Category: State-of-Being

Lego: MILS Again

I’m sure Lego fans will get sick of me posting about MILS plates. They’re great but I don’t have the dollars to make eight or twelve of them and only then add landscaping.

So when I decided to raise my town to above so-called sealevel, I built a Duplo + Lego foundation plate in the MILS format.

Tomorrow another one …

Lego Robot

My new not-yet-totally-complete robot posing against the experimental terra-forming.

The robot is from the Dreamzz series, set 71454. He’s called Z-Blob but I will be thinking up a name appropriate to the role he’ll be playing in the the ongoing storying.

The terra-forming needs over-painting in places, and a way to attach the long sides to each other that will allow changing the pieces around. Maybe.

In the story, there’s a city in the background on the other side of the mud-flats and river channel, that I’m still cogitating how to make. Paint and draw? Collage? A 2D Lego build? What do you think?

Art Journaling

Header on latest page

One of my favourite meditative activities is working on the decorated margins in my dream journal.

They are always different and often suggest living creatures, such as here a beaked being on the right, and a fox-like entity in the centre.

The process is simple. I use my water colour paints and a 0.4 Artline 200 pen. Today I used Quinacridone Gold and Scarlet.

Since this book is new and the paper is an unknown quantity, I’m starting with primary colour mixes. I’ve already noticed there’s a vast amount of spotting on this paper. Don’t yet know why.

I painted patches and streaks of the first colour round the margins surrounding the blocks to be saved for writing, and waited till moderately dry.

Sloppily over-painted with second colour, leaving some of the gold patches and streaks, and making new patches and streaks over the first, and any unused areas.

It doesn’t pay to be too exact. Wait until thoroughly dry. Some people use hairdryers to speed the process.

In my next session I use the outliner—I prefer black—to make lines wherever the colours change including in areas of shading, though it’s easy to go too far.

It pays to keep checking how the work looks, and whether any recognizable entities are cropping up, and then to give them an eye or ear.

Lego, Puzzle One

It’s harder to set up than it looks, even for me, and I invented it.

There’s one piece missing … it’ll be in the post as soon as I have my computer back and can get to my favourite Bricklink store … but I want to get begun on my next project.

I started it as an experimental thing seeing how these slopes could work together. One thing led to another.

Life Admin xyz …

This is one of those days that I need to “make my daily march (back) with the heavy baggage wagon” These words from Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching as interpreted by Ursula K LeGuin.

Meaning to me that I need to attend primarily to my physical and on-ground community needs.

I must be out of the house by 9 AM, spruced up and ready for anything. First an after-care eye specialist appointment that’s walkable. Then bus into the city for early voting on the Yes/No referendum, and a bank ‘appointment’.

I call it an appointment despite that they don’t know I’m coming.

If you’re interested, I’ve begun summarising entries into the Lodestar Timeline on its dedicated page, accessible through the menu.

‘How Art Catalyzes Change—Join Us for a Livestream Event on September 20’

While this event is already past, I want to learn about the outcomes. Just reading the first few paragraphs, I’m sure I can learn ways to rephrase my messaging which seems to be falling on deaf ears at the moment.

Prior to my cancer scare I was a deep green greenie. I volunteered as a Landcare committee member, biodiversity co-ordinator, group leader and the local ‘fungi lady’.

Did talks in science week at schools, talk-and-walks about fungi in the local arboretum. Joined Knitting Nannas, an activist group. I fitted my house out with PV and a watertank.

When I woke after the end of the treatment, about July 2021, I was ecstatic that I had survived. And a few weeks later, very confronted by the seeming lack of concern about the climate emergency. My usual sources had dampened right down.

I had nothing left of any of the above, apart from an abiding fear for plants and wildlife and above all, how my very young grandchildren, and everybody-else’s descendents are mean to survive.

I had to relocate to the next state for the treatment, which all happened during covid. I’m in a rental with no control over the utilities. I have very little energy. No local contacts. But am still largely online.

My flavour of activism is being rejigged …

A unique discussion on the compelling intersections of art, climate change, and social innovation.

How Art Catalyzes Change—Join Us for a Livestream Event on September 20