Everything's so instant

Browsing everyone elses wonderful blogs and seeing their gorgeous photos, I realise that my own photography leaves something to be desired. I'm a relatively new convert to the digital world, having bought our first digital camera only when Leila was born in January. I have long been a digital bagger and have always preferred my old Nikkomatt SLR which I bought second hand when I was about 17 for $120 - an absolute fortune back then.

That old camera has travelled the world with me, for the most part wrapped only in an old red bandana. The hot shoe doesn't work so there's no flash, the light meter has always been stuck in the middle, it weighs so much that I'm sure it's made of solid steel, but it takes such great photos. It has a wonderful CLA CLUNK when you take a photo, and you wind on manually, again with a lovely whirring noise all of its own. For all its shortcomings, I know how to get the best from it.

It reminds me of an old boyfriend I lived with in Canada. He had an Mustang, probably not, I just remember it had a horse logo on the side. Well the speedo didn't work and neither did the petrol gauge. I remember James asking me once when he estimated I was speeding, "can't you tell how fast you're going by how fast things are passing us by?" Ah no. Again with how much petrol there was in the tank - he kept a mental note of how far he'd driven after filling the tank and therefore how much was left - not a skill I had to retain details like that. He knew how to drive that car though, despite it's obvious flaws.

I also love the anticipation of getting waiting to collect developed photos - flicking through looking for the absolute gems. I also prefer having photos in my hands, being able to hold them, touch them, they make the subject more real for me than viewing them on the pc monitor.

Everything is so instant now. I have always been known for being a huge letter writer, but now I rarely write a single letter, they're all emails. a) people don't respond to snail mail, or rarely and b) everyone wants everything now. Even if I were to use my old trusty Nikkomatt, we got rid of our scanner a while ago due to lack of space, yada yada yada - I must improve my digital photo taking skills!

I haven't been making much of late - the skirt above is one I made for Leila recently, to go with a top I bought from Allison's etsy shop recently. She looks such a girl in the outfit, much more than her 7 months.

Currently spare time is taken up with digging, cutting, hammering, chiselling, generally destroying old homewares. We're joining the gangs of renovators next month and are redoing our front verandah, bathroom, kitchen, laundry and toilet, as well as polishing floorboards, recarpetting bedrooms and generally overhauling. To save $'s we're doing the stripouts ourselves, which, with two young girls around, is taking place over many weekends. I'm not sure if I'll bore you with the befores, but may well include some afters.

The girls are both at their most gorgeous at the moment. There are times when I wish I didn't focus so much on the things I can't manage, more on those things I can. I wish I could relax more into my life as it is, but I have always been someone who is concentrating forward rather than on the right now. I don't mean that in a negative sense, that I'm not so grateful for all I have, but I want to achieve so much, it's easy to feel that I'm not moving forward as fast as I'd like. Both the girls are so different, but so gorgeous, I shouldn't give a second thought to dishes, washing, dirty floors, anything like that, but be concentrating on them every moment. I just hope, because they are always so happy and KNOW they are adored, that I'm not getting it too wrong.