bunn

For some reason I haven't posted here in ages, but I don't really want to drop out of the habit, so here's an attempt to catch up.

Itching things
( Read more... )I am now feeding Theo the new insect-based dog food pellets, which he seems to like a lot, as much as almost anything apart from cheese. Cheese is his absolute favorite thing.

Nenya cat remains competent and untroubled by Woes.

Not even going to try to post about World Events. Times too interesting.

I read a copy of Neil Gaiman's M is for Magic which had been hanging around, to try to decide if I wanted to keep any of my Neil Gaiman books, now that it turns out he's a creepy sexual predator. Haven't decided, but did conclude the end of M is for Magic seemed oddly cold and depressing, so I will probably get rid at least of that one.

The number of orders arriving at the Shop on the Borderlands is up considerably on last year, but the value of orders is not: we are mooching along sending out about 20% more stuff, but with about the same money coming in as last year. Unsure if this is down to what we've got in stock, macroeconomic trends, or just... randomness. We have reduced the enormous backlog of RPGs in the house but not in the Shop, however, which has to be a good thing. We might even have slain the backlog by the New Year at this rate.

We took the canoe out a couple of days ago, just a gentle paddle for half an hour. I wanted to check that she was still in good condition, thinking of probably selling her in the Spring. She's not really best adapted for the amount of wind we get here, and we haven't used her much since we got the kayaks and the boat. I will miss her but hopefully we can find a more up-river home for her where she will get further moderately-sedate adventures.

Um. Things that have happened. right then.

The car window that was fixed has broken again due to internal conflicts with the door opening mechanism whatsit. I did ask when I picked up the car from the garage and they told me the door and window had quarrelled, whether they were likely to do so again? They promised not. They were wrong.

Hmph. I now have a solid wooden wedge keeping the window up again while the garage scours ebay for a second set of window parts, and a new door-thingummy. I hope they can replace both together this time, and restore harmony to the Door.

I finally got around to assembling the Fidget Board I have been making. This was solicited by a local nursing home which cares for dementia patients: apparently a Thing now is to fix a bunch of knobs, switches, clips, hinges etc to a board, which is then left around in the lounges etc, and gives the residents something untaxing but occupying to do with their hands. I thought this seemed like a great use for some of the many 'That Will Come In Handy Some Day!' items I have piled in the utility room.

It was harder work than I had expected putting it all together though, because it seemed like I had 999 partial... things. Objects. Artifacts. Gadgets. Hardware. Wood... bits. Very few of which fitted neatly together. I ended up having to carve a plug-hole for my nice shiny metal plug on a chain, for example, because I assume that we either used the hole that the plug came with, or maybe there wasn't a hole? Who knows, that would have been years ago. YEARS I have been hoarding that plug on its shiny chain, and probably a year I have been hoarding the spare shelf that came with my Art Stuff shelves, that I used for the board bit. But now I have Done Something With It, and shortly I shall say farewell to it forever, which cannot be a bad thing.

I have photographed a lot of roleplaying games recently, which I rather enjoy. We seem to have moved now to a status where I am doing most of the shop photography and Pp is doing the data entry and stuff that requires Deep Lore about Roleplaying History. New (to us) roleplaying games are being added at a rate of knots and a goodly number of people are buying them. This is good.

The cats are very happy at the moment, and Gothmog and Fankil spend a lot of time wrestling and boxing and doing other cute things. Sometimes Theo joins in (Fankil really likes Theo, though I think he's wisely wary of Theo getting overexcited and hence too rough). I would take pictures of this, only the automatic lens on my camera has failed and taking photos of wrestling cats in poor light using a manual lens seems a bit fiddly. Maybe later in the year,

Although Theo failed his final exam at Dog School, because he absolutely would not lie down on command (he knows the command. He just didn't feel like doing it when there were puppies around to look at), I have none the less declared him done for now on the dog training front. We may start lessons again in September. But he does know all the basics, and I just need to practice practice practice on defeating distractions, and that will be easier if I just take him places to practice rather than to classes, I think. He is currently 8-9ish months, so he's really at maximum distractability at the moment. He is getting better at bringing me his squeaky walrus to throw instead of humping my leg, but there's still work to do there.

Let's have an art dump of recent arts. I seem to be painting quite a lot at the moment, which is partly because I'm feeling a bit tense and painting is a good release for that.

