Scenes for painters coming up, aka This One's for You, Maureen!

Artist friend Maureen recently asked if I would mind her using some of my landscape pix, printed out from this blog, as raw material for paintings, and I said that would be fine, and thank you so much for asking first. Can't tell you how many people have swiped my work as a screensaver or to copy from, and been quite miffed when I pointed out that they need to ask first, since it's my property! that's not always fully understood.

I usually explain that if they admired my car, that doesn't give them the right to drive off in it! I might lend it to them if they ask, heck, I might even give it to them, but it's still my property.

Artist Maureen of course fully knows about copyright, and all of that, and I was happy to agree.

So it occurred to me while I was out walking today, wonderful late winter day, cold but not bitter, bright blue sky with little clouds scudding across, windy but the birds still out and getting active and starting their spring songs because of the lengthening daylight, anyway, it occurred to me that I could post pix in here specifically for people who might like to swipe and paint from them, or carve sumpin, or knit from them, or whatever.














So feel free to do so, and let us all know if you made something wonderful based on any of them!

Completed tapestry and friends

I can now declare the tapestry to be completed. It's all finished, backed onto a kind of ecru canvas that doesn't draw attention to itself, slotted with a dowel at the top and hung in place in the living room awaiting an exhibit opportunity, as soon as the new gallery opens, which will be at some point, not exactly known yet, since it's part of a new library under construction and almost finished.

As usual it's hard for me to apply words to my work in the form of a title, but if anyone has any cool ideas, please feel free to offer them. When I show this work, I plan to acknowledge Carol Q. who turned me onto spinning with a spindle, Paula L. who gave me the fleece, and friends on Ravelry who taught me how to use KoolAid to dye the resulting yarns I spun, dyed, and wove into these three related pieces. And if anyone comes up with an irresistible title, I will duly credit you with that, too.

The big monotype next to the tapestry is one I made years and years ago, and which has earned a good bit of recognition, nice to say.



What amuses me is that I still, as you see, like that long narrow configuration. I also love short wide paintings, too. Just do not at ALL like squares or circles.

Squares are too, um, static for me, despite Albers' Homage to the Square, and circles are too suffocating, no exit sort of deals. I know people make wonderful mandalas and rondels and there's a long honorable tradition of the circle, perfect form and all that, it's just that I would have to hold my breath the whole time and I can't face working in the circle.

I also took a pic to show you the new work and her friends -- bits of glassware I like on the shelves, and a fibre piece hanging from the ceiling which I made a couple of years ago when I was first fooling with string and freeform knitting.



Oddly enough, exactly as I can never explain or remember all the processes of painting or mixed media work I've done, I can't remember exactly what stitches I used in this piece.

There's knotting and netting and trinity stitch and massive increase/decrease things to make the folds, but I would have a hard time explaining it further! the armature is a bird's perch. Relic of my lovely cockatiel, so this is partly a tribute to her. She would have loved to take part, yanking on the strings, and generally creating a lot of new knots and frayed bits.

The string is regular mason's twine, from the hardware store, my favorite art shop.

So do give me the benefit of your creative title ideas, blogista friends! all ideas happily received and examined.

Still points, various

Time for a little reading matter.

What with various stresses going on in life, I figured it was time to revive my meditation practice, using a really helpful little book which comes with its own CD. I was a bit delayed by my inability to lay hands on the helpful little book and CD which had been put away when we did the Great Book Move for the Beautiful Floor, and found I was starting to get all mad and huffy over it. After I cracked up laughing at the notion of losing my temper because I couldn't get my meditation started, all the mad went away.

The reason the CD is useful is that it gives you, aside from comments, a couple of periods of silence (yes, I see the irony of buying a silent CD) where a gong strikes to start your meditation and another one ends it.

This helps me a whole lot, since I can stop looking over at the clock anxiously, and just do it. Also, this man has a great method of counting, so that you count one exhale, two inhale, three exhale, etc., up to ten. But if stray thoughts come jostling in, which they always do, you simply let them drift off and start over at one exhale, two inhale. It's good.

I notice that when you do this, all the surrounding animals also calm down, must be the vibes.

So that's for nonreading nonknitting nonmaking tapestry (backing is now ON and drying up in the studio) times. Distractible? me? oh look, a bird, no not me...

Poetry also keeps breaking in, and I want to mention Ted Kooser, Lights on a Ground of Darkness, a wonderfully evocative title. And the lead poem, about his mother, has this passage which is the most totally musical, carry the reader along in good hands, passage I've read in ages:

Mid April already, and the wild plums
bloom at the roadside, a lacy white
against the exuberant, jubilant green
of new grass and the dusty, fading black
of burned-out ditches.

What an opener! I stopped in the middle of a stanza, because this is the bit I wanted to say, oh, look, listen, read it, it's a great ride. The way it tapers off to the end. It's a memory of his mother near his own birthday, the gift she gave him of birth, and her own recent death, and well you just might want to read this whole collection.

