Little / Big

Jen. Melbourne, Australia. The cast includes the Husband and F (the kid). Here since 03.03.09.

[little-big]

Last weekend I had my first attempt at collaring on the wheel - basically bringing the sides of a pot in, for a narrower opening. I thought experimenting with some smaller forms - bud vases and posy vases - would be a good way to practice the techniques needed. This was my go at it (last weekend), and then this is the same pot after trimming (yesterday):

(I need to work on the shape of the form in the initial throw, and bringing up more clay from the base - but it’s practice practice practice, and none of the clay from trimming is wasted, it goes in my slops/scraps bucket to reclaim and throw again another day).

And here are my attempts from yesterday:

(Especially proud of the one with the flared neck/opening!)

Anyway, still obsessed with pottery and wheel throwing and wish I could do it every day.

[little-big]

Red sky in morning, shepherd’s warning?

Anyway, it was a colourful start to Monday.

[little-big]

Mural progress - Friday lunch time & Sunday afternoon:

We also did a lot of pruning, and clearing ivy off the back fence. We have a branch mulcher that we use for fruit tree branches, but the ivy had to go in the green waste bin. We filled our bin and then borrowed our neighbours’ bin too. Some of the creatures we spotted behind the cut - includes a skink, a huntsman spider, and a paper wasp:

[little-big]

It’s been such a good Saturday. A perfect blue sky sunny day. Mural painting. Pruning. More painting. Pottery. More painting. Dinner out with friends.

My upper back is letting my know all about the pruning and painting, and I could really do with a shoulder massage but the best I’m going to get right now is a heat pack and bedtime.

[cal3ris]

is this gonna get me fired you think

[little-big]

This reply is a good one. Filing it here as a reminder because I’m sure we’re going to get a similar question on our next Peakon survey.

[little-big]

None of the other magnolias I passed in Flagstaff Gardens were flowering yet, but this huge tree was covered with blooms.

[little-big]

I think that a lot of things right now - even subtle things, like the angle of the light and the cold weather - are (for want of a better word) triggering deeply held / unprocessed emotions and grief from the month leading up to Dad’s death in August last year. Yes, there are things right now that are bringing me joy, great joy even (pottery, art, etc), but there’s also this unresolved sadness (potentially impossible to resolve?) that I don’t know what to do with.

Trying to keep feeling the feelings, and give myself patience and grace.

(I thought maybe talking to a counsellor might help, and tried making an appointment through the EAP app provided by work - the booking system was so clunky that I almost threw my phone across the room. Maybe I’ll still look into it but all I could think of was that the system was so broken for people trying to seek help).

[little-big]

I made a decision on a case at work last week, and it got picked up by the AI audit as incorrect. To me, it was an edge case that could’ve gone either way but I looked at the sum of evidence and made a decision that favoured the customer. Anyway, it got referred to human auditors and 3/4 disagreed with me and it was referred to the technical manager, and today I’ll find out the consequences (which will be inconsequential - if anything at all!). It’s one case and logically it doesn’t bother me but I couldn’t quite put it aside overnight so it went around and around in my head.

Then I kept thinking about the upcoming anniversary of Dad’s passing, and stressing that I hadn’t taken the day off work, and thinking about this time last year and all the difficult days in the lead up. (When I checked my calendar after I got up, I confirmed that it’s on a Sunday this year, so I didn’t need to take leave - so again, stressing about nothing).

And when I was sleeping in between all of the above, I dreamt that there was a huge, dead whale in the driveway at the farm and we were trying to figure out how the hell we were going to dispose of it, particularly since the farm is over an hours’ drive from any coast and it was blocking access to one of the sheds and crushing several rows of my sister’s flower beds.

[scottpartridge]

The first three weeks of #birdartweekly this month, featuring #birdsofaustralia, are Splendid Fairy Wren, Gang Gang Cockatoo, and Pink Robin.

hosted by @migratorymay and @nt.lukas

[queerasaurus-rexx]

So, uh

Sam Neill passed away.

A lot of people know him as Dr. Grant from Jurassic Park, but Sam Neill has an incredible catalogue of film and television, stretching back to 1975 on the big screen, but he cut his teeth in university productions of Shakespearean dramas.

All this to say, Sam Neill never let himself get pigeonholed as an actor. He was an incredibly versatile actor with a plethora of roles and genres to his name.

