramatic finesse that I have seen for a long time.
Look it up on YouTube, because I have forgotten how to link. I guess you can't teach an old dog new tricks.

Oh God!

Let's begin by saying, I keep on seeing a 20 centime coin on my floor and, thinking it is a juicy gold one-dollar, I dive to the floor yelling "MINE" and snatch it up. Then I realise that actually I haven't just increased my overall net-wealth, I have in fact been made a fool of. Sometimes, I think of fashion in the same way. People see something that they want without being sure of why they want it, they then dive in, head first. With the aesthetic interests of this blog in mind, I am not going to post any pictures of the monstrosities that frequent many fashion blogs daily- I will simply say that I don't like what I am seeing.
I am absolutely disappointed with my generation- obviously we have proven that these days not only do you have to have a lot of money to look as though you don't have a lot of money but that comfort and style do not go hand in hand (although I can't see how or why jeans slung half-way down one's thighs can be bearable).
I am so sick of seeing horrible girls who (by the way) snickered at me for wearing lovely old dresses at fourteen, now wearing old dresses with revolting shoes and mullet hair-styles!!! (and calling themselves VINTAGE)
EVERYONE just, pull up your trousers, cut your rattails off, pare it down please! For the sake of humanity and for the aesthetics of our city streets!
That is my negativity out of the way- I am too tired to think, and maybe a tiny bit grumpy after four days of hard-core work.
The picture at the top is a photo that Ricky sent me from Germany. I think she's just a great old gel.




This is a paper-puppet I made for my brother last year on his birthday, the eyes, ears and mouth move. Just like a real baby!
Speaking of REAL babies, I will give a little behind-the-scenes view of a ventriloquist puppet I made last year. Living with her is like having a stuffed three-year old sitting across from your bed and staring at you all night long with her deadpan gaze.
Enjoy the inside of her head!

Scribbling

Today was so cold and lovely, I met Zoe in the city and we went to have tea. Then we walked down Brunswick Street and looked in all of the shops. I wore my brand new red cowboy boots, which I will probably never take off. Well when I do, I will be really upset.

&hearts Ruby

Knit, Sew, Hook

I made weird high-waisted velvet pants the other day, and when I wear them I look like a teacher I had at Ripponlea Primary, called Mrs. Rudolph. Once she yelled at me for drawing on playground equipment with flowers. Needless to say, there will be no photos on this blog.

Big Baby

Today I went to the market with Sam and Andrew. We also hung around with Laura at Kids in Berlin for a while. Oh we had the best food all day! We got the most beautiful cheese and spinach pastries and spanish doughnuts with chocolate (chocolate con churros). And now I am soooooo full and happy- sitting with a towel wrapped around my head.
The picture above is of a paper puppet I made last year from one of my spare knitting patterns. I called him Big Baby because he cries and his chin wobbles as well.
I am very excited about Autumn, and the wonderful golden leaves on the ground, although it is going to get hotter, it has been pretty cool the past couple of days here.
It is Easter Sunday tomorrow and I am going to the Witch Hats album launch- which is going to be really brilliant (they put on such a good show every time).

&hearts Ruby

Easter Friday

I got a job last Wednesday as a waitress at the Melbourne Aquarium. I worked my first shift last night.
It was an eight hour shift from 4:30pm. I though it would only be for a few hours, as I had planned to see Sebe play at the Espy, but I was on my feet all night! I got home and crawled into bed, only to be pulled out again by Sebe and his band members almost straight away. Apparently it was "the best gig ever" and they even dedicated songs to me (because I had said I would be there).
My bones hurt and my muscles ache, but at least now I can say I've worked a day in my life!
This is a picture I drew a long time ago in 2006- I found it in a book that I made about manners, when I was angry with some very rude people.
It is now the background for the Ships Piano myspace.



&hearts RUBY

Cartwheel Quilt

Another quilt that I made last year. The girls are screen-printed onto weird hexagon-dancing fabric I got in a Cheltenham op shop. It is machine stitched and hand quilted. The backing is a really crisp white cotton.
It is so hot in Melbourne at the moment, although I think today is meant to be about 30°C - cold compared to the last few days!
I love going to the beach every day- I am lapping it up while I can, as I have applied for about twenty-thousand jobs in the past week. In fact I had to step away from the computer for a second to organize a time for a job interview today.
I went swimming at the beach boxes the other day, and there was a fashion shoot on- for a Winter collection, evidently. I thought all of the clothes were so boring and sooo old news. They were sort of magenta and charcoal drapey knit fabrics with ugly nineties runners. It is so discouraging- the amount of boring designers that break through into the mainstream fashion world. I am very unimpressed with clothes in shops at the moment and it just makes me so happy to know that I can make my own clothes that are original and actually flattering to my figure. I shouldn't be so negative, because there really are some incredible designers and street fashion movements happening. I would LOVE to start a street style blog- maybe even turn this little blog into a part-time one.
I am proud that I have been writing so often- I am such a natural piker that I seem to flake away from everything- even things that are self-made and fun!

