Buttons
I love buttons. I remember my Nana had a long flat tin, red, possibly it once had toffees in it. Or shortbread. Whatever the case, the consumables had long since been consumed and in it instead was buttons, a lifetime's collection of oddments, different shapes and sizes. It was the closest thing to treasure any real person I knew owned. The grandchildren had free access to these buttons, I remember trailing my hands through them, sifting them through my fingers like sand at the beach. I don't know where those buttons are now. Possibly my mother has them, or my sister who learned to sew and knit as a child, and did so often with Nana, where I lacked the patience for sitting still.
The buttons above are from a shop called Buttonmania in the city. Martin and I are planning an excursion, so I can revisit buttons, so Fred can ride in a hand operated elevator (and me too) and perhaps while we are there we might find some treasures to take home.

Mmm...Duck Fat
I roasted a whole duck last week. It was an interesting process - I poached it in tea first and then roasted it. The recipe called for a very high temperature and because there was honey in the tea mix the duck went startlingly black but was very crispy and tasty for the first few mouthfuls...it quickly became somewhat overwelming - under the crisp skin there's a layer of hot liquid fat. The meat however is delicious, dark and gamey, with a slight resistance to the bite yet soft and tender. After we had eaten the bird we made stock from its bones, dark and rich and strange. I'll make a risotto from it I think, with mushrooms and eggplant and parsley and wine.
Also, in a moment of nostagia for my childhood, I poured the liquid fat from the pan into a white cup and kept it. It's in our fridge now, a solid white block on top with a dark jelly underneath. We've used it twice to cook potatoes in - they come out beautifully crisp and flavoursome. As a child I would have had it spread on hot toast, digging the knife in deep to get a good blend of the white fat and the dark rich jelly. This is a treat that no doubt my children will never know, living in a post-cholesterol age. It feels wicked indulging in duck fat, but whatever gets you through these chilly Melbourne winter days.

Tuesday
I love creche day. Fred goes off in the morning (sometimes I take her in on the tram, sometimes she goes on Martin's bike. This morning I think Martin has caved to illness, fatigue and the snap freeze and taken her in the car) and the house settles into quiet. Una is still happy to lie around alone on the floor and kick and have unfettered access to Fred's toys (life with Fred is somewhat dizzying for Una). Some Tuesdays Martin has a placement in a school and Una and I are alone for the day. I work. She sleeps. We go for little walks to the supermarket or we visit. It's funny though because Undine doesn't like Tuedays:

Undine straggled down the stairs to the bathroom. She felt a lump of something, starting at the base of her spine and working its way upwards. It wasn't a physical something, though it belonged inside her body, under her skin, trapped inside the fine network of muscle, tissue, nerve and bone. She knew what was happening because it had happened before, and even though she felt a little shiver of fear, mostly she was annoyed, because it was Tuesday and Tuesdays were - on the whole - not to be trusted.

After I wrote that line about Tuesdays I found a long essay online about Bad Tuesdays in Jane Austen novels. Apparently Tuesdays really aren't to be trusted. I don't know about Austen but I picked the day fairly randomly, though here's Undine's case against them:

Tuesdays were just badly designed, she thought crossly, as Lou danced in front of her with a piece of burnt toast and a coffee. They didn't have the anticipation and freshness of Mondays,when you woke up with the weekend still singing in your mind, and made resolutions to be more organised for the rest of the week, and looked fofrward to school so you could hear who wore what to Nick's party and the various assorted minutiae that coloured other people's lives. By Tuesday the weekend was well and truly down with - old news - and the next weekend felt a long way away.

But here we are all big fans of Tuesdays. Hooray for Tuesdays!

My favourite part about Tuedays? It's when Fred comes home, if she's on the bike she starts shouting halfway down the laneway 'Mama, we're ba-ack, Mama, we're ba-ack.' She runs in and kisses me, if she's tired she hugs too, collapsing into me. The first thing she always says is, 'Where's Una?' (this is what she always says to me if we talk on the phone when she's out too). Then she tells me about her day and I tell her about mine. It's great being three, having news of your own. She seems to have a lot of friends, but there is one special one - Mali. Mali is 4 and an all important half, she speaks German and has a sister called Lily. Fred loves her the best and Mali loves 'Freddie' (creche is the one place she is called Freddie, to distinguish her from a little boy, Frederick, who has the nickname Fred).

