wow.

I said a dainty 'holy crap' about the 100 dollar bonus. Now I'm not sure I know an appropriate epithet. Check this out:

This is what flat rate boxes are designed for...a billion beaded belts for my Christmas surprise! Cyn Bicker rocks the Christmas season...LOOK at this! I am the luckiest person in the world. Those of you who think you're luckier...show me your Tombstone AZ beaded belt!!

Yup I'm so articulate "holy crap" is it. Thank you Cyn Bicker!

right tool for the right job

A hair dryer couldn't get the air warm enough this morning so I used my handy dandy Darice Heat Tool to melt the ice on the cars block heater cord. Perfect except for the burnt spot on my mitten.

The princess doggie and I went for our morning walk out this morning at our usual place down the insanely icy hill. I left her leash at the entrance road to keep my hands warm (curl up inside mitten) but thanks to Mrs. Bitchy Moose we had to go out the other road. This meant walking on the highway sans leash for about 1/4 mile. The old dog was so proud of herself for walking way over on the side then standing trembling when a big road grader rumbled by! She did her happy dance when I let her go from 'wait'. Love that old dog.

it's alive!

Or at least it has an arm. The sweater with stories is growing faster than ever. I might have to get 2 more balls of yarn, I hope it's not discontinued! I have enough of the black but am thinking not enough white. Brief time out for annoying dog and some yarn searching...

(music plays for a few minutes) Hey wait! I found some tucked away in the shoe thing that holds all those balls of yarn in the cat room! Don't worry story-sweater fans, I think we can do it.

As I was walking to town today I was thinking about this holiday season...realized that the 100 dollars from people I've known for less than a month is my best gift. Nothing from family? Seriously, siblings you really suck.

Oh and sister of mine "You could make yourself a t.v. dinner" for Christmas is really mean and bitchy. You suck extra.

that new job

I quit the market and have been working at the bookstore for about a month, right? Their daughter delivered a card to me tonight...with a $100 dollar bill tucked inside! Holy Christmas Bonus Batman! If you ever come to Haines Ak, stop at the Babbling Book, ok?

elf shoes, an iris and a cat

Knit them huge in 100 percent wool then toss them in the washer and dryer...let 'em dry and you have elf shoes! From the Flint Knits blog... Hers have cool pointy cuff things on them but I left that off for the remain sane option.

After I washed and dried them, they weren't really felted enough so I used the plunger and bucket technique that the Yarn Harlot tried. If you read her next post you'll see it doesn't always work. I didn't use the tennis balls, didn't have a bunch of fuzzy slippers in mine and I used snow for the shockingly cold water after the really really hot water. It worked great. Too well in spots, if you look at my after picture, there are some lumpy areas where the inside and outside of the shoes stuck together...easily fixed with some tugging and shaping after the shoes are dry.


Cat enjoying getting the flash in the face...she was 'helping' with the elf shoe photo shoot.

The post card and the painting...then I screwed it all up trying to add a background. I'm working on a second one. Some of my old water color abilities are coming back, but not many!

Counting birds and stitches

I'm going to join"tens of thousands" of other bird geeks in counting birds for the annual winter bird count! I'm nervous about friggin' bird watching. Thank goodness I'll be doing my section alone so I can spend half the time wondering what the hell the wee brown bird in the bush was.

This is the 110th official Audubon Christmas bird count where people all over the U.S. go out and take a census of the birds wintering in their area. Citizen Scientists...sounds like we need little badges and secret decoder rings. I wonder if I can send away for them, did you see an address on the web page?

Stitches being counted are on some rockin' cool slippers I've made for my sister. I don't think she has any idea this blog exists but if she does, I'm not posting them here. I will say I love them and need to make myself a pair...the shaping is some of the most fun I've had knitting a 'problem' for a long time. I got them from the Flint Knits blog if you want to check it out. If the sisterling does come by here then click that link and scroll down the page...well then I'm caught and will have to keep the way cool slippers for myself!

Again with the sweater?

