On Saturday we went for a drive in the hills around Lake St Clair. I wasn't driving thought because we had a trailer on the car, and annoyingly it is illegal for learner drivers to drive with trailers, but that meant I could take photos out the windows.   

Psalm 111:2,3

Great are the works of the Lord,
    studied by all who delight in them.
Full of splendour and majesty is his work,
    and his righteousness endures for ever.

Psalm 23: 2,3

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of righteousness
    for his name's sake.

 Psalm 147:8

He covers the heavens with clouds;
    he prepares rain for the earth;
    he makes grass grow on the hills.

 Psalm 121:1,2

I lift up my eyes to the hills.
    From where does my help come?
My help comes from the Lord,
    who made heaven and earth.

Psalm 57:5

Be exalted, O God, above the heavens!
    Let your glory be over all the earth!

Psalm 50:1

The Mighty One, God the Lord,
    speaks and summons the earth
    from the rising of the sun to its setting.

All scripture quotations from the ESV Bible

Wait don’t you dare to think I am bored I am absolutely not! In fact I do not ever go around saying I am bored like a lot of people I know. My definition of bored is: when one couldn’t be bothered to do anything of any use, or couldn’t be bothered to think of anything to do. Some people say “there is nothing to do, I’m bored” how wrong they are. There is always something to do and it may not always be nice. Read a book, cook something, go for a walk, do some cleaning, mow the lawn, time is valuable. Don’t just mope around the house bothering others with “I’m bored”, do something about it. If you are in a circumstance that won’t allow you to do much pray, talk to God or just sit and be still, sit and think, or just remember, or if you have a pen and paper try writing something. We are here to glorify God and being bored is not bringing any glory to anyone. Find something to occupy yourself; at the least don’t moan about being ‘bored’, moaning won’t help! It is true that sometimes you will just not feel like doing anything, or the things you want to do you can’t. Write a letter to someone, read a Bible verse, or just sit. One rather interesting thing one can do if one has access to the internet is, researching things like who invented birthday cakes, or who invented the internet , or at what temperature does mercury become a solid and all sorts of interesting things, which are much more interesting if you only have to read them and not do any reports on them, which in this case you won’t.

In case you were wondering I was not actually looking for something to do when I started writing this, but was doing other interesting stuff out in the shed. But (Maybe I shouldn’t start a sentence with But, but I have just started with but, or maybe I haven’t exactly.) Anyway I had about had enough of doing that, when I had the idea for this, so I stopped that and started this. I happened to be thinking about ‘bored’ because it appears to have recently come into someone’s mind that I might be bored, in fact they had the audacity to say I might be perpetually bored, thought they did say that was highly unlikely. And I say it has never and will never happen, (me being perpetually bored that is). Anyway if one is bored for too long one becomes flat like a board. I certainly have no wish to be flat and, well, be a bored board, wouldn’t you agree?

Envelope flowers

You will need; most importantly some old envelopes with fancy patterns on the inside of them, you will also need scissors, staples, a stapler and a split pin.

Cut three strips out of the envelope that are about 1 ½ cm wide. Hold one of the strips by an end so you can see the inside of the envelope, then make a loop to the right and come back behind the first end (that you are holding.) Then do the same to the other side. Make both ends of the strip stick out the bottom a bit so you can bend them behind to stop it all coming undone.

Now do the same to the other strips. If you don’t understand what I am saying you can look at the photos and hopefully will be able to work it out from them.

Place the middles of the three lots of ‘petals’ together then put two staple through them all. That may sound easy but that was the probably the hardest bit. Then bend the staples in to make the flower bend a bit. You can put a hole in it then put a split pin through the hole and attach your flower to a card or something else.

You can also cut a thinner strip for the middle. Twist it round in the same way as you did others except make three ‘petals’. Then make a hole in the centre and put a split pin through them all. And you have a flower made from an envelope.

I have recently started another blog but it is for photos only and it is 

here

or you could click on the Photos tab 

or you could put Claresphotospot in to Google and you will probably come up with only one result and that will be it. Or at least that is what happened when I did.

