She's apples

It was a gorgeous autumn Sunday to get out of the city and see some of the New York state (and New Jersey) countryside. Fall is in full swing and the colours of the leaves are just amazing! When my friends organised to go apple-picking, I assumed it would be a quiet little farm and we'd be frolicking in the mud, surrounded by trees loaded with apples. In actual fact the farm (orchard slash winery) was packed with people, a band was playing, all kinds of food were on offer and while you could buy a bag to pick apples into, they had signs up saying there were very few apples on the trees...

And they weren't kidding! It was quite a mission just to spot an apple, and some potentially dangerous (particularly given the sangria on offer) tree-climing ensued. But in the end we harvested enough for an apple pie or two...

Seriously. Look at this countryside. They really do have red barns here.

First days in BK

So after the thrilling chaos of East Village, on Friday I moved into a sublet in Brooklyn's Williamsburg for the next three weeks. My sweet new roommate is some kind of musical savant - when I first met her and she said she was learning to play the accordion, I was a little concerned. But the reality of hearing her practice in the next room, accompanied on saw (!) by her friend who's also a painter and web-designer (and great cook), has been that life suddenly feels like a slightly more ghetto version of Amelie. Surrounded by such creative people, it feels like a luxury to stay home and write on a Saturday night rather than brave the bars of the city.

Fairy lights are strung around my open window, the sounds of life and traffic filtering up from Graham Avenue three floors below. The subway that connects us here so easily to Manhattan, the L train, is shut down for maintenance all weekend, so that's been a good incentive to spend more time exploring this new hood.


This morning brought an expedition to the farmers market at McCarren Park, about ten minutes' walk away, after a great coffee from hipster hive Variety. It's weird, great espresso is so taken for granted in Australia that it's kinda funny to see people go ape for it here. Anyway, it's sunbright summery this weekend and the market was even better than expected, bountiful with seasonal produce from the area - apples, sugary plums, bright radishes, jars of honey and bouquets of flowers. I heaved home some huge bunches of beets and monster carrots, which I can't wait to roast, along with organic yoghurt, coriander (we call it cilantro here, posh eh?) and a generous handful of my new discovery, concord grapes. They're round and blue-black like muscats but soft and syrupy sweet inside.

In what can only be a great omen for my new neighbourhood, I actually bumped into someone I know (well, who I've met once) at the market, and later we met up for french toast and bloody marys at Harefield Road, which I suspect could become my local. After that we had coffee and delicious delicacies from Fortunato Brothers, a classic Italian-style pasticceria that serves amazing cannoli, a rainbow of gelato flavours, and is home to a lazy fat cat called Rocky.

Williamsburg is this crazy mix of old Italians and young creatives. A shop over the road which I thought sold funeral ornaments also sells brick-oven-baked bread. The community is reportedly still recovering from the death of an old woman who would get up at 3am every day to make fresh mozzarella and sell it from her doorway. The streets aren't as green as the Village but you just know most the homes have gardens hidden out back. Brick facades laced with fire escapes, bikes everywhere. Expect more details - particularly on food and cocktails! - but I reckon I'm on a winner here.

Thank God it's....

Current view:
Can you spot Brooklyn Bridge?

Such a hot day in the city today... Wine on the roof deck well earned...

She's gone country

There’s something really invigorating about spending time in a tiny, tightknit community where everyone knows each other. As an out-of-towner you’re afforded almost celebrity status. People welcome you into their homes, talk to you like they’ve known you forever. Even if you don’t know people, it doesn’t take long to work out friends you have in common from boarding school or uni days.

Everyone’s at the pub on a Friday night after a long week; footy blaring on the TV, the girls from down the road playing guitar and various mates joining in on guest vocals, rounds being shouted, rollies being bummed, kids busting moves on what passes for a dancefloor. You can detour through the park on the three-block walk home, throw yourself down a dewy slippery dip and then dissect the night over bacon and toast and tea in someone’s kitchen. By the time you wake up, the night’s gossip has already filtered out to the rest of the district.

I’ve waxed lyrical before about the joys of bush races, but now I can happily report that even without ponies their fun is hardly diminished. Days of deluge in the lead up to the Morven races meant that the track was too wet for actual racing, but that didn’t deter a turnout of a few hundred people. Little kids raced around in baby akubras and handcrafted belts with their names embossed across their bottoms; hopped up on sugar, charred sausages and the novelty of seeing more people than they might in months.

