365 Words – A Beginning

Posted on January 15, 2014 by thecontentedcrafter

My personal challenge this year is to make a small art piece every day and to record a word or short phrase that encapsulates some aspect of each day.

I didn’t actually decide to do this until 3 or 4 days into the New Year, so I started on the back foot. Which is a fairly typical place for me to start anything really.

I settled into work one afternoon and began by preparing a load of old defunct business cards. I taped two together, then another two, then another two, until I had about a months worth of daily cards.

I adhered some torn book pages to a few of the cards and then happily sploshed some paint around and got something happening colour-wise:

Here is what I had produced at the end of the first seven days of January:

These are the second 7 days:

I journal a bit more detail on the backs of the cards because I know that in six months time I will have no idea where my mojo had got to or why I was urging myself to ‘slow down’ …….. And why am I surprised that it is virtually impossible for me to stick to one word every day? If you’ve been tagging along for a while you will be well aware I am a woman of many words – how can I use just one or two words when sixteen or twenty give a more in depth and juicy image? 🙂

Here are a few individual days cards. This first one refers to how I felt the day after I had remembered to take the long view and see just what had been achieved and how I had been blessed in 2013……

Surely you know what this one refers to:

This one celebrates the life and memory of someone very dear to me still:

This was a happy day – the sun actually shone and we reveled in it – the next day it had gone again!

This is the latest one. One of my oldest friends blew into town – [I’m god-mother to their youngest daughter]. He turns up three or four times a year and we sometimes miss each other as he never thinks to actually give me prior warning. But this time it all worked out and he took me out for a meal. We teased the Italian waiter for leaving Sardinia to come to a place that Summer had deserted, ate probably the best fettucine and calamari I have ever tasted, drank good Otago chardonnay and finished with real Italian dessert – I had Tiramisu which had a party in my mouth and he had Chocolate Torte….. We watched the waves thundering and crashing against the sea wall and had a wonderful three hour long conversation that served our souls well.

So there we are – the first two weeks of January are gone already. In retrospect I realise I spent it dealing with technology issues, pining for my lost summer and being saved by charming men! 🙂 Happy Dance!!

Thank you for coming by today, I’m so happy that you did 🙂

Happy Mail

Posted on January 14, 2014 by thecontentedcrafter

It’s a lovely thing to get unexpected gifts – and my life is rich in them at the moment.

Just prior to Christmas I received an email from another blogging friend Katyoparty over at ArtOutWithYourHeArtOut telling me she had a few spare gelatos and they were winging their way to me, along with ‘a few other bits’ she thought I might quite like.

If you aren’t an arty-crafty type, gelatos are a newish product somewhere between a pastel, a crayon and a paint. They come in something resembling a lip gloss tube, are richly pigmented, easily moved about with your finger and are water soluble. You can use them like a crayon, an oil pastel or watercolour paint. They are a lot of fun and in my part of the world anyway, exorbitantly expensive.

I was very excited – I didn’t have any gelatos and had never received ‘Happy Mail’ before.

The courier delivered a box to my door a few days ago. It was battered and beaten and torn open at the top – it looked as if it had been round the world twice and through a few storms along the way.

The first thing I saw was a beautiful wooden box – a cigar box, just perfect for altering.

And here is what was inside the box or packaged alongside it, all piled on the little table for my delighted eyes to feast in.

There is an array of flowers large and small, pretty papers, sundry embellishments, templates and masks……… and of course the gelatos.

Here is the pretty hand made card Katie sent and just peeking out from beside it is – I’m guessing – some of her own delightfully hand painted paper.

And here are more embellishments and masks and some die cut flowers and sundry bits and bobs:

It quite made my day! I sift through them as I go about my daily art task of recording a word a day – I’ll show you some of those in another day or two.

So, many happy thank yous to katieoparty – it was a real treat! Do check out her blog and her videos if you get a chance.

Thanks for coming by today, I love that you did 🙂

Technology Freezing and Me – An Update For Your Amusement

Posted on January 9, 2014 by thecontentedcrafter

Do you remember the recent post ‘When Technology Freezes – Could I Be the Cause?’