I started it about 6 jobs, 4+ moves, 2 boyfriends (one a fiance), 3 cars, 1 boat, 2 states, 2 countries,the turn 1 century and the deaths of 2 parents ago, it is time to finish the damn thing!

So I tore out the restarted sleeve so I can do the increases in stripes like on the sides of the body. I'm going to have to cut off the bottom of the hem to reknit it in a smaller gauge so it doesn't curl so much. I am actually feeling good about finishing in the next month or so because my knitting skills are way beyond the start of the sweater from the past. ...add to the time line list up there about 10 pairs of fancy mittens 6 or 7 hats and a couple more unfinished other sweaters.

think globally, shop locally

How far does your 'shop locally' ethic go? My new employer's daughter is a high school sophomore that is an amazingly artistic kid. She wants to some acrylic paints for Christmas and Mom is not willing to buy them on line. There's a local store that stocks a small amount of art supplies.... Overpriced and very little variety (in my opinion). I mentioned Dick Blick to Mom but she was pretty firm about shopping locally. She did ask about shipping so maybe she'll relent.

I have been buying my art supplies from Dick Blick about 30 years, ever since my mom showed me their catalog. To me fresh paints and high quality brushes are more important than keeping a local store owner in the business of selling a few tubes now and then. If he were running an art store, I'd feel differently but it's an office supply variety store where a 10 dollar calculator costs 30 bucks.

More photos and less musing soon, I promise.

Respect

Yesterday at the indy bookstore job, a young woman brought in a box of earrings she's made to sell. Very simple earrings she's been selling at the bazaars for $15 dollars. Very simple. One small bead above one large bead, some times a piece of shell, with minimal wire work, if there's wrapping it's one coil and there are wire ends poking out. $15. She arranged them on a dusty black stand with no cards or adornment and set a price of $17 because it's a consignment situation.

It is very important to me to respect the customer that might buy my product. I don't think the customer is gullible or stupid when they are looking at my work. I think finishing work is very important and presentation is a very inexpensive way to show a customer that I give a shit. I find her display of sloppy work on a dusty plastic stand offensive and disrespectful.

I have to add that I have had previous encounters with this young lady's attitude toward jewelry selling. It went something like this: " I can sell out in a day and completely restock in the evening" ...as she wrapped wire in s shapes with glass beads to make a dainty necklace for sale to my former boss.

After my thrilling day at the November bazaar, I can firmly say this is not a post related to envy at her apparent commercial success. It's just plain annoying that she uses her skills to look so cheap.

do you do this?

I totally changed up the design. The reallysoft leather was too soft so I switched to the interfacing and changed the design. I fussed and fidgeted and wasted a bunch of time "designing". That means moving rocks around on a piece of paper, looking for some other pieces of turquoise I knew I had, getting some coffee, walking the dog and then finally gluing something down.
I just love this cab. It's the fraternal twin of the one I started beading on the reallytoosoft leather. I'm trying to enhance the color of the cab but not get too obvious about my color choices. Trying to emulate the colors of my favorite really big cabcentric artists...trying trying trying to make it perfect knowing that's just silly. I like this kind of embroidery, but keep trying to work more fish in to the whole thing. The carved bone fish is a good start.

home again, home again (I've used this before) jiggity jig

Back from Thanksgiving in Juneau...and for once I'm glad to be here. I had an excellent time in town and got the thing I needed like dog food and a safety vest for walking in the dark, but this time it feels like coming home. Yay. I put that (nearly) all on the change of employment. Leaving the market was a very good thing even if it's quitting a job "in this economy" and not seeing the regulars at the market every day. There are a few folks I miss seeing and chatting with, but not many.

This thing died last week. My old bigger-than-a-deck-of-cards ipod sounds like it's in a toilet when I listen in a head set. Maybe I dropped it too many times, or maybe it's a dinosaur but I got a new (orange Nano) one at the dreaded Wal-Mart (thank you Rice) when I was in town. I'm kinda geeky eager to put music on it.

