Remembering what’s important at Christmas
This toddler, followed by a vulture, collapsed in the dirt on the way to a feeding clinic.
Luckily, the photographer chased away the vulture, and this particular little girl made it to the clinic. I shudder to think how many didn’t.
December 17, 2009 Comments Off
More with the spider and egg cups.
So the doctor wasn’t happy with how the spider bite is healing. He gave Seth heavy duty antibiotics, some cream and took swabs for tests.
We’ll get the results Friday, so hopefully we should have a better idea of what we’re up against then.
The funny (yeah, hilarious) thing is that we’re still not sure what sort of spider bit him, or even when. Luckily necrosis is very rare, and while Seth’s wound isn’t healing, it’s not spreading either. Though it does look ugly.
Just hit me the other day that Christmas is pretty much here. And I’ve done almost NO Christmas shopping. Currently I’m working on making some little things as gifts for people, and need to find some nice (but fun) egg cups to complete the project.
And yet, nice egg cups seem to be hard to find!
Well, reasonably priced, nice egg cups within Australia at least.
These are like what I want, but they’re in the USA. I’ll have to keep hunting.
November 9, 2009 Comments Off
Happy Happy Happy
I’m feeling kinda depressed today. Unmotivated with my art or work. It probably doesn’t help that I feel very tired…I feel like I’m slogging through thick molasses to get anything done.
That is, I WAS! Until I checked the post box!
This year I took advantage of Deviant Art’s free shipping worldwide offer, and ordered a bunch of little prints to use little gifts, gift tags, cards etc for people this Christmas. Had I had more money, I would’ve ordered much larger ones, but at least I got SOME, even if they are small.
And, since I was ordering and it was so cheap without paying shipping, I got a couple for me. My favourite being from artist Ravenari!
I’d have taken photos of the other things I ordered, but since they’re not all for me and some are going as gifts to people, I can’t or it’d spoil the surprise.
The above are poor quality pictures (really, my camera is dieing), but I’m VERY impressed with the quality of the prints from Deviant Art. To be honest, I was expecting slightly dodgy, but the colours are good, it’s crisp, it’s Kodak paper – all in all, a lot better than I was expecting.
So now I’m happy, and am going to go about hanging some of these up near my work space as inspiration. 
November 5, 2009 Comments Off
Maple Syrup
When my dad came back from Canada recently, he bought me back a tin of dark maple syrup.
It’s a fair size tin – 540ml, but I don’t want to waste a drop of it. You CAN get real maple syrup over here, but it’s pretty damned expensive. Usually you get the weird arse fake stuff that’s maple flavoured and actually tastes more like old cork floor tiles than maple.
SO! In order to get the most out of my can of maple syrup, I have been planning very carefully (when I’m not getting distracted reading the french on the side of the side of the can) and think I have arrived at three recipes I can make using my one tin.
And they are:
Baked apples with maple syrup.
Mulled apple cider with maple syrup.
And a Maple Cheesecake.
I must say, I’m particularly curious about the Maple Cheesecake.
I’m not 100% certain yet though. I may swap out the mulled cider for drizzling a bit over my yoghurt, in an attempt to replicate the flavour of the Wallaby Maple Yoghurt I had while in California.
And since I bought that up, I’m very confused about Wallaby Yoghurt. They say it’s ‘Australian style’….we have a style of yoghurt? Funny, since we sure as hell don’t have any maple yoghurt here. I have NO IDEA what qualifies it as Australian-like, but apparently they felt so strongly that it was Australianesque that they named it ‘Wallaby’.
Very confusing.
Anyhow, I SHALL KEEP YOU UPDATED ON THE SYRUP FRONT.
I know you’ll be hanging on the edge of your seats.
October 21, 2009 Comments Off
My dad came home
Well, another night burning the midnight oil, curled up in a ball around my wacom, Seth and the cat already in bed.
And since I’m here, I’ll take a break from the painting to write about my evening. My dad just got back after 4 months in Canada (my dad’s partner is Canadian. Her met her online. It should also be noted that I met Seth online, and Laurie met her partner online too. ‘Thank god for the internet’ should be the family motto. And @ should be the family crest.) and tonight was the first time we’ve seen him since he got home.
It’s funny how you don’t realise how much you’ll miss somebody until they’re away, and then once they get back it’s like they were never gone. I must’ve said “Oh, were you there when this happened? Or were you here?” about a hundred times.
So there were a lot of (mostly hilarious) stories to be told, and fabulous gift giving. It was like Christmas. And in the true spirit of my family, we gave and received some mighty odd and fantastic gifts.
Such as!
A leather poncho he bought from a Mohawk Indian, and fun long fuzzy green shirts with polar bears:
and this is WITH red-eye reduction…
A fabulous hat:
And to quote Laurie “Oh no! I’m wearing an Opeth hoodie! How embarrassing!” which should hopefully teach her a lesson or two about wearing other people’s clothes…
Weird little key lights:
As well as a big fat can each of REAL, dark maple syrup. Now I have to figure out what to use it on/in so as not to waste a drop. And a nifty little camera tripod each with extendy legs. And a black shirt with a small leaf logo for Seth, who wears black, black and on a day when he’s feeling really fun, almost black.
Then while my dad was away both father’s day and his birthday came and went, so we got him:
Pickled herring.
A bag of unshelled peanuts.
Half a kilo of goat milk feta.
A book about birdsville.
All beautifully wrapped in a plastic bag. We re-used it. It’s environmentally friendly. Yeah it is. Shutup.
You will note we are one big photogenic family.
And now everybody has gone home, the house is dark and quiet, I’ve got my fuzzy green shirt with (some upside down now, I notice, the poor buggers) polar bears on and left over freshly baked peanut butter cookies.
Time to get to work.
October 15, 2009 Comments Off
Good things from the postman!
The PO Box held wonderful things for me today:
The wonderful (and relatively new dreadhead) Meggy Bee sent me a bit of the custom dread soap she had made for herself! Huzzah!
My camera is a bit dodgy these days (won’t focus properly or…or do anything properly, actually) so the photo above doesn’t do this bar justice.
In person, it’s a deep rich olive green with gold mica sparkle across the top.
And smells fantastic.
I’m keen to give it a go, but I think I’ll use a knife to just lop part off to use.
That way I can keep the rest of the bar away from the bathroom and hopefully lose less of it down the drain. Plus it looks too good to just lather up and ruin. If I do it one small bit at a time it hurts less!
So thankyou thankyou thankyou Miss Meg! Can’t wait to use it!
But not today. It’s too cold. Shame.
The second parcel held my order from Planet Art on Etsy.
[Read more →]
September 16, 2009 Comments Off
A most excellent purchase
I was at the German Club craft markets this Saturday just gone, and in my meandering about found the most wonderful thing and purchased it.
Meet this happy fellow:
See, turns out that supposedly drinking from plastic water bottles all the time is hazardous for your health because of an unfriendly character called Bisphenol-A (BPA). There’s a fair bit of disagreement on this, but as far as I understand it seems everybody agrees BPA is dangerous is large doses, but the smaller amounts we’re exposed to through plastics is where there starts to be disagreements. Those that think the smaller amounts we’re exposed to are harmful argue that is has effects on our brains, prostate glands, mammary glands….in short, it ain’t doing nobody no good. [Read more →]
September 8, 2009 Comments Off