I have photo categories of

~Bees~

~Before the Sun Sets~

~Birds~

~Cows~

~Flowers~

~Fungi~

~Horses~

~Insects~

~Into the Morning Sun~

~Leaves~

and I hope all those links worked, because I don't really feel like testing them all!

Fancy flowers

You will need; some material, a button, scissors, a needle and thread and something to attach the flower too, like a clip, headband or jumper, or anything else you wish to attach it to.

First cut out five squares, it doesn’t matter what size, big ones will obviously make big flowers and smaller ones will make smaller flowers. Take a square and fold it in half into a triangle. Then secure your thread by sewing in the same place three of four times. Note: you may need to use a double thickness of thread if your material is thick. Then sew up the two sides of the triangle that are open, by pushing the needle back and forth through the material. When you have got to the other side of the triangle pull the thread to gather up the triangle into a ‘petal’.

Now you need to sew in the same place a few times again to make sure the petal doesn’t come un-petaled. You can cut the string if it is too short but if it isn’t you can join the next square (folded into a triangle) onto your first ‘petal’ and then make it into a ‘petal’ the same way.

Once you have all five ‘petals’ join them all together then take some more thread and pull all the petals closer together by sewing from one petal on one side of the circle to another petal on the other side.  Then you can attach a button to the centre of the flower and attach the flower to whatever you want to attach it to. 

Words are amazing, the same ones when put into different sequences can give a totally different picture or meaning. Words can mean anything and everything and yet without what they represent, nothing. Just marks on paper or on a screen can draw out strong emotions, they can hurt or heal. Words build bridges that when we walk upon they take us to another place, time, world, without us even moving. 

I did not make this picture, I saw it and thought O yes it is true and I also thought maybe I should warn those who know me of the peril that they are in. 

Exactly what this says, you and any experiences you tell me could somehow end up appearing somewhere amongst a lot of other words that I write, although I don’t exactly write or create the words, I select them and place them in an order and use them to form a story.  I hope when read they will convey meaning and emotion, like any good story should. 

It was quite a normal evening I was sitting at the computer. It was Alice’s turn to make tea so the girls were in the kitchen, Daddy was next me and Mummy was lighting the fire. But the fire didn’t want to go. The smell of smoke drifted over to us, we turned around. Thick grey smoke was curling out of the door of the fireplace. Mummy tried banging the door and flapping, it didn’t work.  We thought it should smoke itself out soon but instead the smoke came rushing out faster. Dad and I got up I stood wondering what to do and Daddy tried banging the door too, and closing it but the smoke only got thicker and was filling the room. Mummy and I rescued the washing that was drying (getting nicely smoked) inside. Then I ran to get a jug of water and my camera. Mummy closed doors of the room and went and got some water sprayers. One of my brothers tripped over and started howling. I opened the door to outside to let air in. Then Jane and I went and got some fans to blow the smoke away.

It was pretty exciting and funny and probably didn’t quite happen in that order, but it all happened quite fast. Now the air is only slightly smokey and the fire is going well. The theory is that the soot had built up around the chimney and got heavy and fallen down onto the baffle and over time had mostly blocked the way up the chimney, so the smoke had to come out somewhere. 

Is rather awesome right now! 

Well that is if you like sewing. My sisters and I bought a few bags of materials last week so we wanted to make something. I have been mostly making flowers, lots of different sorts. Though as of yet I am not quite sure what I am going to do with them.

Photo taken by my sister Jane

  
I have also hemmed a skirt which involved putting lots of pins in it and into my fingers!
It also made me realise just how big the skirt was. I also made and attached some loops to put a belt through onto a different skirt.

Alice was flicking through some of my craft magazines and found a cool looking bag in an ad in one. So she decided to try and make it, it worked pretty well. 

As one can probably see from the photos the room does look a bit messy but mostly that is all the bits of material that are everywhere 

Jane had been making (door stopper) snakes, flowers and now is making a bag with Alice. I am also planning on making a bag or a pillow or something but I can’t decide what material to use....there is too much to chose from......

