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. 

 

Catching up!

I don't know, suddenly I never remember to blog. Maybe this happens to everyone who starts a blog. It's not like I don't have news.   I have lots, I just don't have the urge to sit down and write it.  the time I spend blogging could be time spent with a musical instrument, or my dogs or chickens, studying druidry, or chasing the autumn sun around the property.

Ah well, life is cycles, maybe the urge will return.   I've been collecting photos still...

The bridges for my two new lyres begin their journey.  

Lovely old jarrah cut out of a weathered old bit of 2 by 4.  This will do for both the tailpieces and bridges.   

Autumn skies over Lake Leschenaultia

Roo doing a panorama

Lovely Wandoo trees nearby

A great old grass tree.

More lake, from the other end.

A family of black swans

A coot.  They have such bizarre feet, like little rows of leaves!  

See the feet? 

My view of WA author day on the verandah at Just Add Passion

The sky fROM the roof of our friend Gogs's house.  

A cutie clydie visiting the pie shop in Bakers Hill.  

 

The lake again, on a day spent with druids.  Lovely!

The embarrassed author at WA Author day.   It was fun! 

   

The copper piggy, as Roo calls him, also known as Torc, on the lyre of the same name!  Woohoo!

After a day of Incident Control Vehicle training today, I plan on tomorrow being a day of woodwork, art, music and kolrosing.  Here is my very first bee, cut into the other lyre, Fréowine. The bees will go right around the hole in the lyre to represent the mead being drunk by the two 'wine friends' of the design that will be on the lower part of the lyre.  I'll tackle it when all the bees have honed my kolrosing skills a bit more!

When it has all been scratched in, I will rub cocoa into the grooves, then oil and burnish them.  Cocoa made the nicest colour when we did a few tests, and smells delectable too. I hope some of the smell stays on the lyre when it is all done.  :)  Another arty adventure.  I do love a challenge!  

Have a lovely weekend.   I won't promise to post again on Monday.  Subscribe, and then you'll know every time that I do a post, no matter how irregular!          

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!)