Quill Sizes

Here's a close up with a ruler for a better evaluation of the quill sizes. The bulk of the quills are 1.5 to 2.0 inches in length, with a good chunk of longer fatter quills thrown into the mix, it's going to be a LOT of fun seperating these - NOT. I actually like the long thin ones that are more hair like, they are fun to play with.

What I notice about the quill color, and I'm getting much better at dyeing them, is many of them look blotchy, but when you put them together as a group they blend in and the blotchiness disappears altogether. Very interesting to say the least.

I'm using an alum premordant, I clean them with hot water and soap, lemon joy. I may need to use Dawn instead, the blotchiness may because I'm not getting enough dirt off of teh quill surface. I'm starting to think it's a lot like dyeing wool, the quills can handle more than you think, but there's a magical threshold between beauty and mush in a pot. I haven't been willing to push it too far to see what that threshold is, I've heard stories though, as the quills were expensive and the place I was getting them from went out of business.

Brain tan and quills

Quill work

I've decided to take the plunge and am going to start working with the quills. I'm hoping this week to get some greens and purples dyed up as I'll be renewing my indigo vat, probably on Monday.

I have two pieces of braintan, I"m not sure if it's deer or cow to be quite honest, one is smoked - the tan stuff, the other is not, the white piece. Anyway I'm wondering which piece might be a bit easier to work with for the first time. The white piece while quite thick is very soft and supple.

Latest Fascination X Post

Internet accessible radio! Here's a link to an interesting station KBRW AM/FM Barrow, Alaska. Click on the bouncing radio to listen live. Nothing like music from the top of the world huh!

Another station I like to listen to is KTNN AM 660 To listen live click on the Listen Live link on the left hand side of the screen.

I'm starting to collect a lot of radio stations, I'm still trying to figure out how to get them into Media Player, till then they are in my favorites folder.

I've also found a few with some celtic music, bluegrass, and mandoline music, oh and my dads current favorite southern gospel. I rotate them out depending on my mood that day. I also find Canadian radio to be a lot of fun CBC Newfoundland and Labrador My mom is from Newfoundland so it's nice to have the tie there, adn they play some pretty good Newfie jigs from time to time very reminescent of my childhood - mom was a pretty mean harmonica and accordian player.

Oh and I should also add CBC North This is for the far North Eastern part of Cananda.

The watering hole

This is the patch of water that we went fishing at today, I caught two large mouth bass, I was quite happy about that little feat.

If you don't be quite

I'm going to use you as bait!!! I'm guilty of saying this several times today - to someone elses child no less. I have no idea who the guy is, but he's a world class bastard in my book, he dumped his kid off on us while we were fishing. He finally came back and got him some four hours later. It would appear that he was more interested in walking the beach area and talking on his cell phone the whole time to impress the children over there - all the while his kid was driving me nuts talking a gazillion miles a minute. Hence the above statement.

I told my husband from now on whenever we are out fishing, hiking or camping if someone asks to watch their kid for a few minutes - supposedly so he could go change into his swim trunks but he didn't come back for a very long time - that we will do so but only with a $75.00 non refundable deposit, and my professional babysitting charges are 75.00 an hour - after all I was a professional nanny on the east coast for five years working for Americas finest blue bloods.

I've got this guy pegged as either a drug dealer or child predator - based on his behaviour and the need to hang out with all of the other "childern" on the beach. The beach was a good clip cattey cornered from where we were at so you couldn't hear the casual conversation. But it was obvious that he was not interested in his own child.

I was pissed because I wanted to fish in peace and quite and do some watercolors and some drawings. I didn't have babysitting on my plate today, and I think it's damned rude to just pawn your child off onto other people, especially when you don't know them.

Of Fish and Men

We just got back from fishing, it was horrible tonight nothing was biting and the lakes were packed with people wishing that they were biting. I did catch one croppie, that I threw back as it was a bit smallish. Unforunately that lake we were fishing at is in a public park and closes at 10:30 pm, and the fish were definately biting there.

So we will get up very early in the morning, when the sheltie alarm goes off, and try fishing again, when most folks are still in bed/camp sleeping. A few of the places that we'd go that close early in the evening open at sunrise, which is around 5:15 am right now. So if I'm going to get any sleep I'd best be going to bed.

Day Lilies

I think this is a day lily. I'm utterly confused as in Abundant Harvest, on page 301, the author describes the day lily as having no spots on it's petals, then shows a picture of a flower with spots on it's petals and the caption reads "day lilies".

If these are indeed day lilies I plan to munch on them and enjoy them!!!

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!