I’ll resume the Ali in Italia posts presently, now Christmas and both Western and Chinese new years have whizzed by, and a few bug/work/home front/creative challenges have been met and surpassed. There’s always something endless that needs to be done, isn’t there? Happy belated 2026 and Year of the Fire Horse, everyone.

Where have the last 6 weeks galloped off to? 

Year’sGee whizz, we look like boozers, don’t we? They’re just props, really.

I began writing this post on Chinese New Year’s day while on the plane from Launceston to Sydney, after a delightful 5 nights on the apple isle, for San Valentino and to celebrate our first wedding anniversary. 

I’m nursing another head cold. I was worried it might have been a brand of Ye Olde Covid, but a RAT test says no. Believe the rat…

New year arrived with all its post-Christmas over-stuffed good intentions, revolutions, resolutions, revelations pressuring the poor little new number sitting at the end of the date. Along with the first head cold I’ve had in 18 months. Not a bad health run, really. We’ve both been fighting fit and ultimately that is priceless. So this new bug a few weeks later is just a snotty pain in the arse.

Travel and Adventures

We barely hit the ground after Tasmania down to Bendigo, to collect my VW Trakka camper. Yep! Another room of one’s own. Van life: who’da thunk it?  It means that I can throw in the fishing gear and head down to the coast when I’ve had enough of staring at the Highlands. 

Later in the year we’ll be travelling (not in any specific order) to Italy, the UK, Norway, Kuala Lumpur, New Zealand, and closer to home along the New England Highway, the Snowy Mountains, and all sorts of places that are idling in the ether, waiting for Mr Robertson to do one of his most favourite things: plan travel.

Art and Jewellery

In the second week of January, the Printmaking Sisters ran a four day printmaking blitz in their Robertson studio. Intensive and fun, the workshop covered waterless lithography, drypoint, mono printing, collagraphs, and printmaking from Tetra packs (probably my favourite).

A workshop always produces something glorious in the company of other creative people. I’ve missed that.

The last two images in the gallery below are artworks that I made from the less-than-perfect prints.

In and around the workshop, I charged up my January days with a collage-a-day challenge, just because. I counted them all then and realise I’d missed one (yay for maths. Can count to firdy, me) and then counted them again there really were thirty one after all.

Not all of them have made it into the gallery below, but here are some of my faves.

Like ink and jewellery, I love collage, even if the office currently looks like what happens when you give pet mice a few sheets of coloured tissue paper. Collage owns a lot of humour and whimsy, allows art on the fly, random glee, as much as well-thought-out poetic pieces.

Most exciting news of all: I now have a real, proper purpose built jewellery/art studio.

It’s taken an age to find myself here, to the point it still doesn’t feel quite real. All in time for silver prices to be swinging back and forward through the roof, making it an expensive enterprise. Notwithstanding, here be a space to play with fire and metal, to design and make, to stretch cramped and uncertain creativity flexors. I turn 50 this year, and a “room of one’s own” (especially one that is air conditioned!) is vital for an alchemist of my vintage and ilk, and worth the wait.

From the very marrow of my love, I am grateful to Richard, for his love, perseverance and devotion in making this a reality.