And the funding says no

I had my heart set on doing thingies with metal. I'll stop calling them "thingies", the proper term is signature item. But yeah, I had my heart set on making my signature item out of metal. I recon it would have been good - had a bit of weight, good 3D relief and been sufficiently interesting that people who saw it would have liked it.

But I don't think it's going to happen. Melting aluminium requires a lot of equipment that would cost a fair bit to set up, and even if I had all the gear it wouldn't have given me the level of detail that I want (sand casting requires a lot of clean up work after it's cooled down to make it look good). Fairly straightforward to do with shapes and parts, much harder on a small, coin-sized item with lettering and fine design elements.

Using pewter would have almost given me the level of detail that I want, the lower melting temperature meant that I could get by with pretty cheap tools - but the silicone moulds need to be made of special high-temperature stuff which is hard to get and expensive; plus lead-free pewter is pretty expensive. Pewter made with lead I could get pretty cheap (around $20 a kilo) but that would have been highly irresponsible of me, to put things out in the wild that unsuspecting people or kids could pick up and play with that were made of lead.

I had decided to go with casting with epoxy resin, and had found a great way of running an airbrush on the cheap (use a fish tank air pump {which we have a spare one lying around} instead of a compressor), or go even cheaper and use inks to stain the resin instead of painting it. Still out of my price range. :(

So I'm going to go with little cheap plastic tokens, with a printed inlay.

It's depressing, and I will definitely be looking at the results and thinking of what they could have been. But it's better than nothing I guess. Half the point of getting into geocaching was to have an excuse to make stuff. I could still make stuff without going out and looking for caches - but the funding would still say no.

Maybe one day...

Four for four

The last one is gone now. :(

There is a plover family (Masked Lapwings, a type of ground nesting bird) that lives on our street that haven't had much luck with their offspring.

They aren't too bright, and the chicks tend to get run over by cars, washed down storm drains, get eaten or get killed in some other way. They've only had one or two survive to adulthood in the last five years.

They had a brood of four hatchlings recently (the chicks are sooooo cute!) and due to the new veggie patch they were growing up super fast. Probably because they had a good food and water source.

As normal, the chicks got picked off one by one. The last one disappeared, we assume it got grabbed by a cat or a hawk since there was no sign of it except for a few feathers. Poor little chikkies...

Goodbyes

We laid a friend to rest today.

A loved son, a reliable friend, beloved by his partner. A bit of the magic of this word is gone and we are all poorer for it.

He is not gone. He has merely gone ahead. May I meet him again someday, and when I do, may I greet him with "hello, my friend".

So sad

Awww... I was really happy when I got home. There were some nesting birds across the road that had been sitting on eggs for a few weeks and one had hatched.

It was so cool, seeing this little baby bird running around on the grass eating grubs and being all happy!

Then it got hit by a car. :(

Not even one day old. Didn't even have the chance to sleep and have one dream. So sad now. I moved the body off the road and laid it to rest under a tree. At least its spirit can stand in the branches and sing for the sunrise.

Rest in peace little bird. :'(

Hot up here

Back in Darwin, hot and humid, and away from my family again.

#SadPanda

Never fun having to leave my family behind and come back to work for who knows ho many months until I get to see them again.

This job sucks.

Actually, it's not the job, it is being away from the family for so long. That is what really sucks.

And for now, it can't be helped.

....and ... it's gone.

I was using Business Calendar with my Google calendar to track dates. Addmitedly I don't have anything important or critical on there but the latest sync pretty much wiped my data.

Loads of important dates and little memories, gone. :( Not a happy camper today.

Hunted and tried a few work arounds but no joy, it's definitely gone.

*sigh*

Back to work

Saaaaad... going to spend today travelling and going back to work.

Which means going away from home. Away from family and the ones I love.

For I don't know how many months, again. :'(