A weekend in Melbourne

We spent the last weekend in Melbourne, partly because our son Nick was doing a course there and asked if we'd like to come. It was my birthday on Sunday, so we got to spend time with him. The added bonus is my sister lives in Melbourne and I don't get enough time to be with her. We stayed in an apartment in the heart of the city which was a short walk from the sights and fabulous food.

In summary - a great weekend - fabulous food, long walk, time with family

and a lazy afternoon being photo-creative.

Here is my photo story of our weekend.

Sunrise light reflecting on the pool stairs

Fabulous breakfast; fried brioche with berries at Hardware Society, Hardware Lane

In the grounds of the Convent Abbotsford after a long walk and yummy lunch with my sister Kathy, her husband, Pete and my hubby, Bruce.

Building Reflections (sideways!)

 

Gorgeous light caught my eye

Waterlogue app on my iPad rendered the photo into a watercolour

Double exposure and filter created by Diana app for iPhone

Double exposure; my cousin's window in England and a beach view in Australia with Diana app

 

Exploring Water

Last week, I was exploring underwater photography. Maybe not so much my One Little Word EMERGE but rather SUBMERGE!

I was inspired by some photos that my brother Peter took of his daughter underwater as well as the ones that my friend Therese publishes on her swimming pool blog.

Bruce found that his small video camera is water proof and I purchased a small Olympus Tough TG2 as I am keen to experiment. We visited Mona Vale sea water pool and had some fun. It is early days as we experiment with taking photos in tiny rock pools as well as the murky depths of the sea swimming pool. Here are our first attempts.

Shell in rock pool taken underwater

Bubbles on the surface

Bruce with water reflections

Underwater selfie
 

gratitude week 2 February

Saturday 8 Feb
Preparing for visit by my friends, I decided to make a cake. Here is one that I love to bake - gluten free Apple and Almond Cake. I loved that they said it looked so professional! You can find the recipe here.
http://www.citrusandcandy.com/2009/09/flourless-apple-and-almond-tea-cake.html

Sunday 9 Feb
Brunch with my dear friends from my clowning days- we met 35 years ago and have been meeting regularly for 21 years - we are ageing, we are changing, we hold a sacred space where we can share our inner most thoughts and sometimes we laugh.

Monday 10 Feb
Listening to Ludovico Einaudi on CD, reliving the concert on Sunday night at the Opera House. Haunting and evocative.

Tuesday 11 Feb
Enjoying beautiful organic fruits picked by my friend Deb and brought to us when she visited on the weekend. Luscious.

Wednesday 12 Feb
Lunch with my gorgeous son, Nick..I didn't take a photo so I will have to use a favourite one of him, although he says he is much older now. I don't think he has changed in 5 years!

 

Thursday 13 Feb
Feeling energised after my hydrotherapy and Bowen treatment. Thank goodness for caring professionals helping my shoulder recover.

[no picture for this]


Friday 14 Feb
Valentines Day- my husband is away and he sends me flowers and they are gorgeous purple and white lisianthus. Love that he remembered and chose my favourites.

the meaning of EMERGE

I am playing with my word for 2014

creating word clouds

of different meanings

and phrases

trying to see where my word EMERGE

may lead me this year.

I like the possibilities that my word evokes.

 

 

 You can make your own word clouds here on Wordle

http://www.wordle.net/

 

Light

On the weekend, I was captivated by light and shadows. Here are three images that caught my eye.

Trees
I was lying on the floor doing my shoulder stretch when I noticed that the sun was creating wonderful highlights and shadows on the tree outside the window.

Celtis shadows

Rug

The African rug draped on a chair caught the morning sun and reflected the stair banister.

Rug and stair shadows

Begonia
It was the light that caught my eye and then the tiny heart within the flower.

Heart light on Begonia



Gratitude Feb week 1

Today's post is a week of Gratitude in pictures. It is a challenge to remember to take a photo and think about gratitude..I have also added a paint filter to my photos just for fun..I do like creating paintings from my photos..
Being grateful everyday for at least one thing, improves my mood and reminds me that even when I feel down there is always something that has happened that day that brings me joy..

