Ice and fire trees

Ice and fire trees
Originally uploaded by Heidicrafts.

The sun was captured beautifully in the ice that enveloped each branch. I'm down in the valley where two sledding hills meet.

Iced cherries

Iced cherries
Originally uploaded by Heidicrafts.

While the kids were sledding, I wandered the park looking for "cool" shots as the sun sank lower. I happened upon a cherry tree of some sorts. If' I'm wrong, please correct me.

Pop over to my Flickr account for more images.

Oh, the weather outside is frightful...

Here's how it looks this midday.

Our house is between the left foreground tree limb and the limb across from the postal truck. Our outdoor car is through the downed limb branches and twigs.

I've helped pull four branches or limbs from the street onto curbs or yards. Ganoush, Skunk, and I were outside when we heard the tell-tale crack and saw a limb fall at the white house on the right, down by the curb.

Click to make the photos bigger.

What is falling is rain, but it freezes on contact, so everything is icicles. We had a brief spell of ice pellets, but now we are back to rain.

Icicles on the clotheslines.

Ice on the trees and icicles on the power lines leading to the house. We just learned from CHG last night that there are two insulated wires and one uninsulated neutral wire.

CHG noticed intermittent flickers on the basement lights and his PC since the installation of the generator panel. We learned yesterday afternoon from our electrician that he found the cause - the neutral wire to that circuit breaker was touching the screw but wasn't actually clamped under the screw as it should have been to make a connection.

So last night, CHG explained to us how the power is carried along the wires. I can't explain it here. I didn't learn it that well.

Ice encasing the bushes at our neighbor's yard.

Brownie ceramics

Ganoush and I went to the local high school for a Brownie activity of glazing ceramics for only $5 per item. The Brownie leader works at Local HS and worked with the art teacher for this opportunity which is much cheaper than the ceramics place we have been to twice in November.

Ganoush painted a plate (excerpt at left) and I made a mug just for me (see below). She was told to write her troop number and name on the back of the plate. She chose to write both on the plate's large rim instead.

Ganoush jumped into the middle section, writing out the "green" letters in her message and pattern just by mental vision and without a guide on paper or plate. She made a mistake and got frustrated. The Brownie Event Leader and I both showed her that she could just wipe off the glaze and start again. We wrote out her message on a handy paper towel and assigned each letter a color according to her pattern.

Pencil marks on bisqueware disappear during firing, so any necessary guidelines can be drawn right on the piece. On my mug, you can see the R and W notes to myself for painting the handle in a Red and White candy cane stripe.When her guidelines ran off the plate center, I offered to make some letters for her if she wished. I rewrote C and KIES.

I wrapped my hand around the mug as if I was warming myself, then I traced my hand. If we had been at the usual, more expensive pottery shop, I could have written more in detail with their puffy paints. But that's the price I pay for spending only $5 instead of $18 per piece.

Ganoush wanted me to duplicate the rings on my own hand to the hand on the mug.

Christmas Countdowns

Lisa Vollrath is again featuring her Christmas Countdown of free Ephemera sheets for digital or tactile art. All she asks for in exchange is a link on a blog or on an e-mail list, spreading the word.

Another artsy Advent calendar offers a crocheting pattern every day, here.

Lots of crafts goodness and more in Advent Calendar form from Homeschooling.about is here.

A Google search for Christmas Calendar provides myriad of options. I like the Bach calendar.

And here is a guide you can alter to make your own.

Kid ceramics

When I made the bulb ornament, the kids each painted a ceramic or two as well. Ganoush made these for Goof and Aunt Equestrian. I can show them, now that the gifts have been given.


Here is the horse for Aunt Equestrian.


The dolphin for Uncle Goof. On the right are the three ornaments made by our tablemates, whose leftover glaze I used for the bulb ornament.


Goof is a Miami Dolphins fan, so Ganoush was deliberate in adding the orange streaks in the water. Goof noticed.


