Little By Little

I've been going through old papers, re-organising where necessary, tossing and shredding the rest. Most of these papers come out of cabinets and bins, so things don't look that much different when I stop. But... I feel so much better, knowing there's less rubbish! Little by little, I'm making a dent.

Old bush poles holding up garage roof

A while back we had to replace the bush poles holding up the roof of the garage as termites had infested them. Termites, like rust, never sleep, apparently. New steel poles have replaced the bush poles. The old poles got stacked in a heap behind the garage and other bits and pieces got thrown there as well. The heap grew into a fire hazard. Lately, the weather provided the perfect opportunity to burn the heap - no rain, no wind and the surrounding bush very green and damp from recent rains. We mowed and raked around the heap. It took a little work to get the fire started. We took turns keeping an eye on it.

During my watch, I took along my drop spindle and got a little spinning done as I stood in the shade behind the garage, not far from the fire. I bought that boat anchor of a spindle 40 years ago in San Francisco and learned to spin on it. Most of the time I use my spinning wheel or a light weight support spindle, but both require sitting. Drop spindles work well while standing or walking. My best tip for beginning spinners: spin a few minutes every day. There's nothing like practice to get better at something and short sessions minimise frustration.

I'm not sure I'm getting better at using GIMP, the open source graphics program. Maybe I should practice a little every day instead of once a week. This week I followed a YouTube video on making a new brush from the image of a flower (I chose my favourite hibiscus). 

Everything went well. I used the brush to place hibiscus flowers in the corners of the framed photo above. I got lost when it came to saving the brush. I saved the image, just couldn't save it as a brush. Back to the learning curve. I do love learning. Grumbling goes with learning.

Another tiny frog appeared.

He's no bigger than the end of my thumb.

post and pix editing by M in JaM

pix by JaM