At the Brampton museum and art gallery today. This beautiful sculpture was carved out of a tree trunk there. I love the bee which is well detailed. I wish I could have our old Ash tree, that was partly cut down last year, carved into a bee tree too!
Category: Uncategorized
Lion sketch
I went to Etruria Artists today and was asked to draw lions as we were having a little drawing challenge and the group has a lion as a mascot.
I could have looked at a photo but I wanted to see if I could draw a lion from memory. What I ended up with was a lion / bear hybrid I think! I called it bearly a lion.
Colours used were gellato crayons (I think they are called) with metallic shades. They are a bit like lipsticks and can be drawn with, smudged and have water added to them to make them flow. I used a black ink pen to draw the thin lines. It’s a curious big cat.
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He’s getting a new home x
The cat we have looked after for eighteen months is finally going to a new home.
We can’t take him in because we have two cats if our own that live permanently indoors. The one that is going lives outside in our shed. It’s been difficult for him but it’s not been very cold yet this winter, and if anything he’s put on weight.
So things are looking good. We are introducing him to his new owners so he gets used to them. Fresh roast chicken is helping. (sorry if you are vegetarian). He should be going in the next week or so to a new forever home.
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Life changes.
Thinking about how much life has changed since I cooked toast on our gas fire.
In the 1970’s we had electric central heating installed downstairs in our house. This was installed by our council. But my mom would not have it on because of the cost. We used to sleep with our outdoor coats on top of our sheets, blankets and eiderdowns to keep warm. In the winter there was always frost on the inside of the bedroom window. Sometimes really thick ice.
Now my home has double glazing (single at my mom’s house till the 1980’s). Central heating. The water is usually hot, where we were only allowed to put the heater on for an hour at night at my old home.
Also computers were just coming in and calculators were introduced when I was a teenager. Now they are everywhere. “go online” is the mantra.
Electric cars? Maybe imagined in the 1960’s to be everywhere by the turn of the century, and people really thought there woukd be flying cars.
Bad stuff now… Too much plastic… Too much pollution. But there were shop wrecks like the Torrie canyon and the Exxon Valdiz that poured millions of gallons of oil into the sea and destroyed sea bird colonies.
What else? Our phone, when we got it was a big green one, with a hand held ear and mouthpiece attached to the phone body by a curly wire. The phone itself had a dial with holes lined up with numbers on it. To dial a number you put your finger in a hole then pulled it round the dial until you got to a stop then the dial turned the other way and you dialled the next number… Now, well we have mobile phones, hand held computers like in star trek.
Other things, better medication, more cures for cancer, more treatments, more, older people.
The thing is, the more we have, the more we want…. Catch 22….
Cooking toast.
When I was a child I used to cook toast-on the gas fire!
I would come home from school and warm up in front of the fire, warming my toes, feet, hands and face. We didn’t have central heating, so only the living room was warm. I was older than my siblings so this was my job. Slices of white bread hooked onto the bars on the front of the gas fire with a metal fork. A few seconds and you turn the bread over. Delicious hot toast and I guess margarine because we couldn’t afford butter. If it was a Sunday I sometimes cooked crumpets. They are like a savoury bread like a muffin but full of holes through the middle of them and at the top of them so when they have butter or margarine spread on them it melts right through the middle of them.
I remember the lovely smells of toast and margarine, together with a hot cup of tea in small cups with orange and brown patterns on them.
This memory was prompted by a question on the Alchemists blog page which asked for memories of being cozy. It’s good to uncover old memories like this.
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Time travel
A Dalek at Froghall a few years ago… That’s another story…
I was reading the New Scientists back page last week and there was a question about time travel. Where would you go to in the past or future? Something along those lines. The answer one person gave is that as the planet moves through space, if you travelled six months forwards or backwards for example, when you rematerialised Earth would be at the other side of its orbit. Difficult unless you are in a vessel with an airlock. They went on to explain that as the sun is also moving through the milky way galaxy, its planets spiral around it in its wake, so where Earth was a year ago is far behind where it is now.
I realised from reading that, that your time machine would have to move in space as well as time. In something like the T. A. R. D. I. S. This is a time machine in the Sci fi series Dr Who. It means “Time and relative dimensions in space”. In other words it can travel in space as well as time.
Considering the show was first broadcast in the 1960’s that’s pretty clever. Working out you need to be able to find the Earth’s coordinates in time and space. Mind you they were closer in time to Einstein so they might have had more of an idea about it than we do…..
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Edges
Edges.
See that line around your soul?
It holds you in
holds your heart
city of pottery,
towns of clay,
each kiln and bottle oven,
part of your blood supply.
Heart of Clay.
My Stoke.
Edged with gold,
signed underneath your body
giving the city soul.
Just doodling
What to do when you are watching TV and you want to draw? Wait for the ad break and draw something quickly.
I’m watching something called the Great Pottery Throw down where twelve potters compete each week to make the best ceramics. This week the challenge is to make a six piece coffee set with a caffitierre, two expresso cups and saucers and a toast rack. Really enjoying watching people design, make and fire pots. Watching clay dry and drawing… Fun!
Playing
You don’t know what you will get when you play with photos. This was the result after playing with this photo. 
And also playing with the brightness and hues in it….
I like it.
Just a photo of a reflection in a window.
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Curled up cat
He’s sitting on my chair,
lying on my bed,
eating my food,
drinking my milk.
He’s taking the mickey,
having a laugh,
being very cheeky,
making me wait.
He knows I won’t move him,
won’t pick him up,
put his paws on the floor,
put him out of the door.
He’s a very lucky kitty,
sleeping on my chair,
he should be here..
and I should be there!
