Year 3 of the 52-Week Illustration Challenge, Week 4

Week 4: Swimming

Collaged watercolour and cartridge papers, with Puffy Paint and watercolour highlights and shadows on a background of scrapbooking glitter paper. Based on several images found in a Google Image search.

Update:

Week 4: Swimming II

Black Sharpie cartoons on pearlescent sculptured paper, with salted watercolour highlights, collaged onto cartridge card.

Return of the 52-Week Illustration Challenge, Week 23

Week 23: Rain

With inspiration from Bert's pavement drawings in chalk of a merry-go-round (in the feature film, Mary Poppins), this pavement drawing is replicated across several sheets of "scratch paper" (with the supplied tool) and glued onto grey card. Rain drops and puddles created from black card, and decorated with blurred white opaque Uni Posca ink and coloured crayons.

Update:

Week 23: Rain II

"Raining cats and dogs - or hailing buses?" Black ballpoint pen on blue paper, umbrella shape freehand-cut to create a silhouette, highlighter pens, signage in Word on yellow paper, mounted onto black and beige card.

Week 23: Rain III

A solitary raindrop takes The Big Plunge. Originally, he was going to have little black shoes but - suddenly! - gum boots were more appropriate. Watercolour with black and blue Sharpie inks and white opaque Signo.

Wet, wet, wet

DAY 15

Halfway point! A little magic on a gloomy, wet night. Lights from my pool through a glass candle-holder.

First one in... is a leaf!

Mmmmmm. How does that happen? Somehow I should have known that the leaves would beat the humans into the newly-renovated pool, before it's even finished filling up. Now it'll probably rain.





Ah! Found a "Before & After" shot!


Pool in November 1999


Pool in November 2010

Three in a row catchup

This peace lily (spathiphyllum) really loves the alternating
humidity, rain and heat of the last few weeks. 9 March 2010.



This climbing week (lantana?) has claimed a disused smoke stake/flagpole
(and its guy wires) in a long-vacant Penrith commercial site. 10 March 2010.


Stilt walkers on Pitt Street, Sydney CBD. 11 March 2010.

Three in a row

A busy weekend, dodging raindrops!


Coming home rather late after a day of heavy rainfall. 13 February 2010.


A lone portulaca has sprouted and flourished on the edge of the gutter
in the front yard. They've been self-seeding in the back yard
for several years but none emerged this year. Somehow this tiny,
lone seed made it into the front. 14 February 2010.


It seems appropriate that a prehistoric Wollemi pine's pot
should harbour a very prehistoric-looking toadstool! 15 February 2010.

Delivering the mail

Sadness is a Jack Russell terrier with a bindi in his paw.

However, we *were* the first dog-and-human pair to do the circumference of the extended block tonight - and the rain has cleansed everything. Jack is officially the first weemail on every tree, fence and pole in Penrith. If my universal translator is accurate, the weemail reads, in large block letters:

"JACK WUZ HERE!"

It was a dark and soggy night...

Lemongrove bridge, Penrith.

Christmas - and rain - in the air

Any plans to do anything interesting yesterday were put on hold when the weather switgch back and forth between overcast, rain and sunshine, with no less than three frustrating sun showers every time I planned to leave.

I did a little housework instead: cleaning out the cockatiel's cage, alphabetising recent DVD purchases, bringing out some bags of Christmas decorations...

'Tis the season to be domesticated.

Sunday's magic number: 95.4 - sigh.

Jack: 0; Mozzie Zapper: 3

For those of you keeping score, my Jack Russell put on another Logie Award-winning performance last night during an extended walk, via the kebab/pide takeaway shops in High Street, Penrith.

We placed our order at the first shop (the one that has the really nice chunky lamb shish - big chunks of lamb in the Turkish bread) and, while it was being prepared, we wandered further down the road and happened to pass the other kebab shop (which does the mixed slices of chicken and beef kebabs on Lebanese bread). Now, Jack had already put on his demonstration of feigned cowardice, even though the first shop doesn't actually have an ultra violet mozzie zapper light for the insect pests. But several years ago, Jack learned to associate the smell of kebab meat with the noise of a mosquito getting fried in the metal grill of a mozzie zapper. The staff and customers were bewildered by the sight of this crazy dog fretting outside the shop for no obvious reason.

But his bravura performance was saved for the second shop. The owner was standing out on the street, and he immediately recognised Jack from previous visits. By the time were were almost at the shopfront, Jack was practically crawling along the asphalt footpath, and trembling all over. He was excited to smell the man agan - yum yum, meat! - but he was also anticipating the... there it goes: "ZAP!!!!"

Hilarious.

Not so hilarious was our walk home. About halfway, we met a loose bulldog/pitbull cross - with a full set of testicles! (I guess that's better than a cross bulldog/pitbull?) He wasn't too aggressive, but Jack objected to the dog's nose going where it didn't belong, and Jack was atypically barky. Sometimes he doesn't know when to pull his head in.