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And Finally! I am offering art in both the Fandom Trumps Hate and Fandom For Australia charity auctions, and to my extreme delight, someone has actually bid on my Fandom for Australia offer! Two people! Woohoo!

But I am suddenly exhausted from typing all that, so I shall simply link to this tumblr post about that rather than pasting it all in.

It’s hard to work out,with art, what is ‘good enough’ to show online, to give to people as a gift, and most of all, to sell. I am still struggling to work it out. If I paint something, and show it in one place – on tumblr, say, or on Deviantart – and it doesn’t get many people interested, in terms of likes or reblogs or whatever metric you use is that because I didn’t show it to enough people, or because it’s not of a high enough standard for anyone to be interested in it yet, and so I need to work for longer on technique? Or is the subject only of interest to me? Or should I take a new approach to what I make?

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Anyway, on Friday I made this in art class (well, I made some of it last week but this is the finished version.) It was supposed to be a 'how to paint mist' practice, but I'm pleased with it beyond a practice piece. The figure is inspired by a free stock photo by Marcus Ranum, who is a very public-spirited soul who enjoys taking highly professional stock photos and giving them away to people to use for art. I'm not sure I've quite managed to catch the texture of silk, but it's not bad. I probably can take from this that I should work harder at sourcing reference photos..

( More pics, more wittering below cut. Pics less good than the top one, I fear. )

Last week I went to a life drawing session. The model was a large round very naked gentleman, and I must say, it took me a little while to adjust to drawing someone so very naked. But I think I did learn some things from it. You just have to keep drawing and drawing and hope that eventually you've made all the mistakes.

Its quite hard to draw all of a person. So easy for feet and things to end up off the edge of the paper. The guy in charge of the life drawing thing reckoned I should be painting on very large canvases, but this is both expensive and hard to store, so I think really I would prefer to learn how to get everything more successfully into the page.

I also trialled some varifocal contact lenses, since I noticed recently that sometimes it's hard to read the very small print on the back of a tube of paint in poor light. The varifocals were awful. I would rather have to turn on the light to read a tube of paint than put up with a vast deterioration in my distance vision! But it made me realise how fortunate I am that my eyesight with contact lenses is really pretty good, and apparently when my eyesight does get worse, there are several other kinds of varifocals I can try. It doesn't seem worth trying more of them yet though, since I learned that with my usual lenses in decent light I can happily read the bottom line of text on the test card thingy.

On yesterday's walk, I saw a green woodpecker! Most unusual that: I see woodpeckers reasonably often, but usually it's the great spotted woodpecker. It makes a nice change to see a green one. And also I saw a hare, which always makes my day. Hares are not very rare, but you don't often see them here because there's so much cover and they are so good at hiding. I love them, they run more like little deer than rabbits.

And today, I saw a goldcrest, the smallest of the small!

I thought the days of random several-hour powercuts were over, but this evening we had a good long one, well over two hours. Still, we still had a good supply of candles and it's always fun to have to remember how the emergency gas ring works.

It is hot. I walked in Deerpark wood, hoping to avoid too much sun and flies. Most of the year, Deerpark wood is a walk that definitely requires wellies, because there are so many small streams running everywhere through it that it gets quite muddy, particularly where riders have taken horses through, but on a day like this, there is little mud and the many tiny streams are clear and sparkling. I know it must be really hot because Rosie got into one stream right up to her elbows! Most unusual behaviour for Madam I Can't My Feet Might Get Wet.

She also spent some time huffing and puffing down rabbit holes, like the Big Bad Wolf. She sticks her head in as far as it will go, and presumably, she can see or hear or smell the rabbit, not far away. Because once she has jammed herself in there, she huffs and blows. I am not sure if she is hoping that if she puffs hard enough the rabbit will shoot out of one of the other holes? That's certainly what it looks like.

The foxgloves are still in bloom and there are places where you have to scramble your way through tall purple groves of them. Down by the lower streams, the yellow monkeyflower is everywhere. It's not a native plant here, so I would guess that someone once dumped some garden waste in the wood and the streams have carried the seeds everywhere. And in between the foxgloves and the monkeyflowers, the white foamy flowers of wild carrot, which I usually call Queen Anne's Lace, but for some reason they looked more carroty today.

On Friday evening after we got back from canoeing, the most enormous storm came up. It had been the clearest, hottest blue-sky day, and then suddenly, rain was beating down, thunder grumbling all around and lightning everywhere: really everywhere, all around. Very spectacular. Poor Brythen was most upset, but Rosie wasn't, nor Henning or Yama. Odd, the things that do and don't spook them.

