Second Sunday of the Month

Hi there,
sorry if you tried to visit my shop today, it is temporarily 'on vacation' from cyber world, while I give all the hats an outing to The Channon market, in Northern NSW.
They don't get out very often these days, and they do enjoy meeting new people! 'Tho, sometimes they like someone so much, they decide it's time to leave home, and journey 'off' into the big wide world.
This is where they will spend the day, watching all the people having fun at The Rainbow Chai Tent, while I serve Chai and wash,wash, wash lots of mugs.



We will all be back here on-line on Monday morning, sometime later in the day, as we recover from the 'mini-festival' that the Chai tent creates. We don't get packed up til 10 or 11 0'clock at night. It's a big job.

Please have a look at my work on Flickr till we get back www.flickr.com/photos/artnomadix

Back to Painting

Well I have started work on an old Work In Progress. In late '95 I sat up on the edge of a cliff on a local landmark called Brummies Lookout, and sketched a 180 Degree view, on 4 sheets of thick paper. I took them back up in 2000, when I joined my mother's walking group, and found that in 5 years the tree line on the skyline of the mountain had grown somewhat.
On Tuesday we took a friend up there, in her 4WD and walked up the short but steep and very rocky ridge, and the tip of Mt Warning is nearly not visible behind the even taller trees. It was great returning with a digital camera, to be able to take photo field notes to add to my 'in-field' sketch notes, and use them to correct my on-site 'stretching' that can happen when trying to record directly from the Landscape.
Re-inspired I set to yesterday and worked with the photos , editing them and balancing them, and changing the contrast on some to focus on a specific ridge. I was able to 'see' my mistakes, and make a small sketch with corrections on a scaled down thumbnail, from the 20" x 60" canvas I purchased back in Feb.





I've even made a plastic sleeve with an over-laying graph to help translate the basic layout onto the canvas.
Went to start work today, but it was not to be what with interruptions from my sister and her long-windedness, and an extremely hot day where it's hard to feel like doing anything. But hey thats OK, maybe tomorrow will be more suitable

To see the futre stages of this click Here and Here

My Etsy Shop

Well I've finally listed a dozen items in my on-line shop with Etsy, it's only taken me more than a year since I first heard about Etsy, and joined up ! Living on the road, and trying to teach myself to use a computer for the first time, was not exactly easy, especially trying to get enough on-line time. We were rarely in phone zone's as we travelled around Oz, usaully camping in very remote places, and only passing thru towns and phone zones for very short times, just to pick up a bit of shopping.
But since our bus/mobile home, decided for us, that 12 years was long enough, by having the gearbox pack it in, we have been at my Mum's place, as we spend time fixing the bus up, and finishing some of the features that we didn't get done 4 years ago. We had 9 months off the road, to transform a 17 seater bus, into our new travelling home, and we were itching to get back out there!
We had previously spent 8 years living in a Toyota HiAce Pop Top Campervan, so it was wonderful to have so much space in our new bus. I soon filled her full to the brim with all my Yarn that I could fit in, now that we had more space!
I began to dream about having a fixed abode studio again, although I do love the freedom of the nomad, and my partner Geradus was constantly wanting to be somewhere else, further along the road, he really loves the driving and the constantly changing country, with new places to explore.
We kept asking ourselves that year, "12 years on the road, will we make 15?" So 'Dancer' our bus decided for us, just after we arrived back in this region which was always one of our places that we stay in for longer spells, to unload, offload, repair, set up short term studios, sort, and reload the revised "so what do we really need, what can we do without".

The roads around here are very windy around the caldera, with many a steep hill to access some friends houses, not a place to drive a 5.1 ton bus, it is bad enough in a van sometimes, so it was divine intervention that we lost 3rd gear whislt nearby Mum's and we could limp back there and take stock. Timing has been good too, as the price of fuel has risen dramatically, we are so glad that we were able to do all the traveling that we've done.
But now, a year off the road, and we are really missing the sense of freedom we used to enjoy. Yet we are still very lucky, as where we are living, is one of the most beautiful parts of the country, and every drive out, even just into town to shop, is a scenic adventure, amid stunning views and awesome weather, with stunning cloud formations of huge thunderheads against deep blue skies.

Had a call today from a friend with a local Art and Craft Gallery Shop," Heart of Arts" They have finally located a venue to run various art and craft classes, and she asked if I was still interested in being a tutor. They will get going in February, so that gives me plenty of time to get my class notes and patterns finished.
I went into town on the 12th of September "International Crochet Day" and did a Cafe Crochet Crawl to promote Crocheting, and see if anyone wanted to learn to do Tapestry Crochet, and got several names, and contact details, so sometime soon, somewhere I'll find a suitable venue, and get going with some more Hat and Tapestry Crochet workshops going.

I even had my photo taken by the local paper, which was a great bonus to reach even more people who weren't in town that day.