We thought we'd lost the stray in someone's front yard, and managed to get quite a bit of distance between us. Suddenly, a car tooted us. "There's a dog coming, mate!" the guy warned. Sure enough, that squat, furry dynamo who was determined to know my dog intimately had switched to warp speed - and was sweeping towards us like the Tasmanian Devil from "The Bugs Bunny Show".

And THEN the heavens opened. With no umbrella, and carrying Jack to keep him out of reach of the bulldog/pitbull cross, who followed us almost all the way home, we got drenched.

Lovely. What was worse, the kebab wasn't even for me.

Hump Day of a long weekend

Sometimes the universe is just having a big belly laugh at our expense.

No one in Sydney wanted to believe the weather forecasts that predicted rain for the long weekend, but here we are, two days into it and very soggy underfoot. Mind you, after years of drought conditions and water restrictions in Sydney, our gardens aren't complaining.

A friend from Perth happened to mention she was going to be in Sydney over this weekend, for her husband's family reunion activities. Yay! Egged on by a mutual friend in the USA - the wonders of Facebook Friends and three-way texting on our virtual Walls, I started to make serious plans to rendezvous with her. But... she is spending most of the time on New South Wales' central coast, so I had to be up for two long train journeys to get to her.

No problem, I'm reading a good book at the moment ("Star Trek: Enterprise: Kobayashi Maru" - but you already knew it would be a Star Trek novel).

By the time I factored in that my friend's "free" part of the weekend was narrowing down to a small percentage of the whole trip, and that she'd have no transport of her own, and that she was staying in a town that doesn't even have trains stopping at it - add in a bus ride to my two long train rides - plus Daylight Saving, which started today and therefore we've all lost an hour already - plus inevitable train delays due to the heavy rain...

... it will be much simpler, and faster, to visit her in Perth.

I hope her in-laws' reunion festivities aren't too dire, but methinks I'm not going after all.

It's the thought that counts. No?

I can hear the universe chuckling to itself. Or is that thunder?

Sunday's magic number: 93.9 - no, maybe it was my own stomach...

Reversal of fortune, or, About Face

In complete contrast to yesterday's gorgeous weather, today was overcast/drizzling/pouring all day.

I spent the day finally tweaking my Facebook page. Sorely neglected, and never of particular interest, I get the occasional automated email from friends updating their Facebook profile.

Considering that, in a very short time, I'd jumped from five to 35 friends I'm quite pleased! I can certainly see that it could become as all-consuming as a blog, or Flickr, or a bbs (bulletin board service).

I'm sure I have plenty of other tasks awaiting, but all these acknowledgments of linking keep popping through on the email! What fun! It's like a virtual school reunion here!

Sunday's magic number: 93.6 - Okay. Drat. 'Cos I felt much skinnier!

Falling off the wagon - deliciously

I expected bad news. Stepping onto the bathroom scales today was never going to be anything else, but it was a worthy experiment. I can now say with confidence that a two-week celebration, with a food frenzy free-for-all can add over a kilogram eeach week. Especially when the weather has been too dismal to do much walking (ie. the dog ducks off under the bed when he suspects there is rain outside).

This is definitely how I reversed last year's dieting efforts so effortlessly! Fifteen weeks of carefree eating leads to fifteen kilograms of ugly fat; I didn't need to really repeat the experiment, but gosh it was fun doing so. Two Krispy Kreme donuts on Thursday - despite walking the length of Pitt Street, Sydney, in the rain - was not the wisest move. But then, neither was today's Big Mac - my first Big Mac in about eight months!

You know, you can really taste the vinegar in Big Mac Special Sauce when you haven't eaten it in eight months.

Sunday's magic number: 93.7. Okay, I detect a pattern here. After the catered morning tea and lunch tomorrow, for the professional development day at school, the diet's back.

"Melting, melting, I'm melting..."

Okay, it's the age-old mystery:

"How did the Wicked Witch of the West ever take a bath?"

It was raining in Mittagong today, our last pitstop before arriving home from our Canberra vacation. I just couldn't resist snapping this witch's hat, which was sitting so forlornly on the pavement in the constant drizzle.

It was perfect weather for fish, chips, battered savs and potato scallops. But please don't tell anyone. (Sadly, every day of this holiday has been Junk Food Day. I just hope I did enough walking...)

Lounging around again

Well, the new lounge suite arrived tonight. It looks very comfortable. Perhaps too comfortable; recliners send me straight to sleep and this corner suite has two of them. And its such a pretty medium blue.

The delivery truck was due at 6pm, but a thunderstorm held them up and they didn't arrive till after 8.30 or so. I ate dinner sitting on the floor in front of the TV, the only furniture left in the front room.

The room has been freshly painted (making the rest of the house look shabby by comparison). And no sooner were the modules slotted together than Jack was up on one, and settled in for the evening. Looks like I'm testing out the suite's resilience to dog hairs much earlier than expected.

