Harvest Church Camp

We spent the weekend at the Peter Snell Youth Camp, up in Whangaparaoa - 27 acres, with 20 of those covered in bush. The weather couldn't make up its mind - it would go from brilliant sunshine to freezing cold and back again - a low of at least 12C thanks to the sou-westerly wind.

Picked up dinner on Friday night at a Roast Dinner place in Whangaparaoa village - very very yummy, with extra crackling. Once everyone had arrived, we made our way to the hall, where we had a bit of a worship session, then went outside to watch the fireworks. Once it was dark, and the littlies were in bed, they put on a movie - "Holy Roller" - truly dire Aussie production, with lots of kiwi actors. We decided it would be more fun to go to bed early and read.

Saturday started far too early - the ladies showers were right beside my bunk, on the other side of a paper-thin wall. We were also on breakfast-setup and serving. I looked at the food laid out and had a little cry - there was NOTHING I could safely eat - and then they brought out something that was alleged to be porridge. Ok. That would do. Not a happy pixie. Got a text from our neighbor – the dogs had done a runner. David went home to find them, and make sure the house was secure.

After breakfast I met up with Lindsay and we planned out what we were doing for the womens' devotional session. We'd both run out of time during the previous weeks, so I'd photocopied the workshop on Pressure from our Weekend to Remember/Family Life booklets. Everyone seemed to enjoy the devo, and it sounds like I did ok - sort of semi-nervous – worrying about my doggies didn’t help.

Lunch was good - wraps, so more choice. The staff at camp are a miserable bunch - I think they have an allergy to smiling. In the afternoon there were activities - climbing wall/abseiling, shooting with air rifles (yeah, I can still shoot! lots of fun) and they had their huge waterslide going. Some of the people going down actually got airborne.

Dinner … how do you make baked chicken legs soggy? Don’t know, but the spuds were nice – had 2 helpings. Best thing about dinner were the boiled spuds - the chicken legs looked like they'd been boiled. After dinner was "Camp Idol" - only 5 families had a skit - we were among the many who hadn't. They were all very good, very clever. The Brown's won, with a song written by Alistair. Played cards with Deb, Azariah and Julia – Deb and Azariah were far too good. I didn’t have a clue. Collapsed into my bunk exhausted.

Sunday we were up early. Managed to organize lyrics for Worship. It was a really awesome church meeting, hearing Marcia’s testimony. Felt a bit strange to be worshiping God in a building with a cross on the wall. So ready to go home – my back was hurting, and I was over people.

Doggies were pleased to see us, and cats were lining up to be fed.
I love going away, but I love coming home even more. Thank you Lord for all my blessings.

Numbering Our Days

This has been what I would call a ‘Spirit Inspired’ piece. I’ve been working on an essay for college on the function of prophecy from the Old Testament monarchial period (ie Saul and David), through to the New Testament, and its applications for today’s church.

The numbers 7 and 14 kept coming up as sacred and powerful. Then they started coming up in lessons at college, in sermons, on the radio. Then the phrase ‘numbering our days’ started popping up. When I googled that phrase, Psalm 139 was listed. Verses 7 and 14 of this psalm are:

7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?

14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.

Wow – OK. That works for me. My text didn’t go down well, then I nuked it with the torch, and forgot to put white silk paper underneath. I also put a fish on it. The fish was not an ‘inspired’ addition, and it looked out of place.

I scraped away the fish and the text, put down the silk paper and text again, and stopped. Prayed for inspiration.

Heard an interview with a songwriter/musician Debbie Shepherd for her new album 139 – from Psalm 139. Picked up a booklet by Derek Prince, “The Holy Spirit in You”. Opened it up to read:

Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?

Flipped back to the previous page, where it was talking about God’s spirit as being likened to a dove or an eagle … doves have always seemed to me more like dinner than something that can see into the depths … so, an EAGLE! Thank you Lord.

So tonight, with a bit of luck, I can get the harrier hawk laid down before we take off to Bible Study (doing Toxic Religion tonight!), and perhaps even upload a photo.

Happy happy retail therapy

Just finished lunch - honey-soy chicken nibbles, Moroccan carrot and Greek salads - yum. Topped off with fresh grapes and a wee nibble of Turkish delight. A truly Mediteranean lunch. YUM YUM YUM.

Went to the mall to buy some boysenberry cheesecakes - the containers are just the right size as dog-bikkie scoops, and our local supermarket doesn't stock them! Found an 'oven thermometer' that will sit flat on the griddle - hooray. Also got some masking tape and (baby) mineral oil. I really shouldn't use IPA to remove paperfluff from my transfers, lol, coz it takes the toner with it!

I also popped into the art shop, and scored two tubes of paint - Alizarine Permanent Crimson, and an awesome violet (they're in the car, so I can't check the name). They didn't have any large loop tools - maybe next week I can get to another shop and find one, coz the one I have is far too small!

Yesterday was a long day. Lecture in the morning, and I kept nodding off during the second period. Was better once I got coffee. Recently my car has started stalling at intersections, so I thought maybe the new battery was dying. I left Laidlaw ok, left the sushi shop ok, but when I came to leave David's work, the car wouldn't start. Nice AA man came eventually - no, not the battery - the starter motor is dead. Fortunately I was only about 10 feet away from a garage, so he gave me a jumpstart and I drove around 2 parked cars and into the service-bay.

By the time the car was sorted out, there was no way I was going to get to work - it was already after 1400. So I spent the afternoon sitting on the couch at David's work, studying - argh, yes, really!

We got home by around 1630, so I went straight in and turned on the heat. I had a Spirit inspired piece that needed to be done - and boy it went well. Pictures and more info either tonight or tomorrow.