So it's almost 9am and I have a whole Tuesday stretching out in front of me. Time for coffee, and then to work.

One day when I'm bigger
Fred (who turned 3 in April) just saw the picture of Breathe in the corner of my blog and shouted 'There's your book mama!' Then she asked if she could read it when she's bigger. I've told her a few times that I write books but I was never really sure how much she got it. All the critics in the world and there's only two little girls I really want to impress. You know, like really. I just want them to think I'm cooool, like any good gen x-er mama.

Knitty McKnit Knit
Look what I made. Isn't she cute? I made the hat too.
xx

Reading and Writing
I am reading a fantasy manuscript at the moment and it's making me think about why Undine isn't fantasy. Magic is there, but the magic is more of a metaphor (a metaphor of becoming, on many levels, of transformation), whereas in true fantasy, magic is a scaffolding, both in terms of world-building and in holding the whole structure of the novel together - it's the glue that makes the fiction work. In fantasy the internal logic very much depends on the fantasy. Whereas in Undine, the internal logic almost resists the magic, the magic is a kind of absurdism, like in a dream where suddenly you're naked and you're carrying a fish, and it all just kind of makes sense. It brings these strange elements into Undine's life that she has to somehow incorporate into her real life - which of course is ultimately impossible, leading to her central dilemma - is she the magic or is she the girl - is she the dreamer or is she the dream? In the dream you just keep carrying that fish. Often you don't even wonder where the fish comes from. That's the way a dream works and in a way it's how magic works for Undine - Trout wants to know the wheres and the whys and the hows. But for Undine, the questions are different. The science of it doesn't interest her, it's more about the way it intersects with the girlness of her, she is curious about the girl inside the magic, even more than the magic inside the girl.
I used to say that Undine wasn't really fantasy, it's a magic book and it's true, it's not genre fantasy. But I don't have anything against fantasy and Justine Larbalestier once said in a talk we did together that all fiction is really fantasy and this is true too. All novels deals with their own self-contained worlds which though they may mimic the real world perfectly, they still have their own gravitational pull - in an Anne Tyler novel for example, the entire world may revolve around the experiences of one American family. Although the rest of the universe is implied, we see only a small part of it and it might seem that suddenly the six people who occupy the content of the novel are grotesquely huge while everyone else seems infintesmal in comparison.
Fantasy writers seem to garner a very loyal following who become deeply entrenched in the world the author has created - perhaps more so even that the authors themselves. I think it's fascinating that readers can become so absorbed in a world so alternate from their own. Are they looking for difference, or are they looking for sameness in difference, seeking to recognise themselves amidst dragons and warlocks and magical acts?
I'll write more about this later, my mate Kate Constable is a fantasy writer and we've been talking a bit lately about kids books and magic. There's a lot to say.

A little personal blog tour
So anyway, I am slowly reaching out into the world of blogs.
I started, as many do with  loobylu a fantastic Melbourne based craft-blogger who makes, amongst other things, really gorgeous soft toys.
I then ventured off from her site, finding an amazing array of other incredibly gifted souls. Somehow I wended my way here Wardrobe Refashion and since doing so have taken the pledge - I will buy no new manusfactured clothes for 4 months. This will be a piece of cake since I can't sew, can knit in a straight line (sometimes) and don't know how to cast off (so will knit forever) and have no 'stash' to speak of (this is a term pertaining to the many accumualted materials sewing and knitting types seem to store under their beds, not a drug euphemism, though I have none of that sort either, cos drugs are bad mmkay?). Anyway. I shall try it out.
Lastly I wandered into sarsaparilla which is a endlessly interesting australian based literary blog with all sorts of fabulous people.
And I've also been knitting. I am a busy mcbee.
Now the brave part - to press publish post and see if all my html links have worked...fingers crossed...