And that's not even touching upon his interests outside of acting. He was a passionate vintner (of the Two Paddocks winery) and an outspoken environmentalist who frequently spoke out against political policy that negatively affected indigenous peoples in Australia and New Zealand.

Jurassic Park is an incredible film, and I know many people have fond memories of the original trilogy.

But Sam Neill was more than just Dr. Grant. And I think that should be remembered too.

[dk-thrive]

He said the happiest people, in every society and every era, were those who created things, but without ambition.

They came upon a booth where a woman was selling baskets and belts made of leather. They stopped, smiled, touched the objects, walked on... “But maybe in three hundred years those belts are on display at the Met, as examples of late twentieth-century Midwestern arts and crafts. And I had an anthropologist friend—he’d studied people all over the world for fifty years. He said the happiest people, in every society and every era, were those who created things, but without ambition. The people who make belts, vases, toys. You bring something new into the world, like a god, but without the human need to be recognized for it. Is that happiness?

— Dave Eggers, Contrapposto: A Novel (Knopf, June 9, 2026)

[little-big]

Through the week whenever I had a moment, I worked on gridding up the outlines for my mural panel. And finally today I started painting! First coat of first colour is done! Can’t wait to watch this evolve.

And shortly I’m off to the pottery studio - a very creative Saturday and I’m loving it.

[little-big]

Getting better at making bowls, still not great at remembering to photograph them. These will be trimmed once they dry a bit more, so the bases won’t look quite so funky. Even though I was weary last night, it was so good to get out and throw something after almost two weeks away from the pottery studio. Back there again tomorrow afternoon.

[little-big]

I took a five day weekend since it’s the winter school holidays. I sorely needed the break, and even though I didn’t get to do all I wanted to do - a lot still happened:

Went out for dinner at a Spanish restaurant (Movida), with a voucher I won at work last year; we had an almost $400 dinner and it only cost us $35.

Planted up about a dozen pots of succulents, and expanded the succulent garden outside our dining room window (trying to distract from the boring view of the boundary fence).

Dropped off several shopping bags’ of stuff to the opshop as we continue cleaning stuff from the living room.

Cleaned the deck and set up an area to paint mural panels (again, more distractions from the boring fence view - especially once the new kitchen windows go in).

Painted the undercoat on the cement sheet panel for the first mural, measured out grid lines, and transposed almost all of the first image (only 8 out of 32 squares to fill!).

Caught F’s head cold (tested negative for all the things on the home test kits), and had a fever dream convinced that this was the end of me… but in the next dream/delirium was stressing about what will go in the new storage in the living room.

Back to work tomorrow. I’ll work from home since I’m full of snot, but have been feeling so much better today. I missed out on doing the extra pottery studio sessions I’d planned - at least I survived the fever so there’s still time for more of them when I stop needing to blow my nose every five minutes.

[little-big]

Sadly the husband put the kibosh on this tap for our kitchen. I mean it doesn’t match our colour scheme (or anything at all) but it would’ve been a talking point:

[little-big]

Tiles arrived today! Ignore the white glue stuff, it’s part of the packing (I think), and it comes off easily. I love the colour and texture variations.

We’re sort of at this paused point with the renovations. We’re waiting on the cabinetry to be finished and then installed for the living room, and once that’s done, the living room flooring can be done. After that, the final measurements get taken for the kitchen cabinetry and then it’s waiting on that cabinetry and the builder’s availability.

We have everything except a sink tap and filtered water tap - our spare room has a sink, oven, cooktop, rangehood, cabinet handles, ceiling lights, and now tiles. All the colours for the bench top and cabinets and living room flooring and wall paint have been picked out.

We’re gradually clearing out the bookshelf and TV cabinet to move and sell - some things have gone on FB marketplace (the Wii sold super quickly!), others to the opshop and local buy nothing group.

I feel like once things start happening, they’ll happen all very quickly, but for now I’m getting kind of impatient.

[little-big]

I have a five day weekend coming up - I took a few days either side of the weekend since it’s school holidays - and I can’t wait. Sure, F and I will probably do something but he’s much more interested in hanging out (or gaming) with friends. I have plans to do a couple of extra sessions at the pottery studio, and also start my murals!!!!! (Lots of exclamation marks required because I’m truly excited about it). We bought the materials over the weekend - including two trips to Bunnings since we didn’t counter on needing the trailer - and I may have underestimated how much paint will be needed for the whole project, but I can’t wait to get started.