I have the answer to that question!

Stick with me kids, I hope you’ll enjoy the ride!

You know Esmeralda was cured of her freezing ills. She now runs like a wild horse over a golden prairie. She glitters and sparkles and does everything I want and even more – she has not frozen – or even chilled out – not once!

You remember the fridge that thought it was a freezer? Well, here is its story.

It’s probably close to a month now since I first noticed the fridge was running a bit too cold. I adjusted the thermostat and waited for it to return to its proper temperature.

Some time later I noticed the temperature inside the fridge was still colder than it needed to be, so I moved the slider a bit further down the scale.

Over a period of days I noticed no decrease in the chill level and kept adjusting the thermostat downwards until I had reached the bottom of the bar. The freezing was just getting worse and salady type foods were now icing up overnight and inedible. A fresh organic chicken put in one evening was frozen solid the next morning. My breakfast was made with frozen berry fruits and frozen yoghurt.

Trying to outwit the freezing fridge became a daily event. What could be stored in the fridge and how could I store the other items? I gave up trying to keep salad and vegetable items longer than a couple of days in a cupboard and slowly emptied the fridge of its contents – much of it ending in the trash.

Finally realising that being unable to store food in the fridge in the middle of summer was probably a silly status-quo to stick with – and realising I was wasting food and not being able to stick with my preferred food types, thereby compromising my well being, was just as silly…. I decided to bite the bullet and get the darn thing fixed.

I spent some time and gathered together a list of appliance service numbers with the aim of a) finding someone open and b) finding someone I could afford.

In one of those serendiptitous moments we all have, I had found the Owners Handbook for the fridge when sorting through last years paper work. Another moment of genius had me decide to actually look at the book and check the trouble shooting page before making the calls to service agents.

I didn’t get far with my reading, for on opening said book, can you imagine my a) amazement to find I had taken out an extended warranty at the time of purchase [I never take out extended warranties!] and b) unbounded joy to discover there was still 13 days before it expired! Thirteen days!!

Well, hallooy, hallay!! Oh Joyous Day – just in time baby – a fridge repair at no cost!!

I capered vigorously around my tiny house and took Orlando with me – he purred and I sang and then we made the phone call.

In an amazingly short amount of time a service tech arrived, he looked like an older statesman in a techie suit and was polite yet remote. He asked me to explain the problem and then, without hesitation, opened the fridge door and looked inside.

He stuck his head further in and almost immediately pulled it back out. His face was stern and his voice disapproving,

“You know you’ve got your temperature set at the coldest point” he said and he put his arm in to move the gauge.

“What?” I said – looking, sounding, feeling like a stunned mullet.

He stood aside and ushered me in – if I squinted my eyes, blinked and stared I could just make out the words ‘warmer’ at the top of the scale and ‘colder’ at the bottom.

I pulled my head out of the fridge “I’ve never seen those words before in my life.” I said to him vigorously.

He ‘tsked’ at me and shook his head. I buried my face in my hands and wished the floor would just open up and swallow me …. He busied himself hunting through his hi-tech tool-bag and said – “This isn’t covered by the warranty you know.”

I think I groaned out loud. “I’m not usually this ditzy….” I think I said, in a vain attempt to raise myself in his estimation. He would have none of it. Just returned an icy silence.

I heard myself give a little moan as I berated myself for being a Bear of Little Brain – apparently out loud, for he looked up at me and said “Winnie-the-Pooh. I used to read those stories to the grand-kids.” He looked momentarily wistful.

I apologised for wasting his time – I could see he thought I was an absolute idiot. And he was, of course, completely correct! I told him I absolutely agreed with his every damning thought – I was indeed a person of very little brain – just like Winnie-the-Pooh was a bear of very little brain – and finally he unbent just a little and cracked a smile.

While I silently contemplated a bill with several zeros after a two or even a three, he finished packing up and writing out his notes on his electronic thingy-ma-jig. Eventually he was finished and printed out the invoice with an ominous whirring sound.

As we walked to the door he said “You should probably take a few minutes and read that owners manual.” He handed the invoice and a business card to me, “I’ve put down that the three point plug was faulty and I’ve changed it.”

