Easter good times

Easter brings the National Folk Festival again! After cancellations in 2020 and 2021, and then a convalescent effort in 2022, it is back and at close to full strength, so I went off for three days of folkiness. Friday was a terrible day for weather - rainy and windy - so I huddled in tents with many other old people and got muddy and sad. And nearly bogged my car in the parking field. The clouds were amazing - not so much the storms that came through in waves with full thunder and lightning. Atmospheric.

But Saturday and Sunday were much better, and I saw lots of great acts, and ate some good food. Here are old people listening to afrobeat. 

Here is Fiona Ross singing - unaccompanied - traditional Scots songs about loss, heartbreak, war, rain and being burned to death. Loved it, she made us sing along too. No idea what any of the words meant (except 'dreich' which was very apt at the time...)

Yet more abstracts

Here are some doodle paintings that don't go to the edges. The first thing I do is put down some watercolour swirls or splotches, so that can spread all over the paper, or sometimes not. And then you go adding in bits until it is finished. Not very scientific.

I went down the beach on the weekend and had a couple of lovely swims. My husband went back to the country house with a mate to see the occasional gardener guy, who will keep doing the lawns and some of the chopping / poisoning / pruning / clearing. 

He said they had a picnic on the verandah and it was magical. Sigh..... 

The house is ours

We have done the final settlement on the new country house and the property managers have already shown it to prospective tenants - which is both a relief and a sadness, that someone else gets to enjoy it before we do. We went out for a couple of hours on the weekend and had a good measure and inspect ... great but quite different to the meet-the-sellers the weekend before. For starters it was a cold and rainy day, and the house was completely empty, and a bit sad. 

It's definitely an old house and there are bits that don't quite meet and scuffs and stains. It doesn't have many cupboards, the carpets need replacing, there are drafts through the windows. But this is not our first rodeo! I have walked into a few newly purchased empty, echoing cold houses in my life and I know how to fix it :) 

The measuring of everything was good - I do like to operate off independently ascertained facts - for example I currently use 3.4 linear metres of hanging space for my clothes and the new house will have 2.4 linear metres. I need to get rid of one metre of clothes - this is good, this is quantifiable, I can do this. The numbers on bookshelves are much worse - the new house has just under 40% of the built-in bookshelving of our current house. Can I get rid of 60% of our books? Or do we just get more bookshelves? I am in a throwing out mood at the moment so we shall see. We have sheds and outbuildings but some of them look like the Historic Village we went to on school excursions so I'm assuming Not Weatherproof.

But whatever its shortcomings the house is honestly not even a small part of this place. From every window there is a view of the garden that makes me smile. It is so beautiful.... we've just got to power through the next couple of years (and not freak out about the ENORMOUS debt) then we can play shrubberies until our knees give out.

More abstracts

I finally got round to taking photos of what I've been doing so you might be inundated with random squiggles! These are all A3 size, it's hard to tell from the pictures.

I think they would be better if I scanned them properly rather than taking photos (in terrible light) but then I'd have to bring them into work, and do them on the big photocopier, and it would be awkward. Maybe I could do it on the weekend (but who wants to come into work on the weekend?)

You can see a few themes emerging. I do gravitate towards similar shapes, and some of the pens feel nicer than others. I'm still using the Kuretake paints and the wonderful golds that they have - you can mix it with anything for a nice metallic sheen. 

The abstract art

This is what I'm working on at the moment - shapes, doodles, colours. Some watercolour paint, some gouache, some marker pens, some fineliner pens, some paint pens. I am having a very lovely time doing this and it is making me very happy. Not least because I got to go and buy a 75 pack of posca paint pens which are LOVELY although I got the Japanese ones and have no idea what is written on the side. I am assuming I can use a paint pen without instructions and there are no secrets I'm missing?

I was initially inspired by Anita Winterz and her 'intuitive art'. I am not sure about the emotional benefits but I did think that everything she did was pretty, so that's where I started. Here is an earlier one.

And another one below, with less in it, I'm not sure it works so well. It is so much fun that I look forward to it at the end of the day - I'm assuming I'll get sick of it at some point! There is a sunroom in the new house that will be my art room but it's not very big (and also very attractive as a sunroom) so I am googling 'backyard art studios'. Apparently you can just drop one in without planning permission and it is incredibly tempting.

The new house

On Saturday we went to the cottage in the country we are about to buy to meet with the current owners and get the lowdown on everything! They were absolutely lovely - talked us through the garden for over two hours and then we went into town and had lunch together. They are clearly very sad to leave, but are in their mid 70s now and it is getting a bit much. We saw many many bits of the garden that we didn't realise existed, and learned more of the house history, and the names of the neighbours, and people to call for gutters and septic tanks and tree removal. We are advised to join the local garden club, and who does the good coffee, and so many other wonderful things.

I didn't take any photos so this is just one from the website listing. Of course now we want to move there immediately and are very sad that tenants will enjoy it for a year or two before we can retire. Although we had completely ruled out the commute (it's just over an hour's drive) ... and now we're thinking about it. How we could make it work. Hmmmm.....

Last heatwave

Now that we are officially in autumn Australia has decided to have a little heatwave. Not last weekend when I was actually at the beach, goodness no, just during the week when all I get to do is sit inside. I have very tall windows at my back (which is lovely, not complaining) that face due north so when we get anything warm that isn't in the middle of summer my office gets very warm. And snoozy. Not good.

I am doing a lot of abstract art at the moment (scribbles! doodles! circles!) but I keep forgetting to take photos. So without any pictures I give you this photo of me and my grotty high school friends drinking what appears to be vodka in what I know is a camping ground at Waihi Beach over New Year's weekend at the end of 1987. Were we legal drinking age? No. Were we supposed to have fifteen teenage girls in a campground cabin? No. Were we the epitome of 1980s fashion and style? Absolutely not. My god. I'm the one at the front with the red cup, rocking a spiral perm and a never-heard-of-melanoma tan.