Arty things

I am still enjoying my art classes - and possibly showing some improvement? it is hard to know. The best thing is always Fred the failed service dog. I try to get decent photos but he is always either having a cuddle, or coming in for a cudddle, or cruising for a cuddle. Such a good boy.

I am still trying to do people. People are really hard, especially if you want them to look like themselves. This painting is fine, but it doesn't look anything like the photo I used as a reference ... which is why I'm not going to show it to you. We will call this Imaginary Man.

I didn't know what to do one lesson so the teacher suggested dancers, for movement. So I just did dancers! How much fun ... some are good, most are terrible, but it was interesting to do. So many options in how you put their limbs, and very hard to show where those limbs are, especially in monotone.

In paint-related news, this is the colour the consultant suggested we paint the house. I had sent through photos, including the studio, and she suggested we choose a colour related to the studio but much less saturated and much cooler. 

It looks very yellow in this photo - especially against the white undercoat -  but in some lights it looks cream, and in other lights almost green. She also suggested one of the million whites for the frames, and a nice grey for the fascias ... and a bright red for the front door. The red does look fabulous but I'm not sure if it's what I want to do. Given that we might have to paint the house ourselves for poverty reasons, there is absolutely no rush to make any decisions.

Christmas explosion

My quilt group is having a sale table at the exhibition in November - and we decided to sell christmas table runners. I'm not 100% sure why, but we have lots of christmas fabric and patchwork table runners are nice to look at and (comparatively) easy to do.  We had friends stay on Tuesday night on their way from Brisbane to Melbourne - a three day drive, we were the second night - which was lovely. They arrived about 7 pm so we met them at the pub and were able to get a seat by the fire - the cold change had come through and Queenslanders are very soft :) Then I went down the coast again on Wednesday to get away from the builders and make some table runners.

I had a three-day sewing fiesta. Made a big mess, didn't cook much, went for some walks and made four table runners which is probably enough. 

I still have to sew the binding down on this one. Nothing fancy but satisfying to do.

They all look quite old-fashioned, I'm not sure why. I picked fabrics from the shed and I might have gone a bit more traditional than usual. 

The beach was beautiful as usual. Wednesday it rained for hours, which was much needed. It is scary dry down there at the moment and hopefully a day's rain has helped with the upcoming summer. 

Thursday and Friday were much hotter and I went for some lovely walks. I could perhaps have gone swimming but it was a bit windy. 

Grand plans

Even though we have fifty million unfinished things on the go at the moment, we can't help thinking about more grand plans. One of the unfinished things is dealing with that enormous dead pine and the ridiculously huge mountain of crap wood it created. We don't want to hire a log splitter so we needed a way of dealing with the rounds that are too big to split by hand. 

I rolled eight of the roundest to the front under the north pines to be seats at our future fire pit! It is a nice slope, reasonably near the house for winter sojourns but not too near (for fire reasons) and far enough away from the pines to be safe. I have watched several youtube videos on how to build a fire pit from old bricks (we have old bricks) and I am quite confident in my abilities to do this, even though it will probably not work out at all. But there you go - fire pit. I will also make cushions, for the pine tree logs. 

There are eight of them because I had seven originally and it made me really uncomfortable. I wouldn't say I am even a tiny bit superstitious but I felt like arranging seven old pine stumps in a ring in the garden was asking for trouble? Is that weird? I had to go get another one.

And this is for the not-so-round pieces - my cyclamen garden-to-be. Nothing grows under these pines - including grass - so I'm arranging the pine logs close but not touching; in autumn I will fill the gaps between them with compost or soil and plant some cyclamen corms. According to the internet it should work, and I do like cyclamens. Grand plans.

I also planted the remaining few snow in summer in a bed by the verandah. Under the little-known caulking gun bush. Sigh.

Precision carpentry

The hammering, drilling and sawing is not making life pleasant, but it is resulting in some improvements around the house. This wall is now watertight, with a new window frame (not rotting) and a nice undercoat of waterproof paint.

This is all new weatherboards - the old stuff was not salvageable - with a new window frame and a repaired window that actually opens! Very exciting, we haven't had opening windows in the kitchen so this is definitely a step up. The guttering is yet to come, but there's new flashing (possibly? maybe something else?) and general useful things. It is all costing a ridiculous amount of money and taking an unfeasibly long time but we have nothing but time, and who needs overseas holidays anyway. Not me.

Next we have non-precision carpentry paintstakingly put together by me and my husband (mostly him, but I helped) using whatever we had. This is offcuts from the studio.

