Posted by Sally Cummings on Friday, June 19, 2020,
Last week I caught a train for the first time in months so that I could visit my local library. Like most people, I've been staying close to home with no unnecessary travel. But as confidence grows and restrictions ease, I am taking more and more steps back into the world.
Today I travelled into the city. I wanted to get to Malvern for a fabric sale (a necessary trip, I think you'll agree!). This required a train trip into the city and out again. Rather than just change platforms, I decided to...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Sunday, June 14, 2020,
In :
Travel
Yesterday we did a mini road trip to Healesville to visit the Beechworth Bakery and Maroondah Reservoir Park. It was overcast but not too cold, so we walked up to the top of the dam wall and then did the Maroondah Forest Track walk back to the bottom. The track was a bit more slippery (muddy) than I would have liked, but we managed to navigate it safely and saw some beautiful scenery along the way.
Maroondah Reservoir Park is lovely, one of those really old fashioned spots with rotundas, stone...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Tuesday, June 2, 2020,
Yesterday - I mentioned my excitement, but also nervousness, about much-missed local services reopening due to the easing of COVID-19 restrictions.
Today - I read about a new confirmed case in my neighbourhood. Only three blocks from my home, and only one block from the local shops that I happily visited yesterday.
I'm going to try not to dwell on it too much, but that was awfully close to home and a good reminder to continue being careful about hand hygiene and physical distancing.
So, here is ...
Posted by Sally Cummings on Monday, June 1, 2020,
Hello, long time no see! I'm not sure if anyone's still subscribed to this blog, as I haven't posted here since 2016. Sorry about that ...
I do have a new blog on my
Sally Cummings Designs website. I've been meaning to add a link here for some time! The blog there is also called
Sally Sets Forth, but I've not posted there as regularly as I'd like. I'm yet to find my balance between personal and professional blogging in the art and design world, and that indecision has definitely got in the wa...
Posted by Sally Cummings on Tuesday, June 28, 2016,
In :
Travel
There's a lovely little free exhibition on at the
City Gallery in Melbourne Town Hall at the moment, called "A History of the Future: Imagining Melbourne". It runs until 12 August 2016 and features stories and images of ideas for development in and around the Melbourne CBD over the years.
There are proposals for elevated pedestrian walkways, canals, bizarre building designs, underground trams, pyramids and autogiro buses. There is also information about some design proposals that actually did ...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Friday, June 3, 2016,
In :
Travel
Last night I caught up with a good friend for dinner in the city. As we walked towards Flinders St Station at the end of the night, our eyes were caught by the illuminated buildings of Federation Square, which were covered in colourful patterns. I wandered over for a closer look, and learnt that the light installation was part of Fed Square's tenth anniversary
The Light in Winter.
The light projections on the building facades are called
Federation Squared, created by
Reko Rennie and
The Electr... Continue reading ...
Posted by Sally Cummings on Sunday, June 28, 2015,
In :
Professional
One of my first library jobs after completing my Grad Dip was at the
William Angliss Institute. For those who don't know it, the William Angliss Institute in Melbourne is a training institution that specialises in food and hospitality courses. They specialise in vocational education programs, but also conduct a range of
short courses for enthusiastic amateurs :)
There were two main perks to working at the
William Angliss Institute Learning Resource Centre (Library). One was ready access to the...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Friday, June 26, 2015,
I popped into the city to run some errands yesterday, and as I'd heard of a new art installation called Prevaricated Frequencies by Victoria University's
Skunk Control in the
Flinders St station / DeGraves St subway art space, I decided to make a detour and check it out.
Although the sign had a start date of 24 June and a few pieces were already set up, they were still in the process of constructing some of the displays.
Skunk Control's Facebook page says the installation begins on 30 June, s...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Friday, June 19, 2015,
In :
Travel
I had a fantastic Friday last week, catching up with my friend
Julie at
NGV International.