Call of the Ocean

Roaring, racing, running

Throwing itself upon the shore

Winding, whispering, waving

Over rocks further in, further more

Booming, bashing, breaking

Over boulders and rippling still

Trowing, thundering, thrashing

Rising high and crashing down foamy crests spill

Spraying, spurting, shimmering

Drifting in the air till tinkling drops fall

Sprinting, dashing, running

As I hear the ocean call

I wrote this in May last year, but took the photo last week while on the geological field excursion.

Last Saturday we went on a Geological Field Excursion by CMI, with about 50 other people. Part of a home-schooling family who are friends of ours came too. The weather was lovely, though it was a bit cool down at the beach, and it rained a few drops at times.

We started the day early, because we had to get to the place in Newcastle we were to meet at by 8:30. So I drove through the early morning mist. At the top of one hill the town before us was a lake of mist full of floating tree tops and all amongst the mist were lights like fallen stars. It was beautiful. Later the sun appeared over a hill and through the mist it looked like melted gold. The sun made the mist a golden colour and when I drove past some pine trees they seemed to have black rays shining from them, at least in comparison to the gold all around, in the magic morning.

After everyone had arrived, signed off and got name tags, we climbed onto the coach. The coach rumbled and moved forwards then stopped. It started again, went backwards and forwards further up the slope and then stopped. We were hoping that there were no cars too close behind us. Then it went backwards a lot and then forwards, then stopped. We found out later that the bus driver had never driven this particular bus before.  We slowly, very slowly, crept jittering and shuddering up towards the top of the hill. A passenger went down the front who must have been a bus driver and gave the driver some tips. We were nearly at the top and were going without stopping and then there were some red traffic lights, we stopped and then when they turned green we started then stopped and then finally got over that hill. (There were more hills to come, but they weren’t quite so bad.)

The first stop was at a beach and we were meant to be looking at the rocks of the cliff faces, but I couldn’t resist gazing at the foaming waves as they rolled in endlessly from the ocean. Do waves ever get tired? I think the colour of the waves as they crash over is so lovely. I could see boats and a rainbow far out on the horizon.

There was a ‘dyke’ in the rocks, which is where once a volcano shot lava out of but then a great amount of water eroded the top of the ‘volcano’ away along with other parts of the land. Then there was a fault where the layers  to one side of the dyke had dropped heaps. The guide was explaining how so many scientists refused even to consider the use of a “catastrophe”  like a flood to explain things but use millions of years instead, and a catastrophe makes more sense but they don’t want to admit there was a worldwide flood like the Bible says, but most of all don’t want to admit, there is a God.

We looked at rock layers and our guide said how the red ones had iron in them and the black had lots of organic material. He talked about how coal forms under high pressure and heat from big deposits of organic material. Evolutionists have a lot of trouble explaining how so much organic material was put in these conditions to make all the coal that is being mined in Australia and other places. A worldwide flood makes it easy to explain. He also said how black coal is made under really hot temperatures but brown coal does not need it to be quite so hot.

When we got back on the coach it didn’t disappoint us and stopped again! Another time when the coach was coming out of the part off the road it had stopped in and trying to turn around, we managed to gather a large amount of cars trying to get past us but they couldn’t. My friend and her dad were the last getting back one time and everyone on the coach watched as they came across the road and her hat blew off and she had to go chasing it.

We went and looked at a really old church and I patted some horses that were in the paddock next door, and wondered if the electric fence was on. Is it better to maybe get a zap or to never know? I finally decided the possibility of getting zapped was better than never knowing. Neither of my friends or my sister would touch it because they thought the danger of being zapped was too great and anyway I would do it if they didn’t. I tried with a bit of green grass first, which is meant (if the fence is on) to zap you only a tiny bit and in the past it has worked, and I felt nothing. So I did touch it (eventually) and found out that all the strands were turned off. My curiosity (and some other peoples) was satisfied, but luckily they did not get the satisfaction of watching me get zapped!