Cold frames! For the next stage after our little seed starter trays (my marigolds have sprouted, it's very exciting). Random wood, laserlite roof, hinges and a rope handle. Opening and closing, it's amazing and we are very pleased with ourselves. Surprising what screws and bolts and things you have laying about when you look.

They are only meant to be temporary while we sort out what kind of greenhouse / shadehouse arrangement we want permanently. You can't rush these kind of decisions (and we have no money, see above).

Garden things

 This is the beautiful view over the back from the neighbour's place. We have gone over to check on their horses while they are away - literally all you have to do is check they are still standing up, it's quite easy. They eat grass, not like cats. The clouds didn't come to any rain; it's a shame because we could do with some. It is forecast to be an exceptionally hot and dry summer, which I am not looking forward to at all.

But I planted out my blanket flowers (Gaillardia pulchella) anyway. These are the ones that I grew from seed in autumn and nurtured over winter - the only ones that survived my mistake in not putting the seed tray liners (with holes) in the big tray (with no holes). They didn't seem to mind the seed raising soup for three weeks. A few snow-in-summer also made it through so I've put them in there as well - this is the new bed in the western paddock that we made around some rocks. Despite the horse poo and compost the soil is still terrible, so we will see how they go. I have another dozen blanket flowers to plant somewhere else and we can see what lives.

I also started four trays of marigold seeds, to put under the roses. I know marigolds are bright and tasteless but if they live I'm all for them. We went to a friend's 60th just this side of Canberra last weekend, hosted by his brother who lives on 20 acres. We've been there before but we have a very specific interest now, and made them walk us around the shadehouse and the greenhouse and the vege beds and the orchard. They have a problem with kangaroos - which we don't, thank goodness, they eat everything. 

And in other irrelevancies, someone went into the shed where we (the quilt group) store our display poles for the show and cut half of them off at the base. I know timber's expensive but we feel this is a bit egregious! I put the photo on the local Facebook group(s) and got plenty of sympathy but no actual culprits. They were painted black so we're peering at everyone's formwork/garden edging/bracing/scaffolding to see who nicked them. Bastards.

House things

So this is what the north wall looks like at the moment - new rocks, carefully concreted in, chimney has a new brace, weatherboards removed and replaced, window frames primed and now we just have to finish the undercoat on the new boards. We can't decide what colour to paint the house so we've booked in an online meeting with a colour consultant! I have never done such a thing before in my life so I am quite intrigued by what they do and will report back. 

It is a work of art and we are very pleased ... if only it wasn't about a tenth of the outside of the house! Carpneter has moved onto the kitchen wall, which was resting DIRECTLY ON THE DIRT. This isn't good, so he's dug down, put in a concrete footing, created drainage on the outside and is replacing the bottom couple of weatherboards where they had started to rot. We are hoping to save the beautiful yellow rose but it's not looking very pleased with life.

This doesn't look very exciting but when he took off the weatherboards it turns out that underneath is still the original slab hut! This is very old school - no framing and probably not sawn timber. But it all seems solid enough... It should see us out :)

I have come down to the beach for a couple of days to get away from sawing, hammering and having to get changed in the bathrooom. It is very peaceful here and I've been for some lovely walks. Not quite swimming weather yet.

Things that are yellow

It's time for daffodils again, and they are as glorious as ever. We have at least a dozen distinct varieties, and it's fabulous to see which pop up where. There's a particularly lovely drift down by one of the fruit trees.

I made a vase-ful of different sorts, with wattle for extra yellowness.

And the other yellow thing is the floor of the studio. I chose commercial vinyl because of the colour, but it's been a bit of a dud because it marks so easily. I think it is quite hardwearing - if you have commercial cleaners come round every night with one of those big polishing scuff machines - but for domestic use not so great. And it was very expensive. 

Never mind, I'll put cheap rugs on it, and I have always wanted a yellow floor. The last job was to sand and stain (three coats) the deck - which I've now done. Here's the before.

And the after. Very satisfying. 

The outside is definitely one more thing that is yellow! All the exterior painting is finally done, including the steel covers the studio guy unexpectedly put over the end nibs for protection (happy about the protection, not happy when I realised I'd have to get the paintbrush out again). I've moved most everything in, although it's not set up 100% as I want it. I think I'll have to work with it for a while and then see where to put things, and where the lighting needs to be, and what more furniture I need (if any). I already know I need an armchair to sit and admire the sunshine :)

Cat is happy

Our cat is a creature of routine, and really hates it when we go away. Or go out in the morning. Or move the furniture. Or have the afternoon coffee on the sofa instead of the sunny patch on the spare bed. So she has been super cuddly since we got back, which is very lovely, except this is how I eat my breakfast now.