Then Alison Lurie, not a novel this time, but a series of essays about classic children's stories, very interesting insights. Dr Seuss does not escape her laser beam -- she really explained to me why I hate Oh The Places You'll Go. I hadn't grasped that it's really a yuppie, acquisitive, bigger is better, famous is even better, rich is best of all, sort of ode. I just knew I hated it. She mourns the early Seuss who didn't think much of following the rules and getting rich, was more subversive.

And she is worth following for her accounts of Grimm, Anderson and various other children's myth and fairy tale and morality tale writers.

And my latest detective story discovery, by a wonderful writer, now a TV series, too, I notice locally, her Sergeant Murdoch, a Victorian policeman in Toronto. Apparently very authentic settings and historical accounts, but mainly rattlin good mystery stories. Maureen Jennings wrote them. And I'm very glad she did. All the elements to like: Victorian historical settings, great story, good mystery, appealing hero, strong women. All you need is a cup of tea and you're set.

Happy Valentine's Day to us all!

Since Valentine's Day is about friendship and love of all kinds, happy VDay to us all, dear blogistas, and remember that the paired thing is only a sidebar issue. We don't live in Noah's Ark....

Handsome Partner and Handsome son came through handsomely for this blogwriter, with one giving shopping requests and the other fulfilling them, then joining forces to write the card and envelope.



Major effort for HP to write at all, and I treasure his writing an entire wish inside the card, which I show not to brag, but to admire and be glad about. Thinking back to last year at this time and the total crisis we were all in, it's wonderful to be able to just celebrate like this.



The cats were very interested in the new box and card and the strange smell coming from the box when I opened it, and Duncan appointed himself Chief Inspector, just in case it was something good like tuna or ham, then shook his head to Marigold and they both strolled casually away, like, oh we knew it was something rotten like chocolate, all the time...

This is a multiple festival time, what with Chinese New Year, the year of the Tiger, and Mardi Gras, and Valentine's Day and in the US Presidents' Day, which I think is written that way since it celebrates plural Presidents. All happening right now. Gosh, the mandatory shopping alone gives you pause...

Anyway, enjoy the day, especially if you get to just not do much. People involved in the Knitting Olympics or the Ravelympics are no doubt already clicking away, but me, nah, knitting not being a competitive event, heh. Profanity in the course of knitting, now I could medal in that, easy.

I notice they've added another newly invented verb, having established medalling as a verb. The new one I notice is to podium!!! meaning get at least some medal or other. Well, he may yet podium on that one, I quote.

Big Snows make Good Neighbors

View out onto the patio before the storm was completely over with.




View out front -- those white elephantine shapes have cars under them..

Or rather big snows give generous people the opportunity to plunge in and help. This blogpost is a paean of praise to our good neighbors, who the day after record breaking snow, close to two feet fell, helped get my car out without being asked.

Day after we'd been socked in, the doorbell rang while I was giving HP breakfast, a neighbor asking for my car keys and saying they were about to dig my car out! I looked out and there were Bill B., Fumiko B and three year old Ken B., all dressed, armed with snow shovels, and ready to get to work. They not only shoveled out the car all around and behind it, a huge labor, if you look at the pix I posted which were taken BEFORE all the snow finished falling, but then warmed it up, backed out and turned it facing outward. As Bill explained, in case you need to get out in a hurry, you can.

I had barely recovered from this generosity when I got a call from another neighbor who reported she'd sent her son (this is the young man who sits with HP twice a week to let me get out for a while) down the street with a shovel to dig me out and he'd reported, hey, it was done already, Mom! then when I got out to take out garbage which I had dug out from the snow on my porch, yet another neighbor said he'd got togged up to come out and dig my car, then found it was done. Do I live in a good place or what?

All these friends know our situation and are simply not waiting to be asked for help. They'd give it gladly if I asked, but I didn't need to. The last big snowstorm we had, another couple of neighbors stopped me from trying to dig, and said, no, stop, go in the house, we'll do it. And one of them stopped by later to get my car keys and move my car out of the way of the plow so they could clear out all the parking spaces.

HS couldn't help, since he was totally snowed in and digging out of his own home miles away during all this activity. He made sure we were okay, though.

See, this is why we don't live in a retirement community! neighbors half your age and willing and kind are irreplaceable. Not to mention interesting, since there's a huge range of ages, occupations, races, nationalities just in this little block. Musicians, IT guys, accountants, graduate students, ferret rescuers, from the US, Japan, China, India, heck even NEW YORK!!!

Anyway, we're blessed and I just thought I'd like to say so.

And on the subject of people who come through, I offer you the first of the pictures of the miniature needleworks you adopted.



This is courtesy of Hali D, who also sent a lovely image of the rest of that wall o' stuff, but for some reason I couldn't get it to come in here! nemmind, she did a wonderful job of getting the Tudor Rose pieces framed and I love it.

How's the Round Robin Journal coming? is it on its way to Ontario yet?

Tangrams and taxes

Today seems to be Numbers Day.