I also got some stiff interfacing to continue the anticipation soup project. I was trying to do it on some lovely soft leather that my friend Lindsey gave me years ago. Too soft...

...but oh so lovely to sew upon. I haven't decided how to transfer these two items to the interfacing. I might cut and paste them or baste the entire piece of lovely leather to the stiffer stuff and just continue from there. I was thinking I didn't care about the teardrop shaped cab, but I like it again when I look at it again. I was hoping to get some dark interfacing, but the mask I did last year was on white that had been painted various shades of green.

Anticipation Soup

I've been working on the felted birds and the wee paintings for a Christmas sale for too long. The beads are calling me, the embroidery has already got me. Hoping to keep the creativity going, I stirred together a soup of beads to remind me of some of the ideas.


I have a few ideas, maybe some free form peyote or brick stitch practice...maybe a collar or some other cab centric piece. I know there needs to be matte and shiny involved, seed beads because I love them and...no felt for a while.

winter wonderland!

My what a difference a month makes. The above picture is October 12 just after they cut down the old cottonwood tree that was blocking my view of the mountains. Below is yesterday, November 17. It snowed about another 6 inches today! So pretty and fluffy and light and bright and... early in the season so I'm still excited about snow.
When I was in Anchorage last month, I bought some second hand cross country skis. I tested them out tonight by sneaking up and down our road a few times. I'm pretty sure it's been about 30 years since I spent more than a few hours on cross country skis! When I was in grade school we had a whole bunch of them for snowy day gym class. It was quite a big deal teaching the kids of Capital School all about diagonal strides as we skidded around in a big circle on the playground. I'm certain I was more coordinated then. Practicing in the dark of night (or late afternoon) will make me as graceful as...as...

more photo fun

I did this at Tiltshift there's nothing to down load in this case,but I'm guessing your photo is no longer private after uploading. It's just so cool that changing the focus makes the brown dog look tiny. She looks like she's in a miniature railroad landscape!

fun with photos

This is the original picture of Biscuit the cat and here it is run through the Poladroid:


I found the application here: Poladroid Project It's a little goofy and a little cool, with sound effects and fading in just like the real thing!

later: I messed with this Poladroid thing a few times then it wouldn't work. I don't know if the application is shaky or what but just be warned it's not stable. I took it off my computer and used that cool XP restore feature to get it all off. Bummer, I like the effect.

Neddle felting

I saw it misspelled once and it's been neddle felting in my head ever since. Needle felting is cool, sculpting wool with a barbed needle, poke poke poke and it's a 3-d bird...

Some of the birds have big snoots like Senior Purple above...


Quite a few are purple or blue because that's the best felting wool I have, nice short kinky fibers. Only one is red..I'd love to make more red ones but that is good spinning fiber, all long and smooth and really crappy for neddle felting....or 10. I was making flat stuff with beads, inspired by Jo Woods' work when a wee bird flew in to my head. I'll sell them at the Christmas crafts show that's just after Thanksgiving...and if my fingers aren't too sore from getting jabbed, at the next one too.

Halloween, fall back, November and first snow all happened...what a day!

I just wanted to remember this

I was listening to that Garrison Keilor thing about books..."Writer's Almanac" on my headset while walking the dog. He read a poem that had a line in it about being gravity holding us to the earth, but as the writer understood it gravity is seriousness. So we're held on the earth by seriousness. So...?

learning to use my time wisely

I quit my job at the Market at the end of September so time is mine. I need to use it well or the inner critic will give me hell for wasting it, for quitting the job that became awful, for spending too much time playing Facebook video games and for just plain existing. That critic needs a life!

It seems like artsy types always have too little time and too many ideas. I feel like I have more ideas when I have less time to call my own, maybe because they're in such contrast to mundane work ideas? Anyway, I have to make the most of this unemployment stuff.

