Winter is for hearty food, stews and seasonal root veg:
With such open food importing and trade however we see every vegetable and fruit available all year round. Peru grows my Asparagus, Venezuela exports my Fennel and China supplies my Carrots at the moment. Continue reading
My lovely daughter walked for charity last year and I was so proud of her (secretly regretting not doing it with her). This year, the same walk is on offer at, thankfully, at a much cooler time of year so we are both walking “The Bloody Long Walk” in early August:
Today, as part of our prep we did a fairly bloody long walk, from Brighton to Redcliffe and back again to see how far it is (apparently about 26km according to Google).
I returned to an Origami master – Akira Yoshizawa – his little person, made from the frog base is genius – spirit of the subject, glorious simplicity and I managed to fold it in my state after today’s test walk. Continue reading
Orchids are such extravagant structures – few more showy than a Catalaya:
This cluster will be something else, but just for now it is beautiful all on it’s own.
Anyone who has seen any of the “Lord of the Rings/Hobbit” movies will recognise the profile of this hat:
Gandalf the Grey wore a wondrous felt hat like this, Mike Luo’s “Witches Hat”. Continue reading
Origami cats are hard – their soft elastic ways are difficult to depict artistically with a medium as stiff and uniform as paper:
This is Christophe Boudias’ “Sleepy Cat”, a lovely model that I think manages to capture the posture of a cat that is cuddling up ready to sleep, tucking it’s little pawsies under its chin. Continue reading
The age old questions, “what came first, the chicken or the egg” can be best answered with available fossil records as Dinosaurs came first:
Waterproof eggs, such a step forward, liberating egg laying critters from having to deposit precious and defenceless young in pools, streams or wet places and allowed full colonisation of the land. Continue reading
Not sure if Australia has any native species of Hummingbird:
Some “sunbirds” look similar but are not closely related species. Continue reading
Long before there were “fidget spinners”, Pokemon and “Pogs” there was a craze that swept me away when it first hit the market. A Hungarian designer called Erno Rubic devised a cube, subdivided up into 3x3x3 cubies that all slid on each other in layers:
I instantly had to have one (well, in truth I had 9, including a triangular, circular and 4x4x4 one that I still have). Continue reading
Cautionary advice indeed for anyone who has seen the movie comedy “Rat Race”:
We saw our first live squirrels when we first travelled to the UK, in a lovely park in Holland Park (interestingly the same suburb name we live in now here in Australia).
Lovely little grey filly, impossibly fluffy tail, cutely flitting around in the underbrush. Continue reading
So it is late, and I am tired, but sometimes I am a silly goose:
So what is a goose – long neck, beak, webbed beat, stocky body – this model ticks all the boxes. Continue reading
Reading through Origami Bygota, I stumbled across Ma Yong’s charming penguin:
Clever use of colour change goes part way to defining a penguin, but proportions and general morphology also helps. Continue reading
Australian politicians are a weird lot. Not “American” (shoot first then barbeque something) weird, just an odd lurch from crisis to crisis and stab your mate in the back for a shot at leadership kind of weird:
A recently deposed Prime Minister (Mr Tony Abott) is being a bit of an arse clown in the media, white-anting his own party and providing gifts for our hapless opposition in terms of instability and leaks. Continue reading
What’s that Flipper? Timmy has fallen out of his boat and is surrounded by sharks? You get the coastguard and I will get the anti-shark spray:
An irrational tale of a Dolphin and his stupid pet human. I do not know about you but I grew up on cheesy American telly – Flipper, Brady Bunch, I Dream of Jeanie, The Munsters… all those shows now on high rotation on the dozens of cable channels that you flip through looking for something that is actually watchable. Continue reading
Sometimes you need to fold a modular, and sometimes that modular really needs to be a 12 part construction:
This is “Cube from Thrids” designed by Tung Ken Lim, a simple windowed cube that works well with a 3-colour scheme. Continue reading
Matt and Alix came over for lunch, so nice to have their company (BLATs and an amazing, experimental chocolate souffle):
We ate, talked, played Takenoko – a board game about Pandas and bamboo farming, such cute imagery. I want to say I won, but I played and did my best – that is always good enough. Continue reading