On Thanksgiving Eve Day, Ganoush asked for colored pencils and paper. I later saw her studying our family portrait from 2005 as she completed portraits for her aunt and uncle.

Ceramic bulb ornament

I thought I had posted the "before" photos, well, before. Perhaps they are only on Flickr.

Here is a ceramic bulb I painted at a local pottery shop. It was spur of the moment at the end of the session, most to use up glazes left be my kids and the other family sharing the table. Before & after, obverse & reverse.

Feedback for knitted ATCs

I've been knitting some ATC-sized swatches. If you want, pop over here and leave me some feedback. At least one will go out in a swap through the Creative Mom Podcast.

Thanks.

Feeling much better - Crafty bread

Ganoush and I slept on separate couches in the living room last night. We both feel much better today. For safety of others, we skipped swimming today, though.

Instead, the kids begrudgingly did math and journaling. They finished in time for an art project that both kids embraced.

We took a loaf of bread that no one liked and had been ignored in the freezer for quite some time, and transformed it into ornaments in progress. Each kid had ten slices of bread to work with. As usual, I got the heels. I brought up my boxes of cookie cutters and we attacked the bread. Ganoush tried many shapes. She learned that intricate thin sections do not work with slices of bread. The profile of a reindeer was unidentifiable. Bolder shapes, like rockets, pine trees, bells, and snowpeople did much better.

Gonzo found two metal cookie cutters in the shape of wee gingerbread folk. He set out to make "my army of doomed minions." From his chatter, I believe that these creations are not destined for a tree but for some battlefield of ultimate destruction. Well, no one was going to eat the bread anyway.

Our (the ladies') intent is to let the pieces air dry for two days and then we will paint them with acrylic paints.

I also had time today, while the kids played LegosTM together, quietly (I know!), to tackle a box or two in the basement. I was able to talk with Margaret (who wants a better pseudonym) and redistribute three boxes worth of stuff into, or at least towards, their new Proper Destinations.

Woozy

From the Creative Mom Podcast's CMP Circle's Haiku Monday:

Midnight "Gastro" girl
Six A M, it found me, too.
Helpful hubby home.

More textures, November 2004

Three more texture shots from the November 2004 folder:




My parents' piano. It was a hand-me-down from our church before I was born. An upright. When the house is ever sold (48 years with its first owner, my dad), the piano will go with the house, as it isn't coming up those basement stairs in a playable condition.




Pipes spotted on a field trip to the water treatment plant, preparing water for human consumption.



Ripple on the stream at yesterday's bridge site.

November 2004 Nature Photos

Again with older photos, yet first time on the Internet. These are all from a nature park in November 2004.


Ringed side of a fallen tree, near the entrance of the park's learning center. It is secured from wiggles and kids are allowed to climb on it.


A fallen tree on the trail.


Milkweed explosion.

Many, many of my photos from this session have the wrong depth of field. My camera just doesn't grasp what I really want to focus on. Trade-off for a less expensive model.


The other good shot from this field, depth-wise.



Some sort of fungus on a fallen branch. Great colors and textures.


Little critter paths on fallen wood.


Intentional self-portrait from the bridge over the stream.

Way-back art

When I was in second grade, every now and then our teacher would select a story for publication. She would discuss with the author where the page breaks should be, then send the story off to a friend, who typed the story on onion paper. Then the author was allowed to *skip* a classroom assignment to do the coloring for each book page. Then the book was sent off again to be bound. The author provided the fabric for the book cover. When it was finished, the author had the option to have the book placed in the school library.

My book was called "My Trip to Marsasip." It started out being to Mars, but that seemed too... ordinary, compared to a fanciful unknown planet.


Here is my book cover. All of the patchwork is factory printed.


Here is the Date Due pocket. It was written in 1975. Many of the reader instances were me or my brother.


Here we see me and Koldy near the end of the book. He has wheels instead of feet and changes his colors and patterns constantly. Not only is that visually interesting, but it tosses continuity out the window. Important stuff to a nine-year-old.


