June 2026
Watch out below..
We spend a lot of time in the forest, and being very clumsy, and the forest floor being quite uneven, we spend quite a lot of that time face down in the moss. You have to learn how to fall. Just let yourself follow the line trajectory and fold down in segments. No harm done. Up and onward.
One of the things we do in the forest, other than falling over, is collecting various plants to make a tonic. Recently we ran out so this month’s walk was a foraging expedition. We’re lucky enough to be the custodians of a forest that has a lot of interesting plants and through trial and error* we have come up with an excellent tonic. We are not making any bold claims about our tonic, we’d just like to say that logging out the forests before you know what treasure they hold is short sighted and poor financial management.
*Do not try this at home Dear Reader because we are reckless idiots and you, of course, are not.
Interior June.
At this time of the year in the far South, the days are short and, before 10 am and after 4 pm it’s bitterly cold. We only light the fire in the workshop on holy days and, not being blessed with belief, these are thin on the ground. So short work days and not a lot going on.
We spent a lot of time on the fussy job of restoring the coffee tin lamps that came from under the eaves of the workshop. They’re handmade and adorable but rusty and in need of love and a low voltage conversion. We used a wire brush and rust oleum to stabilise the surfaces and then followed this with a coat of metal primer. Finished with a coat of matt black metal paint and they’re good as new.
We also built a new paint/tool caddy. This rather ugly beast creates storage for tools, paints, brushes, panels etc and is also an easel for large and heavy panels for painting. The ability to adjust the height of the panel is handy for different stages of work. Wheels means ease of movement as the light moves around the space and lets us get it out of the way easily. A big space saver and declutterring tool, every workshop should have one.
rgbDesigner June
This month’s palette is called Japan because it has colours drawn from a lovely painting of a Japanese Lady. rgbDesigner does not use AI in the form of a LLM and is more like a synthesiser for colour with a large number of settings that can be combined to produce palettes, gradients and generated images. It works, like many of the best things, by math. It’s a great solution for colour technicians in any practice. No big advances here this month so we’ll let the images speak for themselves.
You can buy rgbDesigner on the Apple AppStore here. Designed for iPad
Writing June.
Cold winter weather means a busy writer and our resident on the job, Robert Gowty, has been busy. Here’s a sample of his latest output and if you would like to never miss a post you can follow him here.
Music on Substack launches!
The new Cucumber Man series begins, retelling the story developed in the “Insert Title Here” series.
New song.
New poem.
Our book of the month is an audio production of Fair Play by Tove Jansson. We borrowed this on Libby, our library’s digital lending app. This book portrays the relationship of two people who are both creative professionals from creative families and so accurately captures this that it was a bit unnerving. If you are a doer, not a viewer, then highly recommend.
“The clocks stopped ticking, one by one. Winter had come.” Tove Jansson
This is fantastic! Can't wait for the tonic to be ready! I don't think my falling in the forest technique is as well developed. I usually end up covered in scratches and bruises. Lamps and frame are looking good.