Everyone was still in their races finery and the fashions of the field were still hotly contested. It can be a lucrative sideline, and so even at the most remote race meets you’ll still spot the odd lass who’s gone all out for sartorial glory. You can tell those who do the FOF circuit by touches above and beyond the standard country races garb – a net glove here, a seamed stocking there, vintage-style tailoring and jaunty pillbox hats with little lace veils... And when it’s your best mate, with hair curled by her mum, who triumphs over a seasoned campaigner like that, the thrill is magnificent.

You’ll never dance like you do in the middle of a crowd of rum-sozzled revellers of all ages, to music you don’t even like blasted from hired speakers on the back of a truck – people reeling and careening around you like a carnival ride on the verge of falling apart. And you’ll never see as many stars as you do sprawled in a swag in the back of a ute, even if you have to do so while listening to Garth Brooks’ greatest hits being blasted by someone else in the carpark.

Scenes from a Sunday

S.W.A.L.K.

Found this amazing ring for ten bucks at the Bondi markets today. Not only is it a little envelope..

...it even opens! So I put a little good luck note inside.

This weekend's just been all win.

Sydney Cycle Chic Sunday ride

Sydney-side bike lovers: there's a Cycle Chic Sunday ride this weekend... All the details are on the new Cycle Chic Sydney site. The movement, which is all about "style over speed", has really been gaining momentum locally, particularly after cycle chic godfather Mikael Colville-Andersen visited Aussie shores recently.

WHAT: An afternoon in Bondi with cafe/bar hopping and a spot of vintage market shopping

WHO: Anyone who favours style over speed

WHERE: Meet at Rose Bay Ferry Wharf at 11am or en route

WHEN: Sunday August 15 from 11am

Maybe I'll see you there! Just have to work out how to bluff the style part...

Parklife

Have this new pair of sunglasses; they're not the best for cutting out glare, but they're gorgeous retro tortiseshell and the lenses are sepia-toned. When I walk around in them I feel like I'm in an Italian film from the 70s or something; everything looks old and deliciously fresh all at once. It was a glorious winter Saturday today and I decided to take the new Holga (and the old SLR) out for a spin on Big Red. The one downside to taking pics on film is the impatience! I can barely wait to finish the full 24 exposures before racing to get them developed.


Anyway, got sick of the photos I could immediately review not reflecting the ye olde-hued perspective I had from behind my sunnies. So I took them off and held them over my lens, and have to say I love the way these shots from Randwick and Centennial Park turned out.


Had always admired this memorial from a distance - it is the centrepiece of the big dog park area of the parklands - but never inspected it closely. It's even more impressive close up - the domed roof is decorated with mosaics on the inside, and there is a cairn inside in the middle with a facet for each state of Australia.


The whole structure is very geometric, and the late afternoon sun makes amazing patterns. As I left the park I stopped by an old favourite garden, and caught a beautiful moment. I lost my grip on the sunnies over the lens as I snapped it, but I like the effect:

The HOGs

Woke with a start at 5am today - mouth dry, Fleetwood Mac still blaring in my ipod headphones. It all came back slowly: the cab ride home, leaving my bike chained outside a Surry Hills bar, more bottles of wine than I care to remember. There was collateral damage. My favourite Blair Waldorf headband, nowhere to be found; my dignity presumably in the same unknown location. Work was a trial; naturally, of all days, today would be the one where construction downstairs rendered our office full of pounding hammers for hours on end.

That was when my sister mentioned the hogs. What on earth do you mean, the hogs, I asked. The Hang Over Guilts, she replied. Sure enough, as I counted down the minutes until lunch and continued refining procrastination like it's an olympic sport, I felt quite awful about my professional performance. Not that I'd change my Sunday - catching up with old friends and new friends, it was a delicious day. But I will be filing "the hogs" for future use.

Sending a special birthday shout-out to a racy rednut...

Sun-day

Guess who's back on the streets? We've missed you Big Red! A rainbow even popped out to welcome her.
Oh hey - did you hear? Little Edie's childhood diaries are being released as I Only Mark The Hours That Shine... Can't wait to read them!

