Renovations continue................

The long process of renovation continues:

The upstairs deck is pretty much complete now

and has made a great difference to how we live in our house.

Downstairs has gone from muddy quagmire to lovely solid concrete

underfoot.  Soon we'll have the new walls and windows up

to utilise some of this space for storage and studio.

Karakuri

Since my order of 

Keisuke Saka's (also info here in English) book "Karakuri" arrived

in the post the other day  

I have been busily making paper automata

from the templates inside, building up an

understanding of how these things work.

I have long been interested in automata 

and this is a great jumping off point for me,

combining paper sculpture and automata
with detailed instructions and templates.

Phalaenopsis

 Beautiful!

Someone's been digging in my garden

Every now and again we get to see some

amazing creatures wandering around our yard.

At the moment we are very lucky to have

the biggest echidna I have ever seen

(I'd say he'd be at least 35cm long - almost 14")

He forages around in our front garden in the evenings.

We know he's arrived when we hear

a bit of shuffling and snuffling.

He moves slowly around

and doesn't seem to mind us 

coming out to have a look

at him from a distance.

It is such a thrill and a joy to see 

a healthy and content native animal

wandering freely around and knowing

we are able to provide a bit of space

and hopefully safe haven for

him to thrive and survive.

Concertina Child - Covered

A little while ago, 

when I was doing a lot of 

altered book covers, I played around a bit with

metal, nails and text in metal. 

Now, I know metal and paper aren't really good

partners for a long term relationship

as far as archival qualities go,

but sometimes

short term friendships can be

extremely interesting.

I had a hankering to put a metal cover

with a bit of text onto my

concertina child and

this is the initial outcome.

Still thinking.........................

Concertina Child

         

Concentrating on 

repeated images,

slight variations in colour

and 

concertina folds.

Shaping Up

The deck is coming along

with the roof going on in sweltering 45 deg heat through the week.

Just a good paint and a few trims and she should

look like she's always been part of the house.

Now we just need a reliable concreter to move on with the next stage

of building underneath the house.

We thought we had that all sorted, but the world of tradespeople is a fickle place.

Astro Boy

Super cool Astro Boy vinyl figurine

recently received as a gift

from my two lovely daughters.

Makes me happy :)

Stands about 30cm tall.

First Post for 2013 (after a brief blogging hiatus)

Hello dear blogger friends and a Happy New Year to you for 2013.

I am afraid I have been in a bit of a blogging funk of late 

and have not been posting due to frustration with being unable to alter

some very annoying elements of the look of my blog.

Anyone who has visited recently may have been faced with

being unable to read information on my site due to some

awful default colours which I just could not remove/change, no matter how hard I have tried.

I seem to have got MOST of these horrid colours off my blog for now

and hopefully things are a little easier on the eye.

Apologies for the state of things lately.

The installation of our deck is coming along fairly smoothly.

There was a delay with the roof going on, so alas no roof for Xmas.

The old verandah roof is still being held up by temporary posts,

but this old roof will be coming off soon and things will be moving along now that 

the Xmas/New Year holiday period is, alas, over.

Lots of work to be done yet, but we have managed to make

some cosy corners in which to enjoy a good book through the holiday lull

and the house is already much more livable .

Recent Wanderings

Recently visited some beautiful kauri rainforests

in the north of New Zealand's North Island.