Places I've Been

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Dog Days of Summer

I gave both dogs a bath tonight. The next time I bathe the sheltie I'll have to take her picture she looks like a drowned rat every single time, and a pathetically cute one at that! J- and I groomed her a little bit ago, I saved the clean down undercoat for spinning, I'll spin it in with some icelandic and knit a scarf for J- with it, since he requested this.

I will have to groom her in a couple of weeks though in order to have enough fluff to do this. It's a lovely grey color that'll blend in with my icelandic beautifully. Once spun up I think I'll dye it with indigo and then overdye with osage orange for a drop dead gorgeous heathered green color. One xmas present down and several more to go!

She looks and smells really nice now, too bad it's so hot out this will last a day or two at the most - the smelling nice.

Collage

I have this narrow drawer that I decided to create into a shrine of sorts. In it I am putting my mothers slippers and her curlers, amongst other things. I really love the knob on the top of the drawer, so I'm planning to play it up somehow.

Mom was a world class scavenger, she told everyone she was a crow. Dad likened her more to a racoon, but she definately had an affliction for anything shiny. I'll have to go to the attic and get her antique bottle collection, that she found in the field behind their house, so I can include the bottles in the box.

She also liked pretty things, though you'd have never known it about her, too rough and tumble. You were more apt to find her on a lake somewhere fishing or hunting than at any prissy social function. So somehow I'll combine found objects, that she gave me along the way, and other items I have found with this piece. Unfortunately this is the only drawer I have like this, it came with printing blocks in it that I bought at a yard sale. I guess I purchased the drawer just for the blocks.

Humidity

I will admit it I have succombed! I turned the central air on about five minutes ago, it is SOOOOOooooooo humid here it's beyond belief, and the wind stopped. I really feel for those who don't have air conditioning. I'll probably turn it off on Wednesday as a cold front will move in late Tuesday night.

My studio while it is very cool, is growing mildew at a breakneck pace and I can't have that, on a multitude of levels.

The Big Spring Clean

I'm not sure when and how it happened but up until last night we had five dressers in our bedroom, six if you count my little nightstand. I moved one dresser out last night, with the help of my husband. Hopefully I will get more stuff moved, in the spare bedroom that doubles as my husbands study, or he'd like it to be anyway.

If I have my way we will have only two dressers, both of which will hold his clothes, in our bedroom and my night stand, this will give us an enormous amount of floor space in our bedroom! If I had my camera up here I'd take pictures.

I'll have to work on that this evening though, right now I have encaustic work, gelating plate printing, and digital printing to go do. This is not a burden btw, I'm teaching classes on these topics, but came up with an idea early this morning, well you will just have to watch my other blogs and see what I came up with.

Then I have a ton of laundry to do, and wool fleeces to get washed, and asap! And I'd really love it if the yard was mowed and the rest of my plants in the ground or in their planters/hanging pots. I'm trying to spend one hour each day outside, it's amazing how many weeds one can pull in the space of an hour.

Altering Books

I have this old book here I was going to alter, simply because I love the name "The Rum Seller's Daughter or Woman in the Temperance Reform" It is really old, and like I said I was going to alter it, until I looked at the copyright date, 1874, and trust me it looks old enough to be from 1874. The book has prints in it, which once upon a time were probably black and white, they are quite beautiful. The pages are now brown, as is the cover which I'm sure th cover was orignally brown. So I'm keeping it for my own collection, I may photocopy some of it's pages for altering.

Life is in the Details

Prairie

We went out the a local prairie marsh, no birds but there had been a controlled burn done recently.

The Love of My Life

making like a pez dispenser

Spring Cleaning

One thing about not having the housekeeper here bugging me on Fridays I actually got a very large section of junk cleared out. No this wasn't her responsibility, but since I'm stuck cleaning I took it the extra mile.