Naming rights

It's been a while between updates on our blog mascot, Handsome Darling, and his two girlfriends Cherry and Valentine. But today - big news. The sausage factory is doubling in size and Handsome's harem will grow too. Best of all, with three new sausage dogs joining my friend's breeding operation, I finally get some naming rights! Can't decide between an amusing sausage-related name (Kransky? Bratwurst? Cheerio??) or the more egomaniacal route of simply bestowing my own name. Any suggestions?

Time for sleep. Setting sail at an ungodly hour in the morning, for Brisbane, Byron, a wedding, girly catch-ups and hopefully some warmer climes!

Grand designs

Those of you salivating at the title, I apologise for the distinct lack of Kevin McCloud in this post. He is indeed totally dreamy and a perverse part of me can't wait to check Google Analytics and see how many people googling for Kevin DILF porn ended up here, stamping their feet and shaking their pigtails in disappointment.

The designs in question are actually less than grand.. well, see for yourself. As part of my research into studying design, on Saturday I had a "day in the life of a designer" at a North Sydney design college. Clearly I hadn't completely thought through the whole going-back-to-uni concept and so I was a little shocked to find myself in a room full of 16 and 17-year-olds. When I walked in at the same time as a lad being dropped off by him mum, I realised I am potentially on the verge of becoming that which I so despised as a callow 19-year-old: the mature age student. Speaking of mature age - I think I was older than most the lecturers as well as the students!

Anyway, it was all rather fun - I tried to say the word "like" more often in a bid to blend in, and tried not to smirk when the girls on my table traded tales about failing their driving tests. Eventually we had to pair off and make collages which we then tweaked in photoshop and illustrator. Each pair was given a month, and we had to channel some kind of personal experience of that month into designing a CD cover. If you haven't guessed already that blobby thing above is my inauspicious first foray into this meandering new career path. Look out world haha!

We also got to watch a cute little film called "Marry Me", which won Tropfest in 2008. Can't decide whether the best thing about it is the use of spokeydokes (oh, Baby Blue and your spokeydokes wheels, how I miss you) or the massive mullet on the little boy. You be the judge:

Op shop pit stop

On the June long weekend I'll be making the trip up to Byron Bay for a friend's wedding. In what I think is a genius move, the wedding is 1950s themed - so on the weekend we went trawling for outfits from the era.

Our first stop was to a store we'd accidentally discovered a few weeks ago while visiting the Rozelle markets. Called "Mint Condition", this shop is a treasure trove of frocks, hats, shoes and accessories from delicious decades past. Petticoats hang from the ceilings, racks gleam with sequins, and every nook and cranny holds an item with a story. There are gloves that could surely have only fit doll's hands, saucy disco playsuits and wigs from who-knows-when.

The racks are grouped by style rather than era, so there were delicate 50s cotton print frocks alongside 80s numbers with shoulder pads worthy of gridiron players. Fabrics are the best indicator of a garment's age - pieces from the 50s in this kind of condition are wicked expensive because, well, they're nearly six decades old. When they were made, zippers were just being invented. Many items were handsewn rather than industrially manufactured, and thus don't have tags or care instructions. By the sixties, synthetic fabrics are all the rage, zips are no longer a novelty, and most garments have been mass produced. Colours get brighter, prints get crazy, hems get shorter.... and then promptly drop again for the maxi-dresses of the 70s.

But the most striking lesson we learned about garments from the 1950s was that women were much smaller then!
I fell head over heels in love with this baby-blue lace dress. It was just perfect. Except, of course, for the fact that the zipper wouldn't even begin to do up. Granted, I am a bit of a giant, and the shopgirl tried to comfort me with the fact that back when the dress was made most women would have been sucked into girdles and corsets. After a few disappointments with gorgeous 50s dresses, some of which didn't even fit over my shoulders, I swallowed my pride and hit the "plus size" rack.
Jackpot! This dress was definitely in mint condition - unworn and still with tags attached from the 60s or possibly 70s. It's the kind of effortless tennis dress I imagine Margot Tenenbaum would wear to the country club, were she a bored Hamptons housewife in the 1960s; fur coat and martini optional.

I had to have it; but it still wouldn't quite fit the 50s theme, or June weather for that matter. So I found a really simple black floaty dress, with a beautiful drape and hemmed at just the right spot below the knee. Clearly it belonged to some obese, but very glamorous, woman in the 1950s. Thank-you m'am!
And that's why this week is all about Mi Goreng noodles and whatever is left in the fridge until pay day!

