Stage and Craft

After far too many hours of cleaning and scrubbing everything, with much help from Lizzie and Christi, There are still some things that we need to fix up, and we still have an assortment of boxes to unpack but Brendan and I are getting settled quite nicely into our new, old house. In a month, Brendan and I will have been married for a whole year. How nutty is that? “Kenya believe it?” It has absolutely flown by.
 

I am loving being back in Bendigo. There is just something about this town that I really love, and hanging out with Christi again has been just great. We have been friends for about ten years now, how bizarre is that?
 I still feel like we are in high school half the time and its hard to believe we have known each other for such a long time. She has been great about including me when she does things with Tegan and stuff, (U-paint! Awesome- upaint is a little store where you can go, have a coffee and paint the crap out of very random ceramic figurines or jugs or things, they go from about two dollars up to…a zillion, for different sized things. Very childlike activity – except with more caffeine involved) She also bought me the cutest earrings, from...etsy? where they on etsy? they are like cameo earrings, but llamas. yes!

 

Christi and I have been having a “Craft Day” every Thursday for the last few months, and it has been so much fun. We have done felting – making scarves and very funny hats, made leather bracelet things (mine sporting a black llama on a magenta background), we sewed needle books, to hold needles and pins (mine sporting an appliqué llama.) We melted old records in the oven to mould them into funky shaped bowls, and we made collages out of playboy and wedding magazines and scraps of material and other odds and ends.

Collage in the process. So much mess. So much fun!

Tally Ho! A finished Collage.

This week just gone, we made “cold cream porcelain” out of an assortment of ingredients that really should not go together. With that, we made creepy sea creature women – I attempted a giant breasted squid woman (inspired, unashamedly by Ursula from The Little Mermaid) and Crispy made a very cool, terrifying brood mother, with six breasts and a large gaping mouth…and a fish tail.

 

I was very brave and auditioned for one of the theatre company’s productions, and I got in, as one of the principal characters. We have only had three rehearsals so far, but it is already so much fun I can’t believe it.

It’s so very different, I feel very out of my comfort zone, because I don’t know anyone at all in the show – which also means I have no pre-conceived notions about anyone in the cast at all. 

I am learning things about the various people as rehearsals progress, but I only have my own feelings to go on at this point. 

I also don’t know what anyone in the cast or crew are capable of yet, which is very new to me.

I am so used to seeing people and going, yep, I know that they can do that, I’ve heard them a hundred times, or knowing exactly who is new to the company, and who has been around for years, because I spent so much of my life growing up, at the Bakehouse. 

Nevertheless, even though it is kind of scary and at times very bewildering, I am loving it. I am really excited about the show – about getting to know the people and about the performing (and getting to wear a cool fifties dress – thank you Lisa, hehe)

Brendan is on two weeks holidays at the moment and so is Durston (Brendan’s hetero-life-partner) so the two of them spent much of last week playing video games and drinking their weight in alcohol. They are very funny boys. I drifted between feeling like a den mother, or a little sister at times during the great Game Play of Spring Break, and also regressing to high school Katy, but it was very cool to play with the boys, and I did like looking after them, to some extent, and know Bren loved having his boy here.

Elise moved to Geelong to go to Uni yesterday, so on Friday we went to Shepparton, to have a family dinner at Corrie as a farewell type thing. I predict that Elise will be queen of the campus in about a week.

Lizzie is in full swing Festival-Queen now – not sleeping a lot, and working like a crazy person to get the Festival ready. It will be fantastic, of course, but I miss Lizzie when she becomes Festival Lizzie - her usually over-active mind starts running even faster than usual and she gets frazzled easily. She is so strong and so capable, but I do worry that she will burn herself out with this festival.