The Costume Designer: Edith Head & Hollywood Exhibition

On Saturday 21/10/2017, Neale & I travelled to Bendigo for the weekend, which is a 3 1/2 hour trip away for us. It was very easy to get there. Once we turned onto the freeway in Morwell, our next turn was onto the correct  exit to take us through Melbourne and then one more turn to pull into the motel carpark in Bendigo!

Neale had bought tickets for us to see the Edith Head exhibition which is currently being held at the Bendigo Art Gallery for the Sunday. I'd been wanting to see it since I read that there was to be an exhibition of her work

After we settled in, we went for a walk to explore the streets and town.  We actually spent several days on our honeymoon in Bendigo - but I really can't remember too much now, 32 1/2 years later! Anyway we walked all over the place, went to see an art exhibition by an aboriginal artist at another  gallery, I actually managed to make it to the top of the poppet head in Rosalind Park! Walked back to the town centre as they had an arts/crafts fair on in the evening with music in Hargreaves Mall.  I bought myself a cute headband and we bought ourselves tea from a food stall - a deconstructed souvalaki which was very tasty.  We then walked back to our motel - I barely made it too!  So much walking, and I am so unfit. Lets just say that I managed walk around to view the exhibition on Sunday, but Monday-Wednesday, all I could manage was a hobble.  My calves were painfully sore.

The exhibition was wonderful.  To see the costumes that the film stars wore for their performances was amazing.  Believe me - they are sooooo tiny.  I didn't take very many photos - I figured that the show catalogue would contain a lot of what was on display - alas no.  I think my favourite gown was a gold coloured one that Natalie Wood wore in "Inside Daisy Clover" in 1965.(bottom left below)

Top Left - Suit worn by Audrey Hepburn.  Edith Head share the Academy award nomination for this film in 1958 with Givenchy and it is likely that he played a major part in the design of this costume.
Middle - Wedding dress worn by Barbara Stanwyck - I think!
Top Right - worn by Olivia De Haviland
Bottom Left - worn by Natalie Wood
Bottom right - can't remember who wore the purple outfit and can't work it out from the description in the catalogue The green Edwardian travelling outfit was worn by Barbara Stanwyck.

Jen

September/October Pattern Haul

What can I say - well apart from ''they were on sale''!

I am an addict - please don't send help!

Jen

RIP Alf Stratford 31/1/1926 - 3/9/2017

My dearly loved Father in Law, died last month, which as you can imagine was a very sad time for our family.  I just can't believe how fast it was - Dad had a slight cough on the Monday,  on the Wednesday evening he was admitted to hospital with a chest infection and pneumonia and he died in the early hours of Sunday morning. He was 91.

My Father in Law had been a resident of a local nursing home - His house in Morwell, after being on the market for nearly a year had finally sold with the new owners to take possession at the end of September.  So, it was an extremely busy September, dealing with the funeral and of course having to pack up and clean out the house.  We got it all done in time - whew! We donated a lot of Neale's parent's  things and furniture to the Salvation Army. I also felt so bad about having to throw so many of their things out - nearly 60 years of memories etc. Neale and I were exhausted by the time we completed it all.  Obviously, cleaning out the house should have happened when my FIL entered the nursing home - but it was something that Neale refused to contemplate then. We've also  got lots of boxes stored here at home and in our storage locker that will need to be sorted through.  We're planning a big clean up and reorganisation of our garage and storage locker at the end of the year - psyching ourselves up for it!  

I read an article/book advertisement on facebook (?) about death cleaning.  There has been a book  written by a Scandinavian author.  Anyway the gist of it was as you get older you start preparing and decluttering and not buy into consumerism for the sake of it and only keeping the items that are meaningful.  I suppose it is another form of the Kondo cleaning that was all the rage several years back.

Jen

July/August Pattern Haul

Hi All,

Lots of reading and organising done these past couple of months. Still no job on the horizon despite lots of applications done and sent.  I've had several more interviews, but no luck with them. I was told that internal applicants were hired, which seems to be a huge waste of everyone's time.  Pretty sure that I totally suck at interviews also with stupid behavioural questions and being judged on how clever you are at answering them - apparently, I'm not!  I have another 6 applications in progress - but it's been just on 3 weeks now, so I think they've gone nowhere, and will have to start applying again.  uuugghhh!

Bought more patterns on Sale from Spotlight.  It's an addiction I tell you.  I could have worse addictions......

The weather is warming up - yayyy!  I'm so  over the cold and wet.I can finally turn off the heater and save some money on the electricity bills.

I had to see a surgeon yesterday - have got a spot/lesion on my face for years  that just wont heal and go away. and has been driving me crazy.  I saw my Dr last week  to get it checked out and he immediately referred me to a surgeon.  Of course the spot had decided to heal over ggrrrr - (it'll be back) but what stunned me was the brevity of the appointment.  If I spent more than a minute in the consulting room I'd be very surprised.   Anyway, it's getting removed under a local  in a couple of weeks.  Fun!

Jen