Mitre Peak

 

When we were on tour in the South Island in February we were lucky enough to play in Milford Sound, be taken out into the sound on a boat and visit the very magical underwater fish observatory.  When we arrived there in the early evening the light was very magical and I snapped a fuzzy picture of Mitre Peak on my phone, to capture the colours.  I knew I wanted to turn it into a painting so the last couple of months I've been working on it, with half my bedroom floor covered in a drop cloth and strewn with paints.  And here it is hanging in our lounge:

You can see how very full of granny squares our couch is...at one stage we had so many granny square rugs we had to keep some of them in the car!

I'm having fun doing some landscape painting...I think next up will be one of the Manukau Heads!

My Creative Space

Pinch punch first of the month!  For the start of a month of My Creative Space I thought I'd show you my creative space, Millicent Crow HQ.  It's really just a desk in the corner of my room and it's usually covered in drawing, painting, sewing, screen printing, leaves and seedpods that I'm drawing...and a cat.  

  At the moment I'm working on inking a drawing of Shackleton and Hurley for a project I'm doing with Mr. Millicent Crow. 

  I've also got some Millicent Crow bunting - a failed experiment at making bunting for a stall in the middle of the night!

I've been enjoying the Halloween remnants around the neighbourhood today:

 Especially this little grapefruit-o-lantern my neighbours put out on the porch that we share.  Cute!

Joining in today with "My Creative Space" and you can join in a month of My Creative Space on Instagram with the hashtags #amonthof #mycreativespace.

Happy Thursday!

Little corners

These are some of the trinkets that live in the corners of our house.  I don't think I could be a minimalist!

My creative space

The other day I fired up the gocco:

Printed and printed and printed:

Printed some more:
And made these:

The colours remind me a bit of willow pattern

The lounge floor was so covered in prints that I had to make a little pathway for the cat to get through! How about you, what have you been making? Got any crazy production lines going on at your place?

To see lots of other people's creative spaces pop on over to the "our creative spaces" blog.

Hope you're having a good Thursday.

Orangey

My heart leapt when I found this orange enamel pot at the op shop on Saturday. It might need to be christened with a fondue! It matches my orange beads and my orchid perfectly.

Do you know any good vegetarian fondue recipes?

Botanical

I've got a banana passionfruit vine taking over my garden and I decided to draw some of its beautiful flowers to use in a new painting I want to do.

It has turned out to be a bit of a race against time - the flowers don't last long on the vine, and once picked they soon start to wilt and shrivel up. So you have to draw them pretty much straightaway.
I sat down and drew one of them yesterday:
Now I just have to wait for another flower to come out so that I can have another practice. And wait for the delicious banana passionfruit to ripen!

Colourful corners, cryptic clue

'Scuse the bad photo; these are some pictures that I really love on the wall of my bedroom/studio/study. The colours help to balance out the landlord standard-issue mushroom colour that the walls are painted here at the Millicent Crow head office. Some of them are pictures my friend sent me from a German edition of Alice in Wonderland and Alice has dark hair in them...I had never seen that before.

This critter sits on top of the fuse box and watches the world go by.

While I'm at it, does anyone know the answer to this cryptic crossword clue I'm stuck on?
"Monarch gets around in part." Four letters, second letter f...

Fast food

I must admit that sometimes cooking isn't my favourite household task. And sometimes before grocery shopping day there's no food in the house apart from some manky old veges and some aged baking products. On those days, it's good to have a little fast food. Like beer pizza.

If you have these three things in your house you can make beer pizza:
You need 4 cups self-raising flour, 1 teaspoon of salt and a bottle of beer (or a can - just add as much as you need until it goes doughy) .

Mix the dry ingredients, then add the beer. Mix, then give it a bit of a knead.

Roll it out (it can make one giant pizza or a couple of smaller ones).
Add the toppings of your choice (or whatever you have left over in the fridge) and bake at 180 degrees celsius for 20 minutes.
Too easy! You might even have some leftovers for tomorrow's lunch!

New prints in my Felt shop

I've been doing a bit of this:
And I've added these to my Felt shop:
The printing was overseen by my supervisor, of course!

Witchy washing

Late night painting

There's been a lot of this going on at my house lately, I've been working late into the night on a painting that has taken me aaages.

Here's a sneak peek at part of it, nearly finished!

I might go back to painting small things after this!

Gremlins

I think I have some gremlins at my house at the moment. I was looking through my photos today, when I noticed that this (very ordinary) photo had been edited and turned into a banner thing, which I quite like. A while ago I had been playing around with a completely different photo, turning it into a banner, but I hadn't touched this one.

Then, I didn't hear my cellphone ringing because its ring had changed into a sound like a cricket chirping...it took me about three phone calls to realise that the cricket noise was coming from my bag. Much better than the horrible old Nokia ring tone it was doing before!

Ok gremlins, you can stay...as long as you keep doing things I like!

On the first day of Spring

I photographed my newest op shop acquisitions - three little bird candles, which I don't think I can bear to light; I would feel too sorry for them...
...and this gorgeous skinny coffee cup. It looks like it's for drinking coffee so strong you could stand your spoon up in it!
Pinch, punch, first of the month!

Winter showers bring yellow flowers

Or something like that.

I found this mysterious yellow flower on the road on my way home from work today. It looks like a maraca and smells like mango, frangipani and icecream.

This tui paused for long enough for me to take a photo before flying furiously away.

They were selling daffodils at the dairy for Daffodil Day so I got this cheery bunch. They get the cat seal of approval!

This weekend I've been making...

a dress


a mess

The dress is another one like this, Vogue 1923. Don't look too closely at the inside, there's some pretty dodgy sewing going on in there. I added some big pockets on the front this time, they're from a '70s pattern for a dress that's kind of like an old supermarket smock. This fabric's a little bit stretchy, I think next time I'd choose a fabric without a stretch to it. The next one's going to be green. And maybe patterned. Cleaning up the mess is probably my next project!