Di
This week's inchie animal is Kangaroo...now, I do have rather a lot of kangaroo images taken both in the bush and at reserves with the children when they were young and liked getting up close and personal with these appealing animals. But, as I have used several photographs recently when making the inchies, I was reluctant to do so once again. I thought of all the ways these animals have provided images for this country, coats of arms, stamps, coins all over the place in fact. I had a little rummage through my stamp box and found an older orange kangaroo image on a halfpenny stamp, which I believe was in use during the early 1930's. Then a similar jingle through our old coin pot disclosed an old currency 1946 halfpenny. Spoiled for choice once again! I decided to make both, and decide once they were done... Bruny Island, my favourite place on this earth to be, has a colony of albino wallabies which are a bit of a photographic drawcard for tourists and residents alike... Today is also son number one's birthday...happy days, James! That's it for today...
Di
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As this week's animal at EIM is Panda, I could not go past my photo of a red panda, taken at Taronga Park Zoo, in Sydney a few years ago. My dear sister-in-law, Maureen was visiting me for a few days while I was living at Pyrmont, and she was very keen indeed to visit the zoo as she had seen they had a red panda amongst their guest lists. I was terribly busy at the time, our project was gearing up rapidly but I managed to throw a huge tantrum and get three days off so we could see a bit of each other and show her about the city where I was living temporarily. This included taking her down to visit my son and daughter in law south of Wollongong, to meet their first baby, Nicholas. We had such a good time, she was such fun and lovely to spend time with and I treasure my memories of those few days so very much. We did spend a day at the zoo and we did see her pandas, indeed, we sat near the leafy enclosure and ate our picnic lunch while enjoying watching the one animal on view settle down for a doze in his tree... The names of the Sydney red pandas amused us...one was called Meesing (because she was a great escape artist and frequently went "meesing" from the zoo), another was nicknamed mayhem, because of his bad behaviour when staff were trying to film him for a nature programme...it was a lovely day. This photograph is not my own, my photographs from our zoo visit were all too distant to show the lovely colour and appealing face of the little animals, so I borrowed this lovely image off the internet. It was taken by Lisa Cyr...(Thanks Lisa). Well, the scarf is done...one would need to be quite tall to wear this with any grace at all...my youngest son, Chris, likes it and wants one, but my daughter who is not as tall as the boys, was not all that impressed! It measures 3.3 mt or 10.8 feet...and is ready to be posted off to the birthday boy tomorrow... Last year on mothers day Karina bought some white chrysanthemums to decorate the table for lunch at their place. Both her mum and I took home a sprig to take cuttings from...mine grew and I had a lovely large vase of flowers, plus this small vase of smaller side flowers...I love growing plants from cuttings. Well, that's it for now...I'm busy with a couple of design team projects and am trying hard to keep up with my uni work, which is why there are so many photographs...practice practice!
Bye, Di How quickly the weeks are passing...being busy is great for staving off any risk of the slow grey fog of inertia creeping up on one, but my, how it does make time speed up... Still, I know which I prefer, every time. This week at Every Inchie Monday we have another Australian animal, the very appealing little Koala. We don't have any living wild in Tasmania, but I have seen them from a distance high up in the eucalypt trees in the bush near Ballarat (thanks to cousin Mervyn), and very many, quite close up on Raymond Island, a tiny island just off the town of Paynesville in the Gippsland Lakes in Victoria, which is reached only by ferry and is well known for it's large koala population. Raymond Island is called Bunjil-baul in the local Gunai dialect. My inchie this week is a photograph of me with a young koala joey. It was taken at Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary in Queensland when I was seven. My dad was in the Tasmanian Police Rifle Shooting team and one memorable year mum, dad, my older brother David and I all drove from Hobart to Queensland for dad to take part in the National Competition. It was my first trip away from Tasmania and gave me many exciting experiences. I was sea sick all the way across Bass Straight due to a rather vigorous storm. I wasn't alone...dad and a young school boy were the only to passengers to front up to breakfast in the morning before we docked at Melbourne...I lost my purse containing all my precious savings on the second day of the holiday, we camped quite often and stayed at motels occasionally (another first), and I bought a pineapple at a roadside stall for tuppence. (Dad found a three penny bit on the footpath and gave it to me, I bought a huge pineapple and still