We looked at more different sorts of rocks, and a lady from the town we were at (Seaham) told everyone on the bus about how the rocks were millions of years old and formed by glaciers. Just before that our guide had explained that they were very probably not formed by glaciers. Also since the world is only around 6000 years old, things can’t be millions of years old, God had not even created time that long ago! I wondered what that lady would have thought if she knew that probably, nearly everyone on that bus disagreed with her.

We had lunch at a ‘small’ shopping centre and I thought if that was a small one how big would a big one have been. Greenhills shopping centre in east Maitland is not my idea of a small shopping centre! It nearly killed me walking around in there.

After lunch we went to an old quarry and I finally completed the task of finding a rock with no trace of a fossil on it! The fossils were of shells and sea plants and shells and shells. After being there shell fossils will never feel so special again! Nearly everyone took a few home, but my friends dad probably had the most, he filled the other half of his back pack with large rocks, full of fossils and later one of the bags straps was starting to break.

We had been going to go to another place but we spent so long at the quarry we ran out of time and drove back to the starting point and all drove back to our own homes.  The most interesting thing that happened while we were driving home was the first. I was going to have to turn left and go a long way and around a roundabout just to get back to where I was, but on the other side of the road. But there was a break so we thought we would wait for the next and then go across the two lanes of traffic (that wouldn’t be there at the time) and turn right. So we waited. The break came. I went and when I was about to turn right, a car appeared to my left but I knew I had to go because there were now cars coming on my right too. So I accelerated and went into the third lane on that side. Luckily the person saw me and slowed down. So it was all ok and we got safely home. It was a pretty fun day. 

The Interplanetary series or space trilogy by CS Lewis consists of three and a half books; ‘Out of the Silent Planet’, ‘Perelandra (Voyage to Venus)’, ‘That Hideous Strength’ and ‘The Dark Tower’. The manuscript for ‘The Dark Tower’ was rescued by a friend after CS Lewis died in 1963. It had an extremely narrow escape from being burned, but the gardener put off burning it and a few other notebooks as well. I have only just started reading this one and sadly it is not quite complete and finishes mid-sentence. The books are fantasy and science fiction but they are set in the time period of when CS Lewis wrote them.  I really enjoyed the first two, but I found the first half of ‘That Hideous Strength’ difficult but by the end I could not put it down, I stayed up quite late reading them a few times........ They also have really cool sounding words in them like; Perelandra, Malacandra, Viritribia, Thulcandra and other interesting words. They are “out of this planet” or at least the first two books are.

 ‘Out of the Silent Planet’ is mostly set on the planet Malacandra which is a very old dying planet, its inhabitants now live in valleys beneath the main surface of the planet. The main character, Ransom is taken there as a captive.

 ‘Perelandra’, is also mostly set on a planet but this time it is on Perelandra. Which is just coming into habitation and was perfect but a ‘bent’ (evil) man has come and Ransom is brought there to try and stop him making Perelandra ‘bent’ like Thulcandra was.

‘That Hideous Strength’ Is set on earth and is like in Ephesians 6:12 which says: For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Ransom is also in this book but is not the main character. 

This moving work of art took many a day to complete and many more months from when it was thought of-nearly years in fact-to when it was finally completed. As of yet we have not worked out exactly what the artist meant by the positioning of the three post and numerous objects attached or the small rocks around the base.

Ok not exactly

I just finished making some ‘artwork’, it was fun to make. It is finished for now, but when I find some more rusty things I am going to attach them too. We thought of the idea so long ago I can’t really remember when. I had asked my mum a few time where she wanted the posts but had got no definite answer. Then, when we got back from holidays we had another week off school so I decided to do something about it. Mummy decided on the spot where she wanted them and I started to dig holes. That took me a few days especially since it was raining half the time, I dug in the rain too at least when it was light rain. When I got down to the clay I had to use the crowbar, my two little brothers helped a bit too, well one did, the other was more interested in climbing in and out of the holes and filling them back in. Then my dad and I carted the posts and rusty stuff there. I had to dig one hole bigger.