Now that I've assembled all the federal tax info for HP and for me, two separate productions, not being a married pair, I decided to do a rough draft of the taxes, knowing we both have something coming back, and managed to get both done, whipping back and forward between last year's copies and this year's forms and the massive volume of instructions and ending up finding yes, indeed, we will get some $$ back.

In earlier years, HP used to make a huge production out of Doing His Taxes, involving days of calculations and sharpened pencils and lined yellow pads, and muttering and trying out this way and that to see what would work best, and generally driving me bananas over what is a comparatively simple matter. Particularly in view of the small numbers of $ involved.

Then last year at this time, HP was in the rehab, and HS and I made an executive decision to do his taxes, HS would recheck, just in case, since I was in crisis and gosh I might make mistakes, can't think why, and we did get it done, and presented to HP, took him through it and got his signature. Total time elapsed: less than two hours.

Today my own took about half an hour, his took about the same. This beats the heck out of paying a preparer to make the same mistakes I would make anyway. In fact I don't mind taxes at all, even in the years when mine have been very complex, with depreciation and interest and dividends and 1099s and all that.

Not that I've ever had any money to speak of, in fact what I've earned barely rates a whisper, despite how hard I worked and, immodestly, how much good I really did do. The complications don't decrease with the actual dollar value, sigh.

Doing important work for people in need and for animals and making art and creating art workshops for adults and for homeless children, and a lot of other stuff I've done isn't rewarded with a lot of $, but the psychic rewards are great. Except it's hard to present psychic money at the supermarket.

Anyway, I did this on me tod (UK slang, Tod Sloan, on my own, you know, rhyming stuff) for years and a tax accountant friend said he was worried that I was doing this and maybe missing out on valuable advantages and could have have a free of charge look over it, and let me know if he thought he should help, or refer me.

So I thought what the heck, okay, here, take a look. He came back after a couple of days and said, well, you certainly seem to know what you're doing. I couldn't find anything I would have changed. So that was nice,and I was very nice to him considering I could have jeered and said, ah ye of little faith, and mean stuff like that. But taxes, if you don't panic, and have all the stuff organized are not that awful. It's the organization of the paper and numbers ahead of time that kills you.

On a sadder note, I also celebrated Numbers Day by filling in the first of what will be a few Financial Disclosure forms for a local nursing home that may become HP's home, at least to get him on the waiting list. He's on board with this, knows it's inevitable probably, and is only concerned that I keep my hands on it all to make sure it goes well. Which is both a vote of confidence and a huge burden, when you think of it!

But numbers and shapes have happy sides, too, and I discovered Tangrams this week, too. I'd heard of them, but didn't know much about them. They're a set of shapes that fit together to make a double square, but then the parts can be rearranged, using all the seven pieces, to make all kinds of funky images, great fun, endlessly silly.



Originally a Chinese furniture designer made use of the concept to build tables that could be arranged according to need, and I found nice pix of this in modern form.



And you can prove Pythagoras' famous theorem using tangram pieces.



And, best of all I plan to make a set of my own using cardstock or something, just to play with, and best of allest, I realized that that lovely handmade box with the footcare stuff I showed you a while back is a perfect square, so will be a good home for my homemade tangram when I get it cut out.

So that's us! now for tea and snoozing while the blizzard roars on out there, all the places that were plowed this morning are all filled in again. But this snow is so good for the garden. At least that's what I keep saying.

Yarns, and other tales.

I decided that I needed to get on with using the lovely pale green cashmere yarn I unraveled from a thrift store sweater, and for reasons unknown to me, chose a lace scarf pattern to test it on. Well, I did warn my resident observers that knitters have a large and colorful vocabulary, most of it unprintable in this civilized blog, and I certainly justified that claim.

However, it's started, finally, after six different unsuccessful runs at it...starting with reading line one of the pattern instead of line three, and line five instead of line one, etc., even after I'd made my own little chart, check here if you've finished this line....the problem with lace knitting is that you really have to look back and forth between the stitches on the needles and the written pattern, and lemme tell you, with progressive lenses this is not so easy.

You tend to get the ssks and yos and k2togs kind of out of order as you glance back and forth. Then you tend to find you knitted one half of line one of the pattern and followed it up with a second half of line three because a kitty pushed the pattern aside to get on your lap in midknit.

Then you get desperate and get a big bulldog clip and clip the whole shebang open at the actual line you're supposed to be on. And remember to put in lifelines (those black threads are lifelines). You thread them through at intervals so if something awful happens you only rip back to the line, not to the beginning yet again.

Anyway, the scarf is now officially launched and I'm really liking it. Cashmere is lovely to work with, just slips gently through your fingers without taking off like a maniac or dragging back. Of course my observers are lying down quietly with a cool cloth on their foreheads.

Then there are the results of other recently harvested sweaters, one a cotton sort of wheaty blend color, which will be something for summer, the other a seagreen 100 per cent wool.




