Curiosity and the Corduroy Alpacas

We were warned that the alpacas were not exactly reliable as to their manners but this one, with his fashion shot perfect focus on the middle distance looks too pretty to spit. There is a snow-slope groomedness to the just shorn fleece that is reminiscent of a chenille bedspread.  

This fellow was at the Alpaca Farm in Broke, in the Hunter, and will make a cameo appearance in a poem about lunch at Whispering Brook Winery, which is just done the road.

In The Lush - Frank goes Hoe Up

Ever since Frank Winkler heard the rumour that Mr Farmhand had been paid for modelling work by an English gardening magazine, (see A Turnip for the Books) Frank has loitering in various picturesque places and gesticulating madly to get folks to take his picture. The trouble is that, for photographic purposes, Frank is an over-gesticulator, and because of that run-in toasting marshmallows on his hoe (see Rhubartive Moments in Field Work),  his gardening implement is not in any way attractive.  Consequently, some folks have been shouting at him to Get That Hoe Down!, which Frank in is select way of hearing takes as an invitation to party, which as we see here has spurred him on to something of wild dance in the dahlias. Luckily Mr George Loreto was able to take this snap of Frank with his back turned, to avoid Frank sending George a bill for his modeling fee.

Sunday with a View to Bouddi National Park

Sunday morning, it seems nearly too prosaic to put in the edge of brown red roof tiles, when the horizon so completely trumps it as the ascendant horizontal line. But the roof's regularity and pattern  seem remind one that the the upside of repetition is pattern. Off in the distance the headland, a part of Bouddi seems unassailable, a constant stone watcher of water. Copacabana, despite the echo of  frenzy in all those o's and a's, remains a sleepy hollow, with enough sky and water to keep you wondering.

Holgarised - Increasing the Cartoon Ratio

Well, back at Tanpopo for dinner. This place now feels pretty well like home, except that wonderfully we get excellent Japanese food, that I neither to shop or cook, and nobody asks us into the kitchen to clean up. Last night it was the vegetable gyoza, then grilled King Fish jaw, surely the best cut of fish, with its convoluted anatomy so the firm white flesh is bone-sweet, with a slightly salty crisp skin , and a dish of pork belly, any fat long melted off, in a sweet gingerish soy based sauce with great dabs of mustard on the side and stack of perfectly braised boy choy, along a with the green salad tempts me away from ramen. As a special treat the chef gave us some seared tuna sashimi, with grated ginger and lemon, merely because we are regulars! Before the food came I did this quick sketch of Mr T, working hard on a jumpy jumpy game app.  The sketch is holga-ised, which may be good thing, as I had an ink pen, one pink pencil and one purple pencil, so the colours were, hmm, well, not working. 

The Well Spoken Orange Slice

After a warm-up exercise of candying cumquats on Saturday morning I set out  to glace slices of blood orange, starting out with the syrup leftover from the cumquats and gradually adding more sugar to supersaturate the oranges. After quite some time, perhaps an hour, time on Saturday morning is not the bustling weekday time that gets measured in minutes, I removed them to a tray and put them to dry at 100C with the oven fan on, turning them over now and then. They are now a kind of kitchen treasure, ostensibly waiting to be used in a fruit cake or fancy cheese plate, or perhaps dipped in dark chocolate to go with coffee, but they are far too easy just to eat, surreptitiously after duly admiring the glace spokes.

Coffee to Crow About

It might be hard to find a roof line trickier, in its intersections, angles and general about-faces than the  Crows Nest Community Centre. It suggests a maths theorem that is yet to be proved. The drawing here, scribbled in while having a coffee at Bean Drinking - on the south side of Crows Nest square, goes, well pear-shaped would be the wrong metaphor,  let's say, Straw House Blown Over By a Wolf Shape below the first roof line. This means I need more practice and will have to go back and spend more time drinking Bean Drinking's marvellous coffee. 

Under a Cloud - Dark Thoughts on a Fine Day

There are days when Mavis Eggwhistle, literally, lives under a dark cloud. Some might be tempted to call it despair but it seems this particularly black cloud came out of her oven when she accidentally left it on for a day or two  when she was trying to cook ornamental candied yams in anticipation of Turkey Day.  There is no denying that Mavis was mighty annoyed when the fire brigade arrived and said various quasi-negative things - which did nothing to dispel this black  blot on the Eggwhistlean atmosphere. Bart Brassica mumbled something about how the Carboniferous was his favourite cuisine but Mavis still isn't speaking to him, despite the very lovely autumn weather in Lambertville.

If The Fit is Finn - Two Green Shades

Years ago there was a radio show called Adventures in Good Music, which I enjoyed. Now there is Adventure Time, which, while I am not in any way a zealot, I must be a fan.  So, someone in my house says he is planning on a going to a Year 11 Informal Character Party as Finn and can we /I convert the very elegant woven backpack to one just like Finn's? So, I study Finn's, noting the two-tone straps, the two-tone body, its stretchy nature, and the green cover flap.
So, I find fabric and sew, also I velcro.  A vestigial memory of the various uses of bias binding inspires me, so the back straps are a wrap!  Theo sews on the final detail, that telling button. One of my very first friends was, in part, cartoon, so now this looks just right.
I am not sure if I've  over spent on time on this, but right now, I am more inclined to consider it might be an investment.

Shady Strawberry Fiats Forever

In what amounts to a brilliant fiat, as Bart Brassica himself has been telling Mavis E, he  has managed to lure his shadow back by placing this extra large strawberry on his head.  It is unclear why shadows find strawberries so alluring or how the idea came to Bart in the first place, but as you can see there is his shadow or a reasonable facsimile of it.  How this will work out as a permanent arrangement has Granny Egg a little flummoxed .  She expects if the  current high temperatures continues,  the mercury in Lambertville today hitting 86 degrees Foreign Height, as Granny has it, Bart may find himself in something of a jam.

The Key to Operatic Moments?

 

 Like the message, 'Drink Me' that Alice finds, the Opera House seems to be loaded, by dint of those vast arcs, shining heroic whites, the complex intersect of curves and sky, to be saying Draw Me. For me this is nearly an act of arrogance, a devil-may-care lack of respect, tackling a subject which is beyond what I can render with any verisimilitude. So, why not I thought? In general buildings get the better of me, it is like perspective has given me the cold shoulder. Mercifully the Opera House is all hips with nary a shoulder in sight.  The new cafe terrace on the top floor of the MCA gives a good view but Wharf 4 lookout point (above) seems to be the optimal distance.

 

Cartoon Hat Man - Gone is Gone

More than experimental, this is touch and go, or at least the hat is. Better make that gone.

The Architecture of Flotsam - Manly Lagoon

Why do things aggregate?  I found this half-formed tumbrel of things that float by the edge of Manly Lagoon, walking back to Keirle Park. The longer sticks seem to form, well sticking points, while the smaller leaf litter makes knotty cross-overs . Is this the way star dust might accumulate. I expected this clump to have more rubbish but there is not such a lot of it.  Hazarding a guess, the green seeds might be mangrove babies out to find a place in the world?