So, March and April 2020, hey. Everyone has responded to the lockdown in their own way. No one knew how it would be when it came down to actuality, so whatever the response has been, it is an honest one.

This is awful, and no one is immune. That sentence sent a chill down my spine

5 days before this I posted loads of pictures of my new top. The strangeness of that.

“Eighty-eight thousand people have lost their jobs. The NRL is suspending the 2020 season. The olympics won’t go ahead this year. Queensland has closed its borders to us, 3000 Australians are stranded on cruise ships around the world, and we can’t go to the pub for a drink. If I told you six weeks ago this would happen you would think I was making it up. Well, all of these things happened in one day. Today.
”

— From The Guardian.com /world/live/2020/mar/23/australia-coronavirus-updates-live-pubs-closed-but-schools-open-after-national-cabinet-meeting-latest>

In that one day, everything dramatically changed.

My studio is downstairs from where we live, so its disconnected which is good, but during these weeks I’ve wanted to be with my family; I felt like I wanted to keep everyone together, when everything is coming apart. I started sewing. I haven’t been sewing as much as I’d liked to over the last 3-4 years, any time I have is given to work; I’m feeling my years are running out & I need to be in the studio, there’s still things to make. All the time. And then I stopped. And I started sewing. Keeping things together. Louise Bourgeois ratified psychological therapy.

As the dining table is now office WFH station, I moved my sewing machines into the kitchen & the fairly small table we have in there. Its a kitchen table like, a table where you put all the mail that grows into a pile of mail, until every 6 months you freak out that there’s probably something really important in there & you throw it all out. That’s where I’m stationed and it feels right. Maybe soon I’ll have had enough. There is work to be made.

My fellas also needed somewhere to go so they’ve been in my studio making shit loads of mess, the bad kind that makes sawdust that really interferes with oil glazes & gilding. But thats where they were called & I cant really ban them from it, given these times. They’ve been making miniature siege weapons and as I type that, I can see the sense of it: its like the world is laying siege to itself! People keep saying “we’re all in this together” when really, it’s everyone for themselves, keep us out of it thank you, everything out there is life threatening. So making siege weapons, albeit very little siege weapons, is an emotionally valid response. I buried myself in making clothes. Which had really needed doing to be honest, not having taken that time out to sew has left me with poor wardrobe choices. But then I haven’t been getting out much anyway. And now I have all these clothes…

They’ve been making catapults & Ballista for a long time but never this miniature scale. We once had a 1.5 meter high Trebuchet in the back yard for bricks to be sent down to the skip when we renovated, so they had to go miniature this time around just to keep it interesting. These guys.

Ironing board in the sewing-kitchen, as Ballista proving ground. Ballista threatening a bookend.

Emmet-mini-crossbow.3.jpg — The bamboo bendy bit is a design breakthrough. Dont even need elastic bands for this one

Senseless waste of cucumber life

Train station car park. Some photos need to be taken.

Rosie_Perl_somerfield-coat-14.0.jpg — Workin’ it

My Magnificent Somerfield Coat

It’s a rubber band gun. With auto fire of up to 22 rubber bands & a dummy magazine ejecting wooden dowel cartridges. Incredible — It’s a *rubber band* gun. With auto fire of up to 22 rubber bands & a dummy magazine ejecting wooden dowel cartridges. Incredible

Endless walks around the neighbourhood has revealed these two creatures. The pug’s name is Ben, I’m not aware of the true identity of the concrete pig.