Bags and books and featherweight things

I had to deliver two lots of artworks to two different places today, one early morning, one mid day, so this entailed getting out both artbags, one the ancient gray canvas one of student days, the other a more interesting one.

And it occurred to me that they were great canvases for painting on, as are my totebags for grocery shopping.  And that they might be candidates for transparencies.. so I took a pic or two, and here they 
are.  

Two sides of same bag, two moods!

Front and back of giant art bag.  The second one is a pocket, but it could be a bag in itself.  The only drawback to giant bags is that if you take advantage of the size, you can't lift them...

You know how easy this is, yes?  you take any old canvas totebag, tape it with masking tape to give yourself boundaries, then using liquid acrylics and a one inch cheapo sponge brush, you paint.  Then you peel off the tape. And you have a much more interesting bag than you had before.  You might also have something you could frame.

This could go in the art blog, but that's going to be a bit heavy with the shows and with the artist book capers, so I'm putting it in here.  And there's an invitation to create and teach a workshop, which I'm thinking about, and will get into over there, when I get there..

And I have two books to recommend, A Bird in the Hand, by Diana Henry, which doesn't sound very new and different, but it's great. She uses all the spices I learned to use from Ottolenghi in the service of chicken.  Really interesting stuff here. Worth a try.  

But, smugly, she doesn't have the one I invented I think, last Friday, chicken thighs, pounded thin, rolled up with sharp cheese and baby bellas sauteed with all kinds of interesting spices, spritzed with olive oil, showered with panko, and roasted at 400F.   Does this have a name? I probably only dimly remembered it from somewhere and thought I'd invented it, as you do.

On the food front, a neighbor stopped by to return a container, in which he had put two slices of banana bread, different recipes. Both wonderful, they became my afternoon tea. Nice chat on ingredients.

The goose feather resting on the chicken book is a find from today's marsh walk, probably a Canada goose. They're in nesting mode right now, so I was careful not to blunder through them.  They can get a bit short tempered if they think you're on their patch.

And the other book is one I really recommend, How to Read Water, by Tristan Gooley. This man is a wonderful teacher, brilliant and knowledgeable and capable of talking about his subject clearly and without reaching down. He has a great reading voice, too.  I heard his audio of The Lost Art of Reading Nature's Signs, and was very impressed.  He was on radio recently, and I got so engrossed in his anecdotes about water and how to study it that I'm now reading his book on it.  

So after doing the art deliveries and other errands, I took a walk along a nearby marshland, where there's plenty to see, and studied water patterns and little wavelets and how the shape of the banks and the breeze changed them, putting my newfound knowledge to work.  Anyway, do look at any of his writing, it's great.  

Today the birds were out in force, sunny, building time, and my favorite song of all, I heard the shout of the redwing blackbird.  It's not melodious, not a patch on some musical birds, but for me it's so redolent of Spring, and Shakespeare, and the smell of boxwood, and well, it's the real sign of spring here.  Other birds wander in early, but once the sound of the blackbird is heard, you know it's official.  Here it is, complete with rather fuzzy pic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RA0FwcSb8ng

And that's a few of the things happening today around here.

Field and Fen lives up to its name for once

A couple of mild winter days is all it takes for me to get out, walking up a storm, observing, collecting, and generally liking the season and the freedom to see it.

I'm reading one of Tristan Gooley's books, and getting a raft of great ideas from it, some of them even useful.

The lost art of reading nature's signs : use outdoor clues to find your way, predict the weather, locate water, track animals--and other forgotten skills

This is out in ebook form, and I'm reading it via Hoopla at the moment. I tried to give you the full link showing the cover, but Blogger panicked and said, no, no, not secure, don't go there, sigh. Very readable prose, and though he's based in the UK, his observations are interesting for other parts, too.  He's walked and observed all over the world in practically every natural surrounding, and lived to tell the tale.

I already started noticing things about trees and mud and wind that I hadn't put together before.  Anyway, if you make art, you'll like these ways of seeing, and if you like walking, you'll like his approach, and if you're an armchair hiker, it's still fun to read. Some of his tracking skills are vital for readers of detective stories, where you have to see whether there were three people or four carrying another, or whether the bike or the car came by first..

I do a modest amount of tracking at the Preserve, since you can see traces of deer, fox and other animals, from footprints in mud, and scat and munched trees and shrubs, and this encourages me to continue.

Winter is a good time to observe the effects of weather on trees, since their skeletons are in view.  Around here the effects are as likely to be those of the power company as the weather, but you learn to allow for that, too. 

And yesterday I went in search of witchhazel, and may be a little early, since there were just buds, nothing open yet, but I brought a few twigs home in the hope that the indoor warmth would push them on a bit.  They're the reddish ones on the right, which will open into tiny shaggy blossoms, red and yellow, ragged petals.
A bit of fluff from a bird came home with it, so I left it in place.

In the same glass there is another shrub, too, the one with the yellowish cruciferous blossoms, and I'm hoping that maybe Quinn, or Judy, with much greater knowledge than I, can suggest what it is. Is it related to witchhazel? different blossom form, though.  And my searches have not turned up a possible name. 

I'm particularly happy to see anything that blossoms in January, anyway, even earlier than my six snowdrops, which I hope will return this year, despite being trampled on by the builders, and having equipment and materials shoved around on their territory.