The year of saying "Yes!"

One of the great joys of not having most of my waking moments taken up with paid work is that when other interesting opportunities arise I can actually say "Yes!" 

Now that I again have two children at the one school I have finally said Yes to joining the P&C (PTA).  In my capacity as an opinionated bigmouth I was invited to participate in a series of scenario planning workshops for the Peel region run by Regional Development Australia, Peel.  I am very pleased I said Yes as it was a great experience and I met some excellent people.  I also said Yes to attending a series of professional development workshops presented by the local contemporary art gallery.  Then I said Yes to being a voluntary gallery attendant at the same gallery on an ongoing basis and am loving my time there. 

I have also said Yes to participating in various projects at Mandurah's annual community arts festival: Stretch.  One of these is in a paid capacity but the others are just for fun. 

Pictured above and below is a house I made for an exhibition at Stretch called My Place.  All the participants were given a plain wooden house which we then decorated to turn it into My Place.  I loved the house in its plain state as it looked like a Pixie House so I was tempted to simply paint it up like a Warren and Mahoney pixie but nobody here would get it.  (If you don't get it either look at the lovely Pixie of the Day tumblr.) 

I am not an artist and I still have an issue with making useless things (the issue is that I don't like doing it) so I turned my house into a card box house which, if it doesn't get trashed during the exhibition, I will eventually keep my crochet kit in. 

The didactic that goes with it is:
A Room of One's Own
I am a maker and often have several projects on the go at a time: this can be messy!  My favourite creations involve contemporary interpretations of traditional textile handcrafts.  At the moment I don't have a space to work in so the next project on my "To make" list is a workroom.

Ironically all this making of pretend workrooms has of course slowed down the work on the real house and real workroom.  Never mind, it was fun and soon Stretch will be over for another year and I won't have so many lovely things to distract me.

Here are some pictures of one of the other projects I am working on for Stretch.  Firstly the inspiration (Pics stolen from all over interwebland. Oops.)

Then progress so far.

This one is called Immerse and as you can see it is still just a work in progress.  This odd project will take a bit more explaining at some point; in the past if I had been asked to do this I would probably have said that I would rather stick pins in my eyes.  But there we are.  Things have changed.  Saying Yes will do that.