... on the joy to be had from bits of corrugated iron.

Recently I've found myself with a few spare days off work. I've tried:

A. Moonlighting as a builder's labourer. This is varyingly successful depending on how hot and humid it is on any given day. Moving bits of scaffolding in the withering sun at midday = wobbles and heatstroke. Hiding under a tarpaulin to paint the ends of beams = more my style.

B. Staring at the stockmarket hoping for divine inspiration. None yet.

C. Making many batches of dextrose-sweetened icecream in my new icecream-maker. Vanilla bean is particularly nice, as is chocolate made with Dutch cocoa.

D. Pekin-bantam wrangling. It's a great time-waster but Otto just doesn't understand that if he continues to practice his crowing (he's only 3 months old) then the neighbours will be most upset and he'll have to be re-homed sooner than expected.

and E. Mildly contemplating why it is that I haven't made any Beasties for a while!

So, out with the stout gloves and tin-snips!

Chop! Snip! Bend out the corrugations! Give them all a good scrub and sit them in the sun to dry! Hello Beasties!

... on the tree!

Feeling a bit sticky this year. This little paperbark sapling didn't recover from last year's bushfire so I've brought him home and covered him with my plaster seedpods, tissue-paper pompoms, some lovely paperboatpress ceramic ornaments and a few tiny glass baubles.

And I can never resist a good pile of presents! I'd stocked up on cord and ribbon from Pepe's Paperie in Canberra earlier in the year. Hooray!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

... on plasternessing something

The other day I was sitting at work gazing idly about my desk, as you do when you're trying to figure out what you should be doing next in a busy week. I try to save the clutter for home, but over the years a collection of things has sprung up on the windowledge - a rock, a paper cricket, some prototype plaster letters and a couple of dry bits of foliage. My eye came to rest on a seedpod I'd picked up while coming back from a curry lunch at West End some months back, and suddenly I had a vision.

That lunchtime I went back to West End and had a rummage - I found three more. When I got home that night I mixed up some Pinkysil and went for it!

(Oh Pinkysil. I'm so delighted Barnes have opened a retail shop here in Brisbane!)

White plaster seedpod Pinkysil goodness HURRAH!

... on the right kind of morning for it.

It's a funny kind of morning, this one. It's alternating cloud and sun, and blusteringly curtain-billowingly paper-flappingly windy. The jacaranda flowers are falling in drifts onto the road, and the chickens look perplexed.

There's only one thing for it. Close all the doors and windows, put the kettle on, let the dog sleep on the rug. Time for a photo-shoot!

...on markets ahoy!

It was Finders Keepers weekend in Brisbane, and I went, for the first time. It was held in the old Queensland Museum building, which is a destination all by itself.

Coloured-glass windows streaming afternoony light onto the tables full of handmade loveliness, and a brick veranda wide enough for both stalls and meandering.

Big tissue-paper flowers were hanging throughout all the rooms, which looked grand.

We finished off the day with a wander through the trumpet-vine house in the gardens - a fine afternoon.

...on a word for the week.

Here's one - topical, given today's other post. It's a favourite of mine.

... on old news.

I don't know why I just took it into my head to Google the author George MacDonald Fraser, but I did, and I was saddened to find that he'd died. The Flashman books have been solid favourites of mine ever since I was introduced to them by my first boyfriend, who read the entirety of Flashman and the Redskins to me aloud. To this day I haven't been able to re-read it because when I try, I hear the whole thing in his voice, and he was such a **** that it's not a pleasant reminder. It struck me at the time that it was weird that a twenty-year-old girl should really enjoy what can be described as historical military fiction, and I sometimes thought about writing a letter to George MacDonald Fraser and telling him that although the boyfriend didn't endure, Flash Harry did.

Occasionally I find myself using Flashmanisms in my daily speech - the word 'gammon' is one, as is the phrase 'mealy little pimp' when someone cuts me off in traffic. The character is a dreadful lech but he is certainly very charming, and remains one of my favourite fictional men. So, I'm very sorry to find there won't be any more Flashman books.

Tally-ho, eh what?