The arms of the seagreen sweater are now legwarmers for HP, perfectly warm and cosy in our recently ghastly weather, and the body part you see awaiting brilliant ideas, probably not involving lace.

The other two sweaters are going to be a mixture of legwarmers and hats and mittens and warm stuff for HS as well as HP.



They're MANLY colors, don't look like candy...and one is a lovely cashmere/merino mix, the other lambswool.



Which all raises the question, why, why, do all this? answer comes there right away: have you priced cashmere or good lambswool in the retail yarn stores lately? also these are sweaters that don't fit any of us or that nobody likes the style, or something very picky gang around here. But the materials are lovely.

And there's the thrill of the hunt...tantivy!

Speaking of which, I'm reading a massive biography of Queen Eliz. the Queen Mum, who lived to 102, hence the size of the book, I guess. I wonder if the bio writer knew what he would be in for when he agreed to it years and years ago...anyway, it's pretty good as a history of the UK during her lifetime as well as hers. And the PBS tv movie about her and King G. VI was pretty accurate, it turns out, many quotes directly from the research shown in this book, well done, too.

I'm the least monarchy loving of people, think it really never should have been and should be gone, and yet I'm still a fan of royal stuff! the Queen looking at horses, the Queen with herds of corgis biting her footmen, Princess Anne falling off her horse (actually she was on the Olympic jumping team, she's very good but everyone falls off sometimes), etc. etc. And the hats!!!! OMG the hats...anyway, it's a guilty pleasure.

And now I have to have a nice cup of afternoon tea with HP, Lapsang Souchong for him, fruit teas for me. Very civilized, very little profanity to be heard.

Chinese New Year soon, art celebration

At the library I use there's an exciting exhibit, small but lovely, of Chinese calligraphy and images, carved into wood and inked. It's a stunning notion, and apparently not a new one in Chinese art, to carve calligraphy into wood as well as onto paper, and this local artist is sharing a terrific output.

The largest piece, the horizontal one which does not show up well in the picture, because the incision is not inked, just left natural, took two years to carve -- it's a classic Chinese poem, written in political exile, about the simple beauty of everyday life and sights.

My favorites are the plum blossom/bamboo piece



and the small really flying exciting calligraphy. It hardly matters if you can translate, since the work itself is so visually exciting to see.






I've taken a picture of the explanatory text meant to tell us nonChinese readers about the tradition and meaning of the pieces.



Remember you can usually click on pix to enlarge them. Enjoy.

Candlemas. And Ground Hog.

Candlemas Day today, officially the day you can stop using the candles in the evening because the nights are getting lighter. Or something.

I believe it also replaced some earlier celebration, which no doubt knowledgeable blogistas will comment on to tell us, with a Christian version of it! and it's the Catholic Feast of the Purification, has to do with Mary recovering from the birth, you know the one, on December 25.

Six weeks on, and there is a Catholic ceremony for new mothers called Churching, where she goes to the church and trails about after the priest holding onto the end of his stole (long purple scarfy thing) praying together. Officially a ceremony of thanksgiving for a safe birth, unofficially a cleansing ceremony, sexist anyone....but I digress.

Getting out into the countryside, Groundhog Day and our local groundhog, Punxsatawney Phil gets to tell us whether there will be six more weeks of winter. Well, I suspect there will be, no matter what Phil has to say or squeak on the subject.

And Marigold the Burmese kitty, celebrated by abandoning her new favorite afghan, the one you saw in rough draft, now an FO (finished object, you have to be on knitting site Ravelry to get these terms).



So anyway, it left the afghan free to show you without a cat covering half of the design up.



It's a magic afghan, all lambswool and other fluffy stuff, guaranteed nap within minutes of getting under it.

Keep warm, everyone!

The Hounds of Spring on Winter's Traces

WHEN the hounds of spring are on winter's traces,
The mother of months in meadow or plain
Fills the shadows and windy places
With lisp of leaves and ripple of rain.

Swinburne.

I doubt if he would have applied this to today's hound sightings, but he's not in a position to complain, so please meet this morning's catch, our local Hounds of Spring:



Ziggy, four month old black lab/Shepherd mix with his proud teenage owner out in bitter weather running together and chasing sticks and generally acting like a happy puppy, posing very obligingly for me, actually planning to lick the camera.



And his new best friend, met this morning, three year old beagle/coonhound mix, running at a good 30 mph and cornering on two paws, as you see.



The two owners, a young teenage boy and a very old lady, also new best friends, but I couldn't get her into the same frame as her fast moving dog!

Celebrating January

Yesterday the almost full moon was up in a clear sky before the sun had set, and seeing it caught among the branches of a tree hurled me into a Japanese woodblock print. Favorite motif in Japanese printmaking, painting, haiku, is the moon caught in the tree.





It's one of those places in life where art informs what you see forever after. I can't see a field of corn stubble without flashing on Anselm Kiefer, either. Or an interior with a window without seeing Matisse.

And the other January pleasure is the shrubs that flower then.



