29 weeks and a uni graduation

i am officially a university graduate.

i was not a good school student. i never did my homework, often had afternoon detentions for not handing in assignments, never studied for tests and talked through class. 

recently timmy and i cleaned out our filling cabinet. before this 'clean out' we would joke about how we could find important documents in there - car stuff could be found under "c" for car, "f" for forrester, "r" for red car, "p" for papers, "m" for money pit etc and so forth. we didn't actually have any files at all, everything was just shoved in. anyway, we found my old school reports in there (filed under "f" for filing cabinet) they all said lovely things about me with quite a few "buts" when they got to the school work bit. 

my best marks were always in art and music because that's what i was interested in. i was never, ever, ever going to go to uni. i was going to work and travel and become a florist. i got a whopping UAI (university admission index - a number between 25 and 100) of 54.12. yep. that meant that even if i did want to go to uni there was no way i could do it like everyone else. i didn't care though because uni was nowhere in my plans.

as soon as i finished school i started working at a call centre to save for a backpacking trip around europe. i worked for half a year and then travelled for 4 and a bit months with a good friend. the trip was amazing - everything i could have dreamed and more.

when i got home things had changed for me. i wanted to study art. i had always loved art and had some ability that i wanted to explore. i couldn't go straight to uni (and still didn't really want to) so i went to tafe (college) and did a diploma of fine arts. my love of printmaking was born there. from the end of that course i still wanted more and with the tertiary study i had completely was now eligible to apply for uni. i was still completely shocked when i got in.

throw in a year missionary service in canada, a wedding, multiple house moves and a pregnancy and here we are. graduated.

i was so touched that my mum and dad could come. the ceremony was dead boring. like, i actually fell asleep. but holding that piece of paper, seeing my husband and parents faces full of pride felt real good. i actually did it.

my mum graduated with her teaching degree when she was pregnant with me. if you look really close you can kinda see a belly hiding behind those robes. 

my older brothers and sisters (plus a family friend - the girl on the end) watched my mum get her degree. 

life is for learning i tell ya.

wearing american apparel chiffon secretary blouse, long accordion pleat-skirt in creme, bobby leather lace-up shoe in royal blue

watch this space later today for the announcement of the kinfolk giveaway winnner!

so you wanna know what printmaking is?

sometimes i just assume that everyone knows what i do at uni, not that everyone should know but yeah. and i also for get that not everyone knows what it means when i tell them i’m a printmaker.... “so you print on t-shirts?”, “so you copy paintings and sell them on the internet?”. these are very legitimate questions. it all gets a bit confusing when ‘printing’ and ‘printmaking’ mean very different things.

printmaking is what I do….

and this is what it kinda looks like….

today was a frustrating day in the studio. i started the day off being organised with a plan that optimised my studio time. i knew that half the class was going to be busy out of the studio and that there would be glorious, spacious, free rooms for me to fill my creativity with….

alas, small things got in the way of my creativity like for example blah blah blah… 

the point is i ended up only producing one half baked print at the end of a couple of hours of blah blah.

 the real point is my day didn’t end up how i had planned but some very good unexpected things happened that made up for the annoying ones.

timmy came to the city with me today which makes six hours on a train very much more enjoyable. we ate the best sandwich that has ever existed in the history of the world. slow roasted lamb, potato, and salad (with the most amazing dressing, some kind of mayo and other beautiful things that I couldn’t pick. good work on picking the mayo kesh that’s a hard one) on some kind of incredible thick, brown, soft, crunchy bread. oh, timmy ate that one, i had some bites. i had a glorious pulled pork sandwich on the same bread with chilli jam and delicious greens. we walked back to the station past a drunk lady weeing down a driveway (gross) and fixed that awful moment by visiting tokyobike, where some amazing japanese bikes are sold. we frothed at their prettiness.

right now i’m on a train sitting next to my fruit ninja loving husband. three hours on a train even makes fruit ninja boring... wait. he just corrected me, he’s only not playing ‘cos the battery is dead. he also spent some time taking these photos to document my day in the studio. i love him. 

today was a good day.