He smiled politely, nodded his head firmly at me and left.

I quietly shut the door and with my heart in my mouth, looked at the piece of paper he had given me.

Job: refit loose plug at defrost element. Test ok.

Call Out charge $0.00

Labour $0.00

Parts $0.00

Thank you for your custom, have a nice day!

The business card held his names and contact details and bore the title ‘Company Director’.

How much more good fortune can one brainless bear have?

I paid attention to how I was feeling. In amongst the mix of shame and elation was that wonderful heart opening sense that another disaster had just been averted, that I, with all my shortcomings, shortsightedness and general idiocies was still, somehow being carried through to a happy ending…..

That seemingly humourless and remote service tech was obviously not a service tech at all! He was the company owner, probably understaffed, obviously stressed, and needing to fulfill an urgent extended warranty job that turned out to be neither urgent nor even a job…… And he did have a heart – he knew a genuine ditz when he saw one – and he liked Winnie-the-Pooh!

So, to my original question – can I be the cause of technology freezing? It appears the answer is a resounding Oh, Yes Indeedy! 🙂

Geez!!

Thanks for coming by today, I love that you did! 🙂

Happy New Year Give-Away Winner

Posted on January 7, 2014 by thecontentedcrafter

The coffee cup was emptied. Washed. Dried. Refilled with names on paper strips. And the winner of our latest giveaway – sponsored entirely by our Anonymous Lovely Person is

Alys over at Gardening Nirvana.

Congratulations Alys, at your leisure do have a scramble through the Etsy Store, make your choice and contact me [details on ‘Contact Me’ page] 🙂

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I just want to take a moment to reflect on being the recipient of unexpected gifts.

I think that life gives us gifts all the time, but often it is not really appreciated – I know for me this is absolutely true. It has taken me a life time to move to a place where I am aware, am open, am accepting and choose to practise acceptance of what is on a daily basis. To see life as a gift rather than a chore…… and to realise that what I want may not be actually on the list of things I need or can have.

I have some days when I say to myself, I’m not getting out of bed until I feel grateful for something – anything. Some days I stay a longer time in bed than I should 😉

And I know each day is made up friendly asides, fortuitous events and serendipitous meetings. I know there are countless occasions when disaster has been narrowly avoided and even more countless occasions when a smile or friendly word has made someones day better.

Yet when, out of the blue, someone does something genuinely kind, caring and generous for me I am utterly blown away – I feel a ‘yes’ move through me like a soft breeze of awakening, my heart opens and expands beyond my physical body, my lips curve in a smile, first of astonishment and then of joy. I feel a sense of wonder and elation. It settles and I feel a gentle ‘wow’ that fills my body. I notice that the negative voice becomes still.

I have paid attention to my physical and emotional response to this gift. I wonder if it is the same for you all?

I have always been the person who gave and this is the first time I have been given to – in this particular manner. It has made me really aware of what an amazing thing it is to receive an unexpected gift.

My dear anonymous donor did far more for me than make this give-away possible – it has been a really lovely experience! Thank you xoxo

When Technology Freezes – Could I Be the Cause?

Posted on January 3, 2014 by thecontentedcrafter

I have decided – a little late I admit – but better late than never right? – to take some time throughout January and document my daily experiences and thoughts. A bit like a diary, or a journal, but public.

I’m doing it because of the thought I caught running through my head on the morning of January 1st which I wrote about here. I was a little appalled at how easily and quickly I had forgotten to respect and enjoy the blessings of my life and was falling into ‘Not enough’ and ‘Not fair!’ mode. Negative thoughts are the root of all evil in my opinion and I have spent the last twenty years learning how to recognise, change and adapt my life style to overcome this tendency in myself.

I am also starting a daily art project, a word a day to document my journey through 2014. Inspired entirely by following a link my blogging pal AJ put up on her blog yesterday. It will be a challenge for sanguine artist-me to stick to something like this, so I am not aiming high – just one word a day, playing with colour, shape and pattern.

I’m stating it in my blog so that you will keep me to it – I hope – that’s what friends are for, right? Well, even if you don’t, it’s out there and, being of the Virgo persuasion, I shall feel the need to keep my word to myself and do my best to achieve my goal.