Oh, and David is bringing my car home, so hopefully it's not too expensive!

Waxing Lyrical

The top priority for the past couple of weeks has been my essay for college. I realised at 1500 on Saturday afternoon that the word count had footnotes switched on - so I suddenly had to write an extra 800 words, that I'd carefully edited out earlier. But now, it's done, posted on the college website - hooray.

And here's a link to the essay.
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I'm about a week behind on Judy Wise's 'Hot Wax' class - I've watched all the video's, but haven't had a chance to play with it, due to the essay deadline. I have got involved in some very interesting discussions, and looked various encaustic artists work, and other students (some of them artists in their own right), work.

Cooking up refined beeswax and damar resin on the kitchen cooktop at night was fun but stinky - it went all bubbly! Cooking up natural beeswax and damar during the daytime resulted in the house filling with bees again - all very dopey, but still dangerous for me. Every bee that was out the back on the flowers came looking for the wax - nom nom nom. David had the priviledge of herding them back out.

Mixing Pigments
I'd squeezed out 7 different colours of oilpaints (12 ml tubes) onto paper towels on the Friday night, thinking I would have a bit of time on Saturday morning - yeah, right. I think the extra sitting time actually did them good, because the towel was soaked with oil, while the paint formed long dry strings that were relatively easy to pick up and put in the tins.

It wasn't until Sunday afternoon that I got the time to pour the hot liquid medium into the cans - it took a couple of spills to realise that it would be a good idea to put the little cans into a bigger metal tray so cleanup would be easier. Oh, and I picked up at least one can and burned myself - darned if I could find the oven mitts.

Oven Mitts (and missing brushes) found Monday afternoon - in the coloured plastic bins on the scotch chest - labelled them now!

I was originally going to transfer the coloured medium into little silicon pattypans, but found this left a puddle of pigment in the bottom of the cans - grr. Sounds like this is a common problem, as the 'proper' pigments are milled very fine when they make the encaustic blocks. Anyway, I poured all the colours back into their cans, with the rest of their pigment.

One of the group members (Don, I think) commented that if he wants a more translucent colour, he doesn't stir the wax, and just dips his brush in the top layer, and for a more opaque colour, goes right to the bottom.

I realised this evening that I've squeezed out all my coloured pigments, so now can't do 'rubbings' which is one of the later classes. I've rescued most of the tubes from the rubbish - maybe I can squeeze a little more out.

Making Raised Spots/Dots
After looking at the work of Eileen Greenberg, I thought it would be fun to try her technique, which involves lots and lots of white lumps/dots/spots in a grid pattern, with colour washed over them. Sigh. I made a template - the holes were too small, and I didn't push all the centres out, the white medium wouldn't stick to the board, blah blah blah.

Anyway, this is what it looks like:
Before


After


There are about 7 layers of wax in this. The worst thing is scraping it all back off, and putting it in the 'mud' can for recycling. Not sure if 'excavation' does it for me.

Next thing to try is accretion, which I'll do round the edges as a border.
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We finally shifted the big wooden bookshelf that we got from a friend out of the entry hall and into the Studio. This meant untidying, then tidying. There are still a few remaining piles around the edges that need sorting, but it's less worse.

Here's David cleaning the wall where my 'display wall' used to be:



Kama and Tara *Helping*


The untidied version


The tidied version

FRESH VEG
I now have a 'vege garden'. The waka is overgrown, and needs a massive digging over - metre high dock, and lots of california poppy - and BEES!

I bought some bags of vegemix and strawberry mix, and a few punnets of seedlings:

Encaustic Crackle Class

Is all set to begin. I just watched the first lesson on using blow torches!

Arrroooo! love those flame throwers! I've been using a tiny little 'penlite' soldering iron. While it's been great for little pieces, it's very frustrating on bigger stuff. However, hiding in the garage is a mid-sized gas torch, similar to the brand recommended by Linda, that I bought a number of years ago, but had forgotten about, until hubby mentioned it.

I've got my pearl-ex pigments ($nz40 for set of 12), an electric grill ($50 second hand) (you can't get pancake griddles in NZ - they just look at you blankly in the stores.) I have a couple of white pine pallets from the US, with 7"/18cm wide planks, which I'll dismember, saw up and sand for boards. (And no, so far, no supplier of 'proper' encaustic boards in EnZed.)

So, all ready to go (ish). But no time to do it:
Tuesday - it's already 2030
Wednesday - High School Enrollment Interview, Small group bible study
Thursday - Lecture in the morning, Youth Group/organise posters and stuff for the church gala on Saturday in the evening
Friday - oooh, there's a possibility ...
Saturday - church Gala from 0700 ... sleep in the afternoon, housework
Sunday - church, visit mother, sleep, walk dogs
Work during the daytime, study for Lecture and Essay.

Then, suddenly, it'll be Monday again.

Under a Blue Moon

Encaustic on MDF with controlled shellac burn and image transfer.

Not sure if this is done or not. I want to add a bit more glitz to the moon, but that will have to wait till my Pearl-ex pigments arrive.

A River Runs Thru

Encaustic piece inspired by Linda Womack's Encaustic workshop.

Cork-backed placemat, with tannin dyed fabric, text on tissue and 80gsm paper, dried leaf, 'gold' flake, and, of course, wax.

My original thought was to have a text-based image, but then it just went off on a strange tangent. Some of the colours I have are working out well, and others are just 'blah'. These colours were from the beeswax crayons I bought. The yellow is good, the red is good. But the blue is too anaemic (too much extra wax in the mix?).

Anyway, home early today, so maybe I can have another go.