Out of My Gord’s thoughts on news and where to get it chime pretty well with mine, though I’m still looking for a dependable Australian news outlet that doesn’t cost too much for a subscription. I’ve been making do with COSMOS Science magazine and The Fifth Estate Magazine for topics I’m interested in, but haven’t yet found a nutritional news feed.
I want chewy, not pre-masticated news.
The Canteen restarted finally … bringing the stuff back to the canteen pad …
The site as it stands. Work has begun on the canteen. Naturally there are some quibbles and quarrels.
Trish wants her cabin up asap.
Boz asks her where with his most irritating logic.
Tim wants to get on with it already.
Dan wants to go salvaging.
Drew stalks around looking inscrutable.
Nin Wizard is agitated and hops here and there with his teacup.
Nin’s younger brother and his crew have almost finished the Stone Dragon Teahouse with just the five of them … a fact Jed points out at least three times a day.
For the last week or so I’ve been busy intermittently with my latest painting. A3 size, part of an ongoing learning curve. Can count the number of successful A3s I’ve done on one hand.
I wanted to use a collaged element, some textured paper that I’ve had for about 25 years.
A mix of French Ultramarine and Phthalo blue for the sky, clouded with gouache white going into grey. The headland unadorned in situ weirdly looks inset, rather than glued on top.
Headland and sand flats painted with Quinaquidrone Gold, headland in addition with Phthalo blue (green shade). Beautiful rich colors, but the sandflats too bright, too gold.
Left it a couple of days. Toyed with collaging an old building in the lower left. Read John Lovett’s website about ‘distressing’. Found a bristle brush. What he recommends for distressing.
Scary stuff to actually do it.
The big middle area painting every which way with grey made of the previous colours and a smidgen of Alazirin Red.
The dark diagonal area running down from the middle was the only problem. After trying to stare it gone for a couple of days, I wet it and mopped up excess paint. Repeated as required. At the same time disappeared the slumped bit of the horizon.
Then the gate. Something in the foreground is a way of getting depth. And that worked. it’s hard to get a good photo. For instance there’s no hill in the left of the picture. That line is much less obvious.
But, OK, I’m happy with if.
A while ago I started an experimental knit that I intended to serve as a base for a crochet design of leaves and vines.
What happened to that?
This. The rolling up just never resolved itself. The more I knitted the tighter and higher it rolled.
OK, so experienced knitters will be saying I’ve done something wrong and I accept that.
Too tight? Nope, as loose as possible with yarn no thicker than a regular two ply, knitted on 4mm knitting pins.
Weird yarn? Maybe. 60% cotton, 40% viscose. No spring in it. At all.
Wrong stitches? Very possible. Stitches in the body of the work are fine. Loose and drapy as desired.
Increasing at the beginning of each row? The problem has to be there! Ffor the purl, rear of the work, row I increased by sticking pin into back of first loop, knitting that plain, then bringing knitting needle forward to knit a purl and continuing with a purl line.
Did the opposite at the front of the work, making a stitch at the beginning of the row by knitting a purl, yarn to the back then knitting a plain and coninuing in plain.
These made nice edges, one that I’d never seen before on the purl side of a work …
And yet, by the time I’d knitted twenty rows the first five had rolled up. After I unpicked those first five—with difficulty—the next five rolled up as I was doing it.
By sixty rows, the first fifteen had rolled up. No matter how I draped and folded the resulting cloth the bottom rolled up. By the time I’d knitted eighty rows I knew I had a twisted disaster and finished it off.
I may deconstruct it and use the yarn for another project, but this was already the second knit that that yarn featured in. Not sure how well it’ll stand up to the strain of pulling apart again.
Note that I said ‘twisted disaster’ …
What do you see?
I see a warm red and a warm green watercolour reaching out for a 50/50 agreement.
I might be wrong though. The red is warm, I have no doubts on that score. But the green?
Apparently if a green leans to its yellow side on the colour wheel it’s classified as warm. And cool if it leans to the blue side.
Light yellowish green has always seemed greener to me, and so cooler. Blueish green on the other hand, felt richer and lush, and so warmer.
I’m about to do that exercise again using Alazarin Crimson, which leans towards its blue neighbour so is classified as cool, and Hooker’s Green wich also leans to the blue side.
And after that, a second trial with the so-called warm versions of red and green. I assume I’ll need to use a scarlet and green made with a warm blue and a warm yellow.
I expect neither of these exercises to resemble the above but we’ll see what we’ll see.
Out of sheer frustration trying to keep my fish pond/pot going, I intro’ed a couple of baby sedges after most of the so-called water plants died, and even the duckweed gave up.
Sedges will grow half in water, and in my past life, when I had a frog pond going for years, swamp plants were a strong feature. These often have their roots and soil substrate in the water, and their leaves above. s
I suspect they somehow condition the water, enabling other plants to grow. I certainly never had any problem keeping either Azolla water fern or duck weed alive and used to raise dozens of tadpoles to frog-dom.
If I knew anyone with karamat I’d go and beg a cutting but haven’t seen it since leaving the Byron Shire. Both these sedges are usually quite weedy though the little one at the back as far as I know is native to Australia.
‘Weeded’ them both from the local verges while out walking. One of them from the creek overflow. About ten days in their new position they don’t look like they’re dying.
The pebbles are to provide an island for bees and other insects to drink. (Though I need to top up the water.) And if I pour the water onto the pebbles there is hardly any disturbance in the water.
There’s one lone Pacific Blue Eye remaining of the seven fish I got for my birthday 10 months ago.
Rita de Heer 