Yesterday I woke early. Just after 3am. I know! Anyway, I was puzzling about that bamboo fish. Thinking that even if I did another one with string all the way around the outside, I still wouldn’t be able to hang it horizontally. Also, Christine noted that it didn’t have any fins. The construction method isn’t really consistent with the addition of fins so I had to think of a different way of making a bamboo fish. I thought that, because the bamboo was hollow, I could string it a different way, by running the string through the bamboo. However, it still probably wouldn’t be rigid enough to hang properly. So then, I thought of glue.

I didn’t really think this through before I started except to realise that I needed to glue the bamboo onto something. I started at the head end and quickly realised that for stability I needed a slightly more elaborate frame than I started with, so the frame grew with the fish and it’s a bit of a mess at the back. But, sure, who cares about the back anyway? Here it is, fins and all. Hopefully, it’ll end up in our downstairs bathroom, which has a fishy theme.

I found an interesting symbol for a phoenix on Pinterest and it put me in mind of flames and fire. Then I thought that I would have no idea how to paint fire. So I looked it up. It’s not easy! Anyway, here are my first attempts. What I’d like to do is try to paint fire on the inside of an egg shell and superimpose the phoenix symbol on the top of it. We’ll see whether that works or not.

A few days ago I painted some bamboo sections white and black. Here’s one of the things I might paint on one of the white ones.

One day. Three Fs. Fish, fire, foliage.