Finally

Finally, after 36 hours labour my sister in law gave birth to a son. My brother phoned me late last night and I could hear him in the background! I'm an auntie!

Finally, I have found my camera charger. I found it in a broken bag behind our clothes rack while I was looking for wool to make a blanket for my new nephew!

Finally, I have my new press up and running. I just need to get to know it a bit better before I can start on the real stuff, there are a few things I need to iron out first.

And finally, I'm getting these images loaded up onto etsy and my blog. Here's the Crested Pigeon.

Exciting News

A few more hiccups before I'm truly back at my blog! I had a few weeks where I thought this computer had died, but it seems to be working again without me doing anything to it! Another hindrance is I can't locate my camera recharger, so I've having to scan everything in and I have a very substandard scanner!

I have decided to finally upload images of some of my scholarship etchings that I did while at Australian Print Workshop the past year. These are the etchings included in my recent exhibition at APW which finished on the 20th December. I have now added these two below to my 'bridgetfarmerprints' etsy shop.
So, what is my exciting news? Well, I have two pieces of news. As I type, my sister in law is in labour with the first baby of our immediate family. They are in Belfast and I am in Melbourne, so I've been kept up to date by my brother with texts. I'm sending them lots of good thoughts!

My other news is that I've bitten the bullet and finally, actually bought myself a printing press. So I'll be printing away whenever I want now. I can't wait to get it all set up and working. I'd take a photo of it to show, but as I said, I can't find my camera battery charger and it would be a bit too difficult to scan!

I'm Back!

Hooray, we have Internet in our home! No more trips to the library or sneaky posts while at work. I've so much catching up to do because I've been making lots of things since I had so much more time due to not being able to work on the computer!

OK, I'll start today with the new bird prints I've been making.

I was very busy last week because I wanted to get some new gocco prints out for all the markets I'm doing in the run up to Christmas. You can find me as usual at Rose Street Artist's Market every Saturday and at the Abbotsford Convent Makers Market for the next few Sundays. Also I'm doing Northcote Twilight Market at Northcote Town Hall Thursday nights 6 till 10. This is a lovely little market and I just love the cycle up that great big hill every Thursday!


So, here are the new gocco prints, this is a New Holland Honeyeater. I often get asked if I have any prints of this bird and now I do!

And these two little birds are Australian Robins. I thought since robins are Christmassy back home in the UK, I'd try a few Australian ones. The top one is an Eastern Yellow Robin and the bottom one is a Flame Robin.
And of course, no prizes for this one, a Laughing Kookaburra. I heard one from our living room in our new house earlier this week. They sound fantastic!

To read more about how these gocco prints are made see my tutorial blog post on the subject.

We Have a Winner!

It's been a while since my last post, this is due to not having internet available. After moving out of our previous place I've been living with my boyfriend's friends in their living room for the first two weeks which was an experience. One good thing about it was that their cat was adament that it was going to sleep on our sofa bed and Jeremy's allergies subsided slightly, so there is hope yet of owning a lovely cat one day in the future!

All this while I've been battling it out with very small children in libraries for the use of computers. It gets a bit upsetting when you are there to look through realestate.com.au for a place to live and you have to wait for a crowd of children to stop playing computer games. But maybe my annoyance was just because of my stress levels and desparation to sleep in a normal bed.

Now we have found a lovely lovely house, I think it's the best place in Melbourne! Unfortuneatly it's going to be demolished in 9 months, but we're going to make the most of it in that time. We still have no internet but that is on it's way. Also we need to work out why the shower only has two temperatures - scalding hot or freezing cold, as well as why we can't get electricity in the studio room. But it's coming together nicely.

But the main reason I'm posting is because we have a winner for the November blog giveaway! The winner is Feed The Dog who has had a run of bad luck lately so I hope this will cheer her up. She chose "Circle Blue" as her favourite and it will be flying its way to her in time for Christmas.

For some reason on this computer I can neither add images nor spell check, so my appologies for such a dull looking, badly spelt post. Hopefully soon I will be back in order and able to post from home.

100

This is my 100th post on my blog and it coincides beautifully with what I am going to post about!

Since May until September this year I have been working on illustrations for a poetry book called '100 Australian Poems You Need To Know" for Hardie Grant Publishers. The book has poems from all through Australia's history and I really enjoyed reading them all when starting out the project because I knew very little Australian poetry to start with.


Yesterday, in the post, I finally received my copy of the book and it is lovely, a really beautiful object even before you've even opened it! Well designed, well put together, great poems and as for the illustrations, well, for me it was quite strange to see all my drawings and etchings in there, but very satisfying.

The book will be available from 1st December, I'm not sure where from yet, I'm trying to find out myself because most of my family will be getting a copy for Christmas!

I've found a review for the book here and info about it on readings website here and I've found a site where you can pre-order a copy here .

Tomorrow we move out of our house, but unfortunately, due to things out of our control (because real estate agents are supposedly in control, but not doing a very good job) we have nowhere to move into. Homeless! So if you see Jeremy and I walking the streets in the next few weeks please invite us in for a drink and a friendly chat, thanks!