Neighbor lady is having a baby and gave me an invitation to the shower...don't think I'll go play the games but it's a great chance to knit a gift. I was going to make something brown with ears, but decided to use the superwash yarn I've already got (see all budgety and stuff!) I added the little snowflakes so it's got a bit of cute factor if they have a girl. I was sewing the little flakes on while Suzy and her mom were doing the country radio show so maybe some mom/daughter love is sewn in here.
I'm also working on some small paintings for impending craft shows. I am thinking I might bead some rocks but they take a long time...expensive to sell. It's hard to tell what the market will bear but I'll have to test the waters with out the cheap stuff that was in the booth I shared at the fair.

Figuring out selling venues in a small town is interesting, you have to read bulletin boards for notices about who to contact for selling space. Sometimes there's a website, if it's sponsored by the fair or by the town but usually it's word of mouth or pinned to a board. Neighbor (not the baby one) has contacts through the school, I'll ask.

Catsitting

The cat is a rescue that has some serious issues. Her meow is ragged and weird. She growls better than she meows, probably because she practices growling more. Most importantly? She likes to shower.
Seriously, she sits in the shower and drinks and licks and then turns to sit so it's pelting her on the head.The cat's other hobby is apparently hiding under the bed growling. Mmmok.

The Big City

I'm in Anchorage, the same city I was in when I started this blog. This time it's from the point of view of not living here but in a small town that has very few amenities other than beauty. I'd still much rather live there, but I feel like a kid in a candy shop here!

REI is 1/4 mile down the road
Play it Again Sports has 2nd hand skis
The Bead Shack already took $50 bucks from me
The Bear Tooth movie theater/brew pub is just down the street
Title Wave Books is over by REI
Internet is fast and wireless
T.V. available
More than one radio station
The Tony Knowles trail system is just down the hill

and that's all with out even getting in the car!

Thrift stores, used book stores, Old Navy, Target, Costco, Fred Meyer, Barnes and Noble all want me to come drop a few dollars.

and the sun is out.

I'll be more than ready for my small town life when I leave, but it's fun to visit.

redo

The fat fish repainted. I haven't finished his fin yet, but see how moving his gills back makes his head bigger? I still don't really like the secondary gills that come back from his mouth, maybe they'll just go away. Better fish.

I just found Pamela Hasting's blog when I was stumbling around looking for more information on Arlinka Blair. Nice find! I love that those wild looking dolls Pamela makes come from such an ordinary looking woman. She's working on a big doll that just fits under her 9' ceiling. yum.

Fat Blue Fish

This is fat fish. He started life as a blue butterfly fish cut out of 1/4 inch plywood and then his head got too small. Looking at him here, I know I have to repaint his head, what an ugly fish!

He's about 1.5 x 2 feet painted with acrylics and hung up in the wall gap I made last winter. Repaint job this weekend, yikes! His dorsal fin needs to have a dark outline and more detail so it shows up better, his head needs surgery and maybe more detail on his tail fin. What a funny looking fish!

moving right along

Values quilt with 2nd panel nearly done on the right. I did the left panel in strips but they were feeling stretchy. The right one is done in 9 patch style in squares instead of strips. Seems like seam allowances need to be more accurate in the 9 patches, but it's not so easy to stretch the triangles out of shape.
Oh yeah, the right panel was on backwards at the top. I didn't notice when I was taking the picture and was pleased that I had actually finished the right panel. Um. no. There's one more series of 3 strips or set of 2 9 patch blocks that need to be added on the far right.

In conclusion:

I pulled up the rest of the plants in the 2 bigger beds leaving some parsley and the onions then covered the whole lot with sea weed gathered off the beach this morning. I gave the strawberries and the cabbages a layer of kelp too. The strawberries are going crazy in the rain, next year should be a good berry crop!

Allow the raspberries to take over more, make them a frame to stand in.

Plant more: Lettuce and carrots (don't let the cat get the sprouts!) and chives (unless those 2 plants go crazy). Maybe put the carrots in buckets like the potatoes.

Plant less: broccoli, kale and turnips.

Plant some: flat parsley instead of curly. One or two zucchini plants. A sunflower in front where it's warm.

Use bone meal and nitrogen.

3 buckets of potatoes was enough, you really don't eat that much.