Witchhazel is in full bloom, smelling wonderful, and definitely of interest to passing cats....Duncan pushed in on the picture taking session when I was trying to show you the twigs I swiped recently which have opened up. They're very tiny starlike flowers, beautiful seen through a magnifying glass. Like mosses, they're minute treasures which we hardly notice unless they're brought to our attention.

The snowdrop noses have appeared, and will soon flower, and daffodils are already above ground, but that will be quite a while. Meanwhile, I'm happy with the witchhazel blooming away out there, despite freezing winds and snow and sleet.

Moss on the north side, and other nesting ideas

Some simple knitting here, afghan squares knitted diagonally in garter stitch, here arranged in rough draft for deciding how to assemble them. The complete thing will be 16 squares in all, very symmetrical arrangement, all made in lambswool and angora, harvested from three thrift store sweaters, and destined for Handsome Partner's use when the weather is a little bit less bitterly cold. This picture was taken despite Marigold's best efforts to rearrange the pieces into a nice kitty bed for her. She will no doubt show up on future efforts, having already settled down for a nap on a square I was still knitting.

I'll single crochet the sections together, then do a nice edging around the whole shebang to give it some unity and shape. This is the kind of easy stuff you can do while you watch the news and argue bitterly with your partner about it.

And since it's the time of year when Spring ought to be getting here a lot faster than it is, I made a little moss terrarium (put onto this idea by Eepy and MaryAnn, blame them) today.



Just picked up some moss in the woods, around the beech trees, mostly predug by squirrels frantically looking for their nut deposits, I had it here before, I know I did, maybe it was that other beech tree, though, no, wait, Walt said absolutely the best return on investment was the black walnut area...and I set it up as is under a glass loaf pan, which was the nearest thing the house yielded, on short notice, to a Wardian case, set it on the shelf in the kitchen near the window, and am awaiting further developments.



Also on the woods walk, under a pile of leaves I found a personmade nesting house thing, made of cornstraw and other stuff, with a pointed roof. Anyway, it's now hanging from the wild cherry out back, and maybe we'll get a pair of Carolina wrens nesting in there this year. It occurs to me that I could just post a picture rather than blather on about what it looks like. This belated realization is the fruit of many years of writing for print publications during my misspent youth, all words, no pix. I keep having to remember I can do pix now.



I love Carolina wrens, because for a tiny bird they have the most amazing set of pipes, what a racket! and they repeat themselves endlessly, which I tend to, so I feel for them....they nest around here a lot, good school system and all that, usually in the most awkward place, like on the hinge of an open garage door so you have to decide whether or not to use that door for months on end. Or in the clothespin bag.

I've had them take a shot at nesting in hanging plants, then changing their minds, probably because the mourning doves whose specialty this is, had a quiet word with them..and mourning doves are model neighbors, quiet, nice kids, very tidy tenants.

Updates and foot power

I just had to show you this latest Freecycle find. It's a handmade fabric covered box containing footcare stuff, and the packaging is a wild grass. All made in Indonesia, why are you not surprised that such care and expertise and terrific sense of humor, is found here. As usual, the picture enlarges so you can probably read the contents, which are lovely, all natural good stuff.

The great thing is that it's a fair trade product, meaning that the original maker was paid a proper rate for the product, rather than the sweatshop levels you will be taking part in if you shop at various chain stores with very low prices.

But, if you Freecycle, it's the lowest price of all! someone paid a proper rate, gave it as a gift and the receiver passed it on to a happier recipient, me.

Other updates: the tapestry series is now under pressure, affixed to a backing, the glue is drying, and need only a couple more stages before becoming an actual finished artwork.

I have had many iterations of ideas about these guys since finishing the parts. They just didn't add up as well hung separately in a vertical formation as I'd hoped, but look a whole lot better when they're very close together, more bang. So that's the next stage.

I have some nice canvas (actually a dropcloth found at the dumpster and washed soft, lovely soft natural color) which I think will be the back of the whole series, in a solid vertical column. But that may change too. Can't show you pix yet, since they are reposing under glass sheets on glass sheets, with various thing like a miniature press and a shredder weighting down the glass, just happen to be a good size and heft for the job.

Did you know that "on the job" is a brit slang expression for having sex? I bet you didn't, and now know why you raise eyebrows and chuckles among brits when you say you called home to make sure the contractors you arranged for were on the job.....

Last update: the Round Robin Journal, according to my tracking number at the trusty PO, is now in the hands of Diane W., and I hope she's having a good time, and able to set aside a little bit of time, too, to play with it before it moves on in a couple of weeks' time. And might even take a pic of what you do, huh, Diane, that would be great?

Not too late to help Haiti

I haven't mentioned Haiti in here, for various reasons, one of them being that we all know and care already, and people who want to donate know how to, and my words won't add help to the situation.

But I usually don't give money immediately to this sort of huge crisis, since the fact is that they can't absorb a ton of help right away. They need it going along, and now is a good time to do something if you haven't already. Any amount (and I admit ours will be definition be small, given our financial situation) is good.