Pp has bought an airbrush and is excitedly trying out new miniature-painting techniques with it. His paint attitude is diametrically opposed to mine: I seem to be slowly reducing the number of colours I paint with, to Paynes's Grey, Ultramarine Blue, Burnt Sienna, Titanium White, and Naples Yellow. It's surprising how far you can get with just those... Whereas he has LEGIONS of tiny paintpots in every possible shade and texture.

I'm supposed to be helping judge a dog show later today. The weather forecast looked hot and sunny. The actual weather looks grey and opaque: I can't even see Devon at the moment for the fog. Hope it cheers up or I shall be judging dogs by feel : "This one seems to have... a tail. And fur! Well done!"

I've been having some difficulty sleeping, recently, which I know is par for the course for some of my friends but normally I can sleep almost any time so for me it's weird and upsetting! Oddly, it was sleeping at night that was the problem, I'd sleep till maybe 4 or 5am then wake and not be able to go to sleep again. I can resort to naps in the day, but those eat so much time! I should probably cut back a bit on coffee. *but I love coffee* *laments*. And probably go to bed earlier... It seemed to be related to writing, too: I kept waking up with ideas and thinking 'Oh, OK, I'll just note that down' and then two hours later... Which would be fine if writing were a paid job, but since it's a hobby it's really silly. Bah.

I have a bad feeling that the lack of sleep may also relate to the fact that I've taken a nose-dive this year into just not looking at the news, for the first time ever. This is a bit cowardly and I should stop doing it. Maybe next week.

Promises the Libdem election leaflet of one Matthew W.

No you won't. There is no scenario where you will descend out of our Eastern hills into the West, falling upon the unsuspecting inhabitants of Truro with Fire and the Sword. Nor do I want you to. For that matter, how do you know they are even wrong? They might be right! I might be wrong! Also, if you are fighting for me, then very likely you will have to fight, not against the wild raiders of Penzance or the solemn townsfolk of Truro, but against the annoying man up the road that thinks it's appropriate to control growth of a cornish hedge by spraying it with weedkiller.

... I don't think election leaflets are aimed at me.

Must look up what eldrich horrors Mebyon Kernow (Sons of Cornwall) are promising. Possibly they really are promising Fire and the Sword.

Just watched this, and my reaction was IT’S SIT DOWN BY JAMES!!!! I feel I’ve somehow obscurely misused my nerd credit. Flashback to listening to the radio in Oxford in... 1990? 1991? Something like that.

And then a few years later driving endlessly from Chester to Birchwood in my awful, awful red Metro, and getting stuck endlessly on the Thelwall viaduct and singing along to James in the car because the Metro had the world's most ancient radio and it didn't get FM, and it didn't even have a tape player, and the one station you could get when stuck in the endless massive roadworks on the Thelwall Viaduct was always playing either James, Pulp or Oasis. And occasionally fantasising about simply getting out of the car, when it hadn't moved for literally 30 minutes, or on one occasion TWO BLOODY HOURS, and just leaping over the edge of the bridge and swimming out to sea, never, ever, ever to return to a dull industrial estate on the outskirts of Warrington.

Which fantasy was probably enhanced by the fact that in those days it was still normal to go out to the pub* for lunch and return to work for the afternoon in a beer-induced haze that probably hadn't entirely worn off by the time the clock finally ticked with agonising slowness around to 5pm. Still, I never killed anyone and on the Thelwall Viaduct you couldn't move fast enough to cause a disaster even if you were actually drunk.

I'm fairly sure this wasn't the intended set of associations. WHO KNEW IT WOULD BE POSSIBLE TO HAVE THELWALL VIADUCT NOSTALGIA????

*which was a terrifying place which I'm sure later appeared in Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, and which I would probably never have dared to venture into if I hadn't been hauled along by a gang of heavy-smoking Warrington Ladies who swore liberally and knew no fear. God, they were an education.

On top of a fence post,
all covered in green
I photographed lichens
That evolved before the Eocene.

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We decided to go over to Mount Edgecumbe on Saturday, since the weather forecast was good. Of course, when Saturday arrived, it was snowing, but we thought let's go anyway. And in fact it was quite pleasant down by the sea, although it would have been a sunnier day today. Here's the folly and Drake's Island and Plymouth in the background.

