post 85

and counting, only just.


Another month gone and no regular posts. I wonder what it is with me and this new trend. I guess either I am too busy reading everyone else's posts or too tired to think of something interesting for you folk to read. Sorry about this another boring me post coming up.


I went to a baby expo here in Sydney last Friday with my MIL. It was really good to see how many products there are on the market and I thought it was interesting for a newly pregnant person. I'm not sure if around the world it is the same but there tends to be a trend to use cloth nappies again. But the major difference this time is that they are fitted already. They look like a disposable nappy with press studs or velcro for closures. None of that fiddly folding and pinning. If anyone has a comment about this please let me know I'm very interested. The nappies I saw were made from either hemp, bamboo or soy fibre. Proclaiming to be organic and environmentally friendly which of course is a big selling point. I'm wondering how many of these you would need to get through a couple of days including allowing for washing and drying on the line. Would 40 be a too generous number?


The other thing I was really keen on was the pop up travel cots for when you go camping or travelling. I think these look excellent with their built in mozzie nets and compactness. Handy for a night at the grandparents or out camping.


My mother is roughly still the same although dad did mention that she has lost a bit of weight due to her restrictive diet of chicken sandwiches. I said to dad that she may get scurvy if she isn't getting any veg or fruit but he reckons she is fairly healthy. A major breakthrough for dad is that mum is finally cutting back on the alcohol but dad suspects that she isn't getting a kick out of it as much as she used to as he has been watering it down quite a bit. However she has taken a liking to the cough medicine but as I said to dad he'll just have to get the alcohol free kind.

They are trying to get her into a high security home in the city they are near but the folk whom they had sent the application to for assistance had conveniently missplaced it until dad called enquiring about it. They found it on a desk in a corner. forgotten. I can't believe this still happens. I guess it is more of a common occurance these days with less staff and more things to do but it is inexcusable that until someone enquires it is dismissed. The thing that irks me is that no one gets reprimanded for this. What has happened to customer service and management??


This is where I demonstrate my ability to truly procrastinate...


I had four weeks to do an assignment. It was a really fun one to do. We had to create a book cover design and type package without using the computer. All done by hand. I used to love hand lettering all of my school work and once I started this project I enjoyed it. The trouble is that I left it until the morning of the day they assignment was due. I managed to spend five hours figuring out what to do and doing it. I'd tried to start it a couple of days before but found that working at night wasn't good as I couldn't experiment with some of the ideas I had. So there I was on Monday, choosing the simplest of the three ideas. The other simple idea turned out to be a bit more difficult and also I was going down the wrong track with it. It was becoming more literal and not what the book was about,

this is the concept that I worked on for Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. I was really happy with the idea but it isn't really portraying what the book is about. The fish is a 2 with a 2 mouth and I ended up working more along the lines of a saying than a book cover so I had to rethink...

And this is what I came up with on Monday...

I was really happy with the overall end result in the amount of time I had. I did make a mock up with lots of various full colour eyes behind the cut out parts of the numbers but this simple b&w look was I thought more effective. When in doubt simplify! I sketched the numbers and then cut them out with a craft knife, pasted the eyes onto a new page and then glued the white numbers over the top. Then I cut all that out and pasted onto the black card. I traced the authors name onto white paper and inked it in with a black fine tip pen. It is very very shaky and sketchy and I'm not very happy with the imperfections of the name but it was pretty good for a half hour tracing. The teacher asked why I chose that book and I told her the truth, because it was one of the shortest titles I knew.