Kitty's Drawings

I’m back from my little holiday to Tasmania. Back to work today too. Eurgh. Hehe ;-P
We did a lot of fun things while there and also some relaxing things. I got to catch up on all the developments to the winery – since I last visited, my parents moved out of the old rundown house at the bottom of the property and into the converted winery. Dad raised the roof of the building to allow room for upstairs living quarters. He also moved his wood workshop out into a new purpose-built shed and where it used to belong is now the lounge and dining area.
Not everything is finished yet – the upstairs area only has walls so far – no windows and bare floorboards. Regardless, our bed was still comfy and the silence down there permits a good nights rest – except for when the rooster decides to crow at the ungodly hour of 3am!!
Downstairs is all complete however – the kitchen is fit for commercial use and will also be the kitchen for the cafe. Mum is super happy about having a brand new oven, stove and shiny industrial coffee machine. Essential! The lounge is nice and open and with plenty of space in comparison to the cramped, dark room in the old house. The best bit of the whole new living area is the massive outdoor area! Breakfast and most dinners can be had there as it’s sheltered from the elements. It’s good to sit outside and have breakkie

I took lots of photos this time surprisingly! Which is why I’m actually blogging about this in greater detail. Somewhat unsurprisingly though, my photos are neither a complete documentation of my trip, nor very good. Heh! So I present to you a selection of what I took. These were taken on the Thursday as I wandered around discovering stuff – Jonny was busy in Dad’s workshop playing with the Big Boys Toys.

Some veggies from the greenhouse:

The killing block (look away if you’re a veggo hehe) and some obligatory grapes

Jonny working on stuff and my Mum watering the plants

Cows (or bull to be precise)

Chickens & Ducks

Farm things

Flowers and timber

Bits and pieces from around the house

And finally, some things from the cellar door.

So there it is, a small glimpse into my parent’s winery. While there I also helped set up the St Imre website – which is now live and can be seen here: CLICKY. Still ironing a few things out and adding content. The blog is still not fully incorporated to look like the rest of the site. But getting there! You should soon be able to buy wine directly from the site. Yay!

Now it’s back to drawing and testing out how my wonderful new computer copes with some work.
Bye!

Happy Aussie Day guys! Hope you’re all suitably relaxing and possibly downing a beer or three. Absolute stunner of a day here in Melbs too. Yeah!

Not doing much here ourselves. Just listening to tunes and chillin out. I made double choc pancakes for breakfast. Yummo. Might go for a ride later also.

Onto some art stuff…..
I finally got the labels printed for my parent’s palinka (the Hungarian name for grappa)….45% alcohol made out of the fermented grape skins left after the pressing. You can make it out of pretty much any fruit though – some people use pears or plums too. Whatever you have an excess of!
There’s two bottle sizes…375ml and 100ml…the label is a bit squeezy on the smallest one…so Mum, if you want the label a bit smaller I can send some over because I still have plenty of paper.
It turned out pretty good I think. Looks great against our exposed brick wall and stainless steel bench (I still LOVE my house so much). That’s some great reflection there that you just can’t fake in Photoshop! Hehehe.

Other stuff….I went to my first Melbourne Gra-fight Club meet with the local ConceptArt peeps on Sunday. We bum around in town for a few hours sketching people we see. Lots of lessons to be learnt and cool people to hang with. Here are the results. Pretty blah but they get better as I started getting the hang of the process.
(click the pics to go to my Flickr account if you want to see larger)

The only one I really like is the profile of the guy with the glasses and the grandpa hat.

And finally something a bit prettier….A cute corset by Maya Hansen – soooo many pretty corsets. Want!! Oh and excuse the deformed head. I suck.

Seeyas!

For your viewing pleasure.

Well, I have been flat-stick figuring out the Wordpress thing. Made a few tweaks here and there. You can see my header has changed (AGAIN omg) – this should be one of the final changes..its how I want the whole site to look eventually. With MY handwriting!
Also, if you click the “About” button up the top there, you can see that page is finished too.

These photos are of my parents’ kitties down at the winery. It can be very hard to take a photo of them as they fidget around a LOT. Possum (the grey and white one at top and bottom) wouldn’t sit still! She just wanted pats! The others I wanted to capture all huddled up in a big kitty-pile as they were but as soon as I walked out the door, they all jumped off each other and ran about thinking I had some food for them.
And Petyi is the big tom – he is a very large cat! And very friendly and placid.

I best get back to drawing – Promise more frequent posting in the week ahead. Even though I do have a lot on. I will be heading to PacPrint on Thursday to suss out if what they mean about letterpress being there, is going to be more than just a teeny stall hidden in the back somewhere. Anyone else going?

…. That needs a little love – but the few things I have to fix won’t be too troublesome I hope!

In all her glory. Whatever shall I name him/her??

The rollers that need replacing. See the big grooves in them? That’s not meant to be there.

Where the ink gets deposited onto the forme rollers – From the tray in the left there, across a bunch of metal and rubber rollers and then finally onto the plate.

I am missing a bolt that holds this oscillating roller in place. At least I think this is where it’s meant to go!

The press from the side on. So many levers and wheels and bits that move!

More of the ink system – there should be another metal roller and 2 rubber ones in there somewhere.

The paper feed – I removed the yucky green card shortly after taking these photos. It served no purpose.

The other side of the ink system. Hope I’m not missing any bits here!

I think this is the serial number and model number.
It says:
Type – H222
Nr – 34635

If this is the real serial number, then according to a list I was given on BriarPress, this press was made before 1950. Much older than the mid 60’s I thought it was going to be!

I would be especially happy if someone knowledgeable in letterpress reading this blog would be able to point out any glaring problems which I don’t already know about!?

I’ll be heading down to Tassie again in early June – only weeks away – so I will see if I can get some rollers by then and get this baby running. Though I’m not liking the look of the timeframe I have to get these things.

Update on the new blog – I now know what it will look like….but it involves a bit of CSS knowledge which I dont have. If anyone would offer their awesome web coding services I would happily draw them something original and unique in return
Until then, I will play with the local version of WordPress I’ve got running on my work computer and see if I can suss something out.

Well – I promised my boyfriend to add some more to the Cult-of-Pop skull so I’m off for tonight!

All done! Bar a few minor details. I will have to get the accurate alcohol percentage and standard drinks amount off Dad. We’re going to have two bottle sizes so that will affect the standard drinks.

Now I just have to find some sticker paper to print them on and also get hold of a stamp for the wax seal.
Oh and do the back label. Nothing fancy with that – I will just use the paper texture and the Garamond font for that.

Now what is Torko Palinka (I can’t be bothered to do the little swash things here – does anyone know the shortcuts?)? Well, it’s the Hungarian name for what most Aussies would know as Grappa. Distilled from the skins of the grapes left after pressing. Pretty toxic stuff! Great for curing stomach upsets and all kinds of things…well for me I am sure it would make my stomach feel much worse after a shot of this stuff! But it worked for Mum when we were in Europe in ‘07…..There, all the relos and friends will greet you with a glass of wine or a shot of Palinka…Or both! Hehehe. And it’s rude to refuse. Oh dear!

Anyways – it’s hard to get this in Aus. I am not sure on the details but I think my parents and maybe one other company in Tasmania (or even Aus) are the only ones who actually have a license to sell it. Everything else is imported I do believe. So if you’re keen to try some Aussie Palinka/Grappa then just ask my Mum and she’ll be able to hook you up! Link over there —>
Just wait til we bottle them. Hehe.