This is towards the beginning of the story, packing in my bedroom.


This is my actual bedroom in 1975. Remember, America's bicentennial was approaching and I fully embraced the red, white, and blue theme.



Going around the room clockwise, there are my bracket shelves of knickknacks, the star-spangled bedspread, the USA curtains. My mom was a straight-line seamstress with her turquoise Viking sewing machine, but she did make these curtains.



Nice big area rug, forty-eight star American flag from my grandmother, antique school desk (my great-grandfather ran an antique shop), Dressy Bessy doll, Waffle Quilt stuffed dogs, fish mobile made from a punch-out fold-together cardstock kit-book.



My antique dresser and vanity set. I still use the dresser. The drawers are quite deep. The vanity is in my parents' basement. It became my computer desk in junior high, holding my TRS-80 Model I, Level 2, with cassette "drive." I still have those lamps, too.


The doll crib was an antique from the shop. The pegboard hold my orange AM radio, some glued-felt-on-masonite art of mine, and two embroidered samplers from my grandma.

Red Hat / Cow sushi plate

A sushi plate I painted/glazed for my mom in 2005. She likes cows and she is a Red Hat Lady.

Zut alors, il neige!

My title comes from my first-year French dialogs, meaning: Oh drat, it's snowing.


Snow on my wreath ($10 from my son and his Boy Scout Troop) at 4:00 this afternoon.


Same wreath at 7:30 this evening.



Another texture, snow on backyard leaves this afternoon.

Textures: Bubbles on blue

Texture Bubbles on blue
Originally uploaded by Heidicrafts.

On my flickr stack, I have added a bunch of texture photos I took in 2004.

Pop on over to have a look.

Fall Photos, 2004

Not much to report today, so I'll pull a couple of fall leaf photos from the archives. These are both from 2004. I liked how the sunlight was highlighting the turned leaves. I'm sure this isn't a mistake. I can't prove it, but observation leads me to believe that the leaves that get the most sunlight turn colors first. As those leaves fall, subsequent leaves not get more sun, on and on until the tree is empty.


This is completely unPhotoshopped ('cause I don't own the program). I was struck by how the sunlight illuminated the leaf. I was pleased that I was able to capture the look on film (i.e. pixels).

Missed Saturday - Explanation Sunday

I was trying to achieve NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month - less intense than writing a 50,000 word novel in November) but fell short. I'll keep posting, however. My DH explains why I missed:

I sent Heidi a link to a story, and clicking it cause three help windows to pop up as well as the site. They couldn't be closed by ordinary means, so I nuked Firefox from the task manager (the desktop box being a Windows installation). After that, we heard the tell-tale clicks of application after application being opened in the background. Turns out that about a hundred little help windows were starting, but not showing up on the desktop. Panic is sometimes appropriate, so I hit the hardware reset and started over. So during blog time, the machine was undergoing a thorough virus scan (which it does regularly anyway), and a scrub from Spybot. All seems well now. You may return to your normal lives.

Now for the more interesting part. Gonzo has latched onto dice stacking. He saw a video of it last night, and has in the intervening 20 hours managed to teach himself to stack three dice reliably, and occasionally four dice. I am impressed, and very happy that he's developed an interest in a juggling trick -- as a juggler, I can actually help him with that.

OCT CMP ATC

My Artist Trading Card for the October Creative Mom Podcast exchange.

The theme was "Tell Me a Story."

Stockings4Soldiers Page 10

Cards made for Stockings4Soldiers, a service project for Iowa National Guard soldiers in Kosovo or Iraq. Most cards are one of a series of 10.

I was asked if I could make another 40 cards. I went ahead and made another 10 more sheets - 100 cards extra. But to save time, I had to craft first, and run them through the toner copier second (to put info on the card backs - my printer is an inkjet and prone to running when wet.)

The art had to be flat, so I went to rubber stamp and direct to paper with my Marvy ink pads.