St. Flora

This is a quilt I made last year. I built it around an embroidery that I had done the year before that, gosh- 2006! I sewed the entire thing by hand. The backing is a beautiful pink silk. It was so wonderful to watch it grow so slowly. I felt just like a pioneer in America, trapped by snow in a tiny one room cottage in New England.
St. Flora is my favourite saint- not that I am religious. Although I did attend a small Catholic girls school from the age of twelve to sixteen. In year eight we had to do this project on saints, I remember my friend Molly took Saint Elmo because he was the patron saint of stomach ulcers or something obscure like that.
But Saint Flora was really amazing. She lived in 14th century France. Basically she rebelled against her parents and refused to be married. At the age of fifteen, she entered the Priory of Beaulieu of the Hospitaller nuns of St. John of Jerusalem and was bullied by all of the sisters in the convent. She fell into a depression and began to have mystical and out-of-body experiences.
On the Feast of All saints, she fell into an ecstasy and fasted for three weeks- taking no nourishment until the feast of St. Cecilia.
The best mysticism that she experienced was rising four feet from the ground while meditating on the Holy Spirit and bleeding freely from the mouth and stigmata on her wrists and feet while all of the bully nuns watched enviously (think Sissy Spacek in Carrie).
She was also prophetic, sometimes having visions of major events that were still to occur. She died in 1347 and many miracles were worked at the site of her tomb.
I also really loved this other saint for a while- I can't remember her name- she was detained by authorities who believed her to be practicing witchcraft and during her imprisonment, she bit through the veins in her wrists and bled to death. There was another "witch" in the cell who wrote down what she said as she was dying. It was this amazing disjointed poetry- with visions of Satan and "blooming beastie beards" that was the best line that I remember clearly.
Most saints were people living on the borders of society, most of them were probably mentally ill, and experiencing a sort of distortion of the world that many people could never imagine. Without explanation for the way these people lived and interacted with others (if they did at all), they were revered and seen as having special divine powers. I think there is such a contrast in the way that people with severe mental illness are treated in society today, and to the way that they were treated in the years before psychological studies were advanced universally. I think that in a way, the sheer amount of reverence shown to people living alternatively like Saint Flora, is probably lost to us forever due to modern skepticism.

Bon Anniversaire! (trés tard)

So I am an absent blogger most of the time, and and I only just realised that I forgot to say "Happy Birthday little blog!"
But as I always say, better late than never and I have a really nice birthday card...





This is the Front Cover for the New Ships Piano album. It is an embroidery- the dress is made up of more chain stitch than you can wave an ironing board at... and as nobody reads this thing anyway, I will keep it in this clean, quiet corner of cyberspace for a while.

love Ruby

Tougher than a 65 cent steak

Right now, I am sitting in a salmon housecoat with a chandelier crystal hanging from a ribbon on my neck, and my hair is wrapped in a silk magenta turban. And heavy sheets of rain are falling on the road outside, making the cars swoosh. Oh domestic bliss!
I am so ecstatic about school being over, and the fact that jobs are falling from the sky like shiny red apples. I just finished making a belly dancing costume and up until christmas I am making dresses all of my baby cousins.
Also, I am doing the artwork for the new Ships Piano album.
This summer I have been to Torquay, Fairhaven, Meredith Music Festival (!) and I just got back from a short stint in a little suburb called Hartwell where I was house-sitting. This place was so green and leafy, I couldn't believe it. The people of Hartwell are solely fueling the drought in Australia.
Agh! I'm waiting for this bloody image to upload, but if it won't by the time I finish typing this post, I'll just throw a tantrum. Well at least I'm dressed for it.
Because all of my friends are going to uni next year and getting full-time jobs, I think I might just run away to a place where I can "plant potatoes and dream" as Moominpapa so fittingly put it.
Maybe I could sell salmon housecoats and become a billionaire next year!
Until then, I'll have the tantrum I promised you all because this picture isn't going anywhere.