Another very Hot Day.

 With the temperature around 40°C today, I was happy to spend the day experimenting again with sun printing, even though I had to go outside constantly to put items into the sun and to retrieve them again. You can see the negative for this one above in yesterday's post.

 It's amazing what detail can be obtained from a negative of grasses. Lots of play possibilities here.

Anyone following this blog might recognise an image that I made sometime last year just for fun.
The butterflies are all photographs of actual butterflies that I have in a long-ago-butterfly collection and I made a fun printer's tray of images with the photos, then made a negative and then sun printed it today. It's not quite what I was aiming for, a sort of cyanotype, but again it's amazing what detail can be obtained.

Sun Printing Again.

        With a predicted temperature of 38C, I felt that it was time to try some sun printing again.

 Using some of the negatives that I made last year and some new ones, I had an afternoon of playing.

                                  This is the first batch out of the washing tub, more to follow.

Shivery Grass.

 I don't know what you called this grass when you were a child, but we often called it Shivery Grass because of the shivery little seed heads. I recently came across a lot of very large heads and decided to press them for future reference. Today I took them out of the press and I was struck by how like trees the heads were, rather like Eucalypt trees with their sparse foliage.

I photographed and scanned all the different heads of grass and made them into Photoshop brushes which I played around with and came up with a couple of fun ways of using them.

                                    I'm going to have fun playing around with these images!

Success!

Well, I think that we can say that the heavy duty pruning of the tree fern was a success! It's looking so pretty now with it's almost unfurled fronds all a lovely bright light green. Before we know it, it will be up across the window again. I wonder if it would take a second cutting of the trunk......

Almost Finished!

The Kitchen is almost finished, with just a few finishing touches left to do. It is now usable, although the fridge will be not be re-installed for another week or so.

Here is what the kitchen looked like a mere 3 weeks and 1 day ago.

 

The Early Bird gets the Bargain?

 I have no idea what this beautiful King Parrot was doing perched on the Op-
 Shop sign, but he was in no hurry to fly away.

 Isn't he beautiful? The females are almost all a deep green, so when seen together they make a wonderful sight.

We were lucky enough to have a small group of them fly into our garden a couple of years ago, so of course I took lots of photos.

Don't Walk on the Floor!

Another step in the kitchen renovation story, but please don't make that an actual step! The lovely old floor boards have been sanded and sealed, but the sealant has to dry and cure, so after this week of drying we have another week of curing before we can move the fridge and dishwasher back in. The under cupboards kickboards will go back when the floor is ready and we are still waiting on the flue covering for the range hood which had to be specially made as it's much longer than is usual and also has a right angle bend in it, but we're nearly there! The surfaces look rather pink in this photo, they aren't, much more of a mushroomish colour.

A Little Bit of Sewing.

 Having collected up little bits and pieces throughout the year for the small Grandchildren, I found I had quite a lot of things to wrap and take over to their place on Christmas morning. Just little things like a dinosaur shaped money box, some 'little girl' jewellery, puzzles and books.

 I decided to make a couple of 'Santa sacks' from some of the Christmas fabric that I had stashed away. What better use of it anyway?

I used some old multi-coloured braid for the drawstrings and here we have 2 slightly different bags all full of goodies for Christmas morning.