"It's 2.30am on a Saturday morning, and I must lick your face!"

You know, by cleverly judging the time between heavy rain showers, Jack (my Jack Russell terrier) was taken for a one hour walk last night. There's no way he should have been awake enough to demand to go outside to post an urgent wee-mail at 2.30am this morning.

But he did.

Dammit.

Welcome to summer. No wonder it's raining.

(I cheated and peeked at the scales a day early; if I walk heaps today I can be under the magic 90 kg again tomorrow. Whew! I thought I'd been really tough on myself this week, but there hasn't been a lot of change at all. Last week, i knew there'd been a sudden two kilogram drop. i could just tell that i felt lighter, and skinnier. There are mornings when I get dressed and feel amazed at all the extra room in the waistband of my pants, and how they'd fall down without a belt holding them up. There are other morning when i catch myself side on in the mirror and am horrified that the tummy ain't never gonna look better without some exercise beyond walking. (My thighs always look muscular, but that's because a life time of walking builds 'em up. Such is the life of a pedestrian.)

... where skeletonised corpses lie!

Walking through the Sydney CBD last night (heading to the Star Trek Meetup at Darling Harbour after an almost-two hour car trip), and again today near Paddy's Market, I was stunned to see over 100 tattered remains of storm-ravaged umbrellas, abandoned in garbage bins, on steps of shops, or lying in gutters. Twisted skeletons of metal ribbing and sodden cloth.

Wow! That was some rain we got. As per usual, the garage here at home flooded - it just can't cope when the rain is so heavy and relentless. Luckily almost everything is up on stilts these days. But Australians can't complain about precipitation these days; like everyone, we all hope this turns out to be Week #1 of long-awaited drought-busting relief.

Into the soggy night...

My online Star Trek friends and I are heading off to Baia San Marco restaurant in Cockle Bay, Darling Harbour tonight. I was planning a leisurely ride in on the fast country train, curled up with a good Star Trek novel ("Vanguard: Reap the Whirlwind"), but my friend Rosalind is swinging by in a car to pick up her cache of wine, ordered at the Pieroth wine cruise last February (I bought plenty of my own, so wasn't tempted to sample hers, and it's been safely in storage while she was overseas).

So wish us luck as we take on the motorway in wet conditions, Friday-night-of-a-long-weekend, but hopefully in the opposite direction to commuter traffic.

After the restaurant, it's off to Pyrmont for an all-night marathon of ST episodes. Or snoring (not a comment on the episodes, but it's a 40+ thing I think; lots of Nanna naps to get through the session these days).

Jack Russell: 1; Master: 0

Jack woke me this morning by smothering me with wet doggy tongue kisses, but when I got up to let him out into the yard, he hid under the bed. Yes, it was sprinkling with rain, and Jack had obviously assumed it was going to be too unpleasant to wee.

He's now just over five years old but has always been disconcerted by rain. He also used to hate the hose being on, although in recent years he's been known to race through the water stream, barking loudly. However, rain freaks him out, and i fail to understand how he'd prefer to stay inside all day, holding onto a full bladder all day...

Usually, I have a range of sneaky strategies for tricking Jack outside on a wet day, and at least one has worked: "Look, there's a cat outside!"; ringing the front doorbell and catching him when he runs through the hallway; "Oh, look!"; sneaking up on him curled up on my bed after I've been in the shower; "Jack, come and get your collar on"; or simply grabbing him by the scruff while under the bed, then carefully extricating him and carrying him into the yard.

This morning, absolutely nothing worked. After 20 minutes, I had to admit defeat, then run all the way to work to make up for lost time. This afternoon, before going into the city on the train to collect my weekly comics, I had to swing past the house to let you-know-who relieve his pain.

Children... Sigh.

Raindrops are falling on my head

It's very hard to feel too disgruntled by Sydney's heavy rain showers, when our country is so far into a major drought, the dam levels are dwindling, and government ministers are arguing the pros and cons of expensive desalination plants vs the recycling of sewage into drinking water. But try explaining to the dog why he's going to get damp on a toilet break.

The grass in the backyard is loving the relentless downpour, as do the flowers, the potted plants, and the frogs. I guess the translation of their mournful, communal cries is, "Quick, there's a puddle! We must procreate!"

I discovered tonight that the garage has flooded. Ick. That's the third time in six years. Not too bad, I guess, especially since I put everything up onto packing-foam blocks after the first time it happened. Two days of constant heavy rain is about the limit. By the third day, the ground and drains can't hold any more and the water just flows under the bricks, or through the mortar, or comes from somewhere - and across the concrete floor. The previous owners were here about 15 years and reckoned it never flooded in all that time.

It was a bit daunting once when the local newspaper showed a map of the Penrith Valley flood plain a few years ago - and there was a huge lake that theoretically forms, every 100 years or so, between my house and what is now Westfield's Penrith Plaza.

Ah, the dog needs to wee again. He has that look in his eyes. Let me just get the umbrella...