After a short pause to stick my finger in the water wall (very important), and gawk at the Great Hall's beautiful stained glass ceiling, we headed to the NGV cafe for a cuppa and a chat. We went to the fancy one upstairs, which is a bit quieter than the ground level cafe, so we had a lovely long chat :) The drinks (tea and hot chocolate) were lovely, and generous.
We visited the NGV to see the
Exquisite T... Continue reading ...
Posted by Sally Cummings on Thursday, June 4, 2015,
In :
Travel
Last week I posted a couple of photos of a strange new art installation in
Federation Square (known locally as Fed Square). It reminded a few people of H. G. Wells'
War of the Worlds, for obvious reasons! The information signs were mysterious, simply saying that more details would be revealed soon ...
Well now it has a name! Officially launched on 1 June, it's called "
Molecule of Light" by artist
Chris Levine. This laser installation radiates a constantly moving series of colours and patterns,...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Tuesday, May 6, 2014,
In :
Professional
A lot has happened since my last blog update, and life has been stupidly busy. But a little bit of breathing space has finally opened up again, and I'm finding my way back towards a (hopefully) manageable routine.
My sisters and I have been working really hard to prepare the family home for sale. It's sad for all of us to part with this house that has been in the family for nearly 80 years and is full of memories. We also haven't had much time to work with, as we need to raise the bond for the...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Wednesday, January 29, 2014,
Long time, no blog.
We arrived back in Melbourne in July last year (gosh, 'last year' makes it sound so long ago!) after an amazing holiday in the Kimberley. We're now back in our own lovely home, and have enjoyed settling back in to the house and working in our garden. Melbourne's predictably unpredictable weather is certainly a change that takes some getting used to, but it's nice not to be hot all the time (although it's very hot some of the time!).
I've been on a hiatus from work, taking so...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Thursday, May 30, 2013,
In :
Professional
Well, we are on the move once more! This is a short post for a lot of news, but time is limited so here goes ...
Just after Easter, I submitted my resignation at the university I've worked at for the last 3 years. It was both a hard and easy decision. Hard because I loved my job and the team I worked with. Easy because I miss my family, and as time went on I struggled more and more with the Darwin climate.
So we're returning to Melbourne (again). My last day at work was a couple of weeks ago, a...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Tuesday, January 1, 2013,
Another year begins, and I'm hoping that 2013 will be a good one! 2012 was a challenging year in many respects, but of course there were plenty of highs to balance out the lows. Mostly it just felt really busy - moving interstate (again!), lots of visitors, lots of work. The year seemed to pass in a flash.
My blogging frequency dropped off a cliff after the #blogeverydayofjune challenge, as per usual. My PC was out of action for much of the year, and I don't really enjoy blogging with my netbo...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Thursday, December 29, 2011,
Wow. What a crazy couple of months it's been.
Sometime it's seemed like a string of disasters ... but there have been highs as well as lows. I haven't blogged (and probably won't blog) in detail about some of the things that stressed me out at the time - partly because I'm a bit of a slack blogger (did you notice?), but mostly because I prefer not to vent on my blog. So I've waited until I've got a bit of distance on recent events, and can now provide you with a brief summary of the ups and do...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Friday, October 28, 2011,
In :
Professional
I've made a few veiled references lately to being busy and making plans, but have been keeping the details under wraps until things were a bit more solid. Well, I think it's pretty well confirmed now, to the point where I feel comfortable talking about it online ...
For family reasons, we're coming back to Melbourne for about six months.
We're already in the middle of packing the house up and arranging the move, which is why we've both been so under the hammer lately. I'm flying out next week, ...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Tuesday, August 3, 2010,
When I first set up this blog, it was partly with the intention of using it to keep my family and friends up-to-date with my life when I moved interstate. Well, now it's finally time to start doing just that!
I arrived in Darwin last night. The weather is perfect. The serviced apartment that I'm staying at is great, and is centrally located in the CBD. Everything feels both familiar and unfamiliar. Love it!
Tim and I have had a crazy few weeks getting ready for this move. Unfortunately, Tim won...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Wednesday, June 30, 2010,
In :
Professional
Well, today is the last day of #blogeverydayofjune
It's also my last day at work, having finished my contract at the Victorian Parliamentary Library. Again.
