Evil Santa

Santa can be evil.
Joseph was in the other room, freshly home from Middle School. I yelled very exuberantly:

"Guess what?"
"what"
"Today, when I was driving home after dropping you off, I thought of the perfect thing to get you for Christmas!"

So he comes over....."What is it?"

"I can't tell you, then it won't be a surprise."

Eye roll. (Middle schoolers are good at eye roll.)

Later, he asks "Did you hide it?"

I reply "I didn't get it yet. I have to wait until the last minute to get it."

"Why?"

I answer as I leave the room.

"Too big to hide."

He screams "I hate you!"




These two batiks are finally done. They both started doing some odd things in the last step, so I stopped. After a while of not working on them and only thinking, I knew what to do. It worked perfectly.
Maura and Jeff can have one of these, they have to pick.
Each one has a sleeve sewn into the top to put a curtain rod. The bird one is exactly 24 inches wide and 39 inches tall. The bird house one is exactly 23 inches wide and 38 inches tall.










/

stick to it

This was in the news page that SBCglobal/yahoo displayed when I logged on this morning.

Toy Hall of Fame points to new addition: the stick


I copied the text to my blog, but if you want to see it, the address is:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081107/ap_on_fe_st/odd_toy_hall_of_fame

ROCHESTER, N.Y. – A magic wand, a fishing rod or a royal scepter?

The lowly stick, a universal plaything powered by a child's imagination, landed in the National Toy Hall of Fame on Thursday along with the Baby Doll and the skateboard.

The three were chosen to join the Strong National Museum of Play's lineup of 38 classics ranging from the bicycle, the kite and Mr. Potato Head to Crayola crayons, marbles and the Atari 2600 video game system.

Curators said the stick was a special addition in the spirit of a 2005 inductee, the cardboard box. They praised its all-purpose, no-cost, recreational qualities, noting its ability to serve either as raw material or an appendage transformed in myriad ways by a child's creativity.

"It's very open-ended, all-natural, the perfect price — there aren't any rules or instructions for its use," said Christopher Bensch, the museum's curator of collections. "It can be a Wild West horse, a medieval knight's sword, a boat on a stream or a slingshot with a rubber band. ... No snowman is complete without a couple of stick arms, and every campfire needs a stick for toasting marshmallows.

"This toy is so fantastic that it's not just for humans anymore. You can find otters, chimps and dogs — especially dogs — playing with it."

Longevity is a key criterion for getting into the hall, which the museum acquired in 2002 from A.C. Gilbert's Discovery Village in Salem, Ore. Each toy must not only be widely recognized and foster learning, creativity or discovery through play, but also endure in popularity over generations.

There are 4 additional paragraphs about dolls and skateboards.

I thought this was especially interesting, since Joseph has played with sticks so much. This hasn't been one of my parenting moves that has seen much approval by my peers. Sticks are dirty, dangerous, and do nothing to promote teamwork and sportsmanlike conduct. Not like Little League or soccer. I have talked to parents who are careful to limit their child's "unstructured activity" as much as possible. I remember the times I spent 'walking around poking stuff with a stick.' I don't think it was wasted time.

Of course, there ought to be a mix.

Here in Silicon Valley, as I'm sure in many other places, there is social value in looking affluent. Sticks don't really fit. Everything is new and shiny.

Personally, I think we are on the edge of some big changes. Environmental issues are making us look closer. Recycling was the main thing for a long time. Now we are looking at the cost of recycling. What is the impact of the recycling process? What are the resources needed for the transport and processing of the stuff before it is reduced to raw material again?

There are new terms and concepts coming into use. Re-use is not the same as re-cycle. It means to re-use without transport and processing back to raw materials.


An example from my life-- Janow, the horse with hay fever, gets anti-histamine medication every evening. I have two friends who help me out by giving it to him. I mix it with bran and alfalfa pellets in a plastic bag, one bag each day. They are doing me a huge favor, the bags make it easy for them. The bags are all re-used. They have been used as bags before. They have contained hamburger buns, Halloween candy, broccoli, the San Jose Mercury News on a rainy day......

Up-Cycle is another new one. Here, you take something that is one thing, and make it into another without taking it to the recycling center to be reduced to raw materials again. Historically, quilts are up-cycled. Now, however, they usually aren't. Quilters buy new fabric to coordinate better. But if you use the fabric from old and outgrown clothing, your quilt is up-cycled.

