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.

Studio II

Well, I put these in backwards. The last photo is Ken putting some temporary lights in for us to work with. Then Kate working on a project and lastly (actually firstly) a few shots of the studio all ready to go. The bears, books, beads shot is there because Kate arranged them the way she wanted them, which I thought was a stitch. The book she made for my birthday is too tall for the shelves and is sitting in the window. The windows will get blinds so won't always be so bright in photos.

There was a bit of time spent looking for stuff but not really as much as I had thought. We did oodles of crafting which I'll show on the next post and hopefully, she will show hers on her blog too since time just ran out on getting photos of everything.

The Studio

The studio is in a semi-attached garage across the breezeway from the house. We had jumped right off the deep end shortly after we got here and had a Naturestone floor installed. Crazy me thought that was all there was to it. But a really cold winter and getting most of my working supplies into the basement made me a bit more willing to wait for insulation and other amenities. Ken and Barry and I blew the insulation into the walls and although I thought I would just be in the way, the machine was so loud it required someone to signal between the hopper and the end of the hose.

Ed and Dee Ann, friends of ours from Lancaster, came to help with the wiring. The guys managed to do most of the nitty-gritty stuff in two visits. The diffusing lights and the fans still need to be installed but we wanted the finishing work done before that.

Ken and I nailed supports for the pieces that were to go between the joists, stuffed pink insulation into the cavities and cut and installed the short pieces of 2 x 8s to fit between the joists. We were really pleased with the results of that last finishing touch. We also insulated below the beaver board with foam insulation and put up a baseboard but I couldn't find any pictures of that because at that point I got overly anxious to get moved in. Ken had told my sister Kate that we would try to have the studio ready for her visit in July. I knew it would involve more than just moving everything out there. We had to organize it and then try to remember where stuff got put away. Assigning letters to each bookcase or storage unit helped me know what went where after the organizing was done. Most of the work was done when our friends had time to provide the help we needed or when it rained and we couldn't get into the garden.

And Even More Garden Pix

These beans are black beans but we also have peas (I know it's too late), limas, green beans and edamame. The pictures were fairly indistinguishable. The little red stemmed ones are beets, already thinned. We built a support for the cucumbers and cornichons. Pretty cool, huh?

And that's the herb garden with the stones around it and yes, there are 6 more tomato plants in it as well as a number of tomato plants in pots on the rim. Wish us luck figuring out what to do with all of them. I should weigh them as we bring them in just for fun.