Sydney Dust Storm

I knew a storm is coming before we went to bed last night. What I did not expect was this
amazing orange and almost sepia tone sky when i woke up this morning!
We thought it was another bush fire near by as summer is come up in this part of the world.

It turned out Sydney was hit by once in a 70 years Dust Storm..........

Cold, windy
And rather excited!
Just like watching a movie.

I mean i've experienced earthquake and typhoon, but this time nobody gets hurt!



not to mention everything is cover in a thin layer of red dust.........

Piet Mondrian - A Journey Through Modern Art

Music: Philip Glass-glassworks

Mondrian Bangle, my tribute to the great master!

Keep Dreaming.......

..... it will come true one day!

Beautiful tree house from baumraum

Spirallllllllll..............

I've always love the simplicity of drawing and the traces of simple lines on paper.

The "Out Of The Blue Pendant" and the "Spiral Ring" combine my love of spiral and line......
The pendant is 20mm X 40mm.
They are quickly to become my new favourite.




Last Sunday's Eveleigh Artisans Market went really well for me. I have a lot of good chats to customers and locals.
And met some lovely people from Etsy. If you are around the area come and say hello.......

I will have a stall in the Kirribilli Art and Design Market again this Sunday, If you are around the area come and say hello.......

Butterfly.......

I have to admit i was off balance a bit lately. With the country flooding in the North and bush fire in the South we all feel the hit......

With a brand new Market coming up this Sunday, I sit myself down on the workbench and slowly get into creative mode again.



It's a bangle with hammered butterfly wings as a focal and a freeform organic shape that can be adjust slightly.
The 3mm thick square wire made it quite a substantial piece.

I also made a matching ring. The photo is taken just after the soldering and i love the rustic feel of it........



The new Eveleigh Artisan Market is just around the corner from where i live.
I am really looking forward to this Sunday!

Spiral Heart

Just in time for Valentines day!

Red coral: My stone

School started.
Music class is back on the radar.
New soccer season is registered.
And I am back to my Blogland and work Bench

It is amazing how much we organise our time around the school term these day!

My Silvermonk.net are now in Australian dollars, which made it easy for my Aussie customers. You can still pay by other currency if you wish and there is a currency converter on the site.

This new pair of Fancy coral earrings are perfect for

Happy Chinese new year!
The year of OX!

memory fruit among other things

When i saw this yellow fruit sit on top of the piano today,
I thought i better took a photo before it all gone funny........
and i should also tell you a bit about our trip down Melbourne.

I had to warn you beforehand though, when i am telling a story or anything involve time, my grammar will be all over the place.
So on the safe side, i am not going to tell you the detail story of the next door neighbour's garage on fire at midnight........
or the caravan that we stayed in went live at on point...........
( the important thing is nobody was hurt and that's end of the story!)

What i would love to share with you is we had an incredibly calming and relaxing time catching up with friends.
The flys were incredibly easy and fast. it took only an hour and a bit instead of taking a whole day to drive down.
I figure out if we can plant more trees next time we will do it all over again!

To play with May and Conor's computer games( Conor is a game developer) and Kung Fu practice weapons is a dream comes true for young Gabriel!

My favourite part was walking around the lane ways of the Northcote neighbourhood with Kerry and her daughters.
Throughout the 1950s the area became home to a large number of Italian and Greek migrants. One of the things these groups of people did was planting fruit trees in their backyards. We spent a good 2 hours walking the Suburb picking and testing fruits hanging out the fences. A true urban hunting and gathering. I love it!!!!!

At the end of the gathering trip, Gabriel said he need to take a memory fruit home and here it is sitting right on top of the piano.

New Year Celebrations 09

We were back in time for the New Year Eve fireworks in Sydney.
The photos were all taken from the balcony in our apartment.



By now, mr. silvermonk had urged me to pull out my tripod ( Christmas present from Mr. Silvermonk) to take some crispy shots of the fireworks.
But then, who has the time, the fireworks only last for a few more minutes.........
I enjoy the un-predicted and abstract effect anyway, do you happen to see the peace doves effects......



We wish you a very happy and peaceful 2009!
cheers
chimin

Christmas Spirit

Today is Youngman's last day of the school year and he will be in year 2 next Feb. The School Report has been sent home and Youngman was cool on all key learning areas. The teacher's report said that he set a good example for his peers. He has already opened some of his Christmas presents and now he can just be himself and play with his Legos and make up his own storys.

The P&C put on a little drinks party after school, after a few snacks and beer, I am officially on Christmas vacation and off line......

We are heading down Melbourne . Mr. Silvermonk bought some carbon credits to plant trees so that we can all fly down this year to spend sometimes with friends and relatives.

We wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

cheers
chimin

Ps: we will be back in Sydney for the New Year Eve firework!

Carols in Victoria Park 08

Carol in Victoria Park 08, originally uploaded by silvermonk.

We've been to the Carol in the park for a few years now. It was organized by the St. Barnabas church The Park is a beautiful place with the city as the back drop.

We were having a very enjoyable time with children playing tips ( chase ) and the magnificient fire works to finish the night! We raised enough money on the night for the Habitat for Humanity to build a house in India.

We also seen the biggest full moon slowly creeping up behind the stage......

Well, after a hectic week of working on the bench, ( which end up drilling a hole in my thumb....)
I am glad that we had a relaxing and peaceful night out in the park.