I'd really like to have a privacy fence/hedge across the front and have been letting the cherry tree babies grow as much as possible. Tossing rose hips in the side yard and letting the weeds/cherry trees grow there. patience.

The other day I turned the compost (sort of) and it was steaming in the rain! Real live compost happening in my heap o' vegetable matter! It was a crazy dry summer but the rain is making stuff happen.

I finally know where the secret-double-secret blue berry patch is! I just didn't drive far enough last time...yeah 26 miles to the bridge then another 1/2 hour plus on the logging roads. It's for friggin' ever to get there, but the berries are phenomenal. Bigger and more dense than Eaglecrest or the Dan Moller trail!

values quilt

No, not family values or morals type values but color type values. Lights and darks. I found a tutorial here and decided it might just help gnat brain to focus. Lots of small steps and quick results.

It's fun to combine the colors, trying not to look at the cloth as my favorite this or that but just as lights and darks. I tried it with a dark center, but didn't like it.

fall

I was going to call this post "autumn" to sound more sophisticated, but fall is more appropriate. We went from a 3 month burn ban due to dry weather to flooding and erosion due to torrential rain. I heard reference to a typhoon today...We fell into autumn.

Ages ago I did an on line dye project with a group from Delphi. We all dyed a rainbow of fabric with a set formula adding a little more of each color to the dye bath for each next color. It wasn't bright primaries. I made a simple quilt top to display the fabric then folded it up and forgot about it. Today when I was looking for fabric for another color based quilt I found it. It's bigger than I thought, with an additional border, it's ready to be sandwiched and stitched into an actual quilt.

I kind of like it but a border will make it so that middle strip of red to purple doesn't run away off the edge. Wow. It was so long ago that both Mom and Dad were alive when I did the dye project and I was living in my favorite if decaying apartment in Juneau. Huh.

harvest

I took the buckets off of one of the potato plants today. Here they are back in June, one bucket deep and looking nice and healthy. The one in the back is the one that's now a pile of Yukon gold potatoes.
Geez, the grass was green in June. It's black and brown now with late season sprouts coming up now that it's finally raining. Black grass is really ugly.
Here they are, my first potatoes. Ever. It sort of freaked me out to have them actually appear in the pile of soil. It's been a tough summer for cool weather crops, too hot for months and suddenly rainy as hell. I was afraid the plants were going to rot with out making potatoes, but here they are. Food. I think I might just do it again next year. Isn't that what planting a garden is about, giving hope, thinking ahead and doing it again, but just a little better?

normal weather for now

It's finally cooled off a lot, back to 50's and light rain...like a good summer day in Haines. Inspiring enough to get back to the bead table where this fine gentleman waits for me. He's a scientific replica of an adult male skull I got ages ago in Ketchikan at the Ray Troll store. I was still working on the tour boats at the time so 130 bucks for a life sized skull didn't seem outrageous. He's been my traveling companion for a bunch of moves in and out of storage and various houses and apartments but I still haven't given him a name.

The new bead project is a smaller fish called a stickleback. A 3 spined stickleback to be precise. When the tide is really high, parts of the golf course where we walk most days floods and these wee fish get washed up in to the grass. There was one in a shrinking puddle one day, I either gave him a heart attack or he survived the sweaty-palmed run from the puddle to the stream. I have this idea that he was a little shook up when he hit the water and totally confused as to how he ended up in that stream instead of the one he came from!

fair hair

I got fair hair at the Southeast Alaska State Fair this weekend! Alaska is soooo big (how big is it?) we have more than one state fair. This is the smaller, more funky version of the agricultural fair in Palmer where they have those big-ass cabbages. I sold some stuff, volunteered a couple of days and got fair hair...in other words the hermit participated! ...and had some good fun. Hermit participation is a very good thing. Fair hair is a pretty good thing and chatting with a really interesting guy until all hours of the morning is REALLY good!