If you buy clothing at an outlet like Ross Dress for Less, or Marshall's, with the intent of using it for fabric, it is up-cycled. You can often get better quality fabric for a lower price if you shop this way. Often, the buttons of one garment would cost more than the whole garment if you bought them 'new' at the fabric store. If the dress has never been worn, the buttons are still new.

So, back the The Stick. Free, up-cycled and it comes in environmentally friendly packaging. I thought I was behind the times, but I was ahead of them.

I am behind on blog stuff due to stuff in real life. There have been pictures sitting in the camera getting old.

Here is one Dave took on the way home from Mt Hamilton last Sunday. Do to shrtening daylight ours and the time change, it was getting dark and the lights of San Jose were comming on.

Dave loves Mt Hamilton and takes tons of pictures every weekend.



And here is our little Almond Roca Factory. She has the cat instinct to sit on "something."

The mess in the background? It's my pile of gifts for the season. I messed it up in photoshop. I don't want anyone to see it and thingk "OOOOH, I'm getting ______!" and then get me something very VERY nice because of it.

Then find out that they are only getting _______ . and somebody ELSE is getting the _______! And then, of course, they get me _____!!! when I only got them _____ . and then I get to feel guilty.

or worse:

They will see the little_____ . and thing: "oh, she's only getting So&so a little______ . I'll have to get SO&so a big______!! to make up for it. Cara can get a dinky_____ . from me so it wll all come out even."

And then THEY recieve the little______ . because the big______!! was really for So&so. Then I can think that they got a big_____!! for So&so, proving that they always loved her best anyway.

We don't need this.

windy

What I got wasn't what I wanted. I opened a Flickr account to do it, but Flickr cannot really do what I need right now. So, visiting forums, I find that Picassa can, so I opened a Picassa account. That was easy, it is part of my Google account and the same one I use for Blogger.

My Picassa account already has pictures in it. All the pictures I have ever put into my blog are in my Picassa account. But the pictures I want to use are not. So I have to upload them. So I need new software.

But wait just a gol durn minute! If loading pictures into my blog also puts them into my Picassa account, why don't I just put them in my blog!? I don't have to publish that entry.

I've done that when I have planned to be away. I load a bunch of photos into an entry and then save without publishing. Then, from another computer, I can make a new entry, copy the photo html from the unpublished entry and paste it into the new entry, and then I have put in a photo from a computer that didn't contain my photos!

Well........that was the easy part. The next part took a couple hours. If the documentation had been well written, it would have been faster. This is what I wanted.


These are the batiks for the saddlepads I am making. Think how much progress I would have made on them in the hours I spent on the computer!

I have been busy at other stuff too, but I don't know what I have accomplished in my efforts. I voted. I spent a lot of time becoming more familiar with the measures and propositions on our local ballot. Fifteen of those. Then the county and state offices, I skipped those. I voted for the local county and city offices. Somebody asked me how I voted. I told her I didn't vote for an individual person. I voted for which way I wanted the wind to blow. Do I want to wipe out a trailer park? or a tree frog?

Janow has survived our first winter storm. I wasn't worried since he has survived many, but HE became worried. He went out in his heavy winter coat, became frightened, was soaking wet, would not come in. He was shivering. THEN, I worried. I had to shut him in with a stall guard. Then covered him with his heavy wool canvas blanket. I told him he was too old to be wet and cold all night!

He began to get warm and I stayed with him until he was calmer. I had to set up water inside, his trough is outside. Then I was soaked. In the morning, he was dry under the blanket, but still damp everywhere else.

Somebody invited me into Facebook. I thought "Good idea, I will become more searchable." After how many hours on a learning curve? I don't think so. So I'm there, and I get emails of people who want to be my friend or something. People I don't know. I haven't decided how I feel about that. After the hours I spent on Picassa, I don't want to spend more time.

I have also been busy shopping for gifts for birthdays and Christmas. Then I got this email. "What do you want for Christmas?" I have been so busy with everyone else, I don't know. I think what I really want is January.