had a penny change!) Good days, good memories...The one thing I really remember best though was just how warm the sea was compared to what I was used to around Tasmania... Yesterday was mother's day here in Australia...not really sure where else in the world the second Sunday in May celebrates motherhood in all it's variations...I know fathers' day date is different in America than here... I was feted very well by my own children...flowers, telephone calls from everyone, cards even gifts which I always veto with a vengeance (but my daughter is almost as stubborn as me), along with morning tea with the girls. It even was a splendid day weather wise...I am so very fortunate... Mothers' day is a good time to think back on all the "mothers" one has known, including mum...since following up research into my own family history during a recent unit at uni, I have been considering more the lives of the women and the times they lived through with far greater insight. I love this studio image of my older sister Edith Peggy, my grandmother Eileen Louise, my great grandmother Edith Jane and my mother Ethel Louise...I am fifteen years younger than my sister and so was too young when when my great grandmother died to have been included in the family photographic archives with her...but I do remember her. I am working on a small knitting project for my eldest son, who's birthday falls at the end of this month. He always wanted a Dr Who scarf when younger, a proper long one like Tom Baker's with whom I think he identified a little, he was quite the buccaneer...while my son is not so young anymore, I thought it might make him smile to finally have his wish granted...I sourced a BBC pattern, bought up yarn in the appropriate colours and got cracking...I think this blog is the last thing he would glance at so I am safe to give you a peek at progress. I have forgotten just how much knitting makes my arthritic shoulders and upper arms ache though, so after a enthusiastic effort at the beginning, I have had to start slowing down to shorter bursts. Well, that's about it from here for today, bye for now,
Di Today is election day for the Legislative Council in our Division of Rumney which takes up most of the South East corner of the State. The process was made a bit quicker this year through the inclusion of a QR code on the notification card posted to us a week or so ago. It is nice to see these useful technologies in action. We went to vote nice and early and enjoyed getting out into the balmy, sunny Autumn morning, a change from the brisk mornings we have been experiencing lately. I was about to post this when I realised I should hold it over for the EIM addition which I had not been able to complete due to having to catch up on my uni work rather frenetically over the weekend and this morning. It is now Monday the eight of May. We have been so busy over the past couple of weeks helping Chris, where we could, to get his business plan together and edited while he worked on all the other documentation he needed for his submission last Friday afternoon. Phew, what a relief it was when he finally submitted it...he heard just a few minutes ago that his application was successful and he can now go ahead with his little business proposition, so it was all well worth it. To be honest, having to develop a comprehensive BP is a huge ask for someone with no experience in such tasks. Still, a learning curve in your day is often very useful, no good trying to set up a business however small without a good insight into all the ramifications of what it entails. Re the inchie...this week it is Flamingo, that most exotic of birds, not found in Australia either...well, any more that is...Phoenicopteriforme fossils have identified two forms, eyrensis and novahollandia, both from the late Oligocene period, in South Australia, so around 30 million years ago. It is thought they gradually disappeared due to the drying up of the lake systems in central Australia. I thought, due to time pressure, (my next assignment, a large one, is due this week), that the effort going into the inchie would be minimal, but as I started a search for images, I remembered a collection I have of Alice in Wonderland stamps...tiny little things that need great care to get a good image that I rarely use. Holding my breath I had a quick squizz and Yes! In tin Alice 04, the flamingo was there! This stamp is one taken from Chapter Eight, The Queen's Croquet-Ground. I can only assume these stamps are not licenced images to the Charles Dodson illustrations (or any subsequent ones), even though they have a strong resemblance to John Tenniels' originals, as the hedgehogs have become tortoises. But I guess that anything could have occurred during the madness of that game.
Bye the bye, I simply love the enchanting illustrations for this book by Lisbeth Zwerger in 1999. They are my favourite illustrations after Tenniels, but I have only seen reproductions, not held the book which is apparently out of date now. Enough chat, got to go, things to be getting on with...URGENTLY. Di |
AuthorHello, I'm Di...I live in beautiful Tasmania, I enjoy making cards and journals for special folk. Categories
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