greenolive

this week's flowers...

I did my best to get some fire engine red flowers for the studio this week, and this is what I was able to come up with. Red, but not quite as red as I'd like them.

I've spied some soft pink flowers within arm's reach so I think they'll do the trick for next week.

found typography

The studio is located in an industrial estate, and there's lots of interesting things lying around the place. Like this stack of wooden pallets – all with different typography. Each a different font, a different colour, all placed there haphazardly by our neighbours the builders.

I'm sure they were wondering why on earth I was photographing them!

 

studio flowers

One of my favourite things about studio life is the flowers. They live in an old glass jar on top of our lovely wooden shop counter and can't help but catch the eye of each visitor.

For the first week I tried bunches of roses bought from the local farmer market – they lasted only a few days in the summer heat. After that expensive disappointment I decided to try local, native flowers from the gum trees the council had planted on the footpaths. Native, colourful, local and free – a perfect solution. And popular too – more than one studio visitor has admired their colour, beauty and simplicity. One even remembered that last week I had orange flowers.

I love watching them evolve over the days – from closed buds to popping open to unfurling to fully opened.

 

Week one was a bright neon orange, week two a paler coral orange and this week is two shades of pink. For week four I'm hoping for bright red – but I'm still trying to find a tree that has flowers at a height I can harvest without the use of a ladder! Not quite inconspicuous that ladder.

letting go in 2012

I was supposed to start the new year recovering from a major operation. In fact the first few months of 2012 were meant to be about recovery. But the universe - and Box Hill Hospital had other ideas! At the eleventh hour, in pre-op with a local aneathestic administered, a hospital bed wasn't available for me and my surgery was cancelled.

So I started 2012 in an unplanned way – plans that I had made in mid-Dec were cancelled, and I'm making things up as I go along while I wait for a new surgery date – February, March, who knows? ... Its in the lap of the Gods and the booking clerk at Box Hill. There seems little point in making any firm plans, such as applying for markets like Finders Keepers as I could well be in post surgery recovery mode by the time the market rolls round in March.

I'm taking each day as it comes, or rather as I find it. Days at the studio making the most of the holiday tourist season. Evening walks on the beach with Jack and Drew. Trying to eat healthy. Processing the mountain of vintage books we have collected. Thinking about future ranges and products. Enjoying the summer weather.

As I write this I'm realising that this is a lesson I have to learn: To let go. Its been a common theme in my blog posts over the past four years – my struggle to let go and the opportunities life has sent me so I can learn this lesson. I had one week's notice for my surgery date on 14 December – everything I had planned went out the window as I mentally and emotionally prepared myself for surgery. Then, just minutes from the operating theatre my surgery was cancelled, and I found myself having to let go again.

I've had another "let go" lesson in late 2011. After almost a year of indecision about the greenolive vs vintage prints brand/identity/website, the decision was made for me. Our greenolive domain name had lapsed and before we renewed it someone else snapped it up. So greenolive is no longer: no email address, no website, no identity. So vintage prints it is.

My only plan for 2012 is to have the surgery - Box Hill Hospital willing – to recover quickly and to just go with the flow and let go. Anything else is a welcome surprise and a nice bonus.