My thumb is also better. I accidentally punched a hole in my thumbnail with the needle on my industrial upholstery sewing machine. Blood came up through the hole. I tried to wash it, but a puncture wound through a fingernail is hard to clean. After 4 days, it doesn't seem to be infected and is wearing a heavy coat of Sally Hanson's Hard as Nails.

Flickr slideshow

I'm trying to figure out how to do this.

Practice

Joseph showed this YouTube to me today. He asked: "What do you think?"

I replied "I'm impressed!"

but I was thinking........You could get that good at math with only half as much practice time!

Why is the grass green?

Spay and nueter. Usually for dogs and cats, right? Well, rabbits too.


At Ed Levin Park, here in Milpitas, Easter Bunny is at the top of the hawk menu.

My Silver was lucky, she was taken to an animal shelter instead of set free. She got vet care and was adopted. There are many rabbit rescue organizations as well.

Ghost

If you've been reading the comments, you know that Fantastyk Voyage "Ghosted" me. I didn't know how to react. I don't have a ghostly image, and ghosts don't scare me. Like Grey Horse Matters, I have never seen Jesus in a potato chip. But then I thought of a real ghost story that happened to me. Emonic is letting me use this image of Jack: I tagged it as a favorite in my saved file when I saw it in Emonic's shop. Emonic lives in Milpitas, which is appropriate. The name of the main street in Milpitas is Calaveras Blvd. Spanish for skeleton. Emonic has a website and a space on deviantart

It's a great day for ghosting because the Indian Hill Ranch is having their annual Halloween Costume Contest today. It's the most interesting costume contest I've ever seen----you should see how everyone dresses up their horses! Somebody will take pictures and post them, I'll try to remember to post the link here.

My ghost story has two chapters.

Chapter 1, Livermore Ca, 1995

Janow was boarded at a small private training stable. The horse in the stall next to him, the "neigh"bor was an aging TB mare. Bella had chronic arthritis that cause a lot of pain and required daily doses of bute, an oral anti-inflammatory with a nasty flavor. It was a daily struggle to dose her. Her owner decided she would not have any quality of life without expensive and scary scary veterinary intervention. She was put down.

Later that day, I came to ride. After I rode, Jill came out to the barn to tell us not to ride in front of the house because that is where Belle had been put down. Sometimes horses get frightened and spook dangerously when near a place where a horse has recently died.

I told her that Janow had been in front of the house and he was fine with it. Belle was ready to go, so he was not sad.

Chapter 2, Milpitas Ca 1998

Janow was boarded at a big stable where he still lives today. I was riding him near the back field when he stopped and looked intently at a spot. He was not lloking for something sacry, as horses often do. There was nothing in that spot. He was motionless. I felt very sad. I felt like crying.

After years with Janow, I have experienced communication with him by feeling his emotions. I know it's weird, but there are still things we don't understand. Just because we have mapped the human genome and have grasped quantum physics, doesn't mean we know everything. When I have an incredible feeling that it would be fun to go faster, I know this is Janow and all I have to do is lighten my seat and we are off! So I know when I felt very sad, that it was Janow's feeling.

After standing a long time and gazing, motionless, ears forward, he turned his head and moved on.

Afterward, I mentioned this to Sarah who told me John's mare had colicked and been put down there that day. I said Janow didn't know the mare. Sarah told me he did. John had sometimes walked Janow for me and he had walked them together. Janow had been mourning the death of a friend who had died suddenly.

I'm glad I let him stay as long as he wanted.













The rules for Ghosting It Forward are:
1) Have a Ghostly Image and/or a story to pass along.
2) Tag three people (I'm doing four. Boo!) on your blog, with links to their blogs. Tell about what great folks they are, or offer to send them a Ghostly Treat. I will ghost anyone who would like to participate. I'm not going to pin it on anyone unsuspecting! Just let me know.
3) Include a link to Ghosting It Forward in your blog.

misk misk

This recently arrived at my doorstep. I bought it from a potter on ETSY. Since changes to the structure on ebay made it more difficult for small sellers, like artists with limited production, many have found other sites to market their good. Etsy is one of those other sites.

This mug is from
Jewel Pottery and it's beautiful. I bought it as a gift, but I may have to think of another girt for that person! Jewel Pottery also has a website.