Here is the first installment of my January journal – it covers events that began prior to Christmas up to yesterday.

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Just before Christmas my fridge, barely four years old, decided it no longer wanted to just be a cooler and overnight became a grown-up freezer. Being a gal with more dash than cash, and more than a dash of Scarlett O’Hara in me, I thought ‘I’ll think about this tomorrow’ and, being a gal with a positive set of mind I also hoped it might get tired of maintaining such a cold life style and would soon revert back to its original and proper state of being.

Alack! I was mistook!

I tossed out two containers containing three trays of freshly grown alfalfa sprouts – frozen and limp – the vegetable drawer full of frozen lettuce, tomatoes, capsicums, carrots and other life affirming fresh foodstuffs – all hard as rocks and speckled with enchanting ice crystals.

Tray after tray of previously good edibles froze solid overnight and became sludgy waste as they unfroze on the counter-top.

I have enjoyed frozen yoghurt on my breakfast cereal as a summer delight accompanied by frozen strawberries and frozen blueberries. I find if I wait long enough – about an hour – between the making of breakfast and the eating of it, there will be some softening of said ice crystals and the meal becomes somewhat more palatable….. It makes for a lovely, slow start to the day.

This morning, as I chipped off some frozen milk to add to my first coffee of the day, I realised the freezing rate is increasing rather than abating – a bit like the weather in Canada as I understand it from Linne and Boomdee’s blogs.

Of course here in the Summery Southern Hemisphere, this is exactly the time of year when the entire country closes down for Christmas, followed by New Year, followed by Summer Holidays There will be nary a tradesman around who will not charge double rates and take six weeks to get back to you.

I curse my naive belief that technology has an inbuilt ability to nurse itself back to health.

But then the unthinkable happens – the freezing, it appears, is contagious! Esmeralda decides to join in and freezes too. She doesn’t drip ice everywhere, just plays possum, refuses to move and refuses to shut down so I can restart her.

I do all the things we have all so painstakingly learned to do with our PC’s over the last decade. I hit ‘control-alt-delete’ once, twice, three times. Nothing. I push the power button – nothing. I turn her over to extract the battery, it’s a non-extractable battery! I pull out the power cord and wait for the battery to go flat. She sits and looks at me with her pretty blue desktop screen and refuses to budge.

Half an hour later she turns herself off, then on again. I open the desktop with a sigh of relief. She freezes.

For three days, my shiny new laptop froze three times in succession every morning and every three hours thereafter, refusing to move until I unplugged her and waited for the battery to go a little flat when she would turn herself on and pretend to be good for a bit.

The fridge is a freezer, the laptop freezes what’s going on?

I said to YD “Is it me?”

YD looked at me thoughtfully and slowly nodded her head.

Sometimes you just get someplace odd in your soul life and affect the running of things that normally just run properly and do what they are supposed to do. Its a sign….. I’m freezing everything! It’s always the mother’s fault!

“Ahhh, crap!” I said ………..I don’t know what to do about that at the moment .

So yesterday morning Esmeralda found herself stuffed into a nicely padded and very comfortable computer bag with all her cords and bits and was briskly marched back to the shop. Where not one, but two Geeks – or Nerds – I’m never sure which is which – set about trying to see what the issue was.

Ignoring my offer of cords and bits she was set up on the desk, turned on and ran splendidly. I talked them through the things I would be doing when she froze and the Head Geek pushed the right buttons, opening and closing programmes, zipping through the internet and Esmeralda sparkled along happily with them.

Just as the two bemused geeks were trying to find a polite way of telling me there appeared to be nothing wrong with my bright and shiny and ever so clever new laptop, YD wandered up.

“Why don’t you try it with the cord plugged in, that seems to be the issue to me” The Geeks, or Nerds, looked at her with their mouths open and glazed eyes. “You said,” she said to me “that when you unplug it, it starts working again – therefore, surely the cord has something to do with it.”

I nodded, bemused.

The geeks, also looking bemused, but ever so polite, agreed that was worth a shot.

Out came the cords and Esmeralda was plugged in, turned back on – and froze!

Need (Photo credit: Daniel Conway)

I jumped up and down and clapped my hands. I patted Esmeralda fondly “Good girl!” I said. The Geeks smiled painfully at me.

‘How did you know?” they clamoured to YD – I could see she had just been elevated from eye candy to extremely smart Geek/Nerd Heroine status and at any minute they were going to do the “I’m not worthy” bow to her and possibly hoist her on their shoulders and parade around Harvey Normans proclaiming her Geeky Goddess Incredibleness.

YD made a hasty escape back into the furniture department where she had found a wonderful lamp and an amazing chair neither of which she needs, has room for or can afford…. but which sure were pretty!

I stuck it out with the Geeks and Esmeralda, who was now plugged in and extraordinarily helpful. She froze at the slightest command. The Geeks ended up scratching their heads and pulling faces at each other and saying things like “Did you twiddle the whatsit and the wheresit?” “I checked the farflung and the diddly and they seem good” “Try turning off the heresit or even maybe the doanythingbit and see what happens” “Perhaps the fezidge isn’t connecting the bletherybit with the togmeister……..”

They both suddenly turned and looked at me and said in unison “It ‘s a restore I’m afraid.”

I surprised them by being prepared for such an eventuality. Will over at Technoblog had already prepared me for just this moment. I’d done the backup of all the files on my trusty USB and they were free to do whatever they needed to do.

I could see that momentarily I too had been elevated from ‘Horrendously Non-Geek’ to ‘Almost There’. I felt quite proud – thanks Will!

The restore took much longer than expected and Esmeralda is still in the hospital while I write this post on my newly respected aged laptop who is behaving rather nicely as if to say ‘See, you shouldn’t have been so quick to write me off – I may be slow to start up and I may be hopeless at the spin games but I get there in the end!’

‘Like you’ve never frozen!’ I say in a stern voice and Flat and Shiny becomes quiet. Oh, yes we remember those days – she didn’t just freeze, she crashed and took everything down with her….

I’m looking forward to Esmeralda’s return. I’m hoping her issues with her cord have been resolved and that the damage is not long lasting…… I am hoping we can find an amicable way for them to co-exist together that will not involve freezing, crashing, slowing or any of the other ills PC’s are vulnerable to.

Next I’m going to see if there is a cure for my wayward fridge – YD is convinced it’s ‘just a sensor’ whatever that means……….. but she is to be listened to in these technology issues apparently.

And I’m certainly going into therapy immediately to attend to my issues around coldness!

What an interesting year it is already! And I haven’t even begun my year long art project or my daily yoga practise yet….. Must start, must start, must start!

Have you entered the Give-Away yet? Three days to go!

Thanks for dropping by today, I’m so happy that you did! 🙂

Happy New Year and A Give-Away To Start Us Off!

Posted on January 1, 2014 by thecontentedcrafter

January 1st 2014.

This cannot be – I think 1994 was just a couple of years back – who turned up the speed?

I finished yesterday with quiet introspection.

On a day to day basis it seems as if nothing much happens or changes and life just ticks along. If I want to get maudlin I could say none of my wishes have come to pass. But when I took a moment to step out of the forest in order to see the trees I saw a quite different vista.

I see that all my daily needs are easily met. I see that I have all I need and even some of what I want. I see I can meet my expenses every month. I see my friends and family. I see my neighbours. I see I started blogging. I see a community that has grown from that first unremembered step. I see I started painting again. I see I opened an Etsy Shop. I see I wrote 100 posts. I see I had a lot of fun. I see new laughter lines. I see that I love. I see that I am loved.

I see a vast landscape of serendipitous meetings, events and inspirations. And I remember to trust that no matter what I think I want, my life is happening even – as John Lennon said – while I am busy making other plans.

I see and I remember that I am a most fortunate person!

Look what I got in the mail yesterday

125 10.5 x 14 cm super shiny postcard sized prints from the good guys over at Vistaprint.

I ordered sticky back labels and business cards from them early in December and they arrived the day before we went off on our jaunt through Central Otago to Queenstown. [Click here for that post] I was really happy with the quality and the price. These postcards were an add on at a hugely reduced price and with free postage as a thank you for my order. At the time I thought why not – may as well give it a go – and it is absolutely a WOW!

The postcard size cuts off a bit of the original painting, which was purchased by the sweet Alys over at Gardening Nirvana on the day I opened my Etsy Store – which kind of made my year really – but I think she still looks kind of neat 🙂

I’ll be sending some of these out as freebies with every order I think. And I’ll get the others made up this way too – who knew my paintings could look so great? Tra-lu, Tra-lay, Oh happy day! 🙂

[NB:- It appears I’m giving up modesty for 2014]

Now lets get on with the business at hand.

The first Give Away for 2014

is a signed print of your choice from my Etsy Shop.

Now should you be a person who ticks one or any or all of the following:

A person who likes whimsical art
A person in need of something to put on their wall
A person who forgot to buy a gift for a female friend/relative recently
A person with a gift needed for a female friend/relative soon
A person who likes free stuff
A person who supports my attempts to become an artist
A person who has previously won a give-away before
A bloke

………..then please feel free to enter into this New Year Giveaway – entirely sponsored by an anonymous, generous, kind, loving, thoughtful, patron of a would-be artist and

Hit the ‘Like’ button on the Contented Crafter Page on FaceBook
Hit the ‘Follow’ button on the Contented Crafter Blog
Hit the ‘Leave A Comment’ on this post and leave a comment

If you already ‘Like’ and ‘Follow’ I know – and I love you for it, just leave a comment.

If you don’t ‘do’ FaceBook, I absolutely understand, just mention that fact in your comment.

If you have stumbled onto this post through my cunning ploy of naming and tagging ‘Give Away’ and ‘Free Stuff’ go check out my Etsy Shop The Contented Crafter for a full list of the prints you could choose from should your name be drawn.

That’s it folks. You have until midnight on Twelfth Night – 6th January – and the draw will be made the following morning. We shall continue the age old tradition of my coffee mug, having emptied it’s early morning contents of delicious hot coffee into my eager being, becoming the receptacle for your various names. I’m hoping the coffee cup will be full and the ‘Likes’ and ‘Follows’ will therefore be quadrupled………..Ah well , we must have a dream for it to come true 🙂

Thanks for coming by today, I love that you did! 🙂

Double Celebrations and a Holiday Retrospective

Posted on December 28, 2013 by thecontentedcrafter

I hope everyone is having a wonderful and magical and inspiring holiday!

I certainly am – not only did I have the first holiday break in four years with both my daughters at the same time, closely followed by being extremely spoiled on Christmas Day [hint: I’m writing on it now 🙂 ] but also something really amazingly generous and wonderful and quite magical has happened for me, my readers and The Contented Crafter Blog altogether!

A few days before Christmas I received a sale notification from my Etsy Store and a wee note which said in part Pauline, please don’t send this to me; I want you to use it for a give-away in the New Year………

You may well imagine, I was totally overwhelmed. If I hadn’t already been sitting I would have sat – splat! The donor has asked to remain anonymous and I [reluctantly] respect that. Here is what is written on the Contented Crafter FB Page

‘I am donating one of Pauline’s inspiring prints for her to use as a give-away. I’m choosing to remain anonymous because this is about her and her lovely work, not about me. I rarely give money to large institutions, but like to use a wee part of my income to support a variety of efforts that come to my attention. I love supporting people who are artistic, alternative, creative and more. Anyone making a positive change in this world deserves support. I hope all her readers and followers will enter to win this lovely prize. Good luck, everyone!’

Isn’t this the most amazingly unexpected, wonderfully kind and generous and Christmassy Spirited thing? It’s like we have our very own Christmas Fairy!!

paulinekingblog.wordpress.com

So we get another give-away 🙂 Which makes me happy – and you too I hope and one lucky person will get to choose a print, and I hope they will be happy too!