If any of my 5 followers are voters in Alaska, time to jump on the Bob Poe bandwagon (see Mudflats for more info on this potential governor dude). He was here for the fair, he campaigned some, bought coffee at the Market and had the patience to stand in the really long (local brew) beer line yesterday! Bob Poe for governor!

annoyed at best

One of our best weekend walks is a trail that goes from the end of the road above us to Allen road over closer to town. About 3/4 of a mile through the woods then back through a neighborhood, along the highway, up the hill then home. It's the only long walk that doesn't involve a lot of time walking along the edge of the highway. Summer road construction means lots of trucks carrying fill and asphalt are zooming up and down the road.

I have spent the past 12 years being as responsible a dog owner as I can, keeping her on her leash if there's a chance she'll get in trouble, picking up poop if it's where other people might walk, and doing my best to keep her out of fights. When Ceilidh was younger, she was a fighter but now she's 12 or 13 years old. Enter asshat "babysitting" a pitbull. As in pathetic plea "it's not my dog, I'm babysitting" when I screeched at him because the dog had just attacked Ceilidh as we walked up the road. I fucking hate that sort of helpless crap, control the dog! This morning it happened again, but I was carring a stick just in case. I hate to hit a dog, but I'll defend mine if he won't control the one he's "babysitting" from inside the house while it runs loose.

sunny still, distracted

I'm supposed to be getting ready for the Fair next week, good thing I had a shit load of earrings and a stack of cards already made! The sun makes me do stuff like scrape and paint and caulk and rake and weed and plant and (according to my bff neighbor) sit around and read all day.
A fine example of what I've been doing, see the board under the door that her highness is stepping over? There's a second one at the top of the door. These cover the huge gaps left by the rocket surgeon that did the remodel and just didn't see fit to actually finish the job! I'm finding more and more stuff like this, places where rain can get in and cause rot and damage. WTF?

Dad would have yelled so loud about how I reached the top of the door to screw and glue that board! Step ladder on the left...2 legs on the top stair, two legs on blocks of wood on the bottom stair. Can ashes roll over in their 'grave'?
A wee painting, 2.5 inches square, I'll sell at the Fair along with some earrings and lino cut cards.

yum.

My trip to Juneau was just what the doctor ordered! 3 days of fireworks, parades and sunshine all under the special glow of 'our governor is a quitter!'. Happy Independence Day Alaska, she quit!

Friday night was fireworks as seen from Frederick and Terry's balcony above my old apartment. They're done on the 3rd just before Midnight so Juneau can be the first capitol city to blow them up...I had no idea that's why they're on the 3rd, but there ya go. Lots of bang crash and sparkly shine, I love fireworks.

Saturday I watched the Juneau parade with Theresa, Carol, Chelsea, Dave and Chris. Blazing sunshine, no wind...the kids in the parade were wilting by the time it passed the 2nd time. Yup, long parade short route is typical Juneau, I love it. Mrs. Palin didn't show up for that or for the 49 star flag raising 50th anniversary celebration...even though she was in town. (quitter face) Stuart Sliter and some of the other Miss Alaska representatives were in the Juneau parade though! Much better image of an Alaskan woman than the former governor.

Traffic getting out of town was hell so we didn't go over to Douglas, just too hot and too congested. Chelsea and I drove out the C&C's in their truck while Chris and Carol tried to dodge traffic on their motorcycles...we got there first even after buying ice cream down town!

Lots of beer and bugs at Carol's repeated again Sunday. Big wide grin spending days with friends.

Joab and I hung out a bit, he had some of my furniture to give back from when I moved south (hated it). He was also on his way to pass through here (yesterday) so he brought the rest of the stuff. He's been having a tough time, Natasha got hooked on oxycontin and then heroin! He's helping her through it with some sort of shots...methadone? Poor kid, poor Dad!

Ok so (catching up)...I went to pay the water bill today. Crappy water big bill...but nice folks. Anyway...I go to pay the bill and what do I get?
Seriously, can you believe it? About 1/2 a gallon of fresh strawberries! They've got a big garden that was a homestead and the strawberries are running amok... run this way, baby!