Snowbound

Haven't been out of the apartment for six days and getting anxious because I'm almost out of bananas ... WAAHH. The car is buried ... tried to shovel it out yesterday with a dust pan but finally gave up. We're not equipped for this on southern Vancouver Island ... you can see a few pictures here

Knitting and listening to audiobooks There's a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell by Laurie Notaro and The Time Traveler's Wife. This morning I pulled out some paints and ink and started to play


In Gwen Diehn's The Decorated Journal, she describes a technique for pouring colours.

I used cobalt teal and olive green acrylic paints and walnut ink poured onto a large sheet of watercolour paper. It ended up looking like a Jackson Pollack gone horribly wrong. Small sections looked pretty good, so I cut it up and have been using them for making cards. The first one is going to Nan in New Hampshire to thank her for the beautiful calendar she sent after I won the draw on her blog Letters from a Hill Farm. I wonder how many days it will be until I can get to the post office.

Winter Solstice

Rain sliding down the wind chimes
Cloud hidden solstice moon
Winter in the Northwest

Recycling

For this journal I used denim from some old jeans that I used to cover a plain composition book. That's me at the front porch of the house on Perth Avenue in Toronto.

An old photo was transferred onto a scrap of plain white cotton fabric and sewn onto a piece of burlap from a potato sack.




This is a portfolio cover made from dark blue felt ... again burlap and photo transfer onto rough cotton dyed with coffee. Corded ribbon ties from the scrap box.

For Joe

In August we'll pick wild blackberries. The bushes will be loaded with berries by then. They grow thick and dense on both sides of the trail. Some folks bring ladders so they can reach the biggest and ripest and juiciest at the top.

A pail full is enough for a pie, and two or three pails full for jam. But be warned ... my limit is one or two handsful

The berries on the outside of the bushes, the ones that are within easy reach, have all been picked off. The thorns are treacherous. Scratches and curses will follow, and I get really cranky.

Antique Kimonos

A calligraphy exercise. Our assignment was to do something Asian. I'd recently watched a gorgeous movie called The Scent of Green Papaya, and I felt a longing for my home in Hawaii.

For this one, I put down a pale wash of permanent rose and cadmium yellow, sketched a few leaves and tinted them pale green that I mixed with cobalt blue and cad yellow hue.

kermit says

Time is fun
when you're having flies

Grandma Cahoon's House

work in progress

Lots of vacations spent here in Southern Alberta ... the old house has been designated as 'heritage property' now

What's for Breakfast?

One day recently my friend Nan in New England posted this quote from "Winnie the Pooh". I like it so much I decided to borrow it for my Wellness Notebook


"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "what's the first thing you say to yourself?"
"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"
"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully. "It's the same thing," he said.
A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh