Waxing and rolling

One of the stranger blog post titles I have used, but I was doing two different things but not enough of either of them to warrant their own full post, so here they are together.

Firstly, the waxing.  We recently purchased some really large chunks of bees wax from a friend's garage sale.  The wax was pretty icky (a technical term) and it was a little bit hard to see the beautiful swan underneath the ugly duckling outside, but Barry encouraged me to buy it so that I could use it for encaustic and other lovely wax things.

I'm sorry there are no before shots; nor any action shots of Barry going at it with the machete to cleave off the worst parts and make the chunks small enough for me to manage...

We thought that if I melted it down, then strained it through fly-screen wire, and poured it into waxed paper cups, then it would be in good shape for me to use, and it was!

Here are some of the 'ick' bits I strained off, and some cooled wax - you can see the perfect soft, creamy golden colour of it.

As I was melting, straining and pouring them and letting them cool, I couldn't help thinking I was making lots of coffees for folk. They even look like black coffee, white coffee but then when they harden they don't look like coffee at all...

Here they are finished and stacked in the cupboard under the electric wok for easy access. You can imagine the simply divine smell that came from an a afternoon of melting kilograms of wax.  It was interesting to see quite a few bees buzzing around the studio door.

I have used about 2/3 of my first cup and the wax is simply gorgeous to work with. Sometimes you spend a long time doing background work or preparation work just so that when you need to use something you can - this was one of those tasks, and a good one for the start of the year when I am full of good intentions!

And then to rolling.  On my list for about a year has been to have a play with a 'roller' Barry purchased years ago.  It is for for rolling jewellery metal through but I had some ideas of things we might be able to do with it - just had to find time to play. So we did.

Firstly I wrote out some words and cut them from stiff card.

And then we got going with some aluminium and the roller, and tried to press the words into the aluminium. Impossible to photograph, I'd have to say that nonetheless I was pretty happy with the marks we managed to make.

In case you're wondering, my iPhone has a purples case which gets reflected beautifully...

Lots of food for thought and opportunities to see if we can take this places I think. We have a bit of work to do getting the balance of the rollers right and working out how to not have it pull too much to one side, but oh, the possibilities do excite me!

More on The Library of Lost Words -

I did promise that I would let you know as soon as I unwrapped a packet of lost words, so true to my word, here we are.

The top page is pretty badly affected, but the other eight in the bundle look beautifully worn.

What is left of the top page's word...

So having unwrapped a bundle I began to play with a rusty old tin.

Putting a tied bundle in...

And then the untied bundle with some fellow travellers alongside.

What's not to love about a bundle?

Re-discovery and transitions

We had a little bit of rain on Monday night which was very welcome, but which did make us think it might be worth a look at my little bit of whimsy that I had planted in our vegetable garden a little while ago.

I had checked them on the Sunday afternoon and it was all a bit dry and dull, but the rain did make me think it was worth another check.

So today, when I was out in the garden gathering spinach and rhubarb, seemed like a good time to do it.

I scrabbled around with my hands and happily re-discovered my wee parcels.  I took them out and popped them to dry on the rusty wall. Lots of happy photos.

As you can see I had happily found my five.  Barry queried me and asked weren't there seven?  I said hmmmm, maybe.  I came and looked at my blog and yep, there were two more to find! Laugh.

So he kindly did some major scrabbling around and we re-discovered the spare pair thank goodness.

So here they all are sunning themselves to dry out the dark bits, and when they are dry I shall safely dust them off and see what lies beneath...

It was quite sunny and warm, and occasionally the sun went behind a cloud. This is a real close-up shot when the sun was out; amazing how the light dazzled in...

I'll keep you up to date as the transition continues; such a lovely thing to observe.

Glyphs and moths

I think I mentioned that  Barry and I ran away for a few days recently. We went to the beach; but there were lots of national parks around as well, and we went for a walk one morning.

We came across so many fabulous scribbly bark trees.  I don't know if anything like this lives anywhere else in the world; but here in Australia we have clever little moths, whose larvae live in this particular type of eucalyptus haemastoma (gum) tree and make these fabulous marks and glyphs and tracks in the bark.

These zigzag tracks are tunnels made by the larvae of the Scribbly Gum Moth (Ogmograptis scribula) and follow the insect's life cycle. Eggs are laid between layers of old and new bark. The larvae burrow into the new bark and, as the old bark falls away, the trails are revealed. The diameters of the tunnels increase as the larvae grow, and the ends of the tracks are where the larvae stopped to pupate. Thank you wikipedia.

I must admit I get amused by what appear to be completely random journeys; and where things go awry and they have to turn back and go around another way...but the marks they make are beyond beautiful.

And then the calligrapher in me was absorbed by how people also chose to graffiti these trees themselves. As if the handwriting of the larvae was an invitation for humans to try their hand as well?!?  Anyhow, despite my preference for them not to destroy or wreck the trees, I found myself a little bit fascinated by how the carved letters appeared almost like scars and I imagined their scabs falling off as the bark shed and leaving only  hint of the original writing.

Sometimes nature just gets it so right.

Hungry beasties

I had an interesting experience with a book a week or so ago.

I had a hand-made journal with paste paper cover sitting somewhere to maybe be bought. It waited patiently and quietly but didn't sell. So I went to collect it and another journal and a few other bits and pieces.

I happily packed up all my goodies and when I got home realised that something had been 'at' my journal. Literally. Ate my journal.

This intrigued me, and between us Barry and I think we determined the culprit was a cockroach. We think it liked the taste of paste (which after all is mostly wheat and water). And in particular it liked to munch where the paste was thickest.

We have been hearing warnings about cockroaches in high numbers given our extremely wet season, which is why we figure it was one of them. The other journal with dyed paper covers wasn't touched, so I now need to think my way through presenting and preserving paste-paper covers for folk who might buy them!

Firstly I thought I might spray the cover with some fixative - figuring that might make the paste less palatable. Secondly I thought I would always have my journals in plastic - reuseable bags from now on to help protect the paste from paste-loving bugsnstuff.

Any thoughts, experiences, suggestions and advice warmly welcomed! What to do with the munched journal is another thing yet to be determined...