A rhyme remembered

It’s been raining here for days! From when I happened to say to a friend at the end of April, ‘we really need some rain, the farmers are worried they haven’t had enough for their crops’.

Be wary of what you ask for.

Now I remember the old rhyme we used to say when it was always raining ‘rain, rain, go away, come again another day’! It has poured down so hard today you can hear it thrumming on the kitchen roof and battering the windows… Enough! I want to go for a walk!

Cat on a mat?

With a bag? She was staring at me, getting into my mind, so I decided to do a collage with her. This seems to be my creative ‘go to’ at the moment. Photo, then draw onto monoprinted paper, copying the photo. Two holes for her orange eyes. Then stick the paper down. Next post it notes for the bag that holds a couple I’d packs of felt pens. I cut out shapes then drew over it to give it more shading. Finally the mat… Another bit of monoprint. It’s hard to cut out the negative shape of the cat, and the mat is red and green, but I wanted it to stand out from the cat and my red and green pens have just about run out, so I used pink and what was meant to be a pale blue instead. It’s a bit scruffy, I didn’t have enough pattern to extend across the whole page so part of the mat is just coloured in. Anyway it was fun to do. Ignore the date by the way, I hadn’t done anything on the 18th so I filled in the gap.

Today’s painting

Bottle oven and swirls

I like painting bottle ovens on long thin canvases and I tend to use the shape of the side to make almost a yin yang curve. I might add some stars to the swirling sky. I’ve used mainly reds browns and oranges for the brickwork on the kiln. I need to go over the dark mortar and add some shading to the kiln to give it more shape. Acrylic on canvas.

Archaeological dog walking?

Not with those soles!

This was a patch of concrete or cement on the pavement next to a telecommunications box. Maybe someone in forensics could date these soles, their size, the weight of the person? The dog print looks like it’s a large dog, big claws on it. And the crack, did that happen because there are tree roots below it? Why stand on this? I wonder if it was deliberate.

Broken cat flap!

Crash! Smash! Clatter!

The big outside cat who now comes in has finally broken the cat flap! It was cracked in two yesterday, but with both parts still in place, but today? When we came home from my studio the cat flap was broken with two side pieces twisted away from each other and a pizza wedge shaped piece on the ground outside. The outdoor cat was inside and my female inside cat was staring through the cat flap from the outside! I opened the door and let her in. But how to try and fix this? Glue and wide clear tape. I tried gluing the edges, but I was just making a sticky mess. Next I dabbed glue on the flat surfaces and stuck the clear tape to them like a bandage. Next I slid the wedge shape up between the sides and wrapped another lot of tape and glue around the bottom of the flap. Finally I supported the flap on our toilet roll holder so it’s inside the door and horizontal. Why? Because it’s raining heavily and it would soon be soaking wet if I shut it. The door is also open to keep it out of the rain. I’m relying on the door between the kitchen and the backdoor staying shut to keep the cats in (and out).

Fingers crossed x

Setting Moon

Seen a couple of nights ago, a blurry setting Moon, chasing the Sun round the sky.

You can tell what angle the Moon is to the Sun because of the angle of the curve on the sunlit side. As the Moon waxes and wanes the position of the Sun can be worked out, full Moon=the Sun is on the other side of the Earth, a sliver of Moon, the Moon is in between the Earth and the Sun. Eclipse? If the Moon Eclipses the Sun it is directly between the other two bodies. If the Moon turns bright red its the Earth getting between the Moon and Sun, its only really then that you can see the curvature of the Moons surface, whichis usually so reflective that it looks bright and flat.

I guess this is the most number of times I’ve written ‘”Moon” in a blog!