A song for you: The King of the Boars

This song is based on two boar stories.

One of the boars is Twrch Trwyth from Welsh Mythology.


The other is Torc Triath from Irish Mythology.

Were they the same boar?  I posited so in this song!  

I'm Bad...

Yep more blogging absence.  I've been so busy doing cool stuff, is my excuse, and I figure it's a good one. Only thing is, that means you don't get to see my cool stuff happening!

Ok, so this is my very cool kolrosing experiment...

Rubbing raw cacao into the carved lines of the design. 

After that, I burnished the lines back into timber with fine wet and dry.  It's amazing how it goes back to smooth wood and you can't feel the cuts any more, but the lines are still there as colour.

Not to impressive to look at yet, though...

Then, the moment of truth... Olive oil!

The first trepidatious pass.  Will it work?  Will it look good?

Yes is the answer!  Weeee!  I love it!

I'll get you a better photo for next time. this one was taken outside while it was still wet with oil.

The design for this lyre was taken from it's name: Fréowine, meaning 'noble friend' or 'wine friend' (someone you would go drinking with.)  I made a border of bees to represent the mead that the Anglo-Saxons loved to drink, and made a design of Odin's ravens, Huginn and Muninn knocking drinking horns for the central image.

The kolrosing looks quite delicate and decorative.  Every bee was drawn freehand, so they all have their own character, and the two ravens look like they are having a lot of fun. I love it!

I am still working on the tailpieces and bridges for both new lyres, plus a new tailpiece for Mondream, my original lyre. I am hand-sanding them so it takes a bit longer but I love the meditative state of hand-working wood.  There's no hurry. 

Other cool stuff? I have finished my non-fiction book on how to write first drafts of novels, the same way I do.  It is called "Wild Noveling: The First Draft."  I wrote it to be amusing and light and yet useful.  My very earliest report back from a first reader is that they loved it!  Yay!  More on that soon.

This morning we heard our very first rusty crow from our three baby roosters.  It was King Pellinore who first crowed, of course. He is half again the size of the other two.  He's a nice guy though... So far!  I hope he stays that way because he would be handful if he turns agro. He is huge!

I'll try to get you a pic for next time. In the meantime, here is Morgana the more adventurous little hen.  She's shaping up very nicely.
 

       
 The virginia creeper has been putting on its marvellous autumn show for us again.

I think this one below is my all time fave pic of it, and it also sums up how warm and cosy the cottage feels, when you approach it form the paddock on a winter's evening.

There have been some warm days, though, warm enough for picnics.

With amazing skies.

And there is still time to enjoy the extra air and space provided by our new screen door!  Yay!  The building of the verandah was aimed for this moment, and now it is here!

 
Next comes raising, levelling and paving the entry area. It never ends, does it!

 Mr Kitty would prefer that I did more sitting and crocheting. 

Sis Jen and I posted each other matching pics of cats on laps last night.  Funny!  You can tell the cooler weather is here!

Enjoy your changing season, and I'll talk to you again soon. 

 

Fun with olden daysy stuff

We've been having a good time today messing around with the ways I want to treat my two lyres, which are currently at this stage:

 Holes all drilled for the zither pins to go in to hold the strings.  Phew that was a bit of a mind bender but with Roo's help it got done.

As I said before, I want to use watercolour stain on one and then paint on it, and kolrosing on the other.

I think both will work!

The blue stain is just to die for, and the kolrosing is so lovely.  It is amazing how, once oiled and burnished, you can't feel the scratches full of cocoa or coffee or cinnamon any more.  They become once more a part of the wood, and yet they stay dark!

Andyroo made these while messing around deciding which of our tools worked best and which dark powder to rub in for best effect. How cool are they?

So, I will go ahead and do both as I'd planned, so long as the varnish over the watercolour stain and paint works.

It will be easy to slip during the scratching of the kolrose design, but I think a little roughness is part of the charm of such an ancient technique.

The blue-painted one will now be the boar one, Torc. With 8 strings, it isn't traditional anyway, so it might as well be fully modern, and with six strings, Fréowine will be more trad in style.

Torc's design currently looks like this: 

I'm still not quite sure how it will look when on the lyre.  More working out to do yet on colour use, line work compared to solid spaces, etc.