Oh the reason I had a housekeeper is I have degenerative joint disease adn really bad, I'm not supposed to pick anything up over 5 pounds. I'm going to have to get a smaller dog I guess, she weighs about 15 pounds.

Anyway... I have plans to clean out our bedroom later this week, the excess furniture is going to go to the attic. We have 5 dressers in our bedroom, three of which can go bye-bye. I'll put my dresser in the east bedroom, for the sake of not having clutter everywhere. I want a peaceful serene bedroom, and since my clothes are not in our bedroom closet anyway it doesn't really matter if my dresser is in their either.

Personally, speaking of our bedroom, I'd love nothing more than to rip out hte door and the wall going to our closet, it's huge actually, long and narrow huge, with the door at one end. This makes it impossible to get to anything that's any further back than the door jam. If I thought hubby wouldn't have a seizure I'd start tearing it out this week! Then we'd actually have some useful storage space in this house.

The house is a 1905 Queen Anne wanna be, it's goregous actually, but the closets in this house, well they are non-existant! And we have major major storage issues because of the lack of closets. And the ones we do have are most inaccessible, making my life miserable. I'd ask how a person could build a house with no closets but I do know why, they used to be taxed as rooms.

Housekeepers

Mine quit, she said that I was talking down to her. Yep I'm guilty! 100% pure de guilty. I guess she never quite got the message that I wasn't paying her $15.00 an hour to stand around and gab all of the time. And one would think that after a year she would know to come in clean the bathrooms, the floor, vacuum and dust and not have to ask every single time.

I thought the rules were simple enough but apparently not. Wash the kitchen and bathroom floors every week, and the wood floors throughout the house every two weeks. the week you don't wash the wood floors you dust everything!

Too hard??? Apparently.

So now I'm looking for a new housekeeper, preferably a crew that can come in and get it done in two hours, instead of four like the last gal. Hubby told me to start interviewing businesses that advertise cleaning services.

Kitchen Floors

Both dog kennels are in the kitchen, the part that is just bare plywood. I'm tired of it being bare plywood, and since I am the one who has to wash it now, the housekeeper quit last week, I'm thinking of sanding and painting it, to get rid of the ickies. The mop and the broom both get caught on the bare plywood shards, I'm not sure how the pets deal with this issue, I always seem to get splinters when I walk on it barefoot. No I wish I could say that this is a temporary thing but it's been like this for about 10 years now. Husband can't seem to make up his mind on what he wants to do. We have the flooring, 300 square feet of maple. Why he doesn't plane it down so we can install it is beyond me. He has his reasons, I just don't agree with them. So, in the spirit of having a floor that is easy to clean I'm going to paint the floor, probably in May sometime, cause I'll be using an oil based paint, I'm going for durability here, and I'm thinking some catty cornered stripes might be in store!!! :-)

Warning never leave a wife with 65 gallons of mistints and a roller brush alone, it could cause vertigo!

Wet Dog

Well today I spent part of the afternoon bathing dogs. I didn't photograph silky, well because a wet weirmeraner and a dry weimeraner look pretty much the same, she's blue either way. I did get a snap of Angel, before and after. She's wet in the after shot. She doesn't know it yet but she's about a half hour away from a good combing/brushing. I'm waiting for her to dry off a bit more first. I also clipped her nails, she's very shy about this part of grooming, and washed her bedding and her dog kennel tray. John pulled the trays out of both kennels for me. Silky's tray is too big for me to handle by myself.

Exercise Hell

I went shopping, my first mistake, for exercise clothes. I've come to the conclusion that obesity in America is a myth that needs to be perpetuated so that we can have someone to discriminate against.

If it were truly at epidemic proportions as the news claims it is, then there would be more in the way of exercise clothes for fat people. That's right I used that word, FAT!!!

I'm fat, and I can't find a lick of exercise clothing that'll fit me, and by standards of fat I'm not as fat as some, but more fat than others. In order to wear the exercise gear I'm finding at Target, and the sports stores in town, I'd have to loose a hundred pounds, but by then I wouldn't be fat anymore, I'd be what is considered normal wieght for my height and age.

