Miscellany........

Firstly, this was the spectacular moon last night, veiled with a thin layer of cloud. Wintermoon.

Almond and orange friands baked a few days ago.....so yummy, especially with the citrus sauce and double cream I served them with!

Black swans on the river - yesterday's bike ride (35 kilometers).

And finally, a new little something I'm working on - using the same pattern as I used for "Millie".

Apple Girl

As promised, here is more of "Millie" with her basket of apples. I made her basket using fine cane and her apples are rather inedibly made from painted paperclay.

Winter Cloudscapes

Such a beautiful sky this evening.........

(New doll pics tomorrow - I left it too late to take good photos today, but here's a taster...)

Remembering...........

1970 Bob and I (taken through a wire fence)

1969 - Bob with Michael McHugh and Bert Visser

1971

1969 - working on a piece of Huon pine

1969 - in the sculpture studio

1971 (?) With Michael McHugh

I have been doing a lot of reflecting and remembering these past few months - that involves trawling through a large collection of photographs and slides. The slides have yet to be scanned, but here are a few mostly b&w photographs from Art School days.

Winter Music

I'm just back from a wonderful weekend making music at our annual Winter Music Camp. With visiting conductor from Melbourne, Willem van der Wiss, we managed to lick Beethoven's Seventh Symphony into some kind of shape over two days of intense work. We also worked on Cimarosa's Secret Wedding Overture. I squeezed my bike into my little Barina and took it with me, so I managed a couple of rides along the Ulverstone shoreline on some very good cycle paths.
Great fun, good music, fine company.......no cooking!

These photos were taken just at dawn this morning (Sunday) with frost all the way down to the ocean. A bracing ride, to say the least!

A Road Less Travelled............

I haven't written a post here for a while..........making big adjustments in my life and getting used to a new way of being. And licking my wounds a bit.
But I have been working in my studio and making plans for the future (more about that in a future post, but it IS exciting!) And I have been clocking up a lot of miles on my bike. The weather has been so settled and beautiful for the time of year that it is a pity not to be out in it when the sun is shining and the air is clear and exhilarating.
Here's a new piece I'm working on - still plenty to do, but I'm pretty sure about where this is going.

And here are a few pictures of my beautiful part of the world in the middle of winter, as seen from the saddle of a bicycle.

Fungal Musings

It's the time of year when these glorious red-topped fly agaric (amanita muscaria) toadstools pop up under the pine trees.

They make rather wonderful props for a bit of creative photography:

This one was so perfect in form it almost didn't look real! To give an idea of scale, the little needle-felted hedgehog is around three inches (7 cms) tall.

he liked the view from the top.

......and had some fun with a little elfin friend!

Tansey insisted on giving it a try as well.........it made a fine little stool for her!