Light - white- hope

 

I'm told the shortest day of the year is behind us; and yet the early mornings still seem quite dark - impatient I know. I do love the fact that some dark mornings take on interesting hues - like the purplish hue at one point this morning - above and below.

I began my walk in low light so it is not surprising that the white blossoms popped out a bit more. I decided to go with white - to me it suggested hope and light in dark times. I was surprised that there were quite a number of whitish blossoms. Droplets were courtesy of a misty overnight rain.

The white-light theme continued in G's orchid house.

May we continue to seek and find hope.

Another attack on women

 

Fiona asked me a question to which I have no answer - the question was-is "why do they hate us so much?" Why does the patriarchy feel it needs to take away womens' rights; why are they so afraid of equality; why do they feel they need to control womens' choices; why do they just want to take rights back to the dark ages. I have no answers to these questions.

The recent decision regarding abortion in the US, by an unelected and biased group, a group that does not heed the voice of 85% of Americans, is nothing less than a war on women.

The nano posters in this blog reflect this fact - the patriarchy is continuing to wage a war on women and even coopts women into its war. I have printed white on red to reflect the handmaids tale; and the white on black reflects mourning for the destruction of women's rights and equality.

In these times of despair we all need to hold on and care for ourselves. I was tying up bundles of uplift nano posters and pocket posters after printing the war on women posters.

It's hard to pick one's self up and continue the work to dismantle the patriarchy; but pick ourselves up we must and dismantle the patriarchy we must. If you need one or more of the uplift posters in your life  let me know and I will post it/them to you.

Transforming

 

I'm on a mission to tidy my workshop after having been in it for 18 months. I want to use or give away or dispose of those bits of stuff that I have collected or been given. I had been gifted 3 metal watering cans - 2 still in good working order; but not loved or liked anymore. The photo below is of the cans before I started on them - the tallest is about 35-40cm high.

I had a yarn with Fiona about how I might transform them into interesting objects for a garden. We decided to give them a new life by adding rusted metal - primarily from a rusted fireplace flue guard. The opening photo is of the completed 3 objects. Photos below show some of the design similarities and differences. The spouts on two now have rusted hand made washers as a point of interest.

I drilled holes in the base of all the cans so that water can drain away; and, if in the garden, they will not become a mosquito breeding pots. Of course they could now have flowers, a bush or herbs planted in them.

Flying to the moon, Monday morning sunrise

 

Monday and today were gorgeous mornings for a walk.  This morning - crisp, clear, blue sky and gentle sunrise. I rejoiced in the magpies on the overhead wires - the photo above just brought together all the elements with the sun on the magpie's tail feather and wings partly spread - ready for takeoff to the moon. Another photos of magpie and moon below.

Quite the contrast to Monday mornings sunrise - all fire and mackerel cloud- with stars and the moon mixed in some of the photos.

Looking north to the special tree at the top of the complex - soft purple and pink hues.

Quite a number of the orchids in G's orchid house are at bursting point - don't they know winter has not finished. The photo below shows bursting potential.

A really refreshing morning - full of life and light.

It requires patience

 

Continuing the process of making 140-150 silver-plated leaves; and printing some uplift nano posters using leftover ink.

But first - the opening image is the polished edge of a brass weight I use for opening the leaves to 90 degrees. Why the opening title? It came to me as I worked on leaves over the last couple of days. Making considerably large numbers of leaves is very repetitive and takes time and therefore a lot of patience as one does not have a lot to show for the time invested - but the final outcome will be worth it. Still some lovely progress photos emerged. The first few photos are of those that will become earrings and pendants; the second last are daily word leaves; and the last is one of the give-away leaves.

We had some periwinkle blue ink left over after our Wednesday poster workshop. Given it was a generally soft blue I decided to print some nano posters (postcards in portrait) as you ce below.

As got to the end I mixed in the last of the process blue - it resulted in a deep navy blue as you can see below.

Whole lot of letterpress poster printing fun

 

Fiona and I held a halfday (morning) workshop at DEP on Wednesday for four women from one of our local kindergartens.

The idea was to print a large poster (76cmX55cm) using wood type. The plan was to print words that reflected the ethos of the kindergarten.

After some workshopping of words and inspecting trays of type the decision was made to all use the gorgeous almost 100 year old Italian wood type - about 150mm high.

The photo below is of me talking with the group - but in reality both Fiona and I did the teaching-guiding. The group gave their approval for phos and this blog.

As you can see from the proof below it is always good to check your bs and ds. We had a bit of an issue with the capital K - it was a bigger font - different thickness - probably carved by a different workshop all those years ago.

The inking up was a joyous time - including a bit of play with mixing colours and playing with purple stripes at the end. All hands on deck!!!

We printed a couple of originals of the poster. We had intended to print some A4 poster; but ran out of time. So instead we had fun printing tea towels. Great photo of the stash of posters and tea towels and the printers.

I hung the tea towels on the drying rack today - the letterpress ink on the cloth (linen-cotton) will take a few weeks to dry.

The sun was steaming in about 2pm today which made for interesting light and shade patterns..