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 …
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?
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.
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.
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 …
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The Star Wars chronology has been my go-to viewing for the past few weeks. The Mandalorian has just said auf wiedersein to his small charge and will be at a loose end.
The Mandalorian series got me thinking about novels, such as The Crystal Planet by Vonda McIntyre, set in the Starwars universe.
[All Star Wars related media produced pre 2014 are now referred to as Legends, while for post 2014 material and the original series, Disney+ claims the ‘Canon’ label.]
While they all have only a tenuous position on the original timeline, TV series and books have expanded the Star Wars universe.
The original timeline of the Lodestar universe has always involved timetravel. Not sideways to expand the size of the universe yet, to give more options where to set stories, as in the Star Wars universe.
The Lodestar universe began in the future … I even set a date for its beginning when I was still new at the business of writing a universe. But it turns out that in a story that involves a time travelling, forward falling, octohedrenal spaceship such as the Lodestar, there is no beginning or end.
Because that’s what happened …
Seriously? I’m completely boondoggled … is that even a word, I imagine you’re asking … I’ll need to check that myself. It’s been a while since I saw it written.
That suspicion was right. Not the right meaning. The Navy has my favorite explanation … a boondoggle is a fun, but unproductive meeting.
So. Try again. I’m completely at a loss … not as descriptive is it?
But me going to the thesaurus from here and then trying to get back with a good word under my arm… will take me another half hour.
I’m at a loss. My writing is on my laptop and the external hard drive. My research ditto. Everyplace where I might check somthing, also inaccessable.
It’s Friday, and here in Queensland, Monday is a public holiday. I won’t be able to take my ailing laptop to a repair place until Tuesday!
Couldn’t take it today, yesterday or day before due to too much other stuff those days. I have ME/CFS and am constrained by a frequent lack of energy.
I’ve been training myself to take 2200 steps per day. If I go over my daily limit, I’m setting myself up for a three day crash.
The computer repair place visit has to be done on the same day I need to go into that direction for another thing. Three blocks distance is all it is, and three blocks back. It’s all I’ll be able to that day.
Rita de Heer 