And take a look at dear Olive in the terrific Mason Dixon knitting blog, for inspiration! http://www.masondixonknitting.com/ that's probably not a hotlink, but cut and paste and you'll get there.

Rough drafts and finished objects

Out at the preserve the other day before the ice and rain moved in, I found many Canada geese and other species crowded into an open area of water on the icy lake -- the deepest part probably doesn't freeze, where they are -- making a terrific racket. They are noisy neighbors, and alas are protected in this state where they thrive and multiply amazingly.

And I got a nice shot of the stone bench that has been put up at the end of the peninsula which you can walk to by getting halfway round the lake then up the strip of land, and where before there was nowhere to rest your elbows while you held your binoculars, or sit high enough up to see. And now there is.




I talked about seating years ago with the preserve ranger, when there was nothing other than the trails, and he said, well, I have some good ideas about that, using natural materials and local labor, and he put several benches around where you often want to sit and wait for birds, made from fallen trees on the preserve (probably assisted by an active beaver colony forever felling trees) plus this lovely stone thing, like a dolmen except it's a bench, which doesn't ruin the point of the land at all.

Back indoors driven by rain and sleet, I wandered around and remembered my little tablescape upstairs, miniature animals sitting on a cigar box, all handmade, as were the cigars that used to be in the box, Cuban finest.





The animals are: wood jaguars, maybe, carved and painted in Indonesia, then one bread dough cat with saucer, created by HS at the age of 7, the little cat carefully modeled to crouch on her own, not resting on the saucer, which you slip under her chin! and the little clay turtle, was created as a model for kids to refer to, by the writer of this blog, as part of a series I taught in the local summer program a few years ago, on the Indians that used to be native to this area, the Lenni Lenape, and we did various art and craft projects using natural local materials. The animals are explaining their handmade origin in the picture, as you see if you crick your neck.

Tablescapes are fun to do, but in a house with cats, you have to choose your location with care, otherwise they will become tablekittytoys in no time at all.

And the studio as always is full of rough drafts in all kinds of media, usually all going at once, one feeding another, so I thought you'd like a glimpse.





While I make art, I like to have something going in my ears to occupy the left brain a bit and let the right brain get on with its work, so this usually means discussion shows on public radio, sometimes on the subject of food and cooking, and I have a small quibble here. Well, it's a huge quibble, but we're in miniature mode at the moment....which is:

I left kindergarten years and years ago, and I DON'T say my food is "crispy" or "toasty" or "piping" hot or "yummy." There. End of quibble.

Which reminds me of nibble...time for a little something.

Philip Levine and me

So we were watching a public tv news program the other night, and on came a poetry segment, Jeffrey Brown talking with Philip Levine, a poet I'd only very vaguely heard of and knew nothing about.

Now I realize that to some of our blogistas, this is about the same as my rushing in here and saying, listen, I discovered this terrific sonnet writer, and I think he's written plays, too, what's his name again, yes, William Shakestaff, no, I think I mean Wagspear. No, silly me, it's William Wagstaff, and he's really good...

Anyway in my own defense to those who have read and loved Levine for years, I have not always been au fait with modern poets, partly because I've been put off by poet nazi friends, the kind who insist in loud voices that you HAVE to LOVE poetry, and I admit I was even put off Mary Oliver by one of these pns who, when I casually mentioned that I wasn't much into reading poetry, ran and got a copy of a Mary Oliver and literally shoved it in my face. Had to duck to avoid being hit by it.

Which definitely cooled my ardor for the friend and the poet...then years later when I discovered Oliver for myself, I loved her, but had to come to her in my own time not because someone bullied me into it.

Likewise the poetry festivals which are surrounded by a lot of hoohah and posturing and stuff that has as much to do with poetry as sanding floors, but I digress....

Anyway, after we had listened to Levine talking naturally, winningly, and coming across as a wise and nice person, about his earlier life on the auto production line, later as a college professor, I got a couple of his books out, one for HP and one for me, from the library, just to get a taste.

And you know how once in a long while a writer will say something that you think, ohmygarsh this person said what's in my own mind, just did it for me. It's a magical connection, and rare and lovely. I had thought what I would do was read a poem, then knit a bit (currently knitting an afghan in squares, lambswool harvested in shades of pink, tan and white, important info) while thinking about the poem, so that the knitting would provide a backdrop to enable the thinking.

Then I realized after I had knitted about ten stitches, that Levine is one of those writers who sends you off in a mad rush of excitement to write about them, and in the process get all kinds of apparently unrelated art and writing ideas of your own going. It's that supercharged creative energy that comes flying at you from some art, some music, some writing. And it's right here in Levine. What a huge bonus. Can't tell you more yet, since telling tends to take the place of doing, but sooner or later, you'll see.


The collection I'm reading is News of the World, the poem that sent me off in a creative barndance is Our Valley. Literally it's about the Fresno area, a place I've never been only know they produce raisins or something there, but metaphorically it's about a place we all inhabit even if we haven't realized it yet. You can see it and smell it and live it by reading this little page.

