Daily Archives: March 25, 2005

Easter Camping – At home

Posted on March 25, 2005 by

I love camping. My family camped regularly when I was growing up in Tasmania. Last Easter Riscy and I were back in Tas and took off camping for five days, travelling from the top of the Bay of Fires to St Helens. The weather was glorious.

This year I wanted to camp in the high country of Victoria, around Omeo. I was keen to expore some of the alpine areas including national parks. The problems is that we left it too late to find boarding for our dog. And we can’t take dogs into national parks.

So we find ourselves at home. Riscy lasted nearly a day before being drawn to his computer games. I spun a little, read a little and painted a little:

Big Wave

Another Pear. Why not?

Eucalyptus Leaves

I’m feeling my way around the cheapo watercolour paints I bought the other day. It’s a lot of fun, even if I feel like my work has a definite childish quality which wasn’t intended. At least I avoided the perenial flowers and hearts.

Did I tell you I’m avoiding flowers in my art work this year. I hate the way that when ever I ‘sit down to do art’ I draw a flower. How bloody frustrating, annoying and well … stupid. So What do I do now???? Draw PEARS.

Also, today we watch a DVD. Bad Boy Bubby. We caught it unexpectedly about 8 years ago on SBS and it has stuck with us ever since, very disturbing but also pretty darn good.

I’m just about to jump into a new art quilt adventure. It’s still churning around in my skull at the moment, I hope I can start making it reality tomorrow.

Smell ya later 🙂 (damn, I hate The Simpsons. How did that slip in here?)

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Engineering excellence

Posted on March 25, 2005 by

I got my new wheel on Wednesday. I was so excited to get it out of the box and assembled and set up I completely forgot I had a committee meeting that nightand didn’t even remember ’til I got to work the next morning and looked at my wall planner.

This is the first year I have used a wall planner and I’m finding it a great tool for keeping myself in check. Now I’m managing my own little group of engineers, I definitely need it to keep me diciplined. I’ve tried to impose similar timetables on my quilting and creativity, but I actually find it stifles rather than stimulates my creativity.

Ok, back to the wheel, here she is 🙂

It looked like it had been sitting in someone’s garage for a while, it came with some wool already spun on the bobbins. It was revolting, all matted, dirty, greasy etc. The first thing I did was cut that crap off.

The shaft on the flyer was a bit rusty too and the bobbins wouldn’t spin freely so Riscy attacked it with some fine sandpaper and now it is super smooth 🙂

It didn’t come with a drive string, so I made one with cooking string which I coated in candle wax. I hadn’t read about that anywhere, but the string on the wheel I have been borrowing seems to be coated in something like that.

I’ve also rigged up a scotch tension device since my wheel didn’t come with one. I went to the fishing shop, batted my eyelashes and they gave me length of thick fishing line, I got someone at work to show me how to tie a fishermans knot. And Voila!! I’m up and running.

For $120 posted I think I got a bargain 🙂
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