When I had my long bout of finishitis last year, one of the items on the WIP list that I failed to eliminate was the Swimmers Clock. There was simply too many hours of work left to do, to get it done by Christmas. But I did find time to work on it, and my enthusiasm for it and mosaics returned.

Pretty soon, however, I hit a snag. I ran out of blue tiles for the background. They weren’t available at Bunnings, so I headed to the manufacturer, Johnson Tiles. There I learned that the colour was discontinued. The girl at the front desk said there were a few boxes left at the warehouse and ordered them for me, but when I rang on the day she said to call on, she found no order and the person I spoke to said there were none left. This is where the clock is up to:

In the meantime, I started another project: a house number. Seeing Paul with his large tin of obsolete keys, I had the idea of using them in the background. I finished the mosaic just after New Year.

The cream tiles are the same type I was using on the clock. However, I ran out of that colour, too. But it isn’t a discontinued colour, and I was able to get a couple from Bunnings. But these did not break as easily or in a predictable way as the old ones. I looked on the back and saw that the old ones say “Made in Britain” while the newer ones says “Made in Malaysia”.

Fortunately I was able to finish the mosaic by simply cutting and breaking until I had the right shapes, making a lot more wastage in the process. But I was kind of glad the blue for the clock was discontinued as it would be a much more frustrating process filling in the last of the background.

I had bought a bunch of duck-egg blue tiles hoping to just transition into another colour on the clock, but they didn’t match very well and the cutting problem put me off trying with any other colour. Googling, I found that the colour is still available in the UK. I can’t tell from the websites if they are made in Britain or Malaysia, however, so I posted on Facebook asking if anyone knew someone over there who could ship some to me.

A few days later, at a party, a friend said the tiles sounded a lot like what he and his wife used on their bathroom. Later he sent a photo, and they do look very much like the ones I need. I just need to get hold of them and see.

In the meantime, again, I’ve started another mosaic. I’ve been meaning to tile one of our bird baths, as it has a hole in the bottom that needs filling. Wondering what I’d do with the hard-to-cut duck egg blue and leftover cream tiles, I realised that if I smash them up with a hammer and use them as random shapes they should work okay. The smaller the pieces, the easier to fit them together.

Of course, I then ran out of cream, but that’s okay, I know I can get those ones at Bunnings.