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Cat Diary 8

I confess to being completely stressed for the two nights that we had a visitor staying.

First there was the getting the place ship-shape, with no peace to just lay up and relax while the old woman worked through her usual routines.

No. We had putting away. Dusting. Airing the pillows. Wrangling bedsheets onto the mattress. Finding linen in the linen cupboard by first reefing things out, then putting most of them back.

This is how I prefer at least some of my day

But there wasn’t anything like sleeping on the couch for three days! because after our visitor arrived, I had to be totally on my toes. Not that the two women ever sat on the couch, they lounged about at the dining table.

And they mainly ignored me. Even the old woman ignored me. I didn’t get even one game out of her, and the kibble game might as well not have been invented. Very exasperating!

The first night I was shut in my den by 8.30 p/m! In vain I tried to tell her that she was making a mistake. Bedtime is at 9.30 p/m! She ignored my entreating look, where I begged to stay up longer. I was so shocked I didn’t make any further attempts to communicate.

The following night I decided to get back at them. Our visitor slept next door in the guest room made over from the study. I set my internal alarm, and putting my face right by the crack left by the door not quite closing, miaouwed every hour.

She had hardly any sleep, she said. Unfortunately, the old woman had a great night, she said. That’s when I discovered that when she takes out her hearing aids, she can hear very little. Certainly not a few little miaouws.

All was good, though. The visitor left at 9.20 a/m and my routines have been restored.

New Growth

I’m just boasting here … not that I did any of the growing myself. These plants don’t seem to mind standing around on a south facing balcony …

Australian native fig (proper name later)

This is a rainforest species and starts in the undergrowth, so the conditions probably right up its alley.

Bolly gum … it’s reaching for the outdoor light I’ve been leaving on for the fishpond. It’s grown over 30 cm in 6 months. A sprig of its new growth.

This velvety kurrajong is also putting out new growth. I think I finally found the place it likes.

Isn’t that a lush and verdant growth of parsley and Chinese cabbage? I suspect that their success is more to do more with growing in thinly covered composting vegetables.

Most of the rest of the plants are struggling in various different ways. But never mind, I heard from my neighbours that we do get sun for a few weeks! Maybe then there will be various growth spurts. We’ll see.

My view

This morning’s fog to the east …

An hour or so later …

Similar angle as above …

I hope that I get to keep this bit of my view … yesterday we (residents) got an email with the map of the soon-to-be-begun demolitions in prep for the fourth building to be started.

I wondered where they (construction company) would get the fill to extend the flood bulwark. Last night had the thought that possibly the digging out of the basement carpark will give them enough. Time will tell.

The poor cat, she’ll have conniptions. She’s still very skittish.

Gydja, Cold Spring Dark Fold Mix …

I was astounded after five minutes watching and listening to discover this is out here … in the public domain … for free! Or more to the point, whatever you’d like to pay!

Both sound and visuals are impressive. I’ve enjoyed about twenty minutes of it, so far. While I’m listening to the gorgeous soundtrack interspersing the songs, I’m studying (enjoying!) the visuals.

An amazing amount of work has gone into them! It’s possible of course there some AI involved but so what? There’s such detail in each frame as to have required a great deal of work by the humans involved … cutting and pasting, detailed and intricate prompt engineering if any, hours upon hours in the workshop designing the different elements, composing the frames, researching the stories. And that’s just the visuals.

‘Page ends’ are a narrow strip between frames, and bear at least six little vignettes. The page ends do repeat every so often, but not frequently enough that I got bored seeing them again.

The ‘folk’ being extolled here is, I assume, the Old English/European Celtic culture. All the symbology points to it including Joan of Arc, The Green man, Wood Witches and stags. The European landscapes are varied with farm land, hills, forests, valleys and villages. The skies change from rain to stars to clouds and sunny gloamings. The ‘real’ rain drops that spill and spatter down the still frames slowly passing right to left are another creative strategy that help to tie everything together and set a bright tone.

With the pictures resembling high class black and white woodcuts, the ambience could be darker than it is. I think the gorgeous background soundtrack–of bird song, rain, and other natural sounds–does a lot to ameliorate the visual darkness. I can’t get over the bird song … seldom have I heard birdsong complementing vocals so well!

It’s obvious there is at least one very creative human being at the head of this production, though I would expect there to be more like a dozen creatives involved in this work of art. And my hat off to them! I’m a fan from this minute!

Thank you, Ogden Fahey for alerting me to this amazing production!

Knitting, a Tiger

So far so good

Have just added in the left front leg. This knit has got to be one of the most challenging knits I’ve attempted so far … and I began knitting when I was nine.

Juffrouw Krauweel taught me and about twenty other 9 year olds when we were in Grade Three.

Juf stood in front of the class with her big knitting needles calling out the steps for each stitch … insteken, omslaan, doorhalen, af … (I can’t remember the last word in Dutch, maybe later)

I was an independent hussy where knitting was concerned and knitted without patterns most of my life.

This time however I’m following the directions stitch by stitch.

‘Pee Dee Effing’

Lol, that doesn’t look so good for a couple of reasons. But the turning-a-document-into-a-pdf process should have its own verb by now, it’s such a common operation. Of course, there could already be one and I have missed it. Let me know?

When I first started blogging, I’d laboriously do the formatting off-line, then when I copied and pasted into the blog … flit! All the formatting was lost and I’d have to start again. So for me, turning something into a pdf is nearly always about preserving formatting, especially when I started posting up Bosley’s Builders.

The hold-up had two prongs. One, I needed a word processor other than MS Word for the operation. MS Word have lost my custom. Not at all important in their scheme of things, I’m sure. But say a million of us decide not to fork out either the monthly or the yearly cost? They’ll sit up and take notice then. When I saw that they don’t sell copies outright anymore, I was gone.

So, Scrivener is it. I’ve been using Scrivener for a good few years for preliminary drafts. Their latest version has the possibility to save documents into pdf mode. They haven’t put their prices up and they don’t profiteer by forcing people into a perpetual loan situation.

The second prong of the hold-up has been me coming to grips with writing and formatting Bosley’s mob into Scrivener in the first place.