And we're off!

It's a crazy windy day in Hobart and we're gearing up to head to Devonport tomorrow. It's a 3 hour drive from here to the North West coast of Tassie so we're hoping the wind will settle before tomorrow. Chris is teaching at Don College for 2 days doing a short course for secondary school students on comics. It's part lecture and part workshop. He's preparing for it now and it looks like it will be a great day. I'm looking forward to some R&R at the hotel and then some family time on Tuesday night with my mum and gran. There's a cute cat fleece scarf that I want to make too! It's in this book by Aranzi Aronzo. They are super fab and have some nifty sewing projects to boot.

In other news, I've decided to retire from review writing for now. I've been working as an arts writer for over ten years and have some great mags under my belt but for the last year, I've been falling out of love with the reviewing process. While I enjoyed the writing, having to wrestle with gallery staff (over the most simple requests) on my days off was tiresome and time consuming. Sometimes I wondered if we were speaking the same language! Having less time to myself has also made me really think about how I want to spend it. There's a lot less pressure to make money from writing now (oh look, I wrote for a whole week and got paid $75!) and frankly, I'm a little bored with contemporary art and all the fancy-pants networking that goes with it. That's not to say I don't appreciate some of it still. Our lives are just taking us in new directions. I'm having so much fun learning how to sew. I'm starting to enjoy my time off and we're on the road to preparing to add to our little family. It's an exciting and really fulfilling time. Plus, it's nice to devote time to special things like catalogue essays and comics. In short, I'm not missing the reviews at all!

So, after Devonport our next big thing is the Young Writers Festival in Newcastle (October 1 - 5). We need to get our butts into gear and book our flights to Sydney, eek! I'm still in two minds about going to see Tori Amos in November as well. I haven't been keen on her new stuff but I adore everything before To Venus and Back. She's one of the last on my must-see list. Seen Tom Waits, the Eels, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. Decisions, decisions!

By the way, if this was our kid I would totally pee my pants. He is awesome.



PS. Pucca gets to go to Catnip while we're away. Yep, that's a feline resort folks.