Baufix 3001

In January I got a Baufix set off eBay: "Unused in original box with all contents..." As is so often the case, the box may have been original, but it was battered, and it wasn't actually complete. Not the bargain it might have been, but still a nice find.

Fortunately, when I finally buckled down to build this truck today, I was able to come up with substitutes for the missing pieces from an earlier Baufix find.

Altogether, I can now successfully build from a variety of downloaded examples, and I even have an instruction book. Not least, I now have real Baufix wheels. :)

Baufix is good fun, a happy variation of blockplay.

A scent of sand, chalk and linseed oil

An especial delight in returning to Ankerstein after a period of neglect is rediscovering the pleasure of the distinctive scent of the stones constituants - dominated by the linseed oil, enhanced by the chalk, and do I really detect the quartz sand, or is that just the power of suggestion? Sunlight seems to nudge me to bring out the Anchor blocks, perhaps because its warmth brings out the aroma.

The plan is one of those that accompanies set #6, but it can also be downloaded -- look for GK-NF, 06, "6 972," page 02.

Webster is generously providing background scenery of rolling hills. He obviously can find peace without the therapeutic benefits of block play.

Large bead design

My beadplay has continued, with intermittant meditatations on how my version of beadplay relates to what my best blockplay is for me.

I've mostly been doing small bead blocks based on quilt blocks, crochet blocks, beadwork, needlepoint, etc.

But the other day I ran across an interesting book:
American Indian Designs for Needlepoint Rugs. Other books have similar designs, but in this one, they are very close to actual size for Perler beads or Hama beads.

That means you can just place Perler's large trasparent boards over the color designs, and work directly, just like the Chicken Socks Melty Beads book, the Hama Maxi sets, or some Perler sets.

My first project from the book, on two linked Perler boards, is in the photo. (I wanted to use up some Ikea beads, which also meant I had to do some color substitution.)

Pretty nifty fun, and for me at least, a form of block play.

Ball Mosaic

Not blocks, but not far removed from my Parquetry post of a while back. And maybe we can count that nice chunky block of glass that, with its appropriate indent pattern, forms the base of the design. Or we can claim an Ankerstein link, and reference Richter's Meteor, which came in several versions and was shown in various of the old Anchor plans booklets (scroll down to page 18).

I first learned of my glass set, illustrated above, in the Kugelmosaik web site I cited for the Richter sets. I had been using Meteor diagrams (such as those in the Vorlagenheft link for the first set -- and scroll down for an Ankerstein image!) to make fuse bead patterns with Perler and Hama beads, and was googling for more variety. That item mid-right is my newest fuse-bead block, made in counterpoint to the design I had just made in glass.

The Vorlagenheft for the glass set doesn't show blue, so I decided I would substitue blue for green at whim. Since the green is actually a poisionous greenish yellow, whim came early.The white glass balls for the set apparently went missing long ago, with some red and black beads put in the empty compartment. I resubstituted some round pearlized beads of almost the exact size. They all but disappear in the photo, but are quite gaudy in real life.

Not block play in terms of setting blocks one on the other, but certainly not far afield from blocks being arranged esthetically, with the structural elements being repetition and symmetry, rather than stack and span.

The image below shows some earlier examples of fuse-bead blocks from ball mosaic patterns. For my head at least, a similar overcoming of entropy. A satisfactory extension of block play.