Stripes, Glitches, Multi Image Trans Veneers, Model Railway Figures and Fancy Lawn Mowers

Well, still in the throes of this lockdown thing though the situation has eased slightly. Shops are open again apparently, which makes no difference to me as I am not remotely interested in risking my life and that of others in order to 'shop'. To be fair I don't do 'shopping' at the best of times, I buy stuff as and when I need it, so I don't see shopping as a recreational activity in it's own right and can't understand why anyone does ;-) Especially in those hideous, charmless and soul destroying places known as Malls. . .

Of course being a hypocrite, I enjoy trawling through charity shops and the scruffier kind of antique shops and finding interesting things therein. . . That doesn't count as shopping though, obviously. . .

My wife went to the coast yesterday to scope out the seaside town for possible painting locations, she is part of a 'plein air' landscape group who intend to meet up on Sunday for the first time since lockdown began. The place was heaving with visitors, no masks, no social distancing, just crowds of idiots. So she came home pretty quick. What is wrong with people? Silly question, don't get me started. . So no plein air meeting on Sunday, or if there is, she won't be going.

While I am on the subject of domestic life, the two goslings are growing apace and are over half as big as mum and dad. They are growing white feathers to replace the downy yellow ones they had up to now. Big fat healthy buggers they are too. Good to see. The moorhens have several babies but are being quite shy about it all, very protective, so I'm not sure how many babies. At least three.

Anyway, I'm still making and selling stuff, so not a lot has changed for me really. I tend to move between obsessions, bead wise, and have been exploring striped tube type beads and 'spindles' for a while. Encouraged, it has to be said, by buyers being quite keen on them. I try to avoid the temptation to make things because I 'know' they will sell, but I fall prey to it from time to time. I usually find that when that happens it turns and bites me in the bum. The surefire sellers don't sell and I am left feeling suitable chastened for my presumption, and determined not to get caught again. Until next time ;-)

The stripey stuff is getting to the bum biting stage I think so I need to move on again.

Luckily, I still have my obsession with image transfer tiles on upcycled wire frames. I have been messing around with veneers. Not very much, but I have been having fun painting and distressing sheets of poly clay and using the results instead of image transfers on tile beads. I have also combined paint and multiple image transfers, distressing and overlaying them. All great fun. I shall try some more in due course.

I also made use of what would otherwise have been an annoying glitch. The laser printer decided to splatter and splurge ink on the back of the paper, while printing faded rubbish on the front. It hadn't been used for a while so I think it was getting back into the swing of things via a mistake or two. Anyway, the splurges on the back looked interesting so I used them as image transfers. 

I also have an ongoing obsession with model railway figures, the little people that model railway enthusiasts position on platforms etc. I have used them before on wire frames, but it occurred to me that I could embed them in a sheet of poly clay, with other suitable and unsuitable objects. That is how my most recent pendant things were born. 

I am reluctant to sell them, but am not sure what else I would do with them. I may see how difficult or otherwise it is to make brooches, or try to find a way of hanging them on some kind of string/thing/whatever to make a pendant necklace, I dunno. No hurry. I do need to source some more figures though. Ebay is the place by the look of it. They ain't cheap though.

That's all very well, but what about the fancy lawnmower? I hear you cry. . Well, my wife finally got so fed up with having to ask me to start the old lawnmower as she couldn't muster the physical oomph to do it herself, that she went out and bought a small, sit on lawn tractor type thing. One that starts with key. It's red and shiny. . . It also doesn't cut shorter than 3mm, which is a bit long for a lawn. The solution to this problem? Let the tyres down! Only a bit, but it brings the blades lower and makes a nice neat cut. . . Technology eh?

See you next time, 

Jon x

The World is Suddenly a Different Place. .

Well, strange times. . . Surreal times. The fragility of the links that hold everything together are suddenly exposed, although I guess this fragility was obvious enough if we chose to look in that direction -which of course we didn't.

Not that it has had much effect yet round here. Nothing tangible, which makes it like a kind of Phoney War, everything is fine and normal until the first bomb drops on your house. But the advice is to practice Social Distancing, which makes a lot of sense if slowing the rate of infection is the idea, which it should be. It will be weird not seeing friends or family for weeks on end but it has to be done.

It did occur to me that when some people have survived the virus and are no longer infectious, they can act with impunity, mustering in confined spaces at will, having wild parties and dancing on the tables while us virtuously uninfected types lurk in isolation, looking on and muttering darkly over our stacks of toilet roll.

A friend of mine joked that he will be 'self oscillating'. . . Which, I pointed out to him, could get messy if you need to go to the bathroom. . . Could an outbreak of mass self oscillation explain the panic buying of toilet paper?

I am foreseeing complications on the bead making and selling front looming. I have to weigh up the risks of standing in a line at the Post Office, and whether customers are prepared to wait indefinitely for their orders if I decide not to risk it. I need to mail stuff in person to get proof of postage which covers me in the event of things getting lost in the post. I may have to risk not being covered, and print out postage labels online. Also, are people still going to be buying components when they perhaps won't have venues to sell their finished work? It's all very up in the air right now. All I can do is carry on and see what happens. It's all any of us can do I think.

But doom and gloom and viruses aside for a moment, Spring is in the air, I heard a skylark singing yesterday (who knew skylarks could sing Paul McCartney songs? groan. . . ) sorry, I also heard a chiffchaff (a kind of warbler) for the first time this year. The geese are getting frisky in the pond, and as a consequence a goose egg appeared on a patch of mud at the pond's edge. Not in the nest box thing nearby, or on anything resembling a nest of any kind. . The female goose showed no sign of wanting to sit on it or any awareness of her motherly duties. So the egg is forlornly sitting there, being rained on etc and obviously not going to progress to the point of hatching. I thought birds had strong instincts concerning that sort of thing. Evidently not these ones, silly creatures!

So we will be Social Distancing and continuing our own brand of Self Isolation, not because we have symptoms of covid19 but because we have both been freelancers working from home for the last three decades at least, and that kind of social isolation (at least for five days in the week) is completely normal for us and we wouldn't have it any other way. . .

Please stay safe and well and keep up your Social Distancing whenever possible to give the health care system every chance to keep up with things as they transpire ;-)
And as the legendary comedian Dave Allen used to say, "May your God go with you".
Jon x