Funny to think that I was sad and at loose ends after I mailed off the journal to Diane, on the first leg of her journey the other day, because my part in it was done for the moment, and I had that post-childbirth feeling of accomplishment and relief and pleasure and loss all at once. Once your art leaves you, even a small work like the journal, it's like when your child leaves your body -- he is his own person now. It's lonely and it's right, all at once.

So I was definitely ready for a new adventure, I think, and Philip Levine may very well have flung open a new door for me. I think he'd laugh quietly if he knew. Well, that's okay, I laugh at myself all the time.

Now I'm going to read Unholy Saturday and knit a bit....

3..2..1..Liftoff! ruffles and flourishes

The racket you've been hearing this morning is the ruffles, flourishes and general blasting of trumpets as Treasure Everywhere, our joint art journal, achieves liftoff...as of this morning, it's on its way to you Diane!

Everyone, enjoy this adventure! I've had a great time creating the journal, which has a lot of blank pages just waiting for you to plunge in, as well as a few ideas here and there inside just because I couldn't resist.

And to antiquarians worried about the segment of the Japanese woodblock print on the cover, don't worry, yes it's a genuine 19th century print, but it was already damaged and not leading a useful life at all, so this is a way of giving it a new lease on life. I didn't do anything vandalic to it! the others in my collection which are undamaged are happily framed on walls that don't get direct sunlight, and doing just fine.

Remember to sign your own section of the journal as it comes and don't hesitate to add pages or whatever pleases you, as long as it doesn't get so bulky that the later users will need a hand truck to get it to the post office.

I'd suggest you take your own pictures of your own work, so that you have a record and can share it with us as we go, and when it finally comes home to me having circumnavigated the globe, I will take pix of the whole thing, page by page.

And finally......










WHEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

You lookin' at me? My patch, beat it!

I was walking briskly in freezing temps around the park today, nodding at people so muffled that I'm not sure if I know them or not, and the squirrels were doing their mad January chasing and dancing and general mating games.

One stopped long enough to hiss and chatter at me when I had the nerve to stand by his personal tree and take his picture, which I preserved here.

Which reminds me that this time of year, getting into February, is when a lot of animals mate, including raccoons, squirrels and possums, and they completely lose their minds in the heat, pun intended, of the chase.

So the normally nocturnal ones are seen all over the place in daytime, scrambling about, totally ignoring the human race. I used to get calls when I had the petcare biz from people who figured I probably knew something about wildlife and it was easier to get through to me than to the wildlife officials for the state.

They would be panic stricken wondering if seeing raccies in the daytime on their deck meant they were rabid. These fears are not too farfetched around here, since we do get reports of small rabid animals now and then.

So I would explain, no they're probably not rabid, they're mating under your deck! look out for little families of them in a few weeks, and if you set out a couple of Havahart traps, you can get the local animal control officer to pick them up and transfer them. It being illegal for the likes of us not sworn officers, to move wildlife anywhere.

January also brings us a shrub that blooms in the dead of winter -- witch hazel. For years I used to make a January pilgrimage to the local community college where they have great specimen trees and shrubs relating to their hort. programs, I suppose, and larcenously swipe a couple of little twigs from the witch hazel, which are wonderful miniature flowers which open up when you put the twigs in water to force them, and smell good, too. Scratch a gardener and you'll find a burglar in shabby clothes...

Then last year I discovered, duh, that on the side of the park I walk in daily there are several witch hazel shrubs, slightly different species, but fine for swiping and much easier to get to. They're right by the bus stop for reasons that escape me.

So a tiny little twig is now sitting in a glass of water and if it opens enough to be recognizable as other than a little dead stick, I will take a picture.

Still Life with Green Bananas

As you know, the concept of the still life is all about decay and the fleeting quality of life. So it amused me hugely at this point in my earthly sojourn, to take a nice still life pic of fruit including -- green bananas! it's a sign of hopefulness when you are still buying green bananas....

Speaking of bananas, I have just had a wonderfully comic interchange of emails with a nice lady who is apparently doing genealogical research into the Boud family. Somehow or other she found me somewhere and was eagerly asking me if I knew anything about Elizabeth Boud, from the 16th century....I explained that Boud is in fact only a screen name, in honor of my late lovely kitty Boud, short for Boudicca, the updated version of Boadicea, a grey, part-Siamese six pound vital force, small but deadly.

Which suggested her name, actually, since Boudicca, the early British warrior queen, damn nearly turned back the entire Roman military force intent on taking over Britain, at Colchester, which was called something Latin back then, so small but deadly was definitely how she struck them, I'm guessing. Veni, vidi, thumpi!

Anyway, this nice geneo lady simply refused to believe me, and insisted that Boud was my surname (it SAYS so, on the website about the Boud family of NJ, she tells me)
and says how weird that I selected (!) a surname related to Princess Diana. Well, it would be if I had.