 

Next we had to find enough stuff to make concrete with; if we used a ‘measure’ of cement we needed two measures of sand and three of gravel. We sifted through the sand that had made its way out of the boy’s sandpit and finally had enough. The question was; where were we going to get the gravel from? It then occurred to us that there was a lot of gravel down at the river down the end of our road. Dad said we should take the trailer down there and get some. The problem was I am on my Ls and am not allowed to drive with a trailer on. But then I thought what in the world would we do with a trailer load of gravel!!! We didn’t need that much. So we went on a bucket/container hunt and eventually managed to fill the back of the car up with buckets and a crate.

I drove to the river and we filled all our containers with gravel, but gravel isn’t really a very nice name for the buckets of pretty, small, pebbles that we got.  I had a ‘Driving lesson’ on the way back meaning doing U turns and driving round the bend and over the narrow one way bridge on it again, and having to do it better which luckily I did, otherwise I would of had to try again and maybe again. We mixed all our ‘measures’ of cement, sand and gravel together with some water, in the wheelbarrow (which nearly tipped over once). Then we cemented in the posts and I positioned them how I wanted, which was the way they looked best.

A few days later I carted the dirt from the holes away. Next came the most fun part of attaching the rusty stuff. Some just hangs there; some is jammed or screwed on, one bit needed bolting. The big wheel is not yet attached properly, but the small wheel has been the trickiest so far. I didn’t want to use new wire to hold it on because that is all shiny and not at all rusty! So I got some wire from down at the creek where there is an old fence that is not fencing off anything. I cut some mostly not rusty barbed wire and a length of straight wire, it was rusty on the outside but not on the inside! So I then used them to bind the small wheel on.  Note: shoving barbed wire through anything is very difficult and straight wire does not like to bend and if it does bend it does not unbend.  Then I poured some of the left over ‘pretty, small, pebbles’ around the bases of the posts.  

Voila! It is finished, for now at least!

Yesterday morning my family was eating breakfast and we looked out the window and saw a cow and its calf eating grass in our neighbour’s front yard. So after breakfast my sisters and I got scarves and jackets on-it was cold out there-and went out to see if we could get the cows back into the paddock. As soon as they saw us they started racing around. The calf got back through the spot in the fence that must have come from, but the cow was different. We tried to get her through the gate in the fence but she ran past us and down into the long grass next to the road. I tried to get her back, but luckily someone had called the ranger and he turned up in his ute and had a key for the big gate. I went back to our neighbours and inspected the fence. It had four strands but the top two were close together and so were the bottom two. And in between there was a hole. Once there had been some dog wire on the fence but now it was all rusty and the cows had just snapped through it. I pulled some branched that were over the cows side of the fence, (or at least where the cows were meant to be) over the hole and left.

The problem is that once cows get it into their heads to escape they keep escaping.  So that afternoon there were two, black, cow like shadows in the neighbour’s front yard. My dad and I went to investigate. The cows had pushed through in nearly the same place as before. They had snapped more of the dog wire just next to the hole they had got out of in the morning. Daddy rang the ranger and we tried to get them back in. The calf went through the fence in another spot and the cow headed down the road yet again.

We walked slowly behind the cow down the road. Halfway to the gate the calf was out in front of us with the cow! By this time it was getting quite dark and they were just two black lumps moving up amongst the grasses ahead of us. Then they seemed to pass the gate and I heard the sound of wires twanging and the calf was through. Then we saw the other lump going up and down and wires twanging and more wires then she seemed to have got to the other side somehow, it was too dark and too far away to be able to tell how.

We got to where we thought they had got in; the fence looked perfect, the wires taught, straight and close. Then the ranger turned up and we told him what had happened and he said that if a cow wanted to get out there was not really much anyone could do to stop it. He also said he would probably come back in the morning and look at the hole in our neighbour’s fence.

This is not the first instance of escapee cows, once there was a grey cow who was wandering up and down the actual road early one COLD morning and once a few cows from the paddock next to us got in our yard. Another time there were three calves that got out where the fence crosses the creek at the bottom of our place. I remember chasing them around until they went in but then they came out again a few hours later and the next day.....There was also a few times when I was out riding my push bike and I came across single calves wandering outside the fence, luckily calves seem to be able to fit back through the fence quite well. It probably won’t be the last either.......