Don't forget to enter my blog give away competition!

Bridget's November Giveaway!

I should be cleaning and scrubbing and packing up our flat, we are moving this weekend (as long as the real estate agents get back to us to let us know if we have our new house, we're cutting it fine here!)

My kitchen is chaotic with half filled boxes everywhere and dirty dishes.The bathroom is clean from waist height up but I haven't quite got down to the bath and sink etc. and our living room is chockablock with cardboard boxes, so much so that I can't get to the skirting boards to scrub or the floor to vacuum.

So I decided to have a rest and I came up with a giveaway idea!

You could win the Featherstitch Fantail, 100% natural wool, 100% hand embroidered brooch of your choice! All you have to do is let me know which your favourite design is on the Featherstitch Fantail website by leaving a comment on your chosen brooch. I will pick the winner at random at the start of December and then make the brooch and send it to the winner.

Good luck!

The Kate Hudson

I'm very excited! I did a print swap with Kate Hudson, not the Kate Hudson, actress, but the Kate Hudson, Melbourne printmaker. She decided she wanted one of my bird etchings from my exhibition and since we know each other from Australian Print Workshop she got in contact with me and asked if I would be interested in a swap. "Would I ever!!!" I replied, I've been wanting one of her prints for a very long time, and, so, last Wednesday she brought in her gorgeous portfolio and I got to choose one. I really thought I'd choose one of her lovely bird prints, but I fell in love with this one. I love the colours in it and can't wait to move house, get it framed and put it in pride of place on my new wall!

The red table cloth in the print reminds me of a beautiful throw I found in my Mum's old chest, I claimed it years ago and still have it in our bedroom here in Melbourne. When I was a student in Edinburgh my granny came over to visit and she saw the lovely red throw in my bedroom and she said, 'oh, look, it's that lovely throw my mother bought while she was in Turkey!" So, it turns out it's a bit of an antique! I've always had a taste for lovely old things.

Here are a few more featherstitch fantail brooches I finished off last night while watching a lovely, if a little strange, true film about a lion called Christian who was bought as a cub in Harrods department store in London by two Australian guys and his journey to rehabilitation and freedom in Kenya. There is a lovely scene near the end in which the two Australians are coming back to visit Christian after a year, they are told he is a semi wild animal now and probably wont remember them. It is all filmed as it happened and Christian's reaction and their reunion is one of the most beautiful things I have ever ever seen on film. I've actually found the scene on youtube, have a look!

Feather In Your Hat

I've been stitching and stitching trying to get ready for Christmas. I've started making more of my fantail hat/ lapel pins since they seemed popular at market last weekend. They are made up of the same layering and hand sewn embroidery as the Featherstitch Fantail brooches with hand felted balls to embellish!



I'm also happy because I have finally sorted out my packaging for my brooches. I bought myself a rubber stamp of my "Bridbird" label and I found the most perfect little boxes, in a $2 shop would you believe! Unfortunately the shop has now run out of boxes but I think I may have found a (very cheap) supplier online. I've given them my card details and now waiting to see if anything arrives! Hope they come soon, fingers crossed they come at all!


I've added more brooches onto my Featherstitch Fantail sight too!

Jigsaw

While I was away last month my friend Andrea was looking after my stall at Rose Street Artists' Market. She also makes things and had her own work at the stall too. Now I am back we've decided to keep sharing the stall. So I thought I'd show a bit of Andrea's work.


Andrea makes jewellery out of old wooden jigsaws. The jigsaw pieces have their original image on the back and the front is covered with beautiful decorative paper then laquered with resin. They are prooving very popular!

Earrings

Earring and necklace set

Brooches

I have also listed more brooches on my Featherstitch Fantail website I'm trying to get lots made for the Christmas rush. Have a look and order early if you any take your fancy!

Be a Tourist In Your Own Town

A bee in a blossoming tee tree at Collingwood Station

A friend of mine has come to Australia for a visit and we did lots of touristy things today. Lots of things that even I had never done before. It's a shame that it takes someone else to arrive for you to explore the city you live in. I found that a lot of the things we did were probably more interesting for me because I did live here, for example we went to the Rialto Tower that is 88 stories high and has a viewing deck. It was brilliant working out where I lived, where my old house was, where Fitzroys is and how long Lygon Street goes on for! Then we went to the City Museum which had lots of old photographs and old films of how Melbourne used to look. As I said, probably a lot more interesting for me than for my friend. So if you live in Melbourne take the time and go to these places, they're great!

Views of Melbourne from the viewing deck at the Rialto Tower


A lovely poppy in the Fitzroy Gardens. I love poppies.

I then decided when I got home to go down to the Abbotsford Convent and draw. I'm feeling a bit sad that Jeremy and I will soon be leaving Abbotsford and moving across town in mid November. Abbotsford is such a lovely suburb with the Convent grounds, the River Yarra, the Collingwood Childrens' Farm, I wanted to make the most of it on this lovely day!

Abbotsford Convent, continuous line drawing, left hand