Looking up

The Child and I decided to take a morning to check out the Laneway Art exhibition. The blow-up PVC sculpture, Donut, above, is supposedly referencing "European and Indigenous depictions of time travel and healing" as well as the the "circular branches of Aboriginal healing trees" and "contemporary pop culture: a 'pie in the sky', something unattainable yet delicious". Luckily I'd read up beforehad as I was able to pass on this information rather than tell The Child it was something that floated over from the New Year's Eve fireworks and got stuck between the buildings.

What I found most interesting was the exhibition took us to five laneways in the city that I didn't even know existed (six artworks, one lane I knew). Rather than rushing by, we walked in and looked around and discovered pockets of Sydney that have remained hidden from me all my life. I now know of somewhere to get takeaway sushi midweek and then sit in the sun away from the crowds as well as the bowels of Westfield.

The experience reminded me of a story I wrote years ago when I was a staff writer for the now-defunct SHE magazine. It was all about simple pleasures and solutions. One that's stuck with me is to take the time to look up sometimes instead of just ahead. Whenever I do this I always notice something new (to me).

And you don't have to live in a big city for this to apply. You may be walking under a lovely bird's nest in a tree every day but never noticed. Just make sure you look back down before you cross a road...

On another note, the experiments from Favourite Cakes, the book I blogged about last week, continue. So far, we've made Honey Syrup Cake, Vanilla Angel Food Cake with Fresh Berry Icing, Chocolate Roulade with Berry Cream and Apricot Blondies, above. All good. All easy. All chosen and approved of by The Child.

Have a lovely weekend.

Street art

Caught the ferry over to Cockatoo Island to see the street art exhibition that's currently on. I don't even like street art much but I do like ferries so the highlight for me was sitting at the back and watching the harbour open up around me.

Getting a bird's-eye view into some of the waterfront homes isn't bad either.

The industrial setting of Cockatoo Island is perfect for the exhibition. Whether wandering through the tunnels, taking a break at the open-air bar, dodging toddlers at the ice-cream stands or just rambling around the site, there's something for everyone. Even nature lovers.

Seagulls nest on a rocky cliff, which they don't seem to realise is bordered by a fence. A fence that's there to stop people falling off. Drawn to the view, you find yourself right at the fence only to be shouted at by birds who are nesting centimetres from your toes. Clearly, it's egg time and the birds got very shouty. The only reason I knew there were nests was because of all the screeching.

As soon as we realised what was happening, we backed away and left them alone. You can see some of them here all lined up, beaks open and blasting, which is fair enough. We left.

Back down at water level, we watched them swoop warning crowds below to keep away. Crowds which weren't remotely interested in them so they were getting worked up about nothing. But that's seagulls for you.

Fascinating to watch them acting naturally rather than how I usually see them, which is harrassing people for chips at the beach.

My kind of art.

Material world

Isn't this a great idea? If we didn't have plans to do stuff in the great outdoors this weekend, I'd definitely be taking a look. Snapped in the window of the reasonably new shop Follow in Cleveland St, Surry Hill (old Bird Textiles site), which is run by the pair behind the Finders Keepers markets so worth a look if you're in the area.

If I was a power blogger, I'd organise something similar online but since I'm not, I'll have to file the idea in the never-will-happen pile.

Speaking of fabrics, I know it's very naughty of Spotlight to be 'taking inspiration from' or, speaking plainly, ripping off Liberty prints, even to the point of the names - ie top is called Japan Tana Lawn Tonga, bottom is Japan Tana Lawn Navy - but at $14.95 a metre I found myself at the counter with rolls in hand.

The bottom fabric will become a second Japanese sack (which I'm now in love with, strangely) and the other a lampshade for The Child's room. I'll be covering a frame with it (what's called a soft lampshade in the biz) and will do a tutorial.

Lampshade is in the will-do-but-not-sure-when pile. Hopefully next week.