Category: life

life, travel

Trip to Melbourne!

christinahopgood
We’ve been meaning to go to Melbourne for quite some time now, to visit family and friends and generally have a fun time.  So last Friday we drove up to spend the weekend!  We were staying at the Quality Downtoner on Lygon which I am thrilled to say is a beautiful hotel.  We could park there and the hotel itself was fantastic.  Not posh, but roomy and full of everything we needed.

On the way we made tea in a thermos.  Charles took a nice photo!

On Friday evening we had dinner with the lovely Violet le Beaux and Jimmy America – two folk who I am happy to call my friends.  James knows the Aquabats you guys.  Violet loves Weird Al.  BFF.  (Big Friends Forever).  We had some awesome Korean food and then got some bubble tea which I totally couldn’t finish. 

Saturday was our first full day in town, and we filled it right up with stuff.  First we headed down to Michael’s camera shop where Charles wanted to buy some fixer so he can develop his own black and white film.  Then I went to Myers to visit the makeup counters.  I wanted some new undereye concealer, but totally failed to buy any.

Then we drove out to see my great-aunt (my dad’s aunt), and her sons (my dad’s cousins).  It was so lovely to have lunch with them!  They live in an old beautiful house with gorgeous detailed ceilings and a big garden full of fruit trees.

Once we got back to the city it was around 3:30pm.  We then walked all the way from our hotel down to ACCA, which is an artspace where our friend Benjamin had an exhibition.  It was great!  We haven’t seen Ben since our wedding since he lives in Perth (and he wasn’t at his exhibition), but weirdly one of Ben’s artworks had one of Charles’ lamps in it which he’d bought for a previous shared project.  He wondered where that had gone!

Then we walked all the way back up to our hotel, via some cute shops.  After a brief pizza, we were ready to go out to see Barry Morgan!  For those of you who don’t know, Barry Morgan plays the organ and is amazing.  We had a great time! It was part of the Melbourne Comedy Festival.  As such, we laughed so much my face hurt by the end!  We even got a photo together. He is so rad.

On Sunday we got up and took a tram to Violet and James’ place where we met the lovely Lottie!  Seriously, no photos or videos can convey what a little bundle of joy she is!  Lottie took to us immediately which I was really happy about.  She licked us one billion times and had us throw her toy for her in turns.
Violet curled my hair 🙂
We went and got lunch together and then went our separate ways.  At this point I was amazingly tired from the past two days of too much walking and excitement.  So that’s why I look so drooby in the photos!

Charles and I then went back to our hotel to change into our… Collingwood gear!  We took the train out to the MCG and went to the footy!  My team lost… by a lot… but we still had heaps of fun!  Charles even said “I would go again”!


At this point I was so tired I thought I was going to die, so when we got back to the hotel I needed a little lie down before I could muster up the energy to go and get dinner.  We walked around Lygon st for a while and got some more pizza.  Why not, when I’m on a street famous for its Italian restaurants!

Monday morning we went to visit my uncle and aunt, and then we drove home.  The drive home was super boring and uneventful, but we were really happy to get home.  It was such a fun trip!  We want to go to Melbourne more often now to see our friends (there were heaps of friends we were too busy to see this time) and do more stuff.
 
At the Dog on the Tuckerbox, Gundagai
CIT, life

What have I been DOING???

christinahopgood
It’s been a busy few weeks here at Christina HQ. As a result, I haven’t managed to upload a blog in over a week!  Bad Chrissy!

Here’s what I’ve been up to:


Firstly, I had a big assignment due yesterday for my Fibres and Fabrics course at CIT.  It was all of our work from the whole term.  I’m not used to doing actual homework anymore so it took forever.
Here’s one of the things I had to do: create a *new* fabric! It was really hard to think of something original (and even now I’m not sure that I did)! I kind of developed a technique that everyone already knows – braiding! I was braiding my hair and thought “Why don’t I do this with 30 strands instead of three?” and so I did.  The thing about this fabric is that it has no separate weft (the horizontal strands), only warp (the vertical strands). This is because the warp is drawn through the weft and left on the other side.

