June 2018

June 2018 – I have been busy recently, and I hardly noticed than June is here already – How did that happen?

For us in the northern hemisphere, it is a lovely time, spring is turning into summer, the gardens are growing fast, in our local fields the wheat is already a foot high, and the potatoes have been planted. I took this about a week ago, and already today, when we were on our walk we noticed the first shoots were appearing.

The birds are breeding for the second time. In fact, yesterday, friends who have a couple of bird boxes with cameras in them, told me that the sparrows have just laid a second lot of eggs. One box has 6 eggs, despite their understanding that 5 eggs is normally the maximum. The other box has just 2 eggs in it, but that may change over the next few days. Food for the last batch of new chicks is sparse, as everything is so late, and indeed my friend’s husband has even gone to the extent of leaving some extra mealie worms to supplement the insects that are available for them. Normally the birds ignore the fat balls at this time of year, but they are still making use of them.  I am on house watch duties as they are off on holiday, so I have been asked to put out apples for the blackbirds, and I suspect there will be seeds for the bird feeders too. I am not so sure about the mealie worms!

The Hairy Coos are enjoying the new growth!

As some of you, who take the time to read my meanderings, will be aware that I took some time April / May to look at what I spend my time on, because for no apparent reason I have been feeling swamped recently. More and more, I think the reason is the amount time I spend on club activities. For some years now, I have attended a lapidary club, and have acknowledged that I spend the vast majority of my time there helping others, or doing chores. It has been highlighted because last week I didn’t. there were only a couple of people there, and I got time to spend on my own work, with the result that I came up with the lovely idea of copper weaving… I was so pleased with how it turned out.

I have since taken it a step further, with texture and shades of copper colours to give it depth, but that is still work in progress. It looks even better, but I can’t decide how to finish it. I thought I knew but I whatsApp’d it to my son, and he said – put it on your wall – I said it’s not finished – he said – it’s a work of art as it is. Leave it.

The result is – it’s on the wall in my hall while I think about it….  I often find that happens. My original concept evolves. So here’s the work in progress!

What it ends up like, who knows? The original plan was to close off all the edges. Then last night I was thinking about extending it….

I have a show on the theme of Metamorphic Copper coming up in November, and given I am away September and most of October, it really has to get planned now, so I have started gathering a list of everything I want to put in it. Then I can trim it down, or identify gaps I want to fill. I hope the copper weave above makes the cut – who knows? I certainly don’t at this stage.

I bought myself a new toy a few weeks ago, which has already seen quite a lot of use.

I am a great believer in recycling. I save all my silver scraps and melt them down and make ingots which I then roll into sheet, which I then re-use. A few weeks ago, in one of my clear out moods, I looked at the collection of silver I had kept when I cleared out my mother’s house a few years ago. There was one lovely dish, which had been repaired by my Dad, so had no resale value, so I decided, it wasn’t doing any good lying in a cupboard gathering dust and getting tarnished. So I cut it my and melted it down! I’m not suire what my Mum would say, but she certainly wouldn’t want it to go to waste, or sold for scrap value when I can make so many things out of it – recycle, recreate…  So it went into the wee dish below, in pieces

and ended up like this, some pieces are already being used for other things. Even though the pieces look scruffy to start with, using my magic rolling mill, they turn out well!

This week on my club activities, I have been chasing membership fees, writing a Club Risk Assessment, getting someone to organise a PAT test (In the UK, everywhere except private homes have to arrange to get a test of every electrical appliance, every year, known as a Portable Appliance Test), sorting out some individual training sessions, agreed to slice 5 stones for another artist in the building, assisted a new junior member to use some of the club machines, purchased some kit and after several months I am still trying to get online access to the club accounts so I can balance the books. I am going to the bank tomorrow! I am my own worst enemy.

Summer always brings some guests. Edinburgh is a popular place to come and visit, particularly when the sun shines. I am also fitting a trip back to Ireland to meet up with some relatives from USA. Then it is off to Amsterdam in August to meet up with all the family – I am so looking forward to that.

I am having my usual battle with my weight. I need to lose some (Ok- quite a lot!) I wanted to lose 10kg in 2017. I still want to lose 10kg or even 15kg in 2018, but it is a long slow battle. As I read somewhere – I wish I was at the weight now, that I was, when I first wanted to lose some weight!. In my case that would be even less than I will be when I lose 15kg. Oh well, I am happy and healthy, and as some of my friends succumb to various health ailments, maybe I am better as I am.

Meanwhile, I also continue to battle with my Spanish. It seems dreadfully slow progress but as my Spanish teacher pointed out the other day, just 6 months ago, we struggled to string a few words together, now we can have a conversation, albeit basic one! I have gone back to Duolingo and it has undergone vast changes. They have introduced loads of new modules and taken away the % complete. So I have started right back at the beginning with the aim of getting a Level 3 across the board. I think that will take several months. Effectively a huge revision program!

I also need to take a look at my 2018 goals. I mentioned them on my post at Hogmanay.  We have our Slow Travel trip to Rome to sort out. We have both been reading the guide book, and Tony’s comment this afternoon is that we will be seeing a lot of churches. However, I don’t think we’ll get bored. I havent focused too much on our investments of recent, so that will have to go on the To Do list for the next few weeks.

For me, this is a relatively short post, but I made the decision tonight to write something. And I have! It is too easy to put things off. I checked my stats earlier in the evening, and I appear to have 20 draft posts, partly written, but none of them really inspired me, so I thought I would start from scratch. I prefer blogging about what takes my interest rather than the style of ‘best 5 things to do today’, although I have done my fair share of those style of posts too, and they do get a lot of views. As I don’t make any income from my blog, and I don’t have to please any sponsors, I get to choose!

I hope you enjoyed it. If you want to Pin it – just click the image below. The picture is of the Hawthorn blooming near my home.

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