Peanuts and maggots

Australia on the whole is a fairly agnostic country; if anything, on a national scale sport inspires more fervour than actual religion. We worship at the altar of football, though there the faith fractures into three codes: rugby league, rugby union and Aussie rules. No, soccer doesn't count.

Most are born into their code, according to geography and class. In my home state of Queensland, league is the dominant code, unless you or your parents went to private school in which case you will prefer union to league. The old maxim goes: "rugby league is a thug's game played by gentlemen; rugby union is a gentleman's game played by thugs". That may have been true once; before union was professionalised most elite players were doctors and lawyers by day. Their league counterparts were more likely labourers, tradies and cops off the field. Today, however, professional footballers are paid considerable amounts of money just to play and train; and as the ongoing off-field sex- drug- and poo-in-the-hotel-corridor scandals suggest, these blokes might have a little too much time and money on their hands.

This is all a very longwinded digression. All I really meant to do was set the scene by saying that I've always been a league fan; union I find messy and unstructured, and AFL I find incomprensible. I mean, the field is round. There are four sets of goal posts. There's no tackling, and knocking the ball forward is actively encouraged rather than cause for a turnover of posession. So when I went to see the Sydney Swans vs the Fremantle Dockers on Saturday at the SCG, I was all at sea.

But I learned a couple of things. Not only are AFL players far more lithe and graceful athletes than league players, AFL fans are considerably more attractive than their league audience counterparts, too. There is a bloke who plays for the Dockers who's over seven foot tall. The guy marking him didn't even reach his shoulder! And the refs - sorry, umpires - are referred to by the crowd as "maggots" (for their white uniforms), and make the most unnecessarily, fantastically camp contribution to a sport I've ever seen. Drama trumps brute masculinity every time in this arena.

Weather-wise it was a weird afternoon; one quarter blinded by sun, the next running for shelter from the rain. But best of all was being on that historic ground, and seeing the silhouetted Sydney skyline beyond the member's stand, all glowing golden as the sun set. I still have some work to do in understanding the rules of the game, but I'll definitely be back to an AFL match for the atmosphere, the athleticism... and the eye candy.

Pleasure craft

OMG I have so much bike porn for you! But first, my day of craft. This afternoon was, of course, the Stitch A Ride workshop. It all happened in Fraser Studios, a fantastic space tucked in a laneway behind the Clare, a stone's throw from UTS and Railway Square. The street also features some awesome graf and a tiny food co-op, and it seems like there would always be something interesting going on there.

It was a motley crew of craft enthusiasts gathered around sewing machines and cutting tables... let loose with scissors and pins and thread. But the Spoke & Spool girls were incredibly helpful, and irrepressibly enthusiastic. The idea was that you brought in old clothes to be deconstructed and then reconstructed into bike-friendly apparel.

A full-skirted dress could be turned into a cool onesie. One lass made riding gloves from a pair of socks. Or, in my case, a $5 pair of old man trousers could be converted into LEDERHOSEN. Yes, they may have been called overalls the last time I wore them (year 7), but today they sound much more exotic. After a few false starts my LEDERHOSEN (sorry to keep shouting with caps, but I love this word) began to take shape. One cut-off leg became the front bib, the other became a pocket. The front piece buttons inside the waistband, and I used reflective strips for the straps - fully removable, they button on and off at the front and back.


The whole thing was just inspiring in the sense that there are young people out there who aren't driven by consumption, but rather the opposite. Boys and girls making old things into new things, and delighting in the kinds of skills our generation so rarely use - sewing, mending, thrifting...

The Spoke & Spool ladies had thought of everything. There were baked treats and cups of tea, buckets of buttons like nanna used to have, and all manner of goodies to enhance our bikewear: reflective strips for visibility, leather patches to reinforce knees and crotches. I couldn't resist a hankerchief-sized map of Sydney's bike paths - super cute to sew into a pocket, and you can even embroider your routes onto it to customise.

The fruits of my labours:
Yes, that's a pocket big enough for a collection of maps, a modestly sized paperback book, or even a small kitten. Really - pockets should always be sized with pets in mind. The only potential issue here is that LEDERHOSEN have not traditionally featured strongly in my wardrobe. IE, not at all. But who knows? Perhaps looking like a reflective, overgrown Von Trapp child on a bicycle is that indefinable thing my life has been missing thus far?

