If You Go Down To The Shops Today

….you should give “Atelier Jeux D’esprit” a try….

…Deirdre did…

…and she got this lovely tea-towel….

…to be honest, while I do appreciate that it is vintage linen and very absorbent, I don’t think it fits my decor….

….(long suffering pony stare)….

…so it will be living at Dee’s place….

…check Elena’s fabulous accumulation of vintage textiles and hand made treasures out at….

…109 Princess Street, Dunedin….(second floor in the Queens building take the lift !)….

….

Without Preamble

….a holiday project started in January….

…a few finishing touches at home….

…aaaaand we’re done….

…on the box….

…on the “canvas”….

…on the box….

…on the “canvas”….

…on the box….

…on the “canvas”….

…on the box….

…on the “canvas”….

…there…..pretty sure I had a similar set when I was young, but never completed it because – gluggy oil paints….

….much easier to wait till they turn up in a thrift shop and just add octopus to suit….

…was mildly unsettled every time someone expressed disappointment that I just festooned other peoples work with a bloody great cephalopod instead of painstakingly rendering the bloody annoying things myself….

…then these came up on the local auction sight….

…mint in box with 40+ year old super gluggy oil paints….

…thought that it would be a wise/wonderful idea to replace said glug with the acrylic test pots that I favour….until I worked out how much having a near as damn matching set to aid my endeavour would cost…

…so made do with what I already had for the most part….

…might octopi when the nausea subsides…..

…but as I have now achieved my childhood dream of finishing not one, but four pain by numbers paintings, it appears that my life is now complete….

Last Minute Wedding Gits

…was accosted last week by these be-suited ragamuffins…

…off to a wedding they were…or a was it a bank heist?…

 

…anyway… that wasn’t enough of an excuse to excuse them from “Dunedin-muscians-in-red-wigs” duty…

…last seen heading up the North East Valley in vintage buses…

…possibly off to Bethunes Gully for an outdoor ceremony…

…it pissed down 29 minutes later.

Reconfiguring The Back Passage

….finally found someone to make and attach the shelving units out the back…

…my regular builder guy stood me up at the beginning of Spring …

…Spring is when EVERYONE finds large quantities of vinyl that has been hidden from view  since the 80s in rarely accessed corners…

…corners that are being turned out because it’s Spring

…so I’ve been living in chaos under a growing pile of new stock for nearly 3 months…

…everything you want is always in the box at the bottom of the pile…

…now the clean up begins…

…and we should be all ship shape, streamlined & sorted in a couple of weeks…

…and should be back to living around, next to & under badly balanced stacks of highly disorganised boxes in about 6 months time…

…let the rumours of “all-the-good-stuff-is-out-the-back” begin…

…yay.

(the sign on the cistern is my original signage from Port Chalmers)

If You Could Re-Buy The Ones You Foolishly Sold

…customer Brent remembers buying his original copy of the Sub’ Rep’s 12″ from the Arthur Barnett Ltd record bar in the late 70’s…

…and was pleased to replace it in his collection with this VG+(+) copy I had lying around…

….even better that this sale coincided with me acquiring a collection that was in bags from every major record shop in Dunedin from the mid-70s onwards…

…so it was like he was buying it for the first time all over again….

…admittedly, for rather of a lot more than he paid for it originally…

…(there was no extra charge for the vintage bag).

Ol’ School

…got me a nicely made,retro (70s?), Dept’ of Education blackboard at the tip shop a several weeks back…

…coupla coats of blackboard paint and…

…finally affixed it to the kitchen wall on Monday…

…easier to draw on, affixed, than when it’s balanced, precariously, on the bread bin…

…mission accomplished…

…somewhere to write shopping lists or to catch ideas for cartoons as they come out of the nearby radio…

…like so…

…pretty sure I didn’t mishear him, but this was at 6.00am and I’m pretty much running on instinct at that time of the morning…

…instinct and only one cup of coffee.

At The Sound Of The F-Toom

 

…dis-infomercial…the shopping channel gone bad…an overactive imagination….

…and thee.

Tip Shop Sound System

…having acquired a 42″ flat screen T.V. and dispensed with the old 27″behemoth class not-flat screen (with bloody great matching cabinet), the time had finally arrived to dismantle and dispose of the speaker stack…

…while this accumulation of worthless old speakers did look great precariously balanced, one atop the other, in the corner…they served no practical purpose, being either blown or too cheap to produce listenable sound. More importantly they  covered part of the wall that would now accommodate said 42″ moving picture device…

…so off to the tip shop they were carted…a full station (estate) wagon full…including one more pair from the shop plus a couple of old partial turntables some one “thoughtfully” left on the shops doorstep…

…couldn’t resist one more “installation” with them…

 

…sound clash anyone?

 

Special

…been waiting along time to see one of these…

 

…and wasn’t sure I ever would….

 

 

 

…now I can retire, my life is complete…

…thanguverymudgeyouvebeenawunnerfulawedyunce…

…Too Tone has left the building.

(back same time tomorrow…bills to pay!)

Seeing The Light

…walking back to the truck on a delivery run somewhere in the greater Bournemouth area…

…looked up and saw this…

 

…got the camera from the truck then had to perform the “photographers-shuffle” for a good 5 minutes to get the composition as I’d originally glanced it…

…result.