In other oldy-timey news, we got a couple of photos that were taken at the Norse storytelling night.  I just adore them, especially the one of us both!

They're dark but that suits the theme of the evening.  We off to another one soon, this one about medieval tales of King Arthur's court.  I'm really looking forward to it, especially since some more of our druid mates will be coming too!

          

Bad Bad Blogger!

I don't know, I was so good for more than two years, writing two posts every week.  Now all of a sudden I've fallen off the wagon!

It's not that my life is being boring, far from it.  I just don't seem to find time to do it.  I'll be better, I promise. 

So this week, we have had a Norse storytelling night at a local sound temple.  It was great!  Someone took a photo of us but now have no idea who took it or how to get it off them!  D'oh!

We also came home from that to a lot of branches from a large Bushy Yate tree that had fallen over on the chook pen and dome!  Yikes!  Our Firey mates came over first thing and worked so fast that I didn't get a chance to take a photo of the downed branches, but here is the poor squashed chook dome with what is left of the offending tree in the background. It still has an equal number of branches to dump next time it feels like it.  We may have to take it out totally before we bother fixing the chook pen.  Sorry tree! 

           
Here we are posed in front of the propped up remnants.  It is working fine with a few additions of pillars inside, cut from the insulting tree branches themselves!   Best news is that every single chook escaped that event unscathed even though they were all asleep in there when it went over!
Amazing!

From L to R: Smutty, Fast Attack Brock, Dave the photo guy, Tigger (Jen), Thor and Blaze.
(Yes, Smutty is me.  Blaze is Andrew.  We jokingly gave each other those nicknames after a particularly grubby fire.)    

 
We called mum into the pic because she made us yummy cake!

Our favourite Lieutenant, Angus, was there too but he took off to walk his dog, Harley, before weekend scheds started, so he missed being immortalised.   Here is his orange-clad backside hard at work, though, just to prove he was there. (Don't you hate bloggers and their cameras?  :D)

As you can see, the fence took a beating as well, but the sturdy gate we put in some years ago with jack-hammered holes into the rock has stood firm!

Last week mum and I took a 'cut lunch and a water bag,' as they say, and did a big drive north and west of the hills to visit mum's cousin, Lorraine.  A couple of other cousins came along too in Greggy and Cheryl, plus spouses and two second (?) cousins in myself and Lorraine's son, Andrew.  We have a lovely family.  So jolly and funny.  Short, though.  Definitely short. 

My two new lyres are coming along.  Both have now been clamped and glued and have their soundboards.

Torc

Fréowine

 
Yes it used nearly every clamp we had to do just one of them at a time.  If you don't clamp a lot,  you might get gaps.

Torc has also been trimmed of extra soundboard and sanded ready for the next stage, which is perhaps drilling the holes for the tuning pins, and for the tailpiece to attach to, or perhaps putting on the design.  Not sure yet.  The design for this one will, of course, be a boar to match its name.

Rosie caught in the hole of the lyre while wandering by.  Nice work, me!

All smooth and boxy!

Do you see the baby chickens up on the compost bins behind Fréowine?

I swear to you, I've taken dozens of pics trying to get good ones of these little wrigglers, and it should be easy since they are forever underfoot, but I barely have even a half decent one.  Baby rooster, not sure which one but quite dark so maybe Sir Grummore. 

Baby rooster showing his growing hackle feathers and cute little puffy baby rooster tail.  Looks smallish so maybe Sir Ector.  I'm going to get them leg bands, because I need to see who it is who has been having goes at my feet so I know who ISN'T staying! (And who gets picked up and humiliatingly cuddled for his pains.) When you see the boys all together you can tell them apart, but not one at a time.  

 

 

I met my sis, Jen, at a local cafe for lunch on Sunday.  We were in the beautiful garden of Mojo Cafe in Mundaring, and it was lovely, including these adorable two lassies who were playing piano accordion duets for us.  My fave tune was the one from the movie, Amelie.  It always evokes whimsy, quirkiness, and happiness for me!  

See you on Friday.  (I promise!)   

  


 

  

A Newsy Sort of Post.

Just because I haven't been newsy for a few posts.

Here are three of my babies.  They are getting more grown up but it takes a while.