Cards 1-2: Paint monoprinting, with SPARKLEWORKS added with my 12-letter rubber stamp.

Card 3: Random placement of letters THANKS. Each letter had its own color and each letter in this set was stamped with the negative block font, the serif font, and the ASL fingerspell set. The THANK YOU stamp was added after the cards were cut into singles, for all of these sets.

Card 4: Marvy ink pads direct to paper with a slight twist before lifting, to give little swirls.

Card 5: just random ASL finger letters, more than just the letters in "Thanks," and not really dense enough. My first sheet of that night.

Card 6: Marvy direct to paper without the twist.

Card 7: Marvy direct to paper using just the side of the ink pad. I keep turning the paper as I pounce, to stay random. This style reminds my of the background in the Talk Soup set.

Card 8: Marvy direct to paper with some dragging and swooping.

Card 9: THANKS letters using only the negative block font. I really like these letters.

Unshelved - Pimp My Bookcart 2007

One of the online comics I read is Unshelved. It takes place in a library.

In 2006, they had a series of comics about pimping (or gussying up) a bookcart instead of a car (a la the TV show Pimp My Ride).

It inspired a contest last year and the results are now in for 2007.

And also check out their Sunday Book Club. Good stuff.

Most popular search of the season

With the free version of Site Meter, I am able track the last 100 visits to my site. It lists city/state/country, how long viewers linger, how many pages are read. Interesting, but I don't obsess over it. My next visitor will be 2,222, though. That's cool.

Site Meter also tracks what brought readers to my site. If it was Google or some other search engine, it usually also lists what the search phrase was that snared Heidicrafts.

In the last week, there has been a noticeable increase in seekers of boars heads (a prop for a madrigal dinner, presumably), so I have moved my tutorial link to the upper section of the right sidebar.

Please, any seekers, feel free to ask a question in the comments if you need more information on any of the topics I mention here.

Sleepy Tuesday

Gonzo was still awake at 11:45 last night. I got to bed at 12:20. I made it through the day just fine, but I'm sleepy now. Lingering smoke from our first oven self-cleaning isn't helping.

So no big art or events to report tonight - I need to rest.

Stockings4Soldiers Page 9

Stockings4Soldiers Page 9
Originally uploaded by Heidicrafts.

Cards made for Stockings4Soldiers, a service project for Iowa National Guard soldiers in Kosovo or Iraq. Most cards are one of a series of 10. These, however, are just nine out of ... I think I made 140.

I was inspired by Lucinda pins and from one of the Usbourne Art books since returned to the library.

I started by going though scraps and cutting house squares. I quickly decided, both for aesthetics and for tome and for sanity that perfect squares weren't necessary. I feel the houses are more charming when they are a little bit crooked.

Then I cut doors and window pairs and glued them on. I ended a night of family and TV and crafting with a pile of over one hundred houses.

Next came running the back text though the toner copier and cutting apart the cards. My first batch were printed on blue card stock, but i ran a few green sheets, too.

I trimmed my cards in clusters and glued long strips of grass, then trimmed them into singles. Later, I added a cluster of snow cards. For the green cards, I added a number of sky strips.

I laid out a bunch of cards, decided which houses looked best on which lots, and then started trimming roofs. I really like the opposing goldenrod on a blue sky.

Then glue glue glue some more (Elmer's purple glue sticks) with fingertip washings at intervals.

Card 1: gift wrap windows, ingredient list door. Grass is tissue paper over construction paper.

Card 3: windows are cut from scraps of painted papers done by the kids some time back. Door is from a junk mail envelope.

Card 5: windows are used gift wrap. I like how the torn paper mimics the snow.

Card 6: Window muntins are courtesy of cutting through the blank middles of school graph paper (construction paper quality). Gift wrap door.

Card 7: Junk mail roof, again looking like snow bits. gift wrap windows and door. Tissue paper sky.

Card 8: Windows and door cut from scraps of calendar pages, left after making a batch of envelopes.

Card 9: Greeting card sky.