the nothing ,anything ,everything thread

[opmania]

This is a thread with no particular

Topic so no one can be off topic 🙂

So if anyone out there has something 

To say about anything you like now

Is your chance

Keep it clean 

And be nice 

See how long that lasts

Can we keep politics and religion out 

Of the conversation 

[ecar3483]

I love that style of carved toy.

I used to make a detour past a shoe shop I knew because they had a carved bear toy that could put on, or take off, a slipper, sitting in the window.

I loved seeing that toy.

🙂

[imastawka]

I think they're Russian motion toys Ecar

      

Hope they give you some ideas

[ecar3483]

I was cooking pasta, it's cold outside, and the kitchen windows misted up.

I thought that while I was waiting for the pasta to cook I'd give the windows a quick wipe over.

I hadn't noticed it before, but the cockatoos have been drooling on the glass.

Okay, stop laughing.

They sit on the window sill and they tap on the glass with their beaks. Obviously, that's not all that they do, ha ha.

There's a pattern, reminiscent of modern art, that extends probably 10 or 15 centimetres up the pane, then stops, abruptly.

It's very strange.

Speaking of strange, one of the sparrows found a piece of bread, nothing strange in that, admittedly, but when he flew off, clutching his precious find, he got chased by a wattlebird. Not just along the garden, but when they reached the point where there is no more garden, only a fence, he, and the wattlebird executed a perfect hairpin turn (would that be a 180 degree turn? That sounds right, or at least as thrilling as any stunt in a James Bond movie, ha ha), and disappeared off into the undergrowth leaving me to marvel at their aerobatic skill.

The rain came in just a little after dark, not too heavy, but enough to accentuate the cold.

Somewhere in the near distance I could hear a little dog not quite barking, not quite crying.

Somewhere, someone was stuck in traffic, windscreen wipers shuddering and squealing their way across a not quite wet windscreen, quietly cursing the weather report that said the rain wouldn't come until late in the evening.

I bet they gave little dog a great big cuddle when they got home, and told it that they were sorry that it had to sit out in the rain.

Right now (special treat) it's sleeping on the couch while they're sitting beside it watching something time filling, or time killing, on the TV. Warm, dry, safe, happy.

🙂

[ecar3483]

They're great. 🙂

I made a toy with the weight underneath (how hard can it be?) and as a result my estimation of that kind of toy has risen.

They are really difficult to balance, to get just right, and there can be a lot of fiddling around with bits of string to get the right length.

The goldfish can attest to having learnt at least three new naughty words while I was making that toy, it was frustrating, ha ha.

I'm going to work out how the mechanism for the squirrel, bottom right hand video, works, one day, if only for the pleasure of saying "Oh, that's how it works, that's what I thought". The trouble is if I go looking for instructions for it I'm more than likely to be side tracked by all the other wonderful toys. That's what's happened in the past, no, really, ha ha.

In all seriousness, trying to find instructions for some toys on the internet is like trying to find the fabled lost gold of El Dorado.

It looks like a simple enough mechanism - a push button, with a spring to return the "button" to it's original position.

But I don't want to assume that that's how it works, so I keep looking.

You never know, I might find the fabled lost gold of El Dorado, but then what am I going to do? I still won't know how the mechanism works, ha ha.

🙂

[imastawka]

I like this one - last one, I promise

[ecar3483]

If you insist on it being the last one, okay, but if you happened to forget, and posted another few several one that'd be okay.

🙂

[imastawka]

Several?    All in one

http://www.instructables.com/id/Designing-Hopping-Animal-and-Comic-Book-Character-/?ALLSTEPS

Maybe a dragon instead of the dinosaur?

[ecar3483]

I still can't remember what the animal was, but I remember seeing one of those toys and thinking it'd be fun to make.

I got caught up in the detail of making the ramp for it - do I get a block of wood and use a router to cut a groove or a straight flat piece and then have to find something for the sides? It began to feel a bit complicated, so I shelved it, not thinking that all I needed was a plank of a decent width, and that'd do. Well, it looks like I've talked myself out of any excuses I had, maybe I should start thinking about making one, ha ha.

Years ago there used to be a similar toy that came in cereal packets (back in the day before there was an app for for 'you don't need toys that require a level of imagination to appreciate them'). They had a string attached to the front of them, and a weight on the end. You put them on a table with the weight dangling over the side and it would pull them along to the edge, (and sometimes over). This elephant is a good example.

🙂

[imastawka]

Yeah,  I remember cereal packet toys like that.   Only the ones I remember

didn't have the weight.    You just put them on a slope and they waddled to the end

I think I'm remembering futher back than I want to go,  Ecar

[ecar3483]

Looking out the window at the garden, the rain soaked garden, in the cold, half light of morning when it is still quiet.

Mrs Blackbird skips across the garden, stops, plucks a worm from the ground, takes a couple of steps and plucks another worm from the ground.

When I walk out there my feet sink a quarter inch, when she walks out there she finds breakfast.

By the time I realised that I would have had the time, it had passed.

I had waited, patiently, for something that was never going to happen, and ended up, once again, not getting things done.

And that is how life is, when you are as reliant upon people as they are upon you.

You plan your day to suit the schedule that they would never keep.

I suppose I can console myself by saying that I probably needed a quiet day, anyway.

And, if I didn't care, then the inconvenience would matter, and it doesn't.

There will be other days.

Go back to sleep.

When you wake up, I'll still be here.

Where else would I be?

🙂