Saying farewell to the cottage for now

 

We are heading back to our Maleny home; so it is farewell to our Armadale home (above) for a while.

As we say farewell I share a few last random fragments from the week.

We have had some great weather whilst over here this time; but as the following photos show the weather can be changeable and so that was the case on our last day.

We look forward to being in our Maleny home and catching up with all the folk and our other life the. We always pause and reflect how fortunate we are to have two wee homes.

Daily Word poem book

 

Whilst at the cottage I have been doing the preparatory work for the publication of a small poetry book. I'm going to use the Blurb platform. I'm going to get our friend Kim H to assist with the actual final layout and publication.

To date I have decided on a few design features including using my own photo images as backgrounds to title pages and the actual poems. I have decided to convert my photos to silver tone to create a softer look and to enable the print to stand out. The 21 images I intend to use are in the screen shot below. Regarding the photos I have written on the mockup to identify the dates and subject matter of the photos so they can be more readily accessed and checked by Kim and myself.

I have made a mockup of the book and identified where the different images, titles and text will fall.

I think I'm now in a good position to work with Kim on this when I return to Maleny.

Wee watercolours

 

Yesterday I finished four small (6cm square) watercolours I had started some time ago. The outcomes are in the photo above and below. The first watercolour is of a spent flower head; and the one below is of a lichen encrusted stone wall down the road from the cottage.

Some process photos follow.

I was also testing and preparing a couple of other things: preparing four pieces of tea bag on watercolour paper for later use; and testing a low tech sketching tool. 

I was reasonably happy with the first three watercolours but no so much the one with a lot of green on it.

The beauty of the field flowers

 

The beauty of the field flowers speak for themselves - just so many; and so many are tiny but intense including the Spring Squill above and the Primula Scotia, Thyme, Heath Speedwell and Heath Bedstraw below.

Any then there are the ground orchids - Heath Spotted Orchid, Key Flower and Dactylorhiza Majalis.

The bumble bees and common dandelions add more colour.

I will miss our highland morning and evening walks.

Simple beauty

 

If you were offered the various bits and pieces in the photos below and had an hour to work -  would you design and create the simple elegant assemblage above - front view?

A young friend of ours asked could he work in our workshop, aka garden shed, to make a small assemblage gift for his dad.

I presented him with the bits and pieces in the photos above; and we talked through some possibilities. He listened and then said he wanted to make the piece in the opening photo. He worked and I guided and very occasionally assisted. Photos below of tools in use.

After an hour he had created his assemblage - photo of the back view below. The piece has a hook in the top so it can be hung from a peg. 

He was keen to have the wooden triangle piece at the front and the small gold painted aluminium piece at the back be untethered so they could move. 

He cut the ends of the rusted nail and the sharp edges were sanded. Once the nail was hammered through the driftwood the protrusions needed to be bent upwards so the moving bits did not fall off. 

A lot of thought went into various aspects of this simple piece.

Still learning

 

Fiona and I spent a few hours with Lindsay Gallacher learning some finer and, for us, advanced design and soldering techniques. I had designed what I thought might work on several wee hand cut plate silver rustic cottages that I had designed as earrings. After talking through my designs with Lindsey I finally settled on the connections you can see in the photo above. 

I also wanted to learn how to solder curved pieces of silver wire to represent coastal dune grasses on a pair of earrings. The outcome can be see in the opening photo.

Some process photos follow.

The time spent with a professional such as Lindsey proves that one can always learn new and improved techniques.

I also oxidised a pair of the rustic cottage forms to see how the dry point marking would show once the oxidising was gently polished back.

I've added ear wires to three of the pairs of forms - I think they are ready for the next step.