Saturday 1 Feb; Bruce and I walked from Clovelly to Bondi and back. This is a beautiful coastal walk. We got exercise, fresh air, beautiful blue water and clear blue skies. In this photo, lunch was nearby as was respite from the heat and humidity.



lunch is in sight

Sunday 2 Feb: I enjoyed a quiet coffee in the garden. It was peaceful and restorative. Bruce went to the beach, I stayed home, reading the papers and enjoying the birds, the flowers and the quiet.

Morning coffee

Monday 3 Feb: I went for a swim. Not in this pool - it's the one at Bondi. I swam in an indoor pool sheltered from the sun. Still this image captures the "feeling". Moving fluidly through water..

swimmers at Bondi Icebergs pool

Tuesday 4 Feb: Purple lisianthus are some of my favourite flowers, I found some in the local supermarket and they are now in my kitchen. Beautiful. The photo looks particularly beautiful in the watercolour filter. Wish I could paint like this.

Lisianthus

Wednesday 5 Feb
Bruce and I did some much needed pruning of trees in the garden and restrung some of our solar-powered fairy lights. Love the twinkles at night. The craggy bark and hanging plants are lit up in the dying light of the day.

Twinkle lights on the crepe myrtle

Thurs 6 Feb
Time to do some quilting. I am working on a sea blue quilt for my son, Nick. Enjoying the colours and the challenge. I was drawn to Kaffe Fassett's Earthy Mitre squares as a design but have made this a centre panel while I create soft sea scape stripes top and bottom.



Making progress, sea blues squares and stripes

Fri 7 Feb
Nothing creates a sense of summer more to me than luscious mango. When I was a child we would be given a mango to eat as a special treat. The sweet juice would run down our arms as we sank our teeth into the soft flesh. It is still my favourite summer fruit even if I have learned to nibble the flesh from the skin rather than sink my teeth into the softness around the stone.

mango ready for breakfast

Glass Bottles

When we were in London last year, wandering around the British Museum in the Turkish/Moroccan section, I saw these glass bottles. The light illuminated them perfectly and I was enraptured. I am dreaming of turning this picture into a quilted wall-hanging, if only I could work out how to do it. Design ideas keep swirling in my sleep.

Glass Bottles British Museum London

In the Metropolitan Museum in  New York, I kept circling back to the Tiffany Glass - pictures fashioned in stained glass. Again I thought of creating these pictures in fabric.

Year before last, in Noosa, Queensland, I spied these Mason jars filled with flowers and hanging from trees at a wedding reception. So simple and lovely

 

Now I find my eye is drawn to glass jars and bottles in homewares shops and on Pinterest.

So much so I've started a Pin board on glass bottles - just to get a gallery of shapes to work with.
http://www.pinterest.com/jennyfisher3/glass-bottles/

Hmm, think there is a drawing or design bubbling in the background here or maybe just a need to be creative with glass.

Gratitude January

Ever since I read how practising gratitude can improve mood and sense of wellbeing, I have been an inconsistent proponent of the habit.

In 2009, I read a magazine article about a woman who took a photo of the small things that she was grateful for, every day and posted it on Flickr . She had been experiencing depression and she found that posting her daily photo resulted in much improved mood. I started the practice of taking a photo every day. It was fun looking for a moment to capture and photograph. I think my folder had about 30 entries, maybe one month's worth.

Then I read in Sonja Lyubomirsky's wonderful book, The How of Happiness that writing  in a gratitude journal significantly boosted happiness. While it is recommended that you do it every day, Sonja says that once a week can be effective. In the last few years when I have become stressed and negative and unhappy, I would pull out my gratitude journal and write down my thoughts. It has been so important to take my focus off my worries and instead focus on moments of beauty, people, places that I am lucky to have in my life.

So I plan to look for those moments of gratitude and post them in my blog at least once a week. Today I'm doing a catchup.. for January and here are 10 things that I am grateful for

1. the extent of surgery on my arm was much less than had been predicted and
2. my recovery is happening so much more quickly
3. my friends who sent me so much love and support before, during and after my surgery- I floated on a cloud of love
4. my husband who listened to and supported me in my pre-op nervous jitters and my post-op exhaustion
5. a friend who sent the most exquisite bunch of flowers that not only looked divine in pinks and blues but also wafted a heavenly scent when I walked in the room
6. the beautiful sunshine that has greeted me so often in January making it a pleasure to sit on our deck
7. our garden has felt like a peaceful oasis where I can rest and heal
8. getting back into the pool and realising how much I love my swimming
9. breakfast with our son Nick on Australia Day at a cafe on the local marina
10. feeling the return of energy and excitement about what 2014 has in store

What are you grateful for today?