I tied all my strands to a coathanger to create the tension and braided it!  Like a huge friendship bracelet.

 Not sure how I’ll go on that part of the assignment.  It’s a pass/fail course, so I probably won’t get much feedback either.  I think I’ll pass.

Secondly, my parents have gone away to Europe for 5 weeks! They left on Sunday afternoon.  For weeks they’ve been planning and booking and researching their trip, and I’ve been helping in any way I could.  I gave them a bunch of things from when I went away (noise-cancelling headphones for plane, sleeping pills, Oyster cards for the Underground, etc.) and have been trying to calm their anxieties.  I took them to the bus on Sunday and they arrived in London late late late last night.  I think they’re going to have a ball!

Thirdly, I’ve been planning out my Autumn holidays.  We’re going to Melbourne on Friday until Monday! We’re going to be doing SUCH FUN things! Will keep you posted on our trip as it happens.

Other than that, it’s been work as usual.  We’ve been watching a lot of 30 Rock while doing our homework.  Why did I not adore this show while it was actually on???

concert, life, percussion, sticks and tones, xylophone

We were there at YouAreHere

christinahopgood
So on Friday the 22nd of March we had a fun Sticks and Tones gig as part of the You Are Here festival.  You Are Here is a fun Canberra arts festival that runs every year around this time.  They have theatre, music, art, dance, writing, poetry, you name it! 
Our concert was a lunchtime concert in the old Fletcher Jones building in civic.  Sadly, Fletcher Jones (an Australian clothing company) closed last year. But it left this large shop space which was the You Are Here HQ.  They blacked out the windows and set up a stage and lights, so it was like a real exciting night time gig at a venue!  Here are some photos that people took at the festival (taken from Facebook).

These people with their big zoom lenses only got one of us together!

After us, another great band called Fun Machine played and it was super rad.  We were also interviewed by Woroni (the ANU student newspaper) and the sound file can be found here.  Unfortunately they didn’t get any footage of the actual gig!
We had such a lovely time!  We’ve never had such an appreciative audience, they clapped and whooped the whole time!  We really felt part of the scene and actually popular for the first time ^.^

canberra, life, violetlebeaux

Violet Le Beaux visits Canberra!

christinahopgood

A couple of weeks ago, Violet LeBeaux and Jimmy America came to Canberra as part of the Human Brochure tourism campaign.  
Check out her blogs for day 1, day 2, and day 3.  We hung out on day 2, the Saturday.
Here’s her vlog for the day, Charles and I actually played her theme tune! 



So I have been reading Violet’s blog for a really long time.  Years!  I always really liked her style and how she likes to make things!  I also like to make things, so I felt we’d be good friends.  When she got a  puppy I emailed her something cute about doggies and we made friends over email.  So when Violet found out they would be coming to Canberra for the Human Brochure, she got in touch asking if we could finally meet!

On that Saturday, we picked James and Violet up from the NatLib where they’d spend the morning.  Then the 4 of us went to Braddon to get a cup of tea and look at the cool shops.

And she really does bring Bergamot Bunny everywhere with her! What a funny bunny.  We chatted about cameras and internet things and stuff! I can’t even remember, but I remember having a nice time.

We had a look at the new Lonsdale St Traders shops, which were very hipster, and then we went to our house for a cool drink and a little rest.

That’s when we did some music for them!  And they also had a go on our instruments 🙂 Violet and James are both accomplished musicians, THE MOAR YOU KNOW.

And she really is that gorgeous in person.

And look!  I’m taller than someone 🙂

After a while we took them back to the hotel so they could go on the next tour.  It sounded like an exhausting tour, so I was glad we gave them a chance to relax a bit.  I felt like the four of us got along really well! I was sad we didn’t bother getting photos of all of us together.  Next time!

Violet has lots more pictures from that day so you should check them out here!