Live Bold List 24: 6 Things I learned about re-charging my batteries by riding my electric bike

Posted on October 18, 2011 by avatar

Hello dear one :)
Thank you for being here. Your presence is so precious.

The weather is warming up here in the Southern Hemisphere – time to transition to using the car less and the bike(s) more! Last week I misjudged the battery longevity on my new electric bike and had to pedal the solid red frame up a hill, to meet my friend. At the point of battery fizzlement I also made the decision to have the train assist me to get most of the way back home afterwards!

Here are some of the things I pondered while I pedalled the rather-heavy-when-the-battery-isn’t-helping beast along:

Live Bold List 24: 6 Things I learned about re-charging my batteries by riding my electric bike

  1. You are totally allowed to take the smoother, less busy path. You can choose which will be easier for you this day :)
  2. You ARE still moving, even though the meter is no longer showing you your speed (because it, too, is powered by the battery!) Keep going steadily, even if it feels a bit restricted! Left, right. Repeat.
  3. If you start your day with your battery charged to only 30%, it drops surprisingly quickly to zero.
  4. You might need to allow extra time after stopping at the lights to get up momentum.
  5. You can change gears! Pushing the pedals is a lot harder without the luxury and support of battery help – even the battery itself is weighing you down! It’s permitted to change to an easier gear and pedal at a sustainable level.
  6. Respect and recharge your battery. When you get back home, plug it in to a sunny day (solar powered power point during daylight) and re-charge ready for your next adventure :) Then have a good dinner and an early night!

This was a fascinating way to learn something so nurturing about life, myself, *recharging* and my new bike (which is really my car).
How do you recharge your batteries? Let me know in the comments section below!

Oh, did I mention:
Recharge your batteries,
recharge your batteries,
recharge your batteries.

Much love,
Meg x o

 

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Market and Nutmeg

Posted on October 11, 2011 by avatar

Hello beloved kindred spirit <3

Hoping you are well and content. If things are other than you might judge ‘perfect’, I am sure their educational purpose will become clear in the fullness of time! I myself am winning a long fight with some kind of cold and have random things happening in my world, but trusting that all will make sense in due course.

Hello new friends from the Port Festival Artists Market. Thanks for coming to check out my site – welcome! It was wonderful to meet you over the weekend. My gorgeous friends/helpers and I had fun at the stall sharing vibrant art, including giving away 138 free art bookmarks! Civilised weather made things easy for stall holders, organisers and visitors alike, and live music added to the atmosphere.

I think I look pretty tired in the photo – ‘cos I was tired and also fighting the lurgy. If you are wondering about my garb, on the Saturday (above) I wore the Luka Cat of Light Tshirt and on the Sunday I wore Rainbow Lady. My helpers chose Floraline, 3 Bold Butterflies and Stripey Peace. The tshirts are such fun to wear, comfy and garner lots of comments (plug, plug :D)!

Would you like to see one of my latest greeting card pictures (if you were at the market you may recognise her)?

Nutmeg the Magic Cat

Here is the poem which inspired Nutmeg to be painted. See how you can put commas and fullstops (periods) in lots of different places in it? Have a go:

I like Nutmeg very much he is a cat with a tail of magic and happiness is all Nutmeg likes me

If you are inspired, try making a SentencePoem with lots of possible pause spots of your own. I’d love to read them in the comments section.

By the way, Nutmeg is now available as a greeting card (top row, right)!

See you in the comments section below or on Facebook!
Much love,
Meg x o

 

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Cat Calendar proclamation

Posted on September 22, 2011 by avatar

Hello Dearhearts!
*Hugs* and Meow!
I’m bursting to announce this…
Look! Oh look! I made you a Cat Calendar!
12 months of wholesome catty art goodness, just for you. The cover looks like this:
If your soul is nourished by vivid colours and/or Cat Art (I guess that’s why you’re here ;P) then this is for you! Having this on your wall guarantees a whole year of fresh Tangerine Meg colour blooming right there on your wall, a new one each month. You need only look over and be uplifted by (tangerine) zesty colour and visual images of cat contentedness and wisdom.
I took a lot longer than I was imagining to make this collection – I wanted to make sure all the artworks were colourful and strong with their own personality. Like you, lovely bold soul!

Bold Souls who’ve had a sneak peek have already commented:

“I love this bold cat calendar. Every month is a treat.”

and:

“My Xmas list has just become a lot easier! Wonderful site!”

[Do those colours remind you of having your eyes checked? And then choosing pretty new glasses? Oops, sorry, what was I talking about?...] Oh yes…

It’s pretty easy to order the cat calendars if you’re familiar with ordering things online. When you click on the picture or (this>) text link to the Cat Calendar, you go to a third party site – the ‘print on demand’ company I like: Red Bubble. There you can look at the pictures for each month and choose which month the calendar begins on.

I’ll tell you up front, bold soul, the postage cost seems high at first – it was $13 within Australia the last time I checked (which was earlier this afternoon). However, I’ve ordered calendars from Red Bubble for myself to have a test run, and am well gladdened with not only the good design, excellent print and lovely thick paper of the calendar but also the robustness of the packaging materials they use. They’re packed sturdily and are super secure. You will receive the calendar in perfect condition.

