Black Cockatoo's

This week while chucking laps around my local park, I heard things falling through the trees, thinking someone was up the tree, I stopped to look closer, the big gum trees had heaps of these big black cockatoos, I hadn't taken much notice of the noise until then, but it was quite a racket I presume there was young ones up there, they sounded like a rusty saw going non stop.  The black cockatoo are said to herald the coming of rain, they where accurate there, as the puddles will show you.

The noise of things falling through the trees I had heard where falling honky nuts, above you can see the mess they make and below you can see where they nibble around the tops, they must have very strong beaks.  When I hear and see them I am careful walking underneath as I don't fancy getting hit on the head by a falling honky nut.

 The first day I saw them they where down lower but the next day its was raining and they where higher up, below you can see them preening their wings out to dry, dumb birds it was still raining and dumber me standing under the trees taking photo's drenched through to my underwear, and i had a raincoat on, they don't seem to make proper raincoats here that keep you dry, only shower proof and this was more than a shower, but it was nice walking in the rain.

                    Hows this for green you kiwi's,bet you didn't think we got this green aye!

                     See those clouds, we have had a lot of them lately, bring it on, I say, I'll take it all!
In the weekend paper there was an article on how large tract's of native bush has died because of the extreme heat and the driest summer last in recorded history, and they say that it will not regenerate.  Signs of our climate in trouble?

 Recently I was asked to demonstrate Golden products for a group called ATASDA which is Australian Textile and Surface Design Assoc, hope I have that correct.  I looked up their website so I could demonstrate the products that where relevant to their media.  I also decided I would try to make a sample that showed the products in their media style and above is what I created.  I have applied Moulding Paste to the background on calico, I wanted something pliable and this met that criteria.  The image is a skin made from fluid iridescent gold which gave a lovely rich glow.  When the moulding paste had set, over 24 hours, I used moulding paste to glue the image to the background after painting the background in lovely oranges (vat orange) and rich yellow (cadmium yellow) dry brushing iridescent gold on the high peaks, and interference red over the circular peice.  I then used my sewing machine to go around the edges of the image, no problems there, then hand sewn bits of lace, buttons and some ribbon work.  I was quite pleased with the end result.  I will be making more of these, I think they will make great book covers of simply frame them.  I will be teaching this in class next week and carrying it over two weeks to allow drying time.

The past 3 or 4 weeks I have had one drama after another with my new iMac computer, in three months I have had 3 new hard drives, grrrr.  The first was a recall on the hard drive, the operating system I had when I bought the computer was Snow Leopard and they upgraded it to Lion which is only new out, untried enough I think.  Things went along alright for a few days then the keyboard wouldn't work, after many hours on the phone, their advise was to take keyboard into the Apple Store, now we only have one Apple Store in Perth, in the middle of the city on a busy one way street, parking a nightmare, so as the keyboard is not very big I decided to take the bus.  Keyboard worked fine on their computers but on safe side gave me a new one, off home go I, connect up, and guess what does not work, several more hours of try this and try that, decided I should trot back into city with computer to get them to work on it, luckily it didn't work for them either, found it was the operating system again............. so after all these dramas it seems to be working ok now, fingers crossed.  Sorry for the vent but I get so damn frustrated with modern technology.