An Artful Potato

I

I suspect it is a recessive gene that allows one to see all sorts of things in almost innocent fruits and vegetables. I always knew I could see lots of things in clouds and vinyl bathroom floors but my sister seemed to have a "special" gift (see her Sexing Lemons post on her Escape from the Library blog). But, alas, I knew I was cursed too when this little fingerling potato left me with no thought in mind but Henry Moore Potato. And then ...five potato, six potato, seven potato, Moore. Honest.

Fall Photos

All of the pretty colors are gone now but one afternoon Ken took the camera out and got these shots of the cleaned out garden space, some geese he startled on the pond, a grandpa frog in the pond and the paths in the woods. It was great for me because that was when I was barely getting outside because of trying to get the ornaments done. Hopefully next year we'll get out to collect the hickory nuts and walnuts and chestnuts.

The Dreamscape Book

This accordian book is one of my favorites. The little scenes are overlaid with pieces of sheer vellum that can be lifted to see the scenes better. It was really different to try to distill the essences of these places I dream about into stamped scenes.

Two more of my "little books" are posted April 2009 and October 2007.

Rubber Stamp Madness / Little Books

While we were still in Kirkland, I submitted most of the scenic stamping I've done over quite a few years for a special publication Rubber Stamp Madness magazine is doing on scenic stamping. The whole thing seemed to get put on a back burner and with our move I didn't give it another thought until last spring when I thought I'd like to get my submissions back and realized I hadn't sent in a change of address. Shortly after I contacted them, they asked if they could use some of the submissions for a feature in their Holidays issue(pictured here). The writer for the article was the delightful Barbara Blanks whose blog is now in my links. The issue came out last week and the article said that some of my little books were to be seen here on my blog. Since the focus lately has been the move and gardening, I thought I would post a couple of those little books. This one is in the form of a star book but shaped like a nautilus shell. It has snippets of the poem "The Chambered Nautilus" by Oliver Wendell Holmes. I'll put up another one tomorrow as The Amazing Race is calling me to the boob tube.

Todd and Kei Chi's Visit

This was over a month ago and I'm really late in getting it posted but we had some very special guests the last weeks of September. Our son Todd and his wife Kei Chi were here from Seattle. We stayed very busy most of the time they were here with trips to Malabar Farm State Park, Lehman's in Kidron and the Stratford Ecological Center in Delaware. We picked a lot of black beans and lima beans to shell. Since Ken and I thought digging potatoes was so much fun, we left a few fingerling potato plants for them to dig. We ate a lot of garden produce so there was some serious cooking done too. And, of course, anyone who is here on a Friday gets to go to the produce auction. Todd and Kei Chi walked over to the auction and back to the house but we didn't make them carry our goodies: eggs, green beans, tiny hot peppers, hickory nuts and a hickory nut pie.

They took a short trip to Columbus to visit friends and relatives and a thrift store on Cleveland Avenue that we all love. Todd works at Microsoft so I had thought he would appreciate getting away from the computers for a while but I was wrong. The last day they were here, Todd's friend from Columbus, Dell, came up for a short visit. Dell is always busy with his food service business so we felt lucky to have him spend some time with us.

My Absolute Last Garden Post (Ho ho)

Well, it seems that most everyone who looks at this blog is looking for news of the veggies. I had no idea. I put some of the middle of the season garden pictures here: http://picasaweb.google.com/kenandsharonsahl/Gardening101# because I had just run out of things to say. These are the results of two of the best picking days we had (there's 110 pounds of tomatoes in that one shot) and a shot of the freezer and a composited pic of most of what we canned. We also just bought an Excaliber food dryer and are having a good time playing with that. We haven't given up on the solar dryer we had started building - just short on time.

We did learn some valuable garden lessons: two seed packages of beets produce way too many beets, garlic is supposed to be planted in the fall, if peppers aren't ripe and red by now, forget it. Also, either the complete organic fertilizer mix described in Steve Solomon's "Gardening When It Counts" is amazing stuff or Ken and I have had a pretty good run of beginner's luck.

I have now sworn not to get back into the garden because I am FINALLY working on some ornaments. We'll see how long that lasts because my tiny okra dried so well I want to try drying some larger pods. Maybe I can talk Ken into fetching some and cutting them up.

My Output during Kate's visit

These are a few of the things that I did while Kate was visiting. Looking back, it was more about learning some techniques than getting anything useful. I had wanted to do some altered cabinet cards but the ones I printed (one made up from a photo of our grandmother and one downloaded from a site about guitars, I think), I printed the wrong size for cabinet cards and we didn't realize that until much later. The small fabric pages were for an old Word Perfect binder I have where I want to combine fabric and paper projects. My initial thoughts on how to get the small pieces into the binder are not working and I did not like the results of using adhesive sheets to stick the farm scene together - much too flat. So that project will continue to be a challenge.

I hope Kate will post her grandmother "cabinet card" also. I loved it.