C-24 // A virtual Christmas Card

Hi all. It's been a lean month for posts this month as I've been away with my family, and busy tying up a multitude of loose ends (still a few to go.)

A few weeks ago I did another linocut print. Inspired by a comment (thanks Geoff) I had a go at making a more intentionally Christmassy one. It was also an opportunity to try a couple of other techniques - a reduction print (yellow printed first, then more of the block removed and overprinted with green) and also using a second block (red). It was quite challenging to get all the colours to line up. This one is not perfect, but is one of the better ones... Ah well. Practice makes perfect huh? I was going to print a whole heap and send them out as Christmas cards but I've run out of time, so this cyber version will have to do...

Merry Christmas!

Have a wonderful Christmas day, a relaxing New Year and all the best for 2010.

By the way - if you're looking for something to do on New Year's Eve, That 80's Band will be rockin' the Square in Palmerston North. We did it two years ago and it was insane. :-) Hard to believe I know, but Palmy is a funny town. Full of surprises.

Still busy but getting there.

Well, things are still busy. Since my last post I have had gigs with That 80's Band and The Cattlestops, and I've done some drum sessions for Paul Schreuder. I've done a few days work for UCA, tweaking some cd covers for them and developing a new brand template for digipaks. I've also been chipping away at a long-standing album project that I need to complete for a friend, and building some customised Reaktor instruments for an upcoming Stevie Starr album release gig. So - still busy, but I'm happy to say that in the midst of all of that I've also been developing some ideas for some original music I want to make, and establishing dialog with potential collaborators.

Actually, it's even busier than all that because I am also in the midst of buying and selling a house! Now that I'm the father of a teenaged boy, our family home is feeling quite small, and the garden too big. We have spotted a larger, more low-maintenance house we really like and made an offer on it, and so now we are frantically preparing our current house to go on the market. It's a huge amount of work involving plenty of early mornings & late nights, 9 cubic metres of garden waste (so far), and lots of scraping, sanding and painting. We have had significant contributions of help from our extended family which has been amazing! We've also had several tradesmen through, and hopefully the last one will finish tomorrow. It's satisfying getting nearly 10 years of maintenance finally done, but to be honest I can't wait until it is over and we are moved in to the new house.

As if all of that wasn't enough, I also drove to Napier on Friday for a wedding – Iain Riddle, the guitar player from Pearl married Carrol. It was quite possibly the nicest wedding I've ever been to. The ceremony was warm and full of wisdom, and after the dinner I got to do a bunch of playing – first with Pearl, then a short blues set with Iain and John O'Connor. Great fun!