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Phonecall from NHS: will I come in for checkup? Well, OK I say, and agree a date and time.

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Long ago, I was in Haye-on-Wye on what proved to be a bitterly cold and icy day. Most of the shops in Haye-on-Wye sell books and book-related items, but books will not keep you warm (well, maybe they will if you buy enough of them to build yourself a house, but I was on holiday and therefore not inclined towards a longterm building project.)

But there was one shop selling hand-made woollen crafty items, and so I flung myself into it with gratitude, and, throwing economy to the wind in the interest of not actually freezing to death, I purchased several items (knitted, if I remember rightly by Marches Matrons from Alpaca-wool). I think I bought a scarf, a pair of mittens, and this hat. I am not sure what I did with the other items, but I still have the hat. Usually I wear it with the flower at the back, because I feel the flower is somehow a bit too much on me. Rosie, however, carries it off with style.

I just bought a box of poobags online (I am picky about clearing up after my dogs, what can I say?)

The acknowledgement email came from 'poop' and the email address is poop@theirdomain.com. Somehow that seemed oddly appropriate today but I wonder how many of their emails fall into spam filters...

Yesterday as I was coming home from the morning dog walk, Helga Saab started to make an alarming wheezing groaning noise, and then she went PING, and I realised that her engine temperature gauge was right up in the red. I pulled her out of the road, and peered into her engine, which did indeed feel very warm. In fact she seemed to have no coolant left in her tank at all, which was odd because I check that regularly as the sensor that should report upon it is knackered.
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When they die, Elves are summoned to the Halls of Mandos by the authority of the Valar. But they don't have to go. They can choose.

Does Fëanor really seem like the kind of person who would accept that summons? Even dead, having suddenly realised that he could not win, and his body disintegrated into ashes?
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Yesterday it rained. I had planned to garden, but the sudden downpours were too much. Instead we went wandering around Tavistock for several hours with the hounds (and took them to our favorite dog-friendly cafe for lunch). I managed to get some more titanium white acrylic paint and then since the shop had an offer, I bought some silver, buff titanium, and Naples Yellow (which at least in the Windsor and Newton range seems to be quite a muted pinkish shade). Foster Ruggie was quite tired out by town life, and fell fast asleep in the cafe, so Brythen and Rosie got to split a home-made burger and chips between them. Brythen ate all the chips. Chips are not refined enough for Rosie Roo.

( ramble ramble ramble )

Driving back from walking the dogs, I had the Ipod on random shuffle. First it gave me 99 Red Balloons, which for those with imperfect memories of 1980s pop, is a dystopian tale of how a day beginning with a minor act of environmental vandalism ends in global nuclear catastrophe. It ends with the singer standing in the dust that was a city.

And then my Ipod, which, it appears, is an unsung musical genius, swung straight into Bill Bailey's Cockney Medley : I swear the join was completely invisible, I didn't even realise the first song had ended until suddenly the lyrics. (And wtf, youtube, with the visuals on that Bill Bailey video? But it does start at just the right point).

And Helga Saab, whose internal IT originates from 2002, and so has a somewhat shaky relationship with the Ipod, who she considers newfangled and confusing, announced the second song on her display by saying BILLB LOONS

... perhaps you had to be there. But I almost drove into a hedge I was laughing so much.

The delightful comfort of wearing warm socks when the weather has taken a turn for the chilly is disrupted by stepping in a splash of water, such as that created by a large hairy dog drinking incautiously.

And yet the splash is not so large that the entire foot is wet, so that parts of my feet are now crying 'we are sad and wet' while other parts of my feet are going 'but it's so snuggly and warm! Can't you just wait a bit, the wet bits are bound to dry soon'.

I wonder if this is what Brexit feels like if you are a country. Get it together, feet.

I should probably try to find another pair of clean socks. (I do have many clean socks. Shadow falls over this idyllic situation when the word 'pair' is mentioned.)

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bunn

January 2026

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Page generated Jan. 8th, 2026 10:25 pm

Entries tagged with wittering

An Update

A walrus-post, filled with random bits.

Arty Stuff

Things

Things Seen

Ooof

Random things

I will fight for you in Truro!

(no subject)

On top of a fence post, all covered in green

Mount Edgecumbe on a Saturday

Health v system

I think she suits a hat.

Poop

Helga's Bad Day

Things done of a weekend

Ramblings about Fëanor

Things done: a rambling update

Serendipitous Segue

Socks

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January 2026

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