I love flowers

One Little Word 2014

My one little word for 2014 is EMERGE.

I chose this word because I feel as though I am ready to move into a new phase of my life. It is two and a half years since we walked out of the doors of Allen-Fisher Acoustics, the business that my husband and I nurtured and grew for 12 years together and he alone 12 years before.

When we left the business, I said initially that I needed a year to recover, regroup, try on different possibilities until I knew the direction that my new life would take. It's been two.

So this is the year, 2014 when I want to take the first steps towards a new career, work-life or what-ever. I am still no clearer about what to do next. But I am setting the intention to move forward.

The last two years have felt like a cocoon, a place where I have tried creative pursuits and loved them. I have also struggled and in many ways held myself while I waited out this period of change.

What do I hope for in 2014?

That I will EMERGE from
1. my frustrating health issues and return to my former energetic and healthful self
2. the extra kilos I have regained recently and get back to my exercise routine
3. my career hibernation and start / create a new job (don't know what form it will take yet), 
4. some self destructive mindless habits into a more fulfilling and mindful lifestyle.

I have started a board on Pinterest with images for my word.
http://www.pinterest.com/jennyfisher3/one-little-word-2014/

I am imagining tiny green shoots emerging from the soil, a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, the moon or sun rising out of the ocean, nature's beauty emerging from the mist, a flower pushing out of its bud, the feeling of bursting from the water..

I am going to explore this more as the year goes on and I will share my journey with you here

Here is one of the images, a sculpture entitled Freedom by Zenos Frudakis. You can read about his personal vision for this work here. http://zenosfrudakis.com/sculptures/public/Freedom.html



http://designyoutrust.com/2011/10/04/sculpture-breaks-free/
 

Stepping into 2014

Here I am two weeks post surgery on my shoulder and the outcome is far from what I expected.

Last year, the MRI showed that I had a high grade tear in my subscapularis and a lesser tear in my biceps tendon. When the surgeon looked at my shoulder through the arthroscope two weeks ago, there was no evidence of either tear. I know I spent much of last year wishing for a miracle cure but the photos he took of the tendons show them in pristine condition. So it seems that the interpretation of the MRI was wrong.

However, he did find a small tear in the labrum, the cartilage that that forms the capsule of the shoulder and extensive capsulitis - scar tissue - commonly known as "frozen shoulder". Or in Japan it is known as "50 shoulder" because people over 50 especially women are prone to it. He sutured the labrum tear, released some of the scar tissue and tipped my rehab plan on its head.

After I woke from surgery, my arm was restrained in a sling and I was numb from the neck to the finger tips. It was a very strange feeling or lack of feeling to be precise. With my good hand, I would find my numb one and it was as if it was not attached to me, no feeling, no sensation, very unsettling.

When I moved, my arm hung limp and lifeless in the sling. My brain kept wanting to shake life back into my numb hand but I couldn't move it, even more confusing. Slowly feeling returned, first pins and needles and then full nerve sensation and eventually after about 18 hours, I could move my hand again.

The surgeon visited me in the morning, with my hand feeling normal, I was shaking off the last vestiges of post-operative drowsiness. He said "Don't use the sling, move your arm as much as possible. We have make sure that the stiffness caused by the frozen shoulder doesn't return and further we have to get the joint moving so that your shoulder can "break through" the remaining scar tissue.

At first I was elated; the dependence, the restrictions, the immobility that I had dreaded and feared did not eventuate. The rehab time would be much shorter.

Then I was thrown off kilter, what if I had known this last year, would I?  could I? what if?
Of course "what ifs" are not helpful. I can't go back and reclaim last year.

It has taken me two weeks to get my energy back, to get off the couch and start to move again, to reclaim my normal life. I am moving my shoulder now at the same level and range of movement that I had before the operation.  

I am in a strange place emotionally. I had quarantined the beginning of this year for rehabilitation, restriction and limitation. I feel as though I been given a bonus and I can't squander the time. Yet I still need to focus on my rehabilitation. I start hydrotherapy tomorrow. I have to do my stretches several times a day.

But I am rethinking February and March and looking forward to doing more sooner rather than later.

Sculpture entitled "Entrust" Derwent Water, Lake District, England October 2013