Lost property and pattern repeats

When I was young I hated carrying things around with me. I liked being free and unencumbered. I distinctly remember being annoyed at having to carry a little wallet to school to hold my bus pass and tuckshop money. And has for handbags, I couldn't think of anything worse than lugging one of those around all the time. Consequently I lost my wallet a lot. In fact I pretty much lost anything I had to carry around with me, as I'd always put it down and forget to pick it up again.

These days that habit only resurfaces when I'm really busy, stressed or distracted. Last week, for instance, I left my personal mobile in a taxi on Saturday, my work mobile in a cafe on Tuesday and my wallet in a train on Wednesday. That should give you a bit of an idea of how bad the week was. What was truly unbelievable though, was that I got them all back! There is seriously something good about these Melbourne people.

Back to the crappy week, which was particularly frustrating because I was actually really organised for my study deadline, then 10 days before due date, our teacher added two 16cm squares and one A3 painted repeat to our tasks. That's a huge amount to do in a week when you're just getting used to painting again, working full-time and have deadlines there as well. I got the assignment in on time, but there was a seriously late night of painting on Thursday. That made me next to useless at work on Friday and now I have to go in today (Sunday) to make up for it.

This is not ideal when I still have a presentation to give this week, but hopefully that will be the end of it before mid-semester break in three weeks, because I'm also doing a huge tender project at work that is going to be all-consuming before its 5 May deadline.

I am counting down the days until then, so life can get back to being vaguely normal and I can share some other bits and pieces I'm managing to keep going on the side. A wee bit of knitting and some embroidery. And of course, the planning for my Mexico trip.

For now, these images are what I've been working on in class. We used lots of different mediums over the semester for creating floral motifs including pencil, watercolour, gouache, ink and crayon, before building up to a final pattern repeat you can see at the bottom. Despite the last week, it's been a lot of fun.

I do miss my blogging though, so please forgive the absences and wish me luck in making it to the May deadline!