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And – as I discovered as I began this post – this is my 100th post – so, double celebrations!! I’ve been blogging for a full 10 months already and so much has happened – not least the amazing people I have stumbled upon, so many of whom have become new friends 🙂

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We went to Queenstown to celebrate YD’s mumbley-mumble birthday. It has to be said she is now older than I think I am. Perhaps the Time Lord has been zipping around in his Tardis and completely destroyed linear time in favour of concurrent and eternal time [?]

Any-hoo…. it was a chilly morning when we set off with me as official back seat driver and the two lovelies up front

Our road trip took us through some pretty amazing scenery and some of New Zealand’s early history too. If you travel this route you will soon become familiar with the beginnings of European Settlement in this country. Rich with gold, the hills are high and rocky. Schist is piled precariously atop schist and always makes me think of some wild and ancient god such as Thor, haphazardly throwing rocks about. The scenery will remind you of Greece, of Tuscany, of England – all in the space of five minutes. The lakes are huge, one is man-made and a village was drowned to make it – and the colour is spectacular – aqua waters shine out against stark brown hills..

It’s wild, it’s barren, it’s breathtakingly beautiful!

First stop was at a great favourite of mine, Lawrence where the original gold rush took place in the early 1860’s. Gabriel’s Gully is on the outskirts of town, but it was a bit too cold to do the walk.

We stopped for lunch in a pub garden in Alexandra, then pushed on to Clyde.

Clyde is in the middle of nowhere, high up in the mountain plateau. A stunningly beautiful, stark, rocky, brown landscape with an aqua lake, a hydro dam and little picturesque villages that could come straight from the English Cotswalds.

I snapped ED standing and staring

What she was entranced with, and you can’t smell is the wild thyme. Those dead looking clumps in the background are wild thyme. This part of the high country, where the topsoil is thin and the bedrock is on the surface, grows wild thyme. It goes from the waters edge up the sides of rocky cliffs, along the road side and over the hills. It is abundant, it is dried, it is redolent and

I picked me some 🙂

We drove on, past the drowned town of Cromwell, stopped at Roaring Meg for a few moments and on to Queenstown.

We arrived about 4 pm – just in time to see the last of the beautiful warm summer days they had been enjoying. But we were not concerned. We settled into our uber posh hotel and enjoyed the view

Queenstown nestles itself on two sides of the beautiful Lake Wakatipu It is small, it is hilly and it is entirely a tourist spot. Sam Neill calls this place home, Shania Twain built a ranch house on several hundred acres on the outskirts and there is scarcely a Hollywood star who has not spent at least two nights nestled up in any of the twenty or more ultra luxurious, inordinately expensive, privacy guaranteed hotels.

We settled for a very nice 5 Star and had a thoroughly enjoyable time with our discount vouchers and savings coupons and lets not forget the trusty credit cards!

It has to be admitted up front that we spent the better part of the next two days eating and drinking. We wanted to stick with the theme – so it was mostly an endless array of delicious and extraordinarily fresh seafood and fine Otago wines.

We did make the trek half way up the mountain to catch the gondola that took us all the way to the top – vertically! YD and I are okay with being in tiny little orbs that look alarmingly like a storm troopers helmet that sway about in the breeze and travel in a series of jerks and rushes. Not so much ED, who began to sing ‘Soft Kitty, warm kitty’ in a tremulous voice – which just made us laugh even more.

The view was worth it. This is what you see immediately below the space age viewing deck

The wilding pines and wildflowers are found all over the mountain sides around Queenstown and were looking particularly pretty. [Wilding pines are self seeded and unwanted invaders in National Parks. There is a huge push to handle them properly so that the native forest can regenerate and the wildings be stopped in their tracks. When I first came to Queenstown 28 years ago, there were few pines growing up the mountain sides – now they cover them.]

This is a panoramic shot taken by one of the daughters clever phones. [ 🙂 ]

The view is quite stunning and we repaired to a small wine bar to admire it some more.

We chose a spot where we could see the storm troopers whizzing past and I amused myself by trying to take an arty shot. You had to be really quick!

Eventually I got this one and had to be happy with it or I couldn’t enjoy my chardonnay!

That evening we celebrated YD’s birthday at a very fine lakeside restaurant where we ate copious amounts of fish, drank not quite copious amounts of white wine and took silly photos with ED’s new iphone to the amusement of the servers and several other tables of diners.