Stitch n bitch

Just a quickie - any bike lovers in the Sydney area might be interested in this fantastic workshop Spoke + Spool are putting on tomorrow (Saturday).

"Stitch A Ride" is the name of the game - rock up to Fraser Studio, 10-14 Kensington St, Chippendale from 1-5pm with your steed and some old clothes, and they'll provide sewing machines and the know-how to knock up some bitchin treadly threads. Which, for example, include reflective cuffs and "map pockets". SOLD. Afterwards there are drinks at the Clare hotel. And it's all free!

Getting there:


View Larger Map

Craft, bikes and beer - not a bad way to spend a lazy Saturday arvo! See you there?

Gallery bonanza

Spent a gorgeous Autumn Saturday checking out a handful of galleries. First stop was Blender, tucked in a Paddington back street, which features lovely little exhibitions of photography in a converted two-story terrace. There are classic rock portraits in the dunny, and a droolworthy display of Lomo cameras and accessories. The current exhibition is "Ludlites Love Water", where photographers used plastic cameras like Dianas and Holgas to capture water-themed images with summery colour distortion and softened light. The Ludlites are a collective of eight photographers who eschew digital photography for the dreamy lo-fi shots of plastic cameras. The result is a collection of images that could have been shot yesterday or thirty years ago, hazy like memories, and capturing both a sense of nostalgia for long-ago family beach holidays and unsettling, moody seascapes.


After a jaunt through the Paddington markets, I then stopped by the Australian Centre for Photography on Oxford street. ACP hosts our exhibition of Walkley photographic finalists every year and it's a beautiful space for photography, always stylishly curated. With the Head On photographic festival just kicking off, ACP is currently showing all the finalists and winners from Head On's portrait competition. Couldn't pick a favourite from the exhibition, they were all so different. There was an interesting shot of Geoff Ostling, a retired history teacher who has his body tattooed all over, and has bequeathed his skin to the National Gallery.

I have a kind of obsession with the idea of curation, and the little explanations that go with images or objects being exhibited. Those words don't just give context or explanation; they can completely change the way you see an artwork or artefact. With many of the Head On portraits, knowing the background of the person posing for the portrait, or the circumstances of the shot, added a poignancy you might have missed from just seeing the image. There was a beautiful photograph by Steven Siewert of his son, rendered even more lovely by the words he wrote about it... describing his love for his child and how, when he first felt the hollow between his shoulder blades, he knew it was the spot where there had once been angel wings attached.

In print publications, the written captions that accompany photographs are generally much more factual. But the captions of exhibitions have the potential to completely reframe people's perceptions. Occasionally, the blurbs soar a little too esoteric, bulging with the double-speak and beauroblab of artists forced to justify the cultural significance of their work in order to fund it. But for the most part they help you appreciate the stories of artists, their subjects, and the moments that bind them together for eternity.

The same principle was at play at the NSW Art Gallery, where the portrait theme continued as we took in the Archibald Prize finalists. The tattoed man was there again ("The Bequest" by Nick Stathopoulos), along with portraits of people from all walks of life - and in all different styles. My favourite was Carla Fletcher's stylised portrait of CW Stoneking, with pencil cross-hatching detail topping off a simple palette dominated by white space.

It's always fascinating to examine a painting and try to understand how the artist worked. Up close, the surfaces swathed in tactile sweeps and splodges of paint are often like landscapes in themselves. You can tell brushstrokes that have been made with haste, yet even the quickest marks have an element of precision, and you wonder how a painter reaches that zone where they're slapping paint around almost blindly but know exactly what they're doing.

Robert Malherbe's impressionistic portrait of artist Luke Siberras, completed in a couple of hours, hangs in hasty contrast with canvases that were six months in the making. Then there are wry touches like Greg Somers' "Self Portrait With Picture of Dory in Grey", a painting you just know was made to measure up to the punny title he'd first come up with.

Interesting that of all the massive canvases, it was the relatively tiny portrait of Tim Minchin (by Sam Leach) that was named the winner. There's still time to get to the gallery and vote for the viewer's choice award (to be announced on May 20), so get down and check it out if you haven't already.

The Green Ray