Art Weekend Content

So Pam and I had spent two days creating and while I got a few backgrounds done, she did many pages in an altered book journal and quite a few journaling inspiration cards. You can see her results here: http://dieverdog.blogspot.com/ . Pam is a graphic artist with lots of skills in her bag. I usually take her ease and speed at creating in stride, i.e., I just expect her output to be about three times mine, but I was starting to feel some pressure to at least make something that had some content. So I did the Hard Heart page and a few soulless cards and felt a lot better. My heart is fine, by the way. (Unless Top Chef really does harden it.) All of the pieces have a major collage component and the more I do it, the more I enjoy it. Ken and I have even gone dumpster diving at the local recycling center to get some glossy magazines. The amazing resource of the King County libraries ongoing magazine sale is not available here, so send all of your old magazines my way. I cut out what I want and recycle the rest. I'm only partially kidding!

Art Weekend

My second project was also from Jane Davies' book. She suggested making some collages that are only intended as backgrounds for other work. I just used some heavy cardstock as a substate and started gluing torn scraps of paper from magazines, calendars, and scrapbook paper. Much of the red one came from a Christmas flyer. This was really fun and I can foresee using both the original and the scanned version to build onto.

Backgrounds and Paperdolls

My friend, Pam, came to visit for four days with the idea that we would play with our paints, stamps, inkpads, and collage materials the whole time. My first project was to do some paint playgrounds, an idea I found in Janes Davies' Collage Journeys. I used 22" x 17" paper and just smeared it with paint with a foam brush. Obviously, I didn't know when to stop, but one of the things I love about this book is that she tells you many ways to go back and forth between digital techniques and messy hands techniques. So I think I can use these backgrounds effectively in digital collages. The paper dolls are BJD bodies from Minoru World. I wanted one of these but they didn't go on sale, so I made her some clothes from vellum. I sort of ran out of patience before I finished the last card.

Farm Pix

I haven't gotten out to get pictures of all of the snow, so here are some earlier ones.

I had tried and tried to get the ducks that were using the pond from late October through the beginning of December and they wouldn't let me get close. But when Pam was here, 12/10, we were walking through the woods and came up on them from behind and they just sat there for a photo shoot.

The tractor pictures were from even earlier, sometime in October. Ken wondered why I was so intent, but anyone who knows me knows my greatest fear is being behind the wheel of anything. Combined with the boredom of going about 1/2 mile an hour, it made for a strange expression. We were dumping leaves from the yard out in the woods.

First Frost

This morning when I took the dogs out to go to the bathroom, there was a light frost on everything and we could see our footprints in the grass as we walked. I hurried them back inside for breakfast, grabbed my camera and went back for a few shots. The pond looked clearer than usual so that made a good shot, the frosted grass of course, and then these things that are all over the ground under a big tree by the pond. Barry says they are chestnuts and I have no reason to doubt him. They are quite spiny and I steer clear of them when the dogs are along.

The first shot is some acorn squash we got at our very first produce auction. We had forgotten it and had slept a little late so it was already started when we got there. It was much smaller than the one we went to with Jean, so not intimidating at all. As I made my way to the action, a bid had just been completed on about 25 dozen eggs @ $.65 per dozen and I was surprised the auctioneer let the bidder take what he wanted which was only a couple of boxes. He let the losing bidder take what he wanted (about 4 dozen) and was hunting for someone else to take the rest, so I asked if I could have some without a number and got 4 dozen and instructions to go get a number real quick. We also got a bag of 5 pounds of new potatoes the same way, and I finally actually bid on the squash and got them for 60 cents each. They are small and very tasty. The Jerusalem artichoke was given to me by a man who got a whole box of them. I asked him what he was going to do with them since I've never fixed them. He thought he was getting sweet potatoes so was surprised to find out they were Jerusalem artichokes. We'll go again next week. Another customer we talked to said the auction goes all year, but later in the fall and winter is mostly hay, firewood and pastries. She also told us about another produce auction on Thursdays so we're going to check that out too.

A Sight Seldom Seen

Barry titled this when he walked by while Carol and I were putting the CD rack together. I don't know if it was a brand new experience but she was a fast learner.

The Move

Thankfully the feeling that the move was one long nightmare is fading. Just getting the truck up the hill and then backing it into the driveway scared the s*** out of me and after it was loaded, Ken did it again with the trailer. As we were pulling out with both fully loaded, our neighbor, Larry. who had dropped over to say bye, came running after the truck, waving a piece of something in his hand. He said it was a bolt from the trailer suspension that was completely broken off. Thank you, Larry, from the bottom of our hearts! So we made our way carefully to the UHaul in Bothel (about 7 miles away) where they told us there was nothing to be done but reload the load into a new trailer and that there was one available in Seattle. We pleaded, begged, threatened, whined and cried but had no choice but to drive the monster truck/trailer to Seattle. We had been promised some help with the job, but the two guys who got the assignment were intent on assigning blame for the broken bolt to us, saying the trailer was too heavy and that we were going to have to leave some things behind. And then it started to rain. After they slammed a few things around, we asked them to stop "helping". Another man came from another dealership to smooth things over but other than helping us get the first trailer unloaded, there wasn't much he could do to help. I took the photos above as things came out hoping they would help reload, but the battery ran out just as we finished unloading. Have I mentioned yet that we spent three days getting the trailer loaded? Six rainy hours later, with only one major breakdown on my part, we were ready to roll, with only a few things left behind. I want to say another BIG thank you to our daughter-in-law, Kei Chi, who drove over to Seattle and dog sat with Juniper and Sambo. We wouldn't have been able to do it without her gracious help.

And speaking of the two dogs, you can see from the photo how squeezed we were. I was in there with them! Sambo found a warm spot on the floor and didn't complain about my resting my feet on him. Juniper was more curious and spent most of the trip an my lap. If I scooted all the way to the door (about 3 inches off the seat), we could sit side by side to give my legs a rest.

Some of the ride was extremely bumpy, but some was fairly smooth. It was slow going, taking a full five days to get to Ashland. The other major headache was near Chicago. We had made the trip three weeks earlier to scout out the roads and get the Prius back. I had routed us completely around the whole Chicago area, and when we got to the point of diverging from the AAA plan, it was raining cats and dogs and we got a phone call and missed our turn. So we drove through the Chicago construction, in the rain, with me in tears, convinved we were going to die. We didn't and it probably made the trip 3-5 hours shorter. And way more memorable.