At this point I still thought she was talking about my cat, and I said, heck, it would be weird if Diana were related to Boudicca.... it just got funnier and funnier, until I said, well it's been nice sharing, but you are clearly on a dead end here, since Boud is not my family name, never had been, and I can't help you further. I think she thinks I'm meanly holding out on her, heh. Comic relief.

The round robin journal is coming along a treat, and we have at least six people interested in taking part, room for more if any show up, and thank you all for being interested. I'm valiantly holding off on filling up the lovely blank pages, before I ship it off to whoever comes first on the list which I have yet to organize.

I'll be putting together an email with info for everyone. I've known either in person or via internet, everyone, for multiples of years, and I have good feelings about everyone's willingness to keep the email for the purpose intended and to just use it to send on the journal, and to faithfully keep it moving! and add to it your own personal stamp (!) and create a wonderful joint artwork.

Don't hesitate (as if you would!) to ask me via email if anything suddenly stumps you about it, okay? and just to make sure: no, Boud is not my family name.



Does anyone else sing Bananaz!!! to the tune of Bonanza, or is it just me?

Treasure Everywhere: The Great Field and Fen 2010 Fun Project, read on...

Would you like to take part in a journal project, open to all, to happen over the course of this year? Here's what I have in mind:

I am in the process of creating artist books, blank inside, with interestingly folded pages, a couple of pix here to show you what I'm talking about. I am suggesting that if you are interested, we can use one of them as a Round Robin Journal, to go around to anyone who wants to sign up and take part. The theme is: A Day in the Life!

I will decorate the front and back covers and leave the rest a lovely snowy blank for everyone to decorate at will. You can use a page or a double open page, your choice.

You don't have to be an artist to do this, by the way, since your page is your page -- you can glue in a comic strip you love that is appropriate for the day you're doing it, or you can write a journal entry in poetry or prose, to share a day in your life with us (if either Diane does this, the rest of us will feel quite tired after reading it....but full of admiration) or you can draw, paint, print, stamp, attach fabric or knitting or photograph, or whatever fits on your page.

I'm using Arches Hot Press watercolor paper, the best in the world, they've been making this stuff since the 15th century, they know how to do it so it will take whatever you can dish out! and if you want to do this but are worried about "ruining" a page, make a painting, drawing, print, etc. and simply glue it in, then you know you like it. Or if you do work directly on the page and don't like it, then make another sheet you do like and glue that over the one you didn't. Feel free to cut, punch holes in, etc. your page. In other words it isn't possible to make a "mistake" on this project! your mark is your mark and it's a treasure.

Actually the only mistake would be to not take part and then later wish you had!

What I plan to do is keep the book within reasonable size so it can easily be mailed in a manila envelope. I will NOT put your addresses in this blog, but will ask you to email me at lxxadams@yahoo.com with your mailing address, and I'll email the whole list around everyone so you know where you come on the list, and who to ship to after you've made your entry, and it will finally come back to me and I'll take pix of the whole thing and show you in here.

The mechanics: I send to the first person on the list, he/she makes an entry, ships to the next person on the list who makes an entry, etc. etc. until everyone's received and played with the journal, last person on the list sends back to me.

Some people are abroad, and I will undertake to send it first to the furthest away person, so that nobody else has to pay that postage, and then they send it to the next on the list, etc. I'd like to send to the first person before the end of January. Well, you know me, it will be WELL before the end of January...

This is just fun, not to be other than a nice toy and sharing. If you decide a bit late to get involved, I'll just add you to the list and notify the person before you who to send to. We can make this work.

In the words of the immortal Calvin and Hobbes: there's treasure everywhere!

Happy New Year, however you say it

Are you going to say twenty ten, or two thousand ten? I don't think we ever came to a consensus as to what to call the last few years that were the "oughts" or "noughts" or whatever they were.

Today is in the 40s, wet, mild, no ice, no snow, this is Good Weather! we didn't quite see in the New Year, being a bit past it, and by 10.30 our day wound to a close. Lovely evening watching My Fair Lady, great fun, with a roaring log fire.

And the laundry was done, the garbage out, the bills paid, the current piece of knitting finished, all in honor of the new year. Of course this morning, owing to a catheter separation during the night, there's a whole new lot of laundry going, but never mind, that's what washing machines were invented for.

The picture is of happy ducks swimming in a brand new lake created by the torrential rainstorms where it used to be plain old grass, including a species of duck that we only see in the winter, and as soon as I find my bird book I'll identify it.



It's the little brown guy with the white shirtfront. A migratory bird, I think, since we're on the Eastern flyway and get a lot of species at different seasons on their way to someplace else..we're their flyover country! any knowledgeable reader is welcome to post what this one is.




And there was some wonderful accidental art on a neighbor's car where snow melted and folded over on itself like a sable wrap, around a numberplate which celebrated battleship New Jersey, a wonderful comment by Nature on the folly of man.

So that's us from here, and Happy New Year to all of us!