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Lately, I've been enjoying winter, but dreaming of summer...


This summer I'll be:

Drinking these all summer long...

Wearing some sort of delightful 40's inspired bikini like these...

Twirling and dancing in some sort of happy flowing sun dress, possibly covered in flowers or stripes or geometric patterns. Maybe I'll even make it myself...

Constantly snapping away with the most amazing camera that I recently found hiding in my house (an old old old Canon... will rave and ramble and celebrate this amazing  camera in an upcoming post)...

and blogging away on my new MacBook Pro that will be arriving soon! That's right, I'm switching to Mac and I'm bursting with fruit flavour excitement about it!

aah, Summer, you tease me with your distance...

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I like to make little bits and bobs.

Lately, I've been wondering whether my making of bits and bobs could perhaps be lucrative.

So I've decided to start with some little things.

Whaddaya reckon? Would you pay cash money for these happy little mittens?

Bel. x

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That's it. I'm gonna learn french and practice the mandolin more.

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When I grow up...

I'd like to be like this lady. She makes the most killer knitwear. Her pieces look like a whole bunch of sheep ate an entire field of licorice allsorts and somehow the candy colours ended up in their wool (?) and then she knitted that wool into a frenzy of pattern and geometric delight. Incredible, I know.

Anyhow, I guess I'm on my way. I've been crafting diligently and I've almost finished my epic winter blanket (you'll see it soon) and I'm about to open an etsy shop (the moment I pick a name..and make some more goods, the shop is up).

Licorice Allsort creativity, here I come!

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So much of my life right now is characterised by this central decision: what should I leave behind, and what should I take with me? A lot of this is emotional/mental fluff that I'm trying to sort my way through. For the most part though, I'm dealing with physical stuff. And the question I'm asking myself is: what, which and how many things do I really need and which things are really useful - for practical or soul nourishing reasons.

After 24 years of growing up on the same block of land, it's suddenly fallen on me to sort things out and get my house ready to sell later in the year. It's daunting, it's painful, it's suprising, it's joyful, it's a lot of work.

It's a relief.

It's keeping me busy.

The best moments come in re-discovering memories. Sometimes, it's hard to know what to keep and what to just hold for a moment then give away. And then, sometimes it's not so hard at all to make that decision. I'v now decided that anything that I get even the slightest bit gooey and gushy about stays. So there, stuff.

I've always been a collector of notebooks and scraps of notes and photos and general paper-y remembrances.

They find their homes in old shoe boxes or photo files.

Flipping through I feel that I know what I'll find...

drawings from the time when I used to draw a tree each day..

a tab I learnt from a friend (with my own special codes: Am7 w pinky, funny G)..

photos from the time I found a black and white roll of film..

blossoms in my neighbourhood

a rainy day suprise photo souvenir in front of La Moneda with my oldest Chilean pal..

the loveliest housemate that ever lived, quietly working her magic with an Otomi backdrop.

my old apartment in Chile..

my home

sacred geometry dreams

 an organic agriculture pop quiz

 a great farm

 the loveliest garden sancutary in buenos aires

 another drawing from the time when I used to draw a tree a day

 another sacred geometry squiggle

 This gift! All the rest, I had known those photos and those bits of papers were in here, but I didn't know where this was!

a card..

and feathers!

aren't they magical?!

think of all the swell things I can make..

earrings!

a miniscule bird?

Cleaning up is swell.

I've been meaning to head out to Cockatoo Island for such a long time now! I missed that amazing festival years ago, I've missed the smaller festivals recently, and even when there were free ferries during last year's Biennale, I still didn't go.

But today! Today, I made it out to this beautiful piece of floating land (because that's what I imagine all islands to be..) and swooned over all the big ol' warehouses filled with rusty machines. But mostly, I got huge artist-envy.

Right now, the island is quietly buzzing with activity as a heap of artists (musicians, visual artists, dancers, performance artists, projectionists and every other kind of awesome art that I don't know how to describe...) prepare for this: the Underbelly Arts 2011. Underbelly has been going for a few years now and this year it looks like this: a bunch of incredibly creative people, one island, a couple of weeks to bring ideas to life and experiment and interact with other artists and the public and then one big old grand festival on the 16th of July to showcase all the work and have a hoe-down on the island.

It's an awesome idea and I love how interactive the process is - both within the group of artists who are creating on the island, and also with the public who can come for a free tour every afternoon up until the day of the festival to poke around and see what's going on.

Man, sometimes I just freaking love Sydney.

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My name is Belinda.


Once upon a time, I had a different blog (http://belindajoysheekey.wordpress.com/ ...with Wordpress, sshhh, don't tell Blogger). I started the blog because I had been reading so many other amazing blogs and I wanted to create something special of my own. I had high hopes for the blog - I would write all the time and upload gorgeous photos and it would all have some great purpose! Ha!

Sometimes, I wrote nice things there. Mostly, I just used it as a place to keep note of other lovely blogs I had found. I would add them to my blogroll and admire my growing list of blogs I swooned over. Meanwhile my own blogging dwindled in quantity ...and perhaps quality?

But here I am with a new home and higher hopes and a few actual purpoes this time! Oh brilliant! I guess the general vibe of what I was going for last time still remains, so I'll include my old "About Me" ramble from before because, well, I liked what I said!

about me:
I’m a hair-braiding, hula-hooping, hand-crafting, hill-billy-at-heart, hell-raiser (maybe). I’m a rambler, but not much of a gambler, and for now, I’m at home. After spending a fair chunk of the past couple of years tramping through the high sierra – way over yonder – I’ve come back home to sunny Sydney, Australia. And as it often goes, I’ve come home with a head full of hopes and ideas and dreams.. and a few resolutions too.
You know how every now and then you meet a person/fella/gal/bunch of lovely sweethearts who just fill your soul up with goodness and light and you feel like you’re your own answer and you’ve got a lot you want to do and you know you can do it? No? Well golly, it’s happened to me recently. Basically, I’ve been inspired. To keep dreaming, hoping, wondering.. and to act on every single little desire and thumping heartbeat and passing whim that I bump into. So the resolution…

Two words: Passion and Action. Sounds a bit raunchy, but I like to think of it as the best goddamn resolution I’ve ever made. To sort out what I’m passionate about and act. Dream in real life. Forward [E]Motion. I guess it all sounds a bit romantic, but as I’m already finding out, turning what seems like ‘a good idea’ into reality can be hard work, time-consuming, and a hair-puller. Or it can be pure knee-slapping joy.

Watch me take on the mandolin, jam-making, worm-farming, bread-baking, seed-sprouting, lunar planting, wool-spinning, sydney-exploring, .. and my most recent whim: to learn everything I possibly can about country music.
(En)Joy.

...so that's all still pretty darn true. Aside from all that, this will probably be an incredibly disjointed and sometimes rambling and sometimes brief kinda blog thing. I'll probably contradict myself and have strange online freakouts followed by blissful life-affirming realisations, but it will hopefully be a refreshing and joyful adventure for us both.

Thanks for joining me.

xx