We will be in the City tomorrow to choose some big Lego toys for the Youngman. He's been a real good boy this year apart from watching too much TV.

Best Ever........

The Finders Keepers Market was the best market i've ever participated in.
Lots of cool stalls, 10 minutes walk from our place, all the neighbours were there and every single one of the young and old handmade groovy people from Sydney were all there, even a lady from Chicago was there and got a present from my stall for her daughter, I was busy..... very very busy and tired and happy!

The organizers should be congratulated on putting such a wonderful and successful market!

The best part of it was seeing all these people with a beer or wine in hand while relaxing, browsing and supporting handmade!

See more of the photos of the night!

The Market!

Dear friends,

The finders keepers market is on........
If you are planning a night out, this is the place to be.

There will be clothing, accessories, jewellery, art, homewares, lighting, stationery and more......
And of course, there will be music and food!

It is held inside the foyer of the contemporary arts space "CarriageWorks".

I am having a stall there as well, so come and say hello.

Finders Keepers will be running:
Friday 5th December 6pm – 10pm
Saturday 6th December 12pm – 10pm

click here for direction.

100 Sales!

My jewellery shop on Etsy reach a little milestone today! A small step in terms of statistic, but a big step in my adventures into the Cyber space.

The 100th sale is my Cross embedded with love, how wonderful is that!!!!!

A big thank you to all my customers.
Your support is much appreciated.

cheers
and more to come!

Christmas Sparkle!

Just want to pop in and say Hello!
I've been a bit busy with the Christmas orders and making lots of jewellery for my up coming Finders Keepers market.
You can click on the side bar for more info.

Also thank you my fellow Aussies greenOlive and Pominoz for putting my fine silver earrings in their treasuries.

We are going to the Star War opening on Wednesday.

cheers and have a nice weekend!

BUY HANDMADE THIS CHRISTMAS!

Couldn't believed it, its only six weeks to Christmas!

I am in love with kraft paper at the moment and redesign my new earring tag and Christmas packaging.

FREE SHIPPING worldwide until Christmas in my Etsy shop .

If you would like to purchase from my website, Just enter FREESH15 upon check out to get 15% discount on your purchase. (Not to be used with other discount code!)

Old Darlington school

The Old charming Darlington School is all fixed up with new beautiful roof and new surrounding landscape.

It quickly becomes our favourite walk after dinner, the only thing missing in this picture is a dog........I wish we live in a house with a backyard.

There has been a lot of opposition noise about the expansion of the University. I personally don't mind that at all.

DaWanda World 2009

Yes, I am going to give away all this beautiful jewellery......

A group of online sellers from DaWanda organise a new promo called "DaWanda World 2009" /"Happy New DaWanda Year 2009".

"The idea is to bring together a variety of shops from all over the world representing Dawanda in this "Dawanda World 2009" promo campaign.

Each shop participating in the campaign will send 10-15 items, which will be put into the bags and can then be bought from a few nominated shops on Dawada .

The sale will start on January 1st 2009 and the money from the sale will be donated to an organization which is still to be nominated."

Creative advertising

Don't you love this?!

The council has been putting heavy fines on people putting poster on the post......
( you could see the lamp post next to it is all clean!)

So someone come up with this great idea and i think they will get away with the fine.

The cool thing about it is the bicycle is chained onto the (legal) new bicycle stand, how appropriate!

Stretch your brain

( Anna~my sister in law sent me some interesting emails every now and then. This is one of those i want to share with you!)

This is not a test - just a phenomenon. All readings are explained.

Read out loud the text inside the triangle below



More than likely you said, 'A bird in the bush,'! and. .......
if this IS what YOU said, then you failed to see
that the word THE is repeated twice!
Sorry, look again.

Next, let's play with some words.
What do you see here?


In black you can read the word GOOD, in white the word EVIL (inside each black letter is a white letter)

What do you see here?

This one is quite tricky!
The word TEACH reflects as LEARN.

ALZHEIMERS' EYE TEST
Count every 'F' in the following text:

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT
OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY
COMBINED WITH THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS...
(SEE BELOW)

HOW MANY ?
WRONG, THERE ARE6-- no joke.
READ IT AGAIN !
Really, go Back and Try to find the 6 F's before you scroll down.

The brain cannot process 'OF'.

Incredible or what? Go back and look again!!
Anyone who counts all 6 'F's' on the first go is a genius.
Three is normal, four is quite rare.

*****************
More Brain Stuff .

From Cambridge University .

"Olny srmat poelpe can raed tihs.
I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm.Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt! if you can raed tihs psas it on !!"

The last test is quite interesting because Gabriel is in the mist of learning to read, write and spell!
And there is this big debate of "Whole Language learning" and " Phonics learning".

What is amazing is that Gabriel ( he is almost finish year 1 ) can read the above paragraph without any problem.

What I've learnt from Gabriel's learning experience is that, some kids are very good with whole word learning and they learn to read (out loud ) in no time, and that is just part of the story ( of learning to read and write). To complete the picture ( to write and spell), you need phonics and grammar.

At first, Gabriel's reading progress very slowly, he's a bit reluctance to say the word out loud ( to read ) if he did not know how to. Now that he learns the phonics his reading and spelling skills just take off........

I am no expert in all this and i probably need Mr. Silvermonk to check the grammar, but i am sure you know what i meant ( hopefully most of the time?!)

I find this quite useful.