The little little roosters already fight a lot.  They all like to sit on stuff for naps.  They are having an absolute ball being free range around the place.   Guinevere is prettiest.  King Pellinore is the biggest and bossiest.   I have yet to decide which rooster is staying. Actually apparently they should be called cockerels and pullets until they get used for breeding.  I've been watching a Wyandotte Fanciers' group on Facebook and learning a lot.  :)

Word back from my first readers is that they love my new book and it is better than the first one, which is good news since the first one was pretty popular too.   It's very encouraging for an author to hear such good news!  I am doing my final read through now, then it is time to do the formatting for kindle and print editions. 

The cover art is almost painted, but I won't show you that yet.  Only this sketch I did as part of my working out.   It's Grace O'Malley, a new character from the book.   She is going to drape herself across the back cover.

I took this pic of the Jimny the other day.  It amused me how tiny it looks amongst the tall trees of our home. 

The two new lyres are coming along.

It took quite a while to rout out the hollow for the deeper lyre, to be called Torc.  It got easier once I'd done the free hand stuff and could lock the router into the jig to do the bulk of the work. 

The second lyre, Fréowine,  is shallower, like my own Mondream.  It was faster to rout as only took one pass on each area instead of three, but I nearly had an accident when the router took off at the end of a bit I'd been working on.  I just managed to stop it from getting right through the wall of the lyre!  Yikes!

Anyway, both are now hollowed out and I have made the tops for them.  Next is glueing and clamping. 

  
I'm currently determined to make sure I get some quiet time in nature on Druid Wednesdays, as I call them, so this week we took our lunch sandwiches up to Lake Leschenaultia, which is quite near where we live.  We don't go there enough because dogs are banned.  Mainly because of all the tame birds.  The Australian Marsh Hens are stupidly tame and terrible raiders of people's bags! 

Dinosaur much?  :D

Who you calling a dinosaur?  And give me some of your lunch!

It was lovely, bird raids and all! 

Last sunday I went and watched my darling sis, Jenny, ride her new horse, Snow, in the her first riding club rally since her big accident five months ago.  She had fun and they looked gorgeous despite it being their first real chance to try jumping together.

I think they both enjoyed it! 

 
How cute is he?  Like a great big pretty pony! 

Jen, Molly and I have been going to a women's only Kung Fu class with these guys.  It is the same school that did the great self defence class some months back.  I love the instructor, Rachael, and the atmosphere is so nice being only ladies.  If you have ever wanted to have a go at a martial art but felt intimidated by the possible blokiness, this might be the class for you!  (And by the way, the men of the school are also lovely and not blokey either.) 

We had a pretty cool sunset last night.  I like how the clouds obligingly went light in the dark bit of the sky and dark in the light bit of the sky.  :D

The afghan is coming on slowly, but Mr Fitty Kitty keeps beating me to the punch and sitting on it, so it isn't coming as fast as I'd like.  Maybe he knows how well it matches his eyes?

I hope the week treats you well.  I have some interesting things afoot, but more on that anon!





 

             

What Do the Bored People Do?

I have no idea. i never have enough time for all the fun stuff I want to do.

My latest book has gone out to first readers. Yay!  It's an exciting time waiting to hear what they think!  Now it is time to play with cover ideas.  How do you like my silly attempt in Gimp just to try out my idea?

LOL, I wonder why I bother to do real artwork?  Not!   :D

The two lyres are slowly progressing. Using the router is a tad terrifying, but so far so good, no holes in places there shouldn't be.

 
This is the deeper experimental lyre.  It already has a name. It is called Torc, which is Irish and Old Irish for Boar.  The name came about due to something I experienced in a meditation.  Boar has long been one of my guides.  I even bear his mark after a farm accident!

Mowing has been happening.  How scruffy can I look?  I'm told I should stop wearing the clothes that are now too big for me, but I say waste not want not!  (Plus I love some of these t-shirts too much to let them go!)

We've created another home sausage-making addict in Thor, our Firey friend.  He came for a guitar lesson and went away a sausage fanatic, already researching new recipes to try!

Yes it looks rude.  It always looks rude. We've made a lot of sausages by now and we aren't over it yet.  Amusement abounds.  :D

Yep ok, I can see that t-shirt may be a little bit too big now.

We took the dogs to the river on Monday morning early.  They loved it.

Aren't these silhouettes and the blue lovely together?

The chickies are still growing and having fun.  I'll get some new pics of them for you soon.