Killing time without injuring eternity....

Prompted by The Whalebone Box I am now reading Philip Hoare's Leviathan, or The Whale - a lovely book which has been on my 'to read' pile for too long unread; it tells a lot about Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne,  and Thoreau too... who put himself into a two year self isolation, minutely observing the natural world around Walden Pond..... "seclusion charged his imagination. Thoreau revelled in the retreat of the day, and in the hours slowed by the calm surface of the water:
'As if you could kill time without  injuring eternity'."

I have found it far easier to sit drawing up ideas and cutting them than getting down to committing them to print - today should have been the day for clearing up and cleaning out the printing space and getting stuck in, but I again spent all day drawing new, re-cutting old, changing ideas, having new....
by my reckoning I have now cut around 50 more playing card blocks since lockdown and cut the new fool book - time to print...

I wanted to try this enigmatic image on the left - see how it will print, sort of wreckage on land, a village crumbling behind; and I re-cut the Fortitude emblem as I wasn't happy with her, clarified her lion head-dress hopefully...
which then led me to try cutting a very traditional alchemical emblem- the green lion swallowing the sun and a sinking moon - a partner for the straw bear perhaps ( won't go as far as red shoes) - the seven stars along his body give him rather weird tracky-b  effect legs and I am not sure he will really fit in but I enjoyed playing with him and he may be useful for something.....
I also need to re-cut the Hermit tree image, who may end more fed by his roots, possibly...
and there is also one more very simple ( and therefore difficult ) flooded tree image to cut tomorrow - it needed to be on a piece of wood with the grain going horizontal rather than top to bottom, so not sure whether this will look strange in a set or not- we'll see....

so tomorrow I may have to give my cutting technique digression,  for any of my printing group who might be reading this, as there may not be much to see  .....