Welcome to my web site!
Here I am in 2012 with an updated web site. I hope to show the things I get up to during the year. It will mostly centre around the photo album. The photographs will show at a glance what I am doing without the need for a thousand words.
I have a new Lumix G2 camera which takes pictures of 12 Mega pixels but I am now interested in Photoshop, so the pictures should start to look better.
I am still working as a part time Design and Technology Technician at Rooks Heath College, although I have cut my hours down considerably this year. I am also going to go into full retirement this summer (2012). That will make it nearly three years past my sell by date, so I think it is now time. Anyway I cannot get anymore tools into my garage/workshop. The part time job was taken up initially to pay for the tools I needed to use for my hobbies. I am also reaching the stage where I am forgetting where I have put the tools I have bought that I needed.
I now need to make a long list of all the projects that need to be completed. There are many!! I also need to make a list of the secret little /BIG challenges that I have been harbouring for a lot of years now, like the William Morris arm chair in one twelfth scale. It is a classic of design but a big challenge to make full size never mind in doll's house scale
I have added pictures of my first attempts at replicating large scale furniture in one twelfth scale. The chair and stool have taken some time as I had to made drill jigs to get the angles correct. The next stage is to make some more in different woods. The cradle still draws Ahhhhhs when people see it. I have five part made in pear wood that I want to stain in different wood colours.
I am now publishing the web site with Microsoft Expressions Web 4 as Front page is now no longer supported. It is amazing how the technology has travelled so fast. Turn your head and you are out of date, and not getting any younger makes it harder to catch up. I am also designing a web site for daughter Shelagh who is practicing making cupcakes as a little side line and an expression of her artistic work www.caketales.co.uk . That exercise also got me using the card cutting machine to make cupcake jackets. An engineering task really as the net had to be drawn very precisely and transferred to the cutting machine. And yes another aside that happened this year is that I got into dye sublimation printing this year. Making personalized mug and water bottles. I must stop wandering off investigating new skills and interests and stick with what I currently have.