I really am still alive, here comes 2012

Right, it is way overdue for me to update on here and so here goes.

2011 was a busy year and the end of a few things in my life. For one, it was the end of my unhealthy eating habits and my no exercise regime. I am now much better at eating healthy and also trying to keep up exercising.

I also finished working at Marden Senior College. I loved my time at Marden and must say I’m sad to be leaving. I learnt so much in my time there and am very thankful to the staff I worked with.

I had been there for 4 years, on a yearly contract. Therefore it meant that at the end of every year I had to wait to see whether or not my contract would be renewed. This made life somewhat uncertain when you have bills and a mortgage to pay.  I also didn’t get paid for holidays so when you have 5 weeks off over summer and you’re waiting to find out if you even have a job the next year it is fairly stressful. It is for these reasons that I decided it was time to find myself a permanent job.

At the end of January (we’re 2012 now aren’t we?) I start a new job at St. Peter’s Girls. It will be a huge change for me as being a teacher at Marden was very different to most schools. 

So a new school and healthy habits are 2 of the plans for 2012. The other plans involve continuing with house renovations, working on a solo exhibition and working on a joint exhibition.

I’ve spent most of my holiday painting doors and doorways in our house, exciting, I know. They were buttercup yellow and had been driving me crazy since we bought the house 2 years ago. Once I finish all the doors, I will then start with the walls (not bright yellow, so not as urgent) and then start ripping up the carpet to show off the polished boards. So in other words, I have a large amount of work in front of me. My husband works 12-14 hour days and 7 days a week a lot of the time, so I do most of the renovation work.

During 2012 I will continue to be part of a textile arts group called SAlt. SAlt stands for South Australian living textiles. There are 5 women in our group, this includes; Julie Haddrick, Judi Bushby, Francie Mewett, Suzanne Gummow and myself. We meet once a month to review our progress and critique each others work.   During 2011 we each worked on 4 pieces of work, we all had the same theme for each piece and then simply took our own approach to creating the piece.

During this year we aim to complete another 4 pieces each, the themes for this year are linked to last years themes. We are currently working on the exhibiting part of the process. It won’t be for quite some time, don’t worry I’ll make sure the whole world knows about it when it happens.

The other thing I’m working on this year is the idea of me having a solo exhibition in the next couple of years.  I’ve talked about it on here before- I call it Exhibition X at this stage as I haven’t decided on a name. The work is based around the idea of vessels in nature. I am looking at nests in particular at this stage. I’m still at the drawing and planning stage as I want to put some real thought into this before starting the making part.  I’ve already posted some pictures on here before, they are not actual pieces of work, purely just me getting my head around this topic.

So after explaining all that, I wonder am I going to have any spare time this year? I’ve never been good with having spare time anyway, I’m not good at sitting still.

Well that’s it for me, until next time……