First Thing,

I arrived at the post office in Naklua,

  and it was packed, 

with motorcycles parked everywhere,

 and this is what I was here for, unsuccessfully delivered yesterday, I though I would pick it up Myself today,

 and inside, 

 a number of sheets,

of 3 mm thick perspex, that had been laser cut to form various sizes of gear wheels,

 I took the paper covering off of one of the sheets, in doing so the cut out pieces were left behind,

 lots of them, but there are a few in this pile that should be kept, 

 in case you have not recognised what all of these gear wheels are, 

 they are a type of adult Spirograph, notice the small doughnuts, for want of a better word, that are easy to throw away when unpacking the larger pieces at the bottom of the picture,

 but unlike Spirograph where the gears are moulded, these are all laser cut for greater accuracy, and here is the good part, the sheet the gears are cut from can also be used as a template, I never had a Spirograph as a kid and always fancied one so when I saw these I just had to buy a set,

 last week you may remember I bought a steel table and using braces made sure the surface was level, and this is what it was for, 

 to keep the paper and gears in place I had bought some magnets, normally you would use pins or tape to keep the paper in place,

 but as pins leave a hole in the paper and tape can sometimes remove the upper layer of the paper, I went the magnetic route, hence the steel fold away table,

 out of interest the company I bought the magnets from was first4magnets, I have bought a number of different types to see which perform the best for my use of them, the best for Myself so far is the N42 neodymium type,

 on to the pens, I thought I would try with these,

 so here goes, and it did not go well!

 the brain/hand movement was a tad out of sync,

 repeatedly!

 and it was not the fault of the gears,

 they are precision cut, and mesh perfectly, notice the small doughnut inside of the hole second in from the edge of the gear, easy to throw away with what appears to be unwanted scrap, also although upside down in this picture on the right-hand side a number with the number of teeth in the circle, this appears on all of the gears so you can see if they will inter-mesh with no problems,

 I tried a few different gears and coloured pens,

 oops! 

 I tired another combination and was going well, until one of the pens went on strike,

 I finally made a complete circuit,

 but missed by a tad, the outer frame had moved, I need more magnets! 

 this design worked well, 

 but going too fast the ink did not have quite enough time to dry, so in places it smudged slightly,

 on the outer pattern every time I made a mistake I changed the colour of the pen,

after a couple of hours I stopped, my arm was beginning to ache, but what great fun, it is so difficult to imagine what the result will be from choosing the inner and outer gear combination, I just have to have lots more practise to achieve a perfect pattern,

after our evening meal we watched a couple from The Chase and rounded off the evening with three back to back episodes of Suits, and with that we were off to bed.