Although I'm ready for new adventures in new libraries in new places, I will always have the fondest memories of working with the wonderful group of people at "Parl" :)
I played tourist in my own workplace today and got snap happy. I hope you enjoy these photos of the gorgeous library that I've been lucky enough to work at for the last three...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Thursday, June 3, 2010,
In :
Food & Recipes
I've just arrived home after a lovely evening of dinner and DVDs with my Mum. The dinner was fish and chips (or in my case, a vege burger and chips) and the DVD we watched was a couple of episodes of early Poirot, starring David Suchet.
But the excitement that my blog post title refers to was in regards to a new local shop that we discovered this evening while waiting for our chips ...
An Indian grocery store!!!!To put this high level of enthusiasm in context, you need to know two things:
(1) T...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Monday, February 1, 2010,
In :
Professional
I'm really looking forward to attending
VALA2010. It will be my first major library conference apart from the
New Librarians Symposium in 2008.
And although I'm looking forward to the presentations immensely, I'm also very much looking forward to meeting in person some of the amazing librarians that I've met via
Twitter over the last year. And some new people too :)
I won't be attending the official VALA dinner on Wednesday night (I'm self-funding my conference attendance). But happily, this is...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Friday, December 18, 2009,
In :
Travel
In my previous post, I mentioned that I went along to the
#socialmelb tweetup for a spot of creative bartering this morning. It was held at
Mr Tulk Cafe in the
State Library of Victoria. And it was the beginning of a very enjoyable day in and around the city for Tim and I.
After we left Mr Tulk Cafe, we did a spot of window shopping in
Melbourne Central. We were hoping to finish our remaining Christmas shopping, but had no luck in that department. So we popped into a cafe for something to eat ...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Friday, December 18, 2009,
In :
Creativity
Sorry about the lack of a blog post yesterday - I was stitching to a deadline and ran out of time!
I've been meaning to post here for some time about crafty stuff - crafts that I currently do and crafts that I want to learn. That blog post is still in the pipeline, but for now I'll show you my latest cross stitch project of robots mucking around in a photo booth :)
(click on the photo to see a larger version on Flickr). The pattern was created by
Krupp at Mr X Stitch. I loved the design as soo...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Wednesday, July 22, 2009,
In :
Professional
This Friday is my last day at the special Government library where I work. My main role for 2 years has been a combination of conducting client (end user) training and reference duties, but I also spent 6 months selecting and indexing journal articles for an in-house database.
I've had such a wonderful time - I've learnt so much and gained confidence in my skills in several new areas. I'll be sad to leave this unique library and my first-rate colleagues, but I'm also looking forward to the nex...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Friday, June 26, 2009,
The magpies are gathering in our street, and swooping season approaches. Help!
I used to look forward to spring. Who wouldn't? It's a beautiful time of year. But for the last 10 years or so, I have somehow ended up on the magpie hit list. Now every year I dread the coming of spring and the accompanying magpie nesting season.
Just in case I have some international readers, I should note that I am talking about the Australian Magpie. This is a particularly fearsome bird, quite large and with ...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Thursday, April 30, 2009,
- It started out with a terrific client training session in the morning, out at the clients' office. It was an excellent 2-way conversation and learning experience. We covered the library's services and resources, and much more besides. The session lasted just over 4 hours!
- After the training session, I took advantage of the inner city locale to visit a couple of interesting-looking bookshops. Yes, I found some lovely new treasures.
- I then enjoyed a very nice lunch at an atmospheric veget...
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Posted by Sally Cummings on Thursday, April 30, 2009,
Righto, I'll start with some information about myself...
I currently live in Melbourne (Victoria), Australia. I've lived there for most of my life, with the exception of four years spent in sunny Canberra (Australian Capital Territory). Later this year, my partner, Tim, and I will be moving to tropical Darwin (Northern Territory) - a place we've always loved.
I work as a librarian, and think it's a terrific profession to be a part of. I really enjoy helping others find information and resourc...
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