The next day, Christmas Eve, we reluctantly packed up and headed back across the thyme covered mountain plateau to a cold, wet and windy home city and readied ourselves for an exciting Christmas Day.

Meet Esmeralda, my new, silver, ultra sleek, super fast Personal Computer.

She has just finished her first successful and very happy blog post 🙂

Thanks for coming by today and taking the time to read – I’m so happy that you did! 🙂

Seasons Greetings One and All!

Posted on December 25, 2013 by thecontentedcrafter

We got home from our road trip last night – utterly exhausted, but very happy!

We celebrated YD’s birthday in style

……with copious amounts of seafood and chardonnay and silly picture taking

And now it is Christmas morning and there is Champagne to be drunk and presents to open and more family time to be indulged in. The full story of our adventures must wait for another post.

Merry Christmas my friends, thanks for making these past nine months so much fun!

I love you all xoxo

Thanks for coming by today, I love that you did! 🙂

Joy – Part II

Posted on December 18, 2013 by thecontentedcrafter

Despite all your lovely and generous comments on yesterday’s post, I felt my little birdie was crying out for something more and this morning I woke with another of my genius ideas – I could frame it – just to see how it looked.

I rummaged around in the magic cupboard and eventually emerged with a somewhat battered and grubby frame. I didn’t even stop to do more than give it a cursory wipe-over before popping in little Joyful birdie and voila

The frame measures 42 x 30 cm and the painting is 29.5 x 21 cm.

Oh Joy!! Tra-la!! Happy Dance!!!

Now she is completed!

What say you?

Thanks for coming by today, I love that you did! 🙂

Joy

Posted on December 17, 2013 by thecontentedcrafter

I’ve been working on this piece for several days – it started as one thing and, as so often happens, morphed into another.

I am determined to continue in my practise of using colours that are not common to my palette – it’s good for me to stretch my wings… This one started off with red and orange, which should be fine as they are side by side on the colour wheel – but when the green came along that simply didn’t work so I morphed the orange into yellow in an attempt to lift the image.

Zing!!

I have developed a decided love/hate relationship with it!

I love my little birdie, I hate the composition! It’s messy and crowded and the bird is in the wrong place ………… I really need to develop a plan of action before I start drawing and painting and gluing random bits down ……. so much to learn!! 🙂

And it’s an awful photo – there is so much sparkle and texture that it seems to be impossible for the camera to get its act together. That shadow in the lower left corner is I believe my head. The floor of the conservatory is the best place to take photos – the sun was shining and it was close to midday……… Sigh!

I’m sounding decidedly grumpy to my own ears – but I’m not really – maybe the combination of red, yellow and green doesn’t agree with me – though it is decidedly summery 🙂

I shall get it scanned and see what I think about it then – maybe it might make a nice card….. or it may just end up in the art archives folder

Click on the image to get a bigger view, click again for detailed viewing.

Mixed media collage on A4 300gsm art paper.

Acrylic paint, papers, stamps, paint pen, gel pens, charcoal, pitt pens, gold metallic pen and Inca Gold paint. Heart punch by Sullivans and butterfly punch by Martha Stewart.

The original layer is two shades of red and some white acrylic paint. When dry I stamped with three different stamps and applied gesso through a template randomly. A third coat of thinned white paint was applied and wiped away while still wet to grunge it up a bit.

The bird was drawn freehand on lunch-wrap paper [deli paper to some of you], painted and then fussy cut and glued down to the substrate using gel medium. I stuck her down too far to the left.

The tree branches were also made originally on deli paper and attached to the substrate.

The flowers and leaves were all made from 200gsm paper which was painted and then dry embossed and punched out in two sizes using heart punches. When they were assembled and attached to the substrate I went in with pens and pencils and paints and gussied them up some.

When everything was in place I used charcoal and pitt pens to define edges and bring it all together.

What do you think?

When you look at it do you feel joy? Or do you, like me, sigh and think – oh, that could have been so nice! 🙂

Onwards ans upwards!!

Thanks for coming by today, I love that you did! 🙂