Justin and I recently hit a new low in our marriage — we did a jigsaw puzzle! Yes, this means we've officially become old and boring. But it has also clearly given me a burst of creativity.
This frog is one of the last holes in a novelty mini-golf course at Bateman's Bay, a coastal town about two-and-a-half hours away. I took these four pictures last December, but realised just last week they could be re-sized and overlaid to make a single image and a whole frog.
Justin isn't sure if he likes the result, although I think it works because he keeps returning to the studio and quizzically looking over my shoulder, exploring the intersection of each frame. I like the way the black edges highlight the image's construction and lead the eye in a circular pattern.
You'll be shocked to hear we've done three more jigsaw puzzles since our first crime ... we'll be playing Scrabble next!
Moora, the West Australian town where my parents used to live, hit national headlines when two floods engulfed it in 1999. Mum and dad lost almost everything, including most of our family photos. They sent me the surviving few last year and this week I've been bringing them back to life, touching up water damage and faded colours.
I walked into my favourite junk store, Ross' Relics, and there she was, tucked away in a room full of vintage tools and telephones. One of her arms rested against the wall behind, perfectly reaching up between her own legs. It seemed just too easy to make the scene even more suggestive by slinging a phone cord over her shoulder and letting the mouth-piece drape low. Telephone sex line? Hermaphrodite? Phallic fantasy? The interpretations are open, but one thing's for sure — I can't get Blondie's "Call Me" and Richard Gere in American Gigolo out of my head!
"Charlie B" by fellow Betty, Kerry Baylor
I went into Civic (Canberra's CBD) yesterday with my fellow Old Spool Betties Kerry Baylor and Susan Stayer. We learned the hard way that starting a photographic field trip with an ale and hearty lunch at the Wig and Pen, a very fine micro-brewery, is probably more conducive to an afternoon nap, but dragged ourselves down a few alleyways in search of patterns and graffiti.
At lunch last week, Robert Burne, my fellow member of the Old Spool Betties, commented on his distaste for photographs of toilets. Little did he know I was working on three such shots, which I took at my local, the Club House Hotel! 
