Catherine Campbell

The book I spent a very long time illustrating has been turned into a real life object.

It is called Girl! - The ultimate guide to being you, it has been written by Anna Barnes, is published by Penguin and will be available in all good book stores come July.

I want to knit this, I'm afraid however that I have enough trouble when the patterns are in English, I wonder how I will go with a Japanese pattern. There is a picture of the pattern. It gives me hope.

I'm back in the studio! It's cold but I'm glad to be here - I'm looking at all the lovely books I bought back from Japan, starting some new pictures and finishing some old embroideries...

I made a t-shirt with Element Eden! It's available now as part of their Winter 2012 range.

www.elementeden.com

These are some photos from our last week in Japan. We spent two nights on Miyajima Island and it was beautiful, the island is covered in Miyazaki style forest and full of tame deer that walk around not bothered one bit by tourists. We stayed in a ryokan in the national park and the deer walked right under our window in the afternoon on their way back into the trees. It was magical - Princess Mononoke lives in the mountains, I'm sure of it.

I am back home now, I thought I might be miserable about this but I'm not, surprisingly. Melbourne is currently doing a good job of looking very lovely itself with crisp clear late autumn days and even some sunshine. My vegetable patch is happily overgrown and my rabbits are getting their wooly winter coats. All seems good.

Goodbye Tokyo. This is Kyoto - only for two days...

Last days in Tokyo. These photos include rain, Lee Bul at the Mori Art Museum, George Barbier exhibition (one of my all time favourite illustrators couldn't believe my luck that this was happening during my stay), movies, Tokyo style tomato seedlings...