Orders are direct from Red Bubble and I don’t see your address or payment details at all. If you’d also like to keep in contact with me, it very easy with RSS, eNewsletter or Facebook – click on those text links or see the right ‘sidebar’. I am also now on Twitter, sometimes :)

By the way, Bold Souls of Adelaide, I am going to be doing a stall at the Port Market on October 8 and 9. So I recommend you sign up for my eNewsletter asap, as I’m busily plotting and scheming what kind of extra fun surprises I can give you if you come there!
Bold Soul eNews subscribers, international, will not miss out: I will have online-accessible goodness for you too!

Let me know what you think of the new cat calendar, either in the comments section below or on my Tangerine Meg Visual Artist Facebook page. You can even email me if that’s easy for you. I do appreciate you taking the time to send me your thoughts, bold soul.

Love you heaps, thanks for being here,
*hugs*
Meg x o

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After the Spring rainstorm

Posted on September 13, 2011 by avatar

Hello warmhearted bold soul,
I hope this finds you well &/or healing and happy &/or deciding how to change things for the better.

I am back from a 10-day change of scenery, and will show you photos when they’ve been extracted from my camera. For today, I offer for your enjoyment a feline blast from the “vault”.Sometimes the watercolour paints run together in an almost precisely imprecisely cat-fur kind of way, a way you can neither plan nor draw, and certainly that would be a challenge to carve into lino. I think this is one of those times.
Can I ask you a favour? If you see one of these “vault treasures” that you think would make a particularly good greeting card, could you let me know? I think that single pear (from last post) could be a encouraging image for solo parents – did you think that too?

Wishing you green and purple magic sparkles. Or sparkling magicals :)
Much love,
Tangerine Meg x o

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The story of a single pear

Posted on September 5, 2011 by avatar

Hello petal! Mwah! :)
I hope you are going tremendously well, and having a brilliant day and week!

I have a picture post for you today, dearly beloveds, a blast from the vault (and when I say vault I mean large cardboard folder) that I was excited to rediscover.

The story goes like this: The single pear alludes to my solo parenting situation at the time, and the fabric was that of one of my favourite maternity dresses (I sewed it myself from a burda pattern magazine)! You can see a little bit of a clothes iron (I ironed?) in the background and a little of its cord, strangley umbilicus-like. It brings back recollections of my boys’ very young years - except the the ironing which I have blotted out! I like the colour scheme that the fabric suggested, it’s not as rainbowy as my latest stuff, but still bold. This picture is a result of making a moment (or several non-consecutive moments most likely) to draw and paint amidst all the Things That Needed To Be Done.
It’s been interesting finding quite a few of my previous paintings, would you like to see a few of the others?

Take care, beautiful bold soul :)
Lots of love,
Meg x o


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Bold new colourful artwork, greeting cards and even hair

Posted on September 2, 2011 by avatar

Dear beloved kindred spirit!
I hope you are shiningly well and frolicking in both joy and abundance :)

I am bursting to introduce this new lino print to you! Can you imagine the colours zinging right off the paper and into your face? Pixels are a bit different but I hope you get an idea -I SO wish I could show it to you in real life, Lovely One!

Content is a study in settling in, right into the warm brightness of your surrounds. Orange Cat is an expert in the art of arranging himself - in this case on the patchwork blanket that my husband’s now 94-year-old Nanna knitted for him long before we met! Take up Orange Cat’s message of luxuriation and contentedness, and drink in the vibrancy  :)  I would love you to see and hold and gain colour-soul-liftment from Content. If you are interested in a rather unique (there are and only ever will be 9 in this edition of handpainted prints) artwork, make your way (via one click) to the  Cat Art Emporium :) Email me if you want to arrange part payments, dearheart!

And, there’s more: These are the 4 newest greeting card pictures I have to offer you, bold soul. Have you a loved one’s birthday coming soon? Or maybe you need to top up your greeting card stash? :) These are available now from the Greeting Card page. [Thank you so much Birdy for letting me know that a vital element was missing - the "View Cart" button! If you've previously tried to buy greeting cards or other art and it didn't quite work, have another try and let me know how it goes! I am always super appreciative of feedback that allows me to make things work better! *Hugs Birdy*]

While I am showing you new things, wanna see my new hairdo? In theory I am ‘growing my hair’ but it’d been feeling a bit dry lately (from months of having an underactive thyroid I think – long story) and it was time for a change! As a bonus I now have a hardly ‘hair like’ hair colour that she rinsed through too (the bright smudge on my ear will wash off!) Just look at the crazy volumes of Spring blossom in the background!

Another consideration with the haircut is that now my energy is returning I intend to return to circus training next term (I’d given myself a break to take care of my health). If you’re doing acrobatics (and I intend to be), it’s quite a comfort factor to know your shoulders are free of your hair when people are going to stand on them.

I’d love to hear juicy details of your greeting card stash in the comments section, below :) What you’ve got there, how much you love surprising people with something ‘just right’ that you’d collected and then re-found. I am assuming here that you have a greeting card (and possibly gift?) stash - am I right? ‘Cos I know you’re fun, loving AND organised :)

Well, dear, have a lovely weekend, buy art if it calls to you, and I’ll ‘see’ you soon :)

Love Meg x o


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