Wednesday, September 06, 2023
Still Crafting
Yikes! It is 3 months since my last post and some of my readers have asked if I am still here.... Well, what with the cold, foggy, wet Canberra winter weather it has not been a good time to do much exploring outside, so the Oldies and I have been busy in our craft rooms. Craft rooms are strange places, usually with a large desk and lots of shelves. The actual useful space on a craft desk is usually just a couple of square metres/feet and most of the desk is covered by tools, plans and materials needed for the current project. The top row shows you some of Mum's craft room. It is fall of stamps, dies, card stock and paper. Finding the item that you actually need can be a major exercise. The bottom row is part of Dad's craft room. The shelves here are full of plastic and paper models of planes, ships, trains, lighthouses and special buildings. Today I am supervising the painting of a Spitfire in Dad's room and water colours in Mum's. I like water colours as I can usually manage to get a bit wet; long-time readers will know that Mum will not let me get wet, so I enjoy this game. So, lots of crafting going on but no travel. This is due to change in early November, we are all paid up and ready to go, watch this space.
Labels: aircraft, boats, card making, card models, models, train
Wednesday, September 22, 2021
Still Lockdown But: Fine Weather, Fine Walk
We are still in lockdown here in Canberra but can get out for a couple of hours for exercise. Today is the first calm, warm, sunny day for ages so we headed out for a walk near the lake. Of course we had to wear masks; it makes the Oldies look like escapees from a bad movie set but I look cute. Lots of people were walking or riding on the paths but everybody was being COVID sensible. The trees are full of blossom at present. That means that small bears have to be careful of bees when we get our climbing exercise. The sqirtey thing in the pictures is the Captain Cook Memorial Jet which commemorates the bicentenary of his first sighting of the Australian coast. I like it because when the wind blows the other way it squirts onto cars going across Commonwealth Avenue bridge. Meanwhile, on those miserable days when the weather was foul, Dad and I built stacks of card model lighthouses. Most of them are of UK lights, but there 4 Aussie ones in there as well. Here's to more days like today.
Labels: Canberra, Captain Cook, card models, climbing, lighthouse, trees
Sunday, July 25, 2021
We're On the Cards!
Still travel-restricted, so still spending our time crafting. Mum and I usually turn out at least one card per day. We just went through a craze for slightly strange and crazy ones. I love the distorted animals and the big-eyed girls. Now we are doing cards with fairies. I think that these would look a lot better with dragons added but Mum doesn't agree and she's the ultimate boss.
Dad uses card too, but he turns it into lighthouses. The shelf space in his hobby area is slowly filling with them. That means we are having to add extra shelves for the ships we are making. Here's the last 4 we completed (HMS Repulse, USS Tennessee, HMS Naiad and IJN Mikasa), but there are 6 others waiting for the old bloke to get around to painting them.
It is definitely time that we could travel again, but stupid idiots keep breaking rules and refusing to get vaccinated so that Australia now has several COVID outbreaks in the major cities. It looks like we need to order more craft supplies in.
Labels: card making, card models
Wednesday, March 10, 2021
And More Bearcraft
I have been helping Dad with his hobby/craft as well.We have added another aircraft carrier to our fleet of 1/700 scale ships. This is the third Royal Navy ship to be named "Ark Royal". The Ark was the first carrier to have steam catapults to launch aircraft and the first to have the hangars and flight deck as integral parts of the hull (earlier carriers of all navies had them as "add-ons"). She had a fairly short life, launched in 1938 and torpedoed in November 1941, but she served in actions off Norway, the hunt for Bismarck and in the vital Malta convoys. Her aircraft made some of the first aerial U-boat kills. Our model shows her on her last trip,about to launch Sea Hurricanes for Malta and with Fulmars and Swordfish on deck. Another thing we have been working on is our card lighthouse collection. These are 1/250 scale and mostly UK lights. And of course we had to do another dragon. The big green one we made in November left us at Christmas to live with an Asian family, so we made a smaller version to keep our red one company. It is amazing what you can make from sheets of card and a good template.
Labels: boats, buildings, card models, lighthouse, models