From what I looked at today only skinny people have the right to have comfortable clothes when exercising.

I'm wondering are these companies embarrassed by fat people?

Do they believe that only skinny people have the rights to feel good when exercising???

Personally I'm tired of wearing my jeans to work out in, it's still too cool in central Iowa to wear shorts outside.

So I'm proposing a campaign here: I want all the fat people who read this to write the various sports clothing producers and complain.

And I really mean complain.

Tell them you want exercise clothing in your size that fits correctly. Maybe there wouldn't be an obesity epidemic if we had incentives to lose weight, starting with proper fitting clothes and shoes! And if they don't see a problem then maybe it really is a myth after all and I'm sol on finding exercise clothes that fit.

Signed - your local fat quilter who doesn't want to be as fat anymore

Kitchen Cabinets Etc

Now that John has successfully installed counters in my wet studio I have full confidence that he can install cabinets and counters in our kitchen. I never doubted that he could do this, but it's nice to see that he is incredibly talented in this area. I'm sure he's not looking forward to the ensuing momumental task though.

I'll stay out of his way by focusing on the new zine, The Natural Surface, teaching my online classes, creating my artwork and filling orders for the business. Someday I have hopes to hire a personal assistant to help with the ever growing mountain of paperwork. Paperwork is a lot like rabbits, when you leave the room and come back there's more than when you had left.

Smart cookie that I am though I'm bringing a lot of talented people on board the new zine, I cannot do all of this by myself! It's insane to even try. I'm hoping we will have the website up and running by the end of the week. There I'll post all the info necessary for those who want to submit articles and artwork for the zine.

I'm off for a long winters nap.

Which Artist Should Paint My Portrait?

Who Should Paint You: Andy Warhol

You've got an interested edge that would be reflected in any portrait You don't need any fancy paint techniques to stand out from the crowd!

What Artist Should Paint Your Portrait?

It's a good thing I like Warhol!

Purging Again

I'm pruging unwanted fabrics, fibers and other miscellaneous crap because it's like a noose around my neck. The truth is I'm probably never going to use those batiks I amassed, mostly because I'm visually exhausted from seeing them in everywhere. My friend Brenda is concerned that I may get bored. She may be right but I doubt it, the stuff is so buried that I never see it anyway. My thinking is it's time to focus and I've narrowed it down to surface design, art quilts, collage/bookmaking and weaving. Plus for kicks and giggles I make my own jewelry, knit and spin on the side. If anything I feel I could be even more focused than this.

I've come to the conclusion that all of this other stuff is keeping me from producing works of any real substance. And it just keeps me from producing period.

Life, Studios & Purging

The older I get the more I learn, and this past month I learned that loyalty means nothing. I also learned that I'm loyal to a fault, to my own detriment. No my husband isn't stepping out on me, sides he knows what I'd do to him if he did!

No this has to do with old friends and what I thought was a trusted ally, one who bitches about those who use others to get ahead in life, yet she had no problems using me. I told my husband that all bets are off, in business, friendship, etc... I've come to the conclusion that I owe these two women nothing.

I'm cleaning out my studio, I called my friend Brenda and asked her to come over after work. I have stuff for her to go through whatever she doesn't want I'm pitching tonight. I'm tired of this stuff owning me, I don't own it anymore. And that is the said reality of life, objects own people and more often than not it keeps them from moving forward in life. I don't want that to happen to me again. I can't say that it has never happened because here I sit in a house filled with stuff, more stuff than you could ever imagine, and it's dominating our lives.

As a friend from church said "it's all going to burn in hell anyway"! So true. My dad is famous for "have you ever seen a luggage rack on a hearst"? No I can't say that I ever have.

Spring cleaning, gotta love it. The house needs a deep cleaning I'm ready to get back into the gardens, do more pruning and ridding them of last years vegetation.