My First Attempt at Watercolour

Ugh, bought some watercolour paper. Had a go. I think next time I'll use a photograph or still life, painting from the mind is especially hard with watercolour. One thing I didn't realise I didn't have was water-soluble pencils. I was looking forward to drawing it with pencils first, then using traditional watercolour technique, and finally detailing with the pencils again. Ah well. Anyway, here are some photos from my...venture.

First thing I did was prepare the paper. Using a sponge, I wet both sides of the paper and taped it to a bit of wood using some masking tape. This will (hopefully) prevent warping.

Home-cooked Steamboat

Yesterday Willo and Louella had the great idea of doing a Steamboat-style dinner at the flat. Using their camping stove, we'd be able to have a pot of broth simmering away while we add delicious food. Bok choy, tofu, meatballs, dumplings, and spinach were washed and chopped. Condiments were lined up to make some delicious sauce. Once the broth was a-boiling, we began.

Buckets

On Sunday Andrew and I went bucket racing. Bucket racing is essentially the poor man's motorcycle racing - not that people refrain from spending an awful lot of money. A Bucket, in essence, is a mix of motorcycles put together to create a racing machine. There are restrictions, of course; two strokes can't be over a certain capacity, many fuel-injected motorcycles are not allowed. Home built parts are fine.

Andrew's bucket is a CB125T. He bought it not working, but he had it up and running as soon as he had the time. Sunday was his first opportunity to test it out. Since it was his first go on the track, the organisers made Andrew wear a fluro vest. The only others wearing hi-vis were a couple of thirteen year olds, needing to be more visible for safety reasons.
"I'm a bit big to be mistaken for a 13 year old, don't you think?" Andrew laughed, but put the vest on anyway. It turns out that cold tyres are slippery, as he found out on the first corner. The front wheel slipped out from under him and spun away from the track, as did Andrew. After dusting himself off, he proceeded at a gentler pace.

I brought my DSLR along to practice getting some shots. Believe me, it's a lot harder than it looks, and being limited to 2GB of memory doesn't help!

Learning to Weld

So I started a welding course a few weeks ago - once a week, two hours at a time. Unfortunately I can't seem to grasp the nuances of MIG welding. Luckily, welds generally hold metal together, no matter how shoddy the work is.

Today I decided to bring my camera in (and got my case dusty, boo!). Here's what I got.

Food

I keep taking photos of my breakfast and dinner. See if you can spot what's missing! ;D

Caesar salad, cheese Kransky sausages, and cheese sprinkled on top

Maxwell

So there's this cat who comes to visit the garage sometimes. He enjoys cuddles, and is pretty much the most chilled out cat I've ever come across. Flatmate says he's a Persian/Blue...something...cross. He's a grey cat.

It's always nice to hear Maxwell's genial meow, and go outside to give him some pats.

Now, his name isn't actually Maxwell. He just looks like a Maxwell. His real name is Fynn, which we found out when he went missing one day. He turned up a few days later a bit worse for wear.

Canon 1000D

So the DSLR my (awesome) Dad helped me to buy for my birthday is amazing. Pretty much exactly what I was after. No video, but that's not necessary. I'm impressed by the reaction time of the auto focus, so it should be great for taking photos at a motorcycle track day.

Here are a few photos I took to test it out.

The Initial Post

I've been very impressed with Blogger's UI so far. I'm glad to see that there is a lot of elbow room for front end development, and I plan on changing the CSS shortly.

So, the purpose of this blog...I guess it will help me warm up to my new DSLR (a Canon 1000D), and share some lols with friends. It should also help me improve drawing and design - hence the title and domain name.

For my first post, I'm going to share some crochet I just did (more crafts-y than design-y)! The pattern can be found here. The thread I used is a lot thinner than in the tutorial, but the pattern is pretty straightforward and I continued the coaster for a couple more rows.