And my lunch. I'm sure you're not meant to let cats clamber over your dining table but I don't care any more. She purrs SO loudly and gets cross when you try and take a photo. Or a sip of your coffee.

Speaking of cute pets, the builders brought this round for a visit. She was part of a litter rescued from someone's farm and my husband had said he was interested. I was not 100% convinced that we needed a kelpie/collie cross puppy in our lives but look how adorable this damn dog is. 

Crazy. She even smelt nice. Anyway, the couple who did the rescuing decided they wanted to hang onto her, which is fine by us, because we are not set up for puppies at all. But gee she was cute.

The builder was determined to find where our roof downpipe went (no sewerage in town, it's all septic or just downhill somewhere) and eventually did, and cut the end off. It disgorged three feet of disgusting which is now all over the lawn, but probably better there than in the pipe. Another delight of an old house.

Brisbane and back

We've had a little ten day jaunt up to Queensland to visit my husbands parents and many other friends and relatives. We did a lot of socialising - including a trip up to the Sunshine Coast to see the new grand-niece who is six weeks old and exceptionally cute and cuddly. Their local beach was beautiful but look at that storm on the way! We did not have the usual glorious settled August weather. 

My husband had a birthday. We don't deliberately time our trip so that he gets a chocolate cake cooked by his mum, but it is very nice when it turns out that way.

It was also a chance to try the car on a two day journey - it definitely took two full days, but we had no hiccups charging. Sadly I am now a fan of the Tesla supercharging stops ... mainly because there are twelve of them at a time. We had a couple of times of turning up to a shopping mall that had four chargers; to find one broken, one the other type of plug and two taken by people who were probably off doing their shopping. The infrastructure has not quite kept up with the number of cars, and the summer holidays could be a bit exciting. We might stay home.

I also bought a new phone because mine was losing charge at a ridiculous rate, and I'd already replaced the battery twice. The new phone has a much nicer camera, so I took a lot of arty photos. Of trees and things. And people.

This is the city looking back from the art gallery. We went into the city twice - once to the art gallery and once to the modern art gallery - and took the opportunity to walk around West End, which is an old working class suburb (now quite fancy) in the middle of town. Most of my husband's ancestors seem to have been born, lived and died within two blocks of each other; I've heard lots of stories so it was nice to wander around.

I took arty photos of old houses.

We went on a rainforest walk (damp, lots of trees, do not recommend). 

Other than that it was a lovely few days of sitting and chatting, bracketed by two days at each end of driving and driving. Great to get away and great to come home again.

Getting to spring

The wattle comes out in August, and ours is true to form. It's very pretty and yellow but always makes me think of cold winds. We have had some biting winds the past few weeks.

I finished my pastel portrait. It's not very good but it's still probably the best portrait I've done. It's certainly the best one I've done in colour, which adds a huge layer of complexity to it. I'm going to try again with another face, and see if it gets any easier.

Finished my crochet rug

I am most pleased with this. Not because it is very good, or very complex, but because I did not have any idea how to crochet, and then I learnt how, and kept doing it, and made a little lap blanket. It also used up a few half balls of wool, which is satisfying.

I finished it in a single line of crochet, which I also did not know how to do, but followed a youtube video and it turned out fine. It is terribly wavy on the edges, even after I washed and tried to square it up with soup cans, but I don't mind. It now has pride of place on the sofa.

Haulin' and burnin'

We had another burn pile for bits and bobs lying about. Sadly it was a day I had quilters and art class so I didn't get to light things on fire, but my husband had a lovely time.

My role was limited to taking nine? ten? ute-loads of wood down to the bottom paddock. Yep, I drove our ute to one part of our vast acreage, threw lots and lots of shitty pine onto it, then drove it to another part of our vast acreage and made a big pile. It felt very countrified, and getting rid of it felt even better. That pine is never-ending, and you can't burn it 100% of the time or it gunks up the chimney. Apparently.

I pulled apart some of the burnt-down compost bins too, so I could take it to the burn pile and finish the job. Also bits of crap wood from the lavender shed re-vamp (still in progress) and a heap we meant to chip but it's now too dry and dead to chip properly. 

I took a photo of the smoke as I rode off to quilters on my bike. We had to take some trees down on the shared access road a while ago (professional job, they were enormous). One of our neighbours has put iron flowers in the stump. I think they look very cute.

My garlic is up ... just another six months before harvesting! It is not a speedy crop. 

I also had a birthday. We threw away all the old manky birthday candles when we moved house so I got a household candle. It worked perfectly well and the cake was delicious. Number one and girlfriend came out to stay the night and we went out for dinner and then had cake and played scrabble by the fire. Perfect.