TSB - Day Five. The Finishes Touches.

This morning, I woke up and found I was feeling very sick.  It had been a hot night and was turning out to be a sticky day.  Well, that's the beginning of Spring here in Australia for you.  But after I had some breakfast and a few glasses of water, I was well enough to get into going to finishing up the TSB across the road.

Mum and I arrived there at around 11:30am or so; and it was already a pretty hot day.  I had put on sunscreen at home,

but I could still feel myself being burnt an hour later; and the heat of the sun was really getting to both of us even though there was a nice breeze.  

But today, I had been asked to paint up the Top Hat section of the box.  This is what we left blue last time.  This is to really make sure that this box doesn't get tagged again.  so, I designed a template for a sun and some rays to come off it last night, cut them out with some small scissors.  We

had some funny times drawing on the sun as the Top Hat section is taller than both of us.  And so, when it came to me doing the main painting of it, I had to pull the paint out of the box, flip it over and stand on it (as we hadn't brought a ladder!).  The trials of being a shortie!  I tell ya!  But we had our fun with the sun on the box.

Once we had it drawn on, I cut out the circular section where the sun's centre went to draw in that area and then we were set to put on the rays and then some white birds.  We put some undercoat on before painting the sun a gorgeous orange (for the centre) and bright yellow for the rays.  So, that the orange centre wouldn't be tagged, I painted in red swirls that were visible from the road.  And once we had three coats of yellow on, I outlined the whole sun in a cool red so it stood out brilliantly.  The rays were orange and outlined in red.  Mum did some birds flying all over the blue sky and had to work on them.  She tried to make them look like Seagulls but when they looked like they had been picked off one by one(with red dots for beaks and eyes, it wasn't looking very nice), she decided to just stick with a nice white colour.  Then, to finish it off, Mum mixed a nice green together and painted the concrete underneath the TSB making it look like grass.

It was very hot work, but it's been worth it.  I do love the way it worked out; and so does Mum.  I would love to do another one next year.  Mum would be in it with me for sure!  I'll have to work on another design soon to get the wheels in motion for next Winter as today was so hot, we agreed doing this in the Summer months would be dreadful for both of us. 

An Update on Old Work.

For those who have been with me from the start, if you remember, I began this site to track where I attached my knitted trees projects. Well, I didn't get very far with it because my area isn't all that safe. But I did fill you in on what I've been doing artistically in my other pursuits; and this has been rather successful.

However, yesterday, while I was on my way to the bus stop, I decided to see what became of one of my first knitted tree projects from a few years back. And what do you know? It's still attached to the tree in Kookaburra Park on Park Road and it's still looking good! There's no tag on it (not that I'd expect it to be there), but it was worthwhile choosing a fully-grown tree to stitch it to! And just look at the pictures that I managed to get before bus came! Doesn't it look good; and after all that rain we've had here in Brisbane too!

Well, until my next post. Keep knitting and keep creating.

Rosey Red

In the last few weeks, I've been shopping for new balls of wool; cheap as dirt, but in lovely colours. So, I knitted this eye-catching beauty. It's on Park Road not too far from Kookaburra Park. I was hoping to do another tree on this street - as I am hoping to do more on the other streets around the place I've already hit so you all can follow the work from street to street and see them develop.

This one took me a little over a week to knit because of the complexity of the rainbow stitches. It was mainly done at night and so that why it took so long. But I've enjoy making it; and loved the way it was so easy to attach to the tree. I attached to work at around 2:30pm on Sunday afternoon. The Winter sun filtered through the leaves on the tree; and after I finished, I took around six photos of it; but only two really looked good (as you can see). I also used a carpet stitch to attach it to the tree. While I was making notes, a teenager rode around the work and looked at it, taking note of the tag then rode back to a house not far away; across the street. He had glanced at me but I didn't know what he was thinking. So, I didn't think anything of it, just curiosity.

On the way home, I checked up on the Kookaburra Park work and found I had to replace the tag on it as it had worn out. Fortunately, I had many more tags with me and enough dark blue wool to attach another tag to it. It looks like I'll have to find a more permanent way to attach the tags. How? I'm not to sure. Stay tuned to find out.

The Second One

I took a walk today to display my second work of art. It's got a lot of garter and purl stitching in it and patterns too. It's in a park a few streets away from my house on a native tree. The one thing I try to look for with trees is that they are fully-grown so that the patch doesn't strangle the branch and it looks comfortable. This time, I added a little label that can lead people here to see my other works.

I attached it to a tree next to a path that runs through this park which is on a busy street; so that whoever walks past will most probably see it if they happen to look at the trees. This one wasn't so difficult to do as the wool was gripped by the bark on the tree. I look forward to doing more of these so I can make the world more beautiful. Keep watching this space for locations of my art pieces. As for this one?

It was placed on 20th, April 2009 Kookaburra Park in Slacks Creek, Logan City, QLD. Happy Knitting!