Joseph has his ticket for the Middle School Halloween dance tonight. He is pretty excited. It goes from 6pm to 8pm. Dave and I can have dinner alone! We have lost our knack for conversing without interruption, but we will try. Or maybe just sit in silence.

I am wrapping up my Primitive Sweatshirt production. I have four more to photo and then put on my website. Four are currently on etsy.

These are two of those. To see the others, you can look on previous blog posts of click on the brown wolf link on the right. Or here: etsy


We had a county inspector at the mountain property Thursday to approve well sites. We have two approved sites. The driller will choose between them, based more on accesiblity for his equipment than on the possibility of finding water.

The City and the Horses

I almost got a lot done this weekend. There were some snags, but it was pretty good.

I got all my pictures saved onto disc so I could delete Photoshop and reload it. It was having problems uploading new photos. After I got all the photos out of it, I tested it and it was fine. Must have been something in one of the photos.

As some of you know, I share my sewing room with Mary Shelley and Whiskers litter box. The litter box cleaning is Dave's job. If I do it even once, it will become my job, so I can't do it. If it gets gross, I don't say anything. I don't nag. If it gets gross, whiskers poops somewhere else. If I clean it up, it isnt a problem when the litter box gets gross. If Dave cleans it up, litter box maintenance gets vigorously renewed. This is the system.

So there was a stink in there. And...there was poop under the table. I ignored the poop. Dave came in to see what I was working on(bug me). He said it was stinky in here. I replied:
"Yeah, I kind of noticed."
He said: "There's poop under the table."
"That would explain the smell."
"What's it doing under there?" Dumb question.
"Sitting there emitting odor." Well, you asked.

I got an email from a musician in NY. He was asking if he could uses my quilt images in his CD cover. He said he couldn't pay me because it wasn't a "paying gig" but that he would credit me and send me a copy of the CD. I said it was OK. His band is called The City And The Horses.

Here is the sweatshirt I made for Lauren. Don't forget you can click on the picture for the McGoo Veiw.


And here is the Rescue Me bunny in progress. I'm not totally happy with it, I may redo some of it. But it may get better as I work on it. This one is taking way longer than any other!

I've got it attached the the shirt already, so taking it off totally is not possible. I put these things on to STAY!

Is this more interesting?

So Dave had another birthday. I wont tell you his age because I can't remember and don't feel like figuring it out. He got the gift he wanted from his parents-in-law. They are great! He even got to try it out before Joseph took up residence. But I know what Dave's sister-in-law is getting Joseph for Christmas. Joseph will get to see it briefly before Dave says: "It's my turn."

This past summer,(yes, summer IS past!)my son and I visited my parents in another state. My Mother had decided to take up quilting and she made a mystery quilt which was in the binding stage of Almost Done. There are many stages of Almost Done. Binding is almost the last.

I was anxious to see her quilt. She said "Don't laugh, it has a lot of mistakes. I'm going to give it to charity." Then she showed me a wonderful quilt!

So my question for the week was how to manipulate her into giving me this quilt. After 47 years, I have learned that the worst way to get what you want is to ask for it. You have to set up a situation where she thinks of it herself.

So........

I helped sew the binding on.....

On the last day of our visit, I went to her quilting group and took many of my quilts to show. It was fun. I saw a lot of theirs. Then Mom brought out hers. Everyone admired it. Someone asked what she was going to do with it. Well, she had already decided, but I told her friends that I wanted it because, I said: "Every quilter should have a quilt her mother made."

Nope! Too close to asking! She was going to give it to someone else.

About a week after I returned home, a box arrived in the mail. I knew what it was! Bright and happy yellow, better even than I remembered it.

I really wanted to take it to the Show And Tell at the quilt guild meeting and blog about that, with a photo of me showing the quilt. The last TWO meetings have not worked out. Boy Scouts is a lot of work for the scout, but just as much for the parents!

So, this is me with the quilt, and Mary Shelley. She looks exasperated in this picture, but that's her normal face.

Enough already!

I'm still having trouble with this one. I take lots of pictures when I'm not sure, because seeing the little picture on the screen of the camera helps me see it as a whole.
When it is on my table, I am not even seeing it straight on, it is at an angle. Each of these pictures is different from the one before!

So I got it how I wanted except for making the rabbit. I decided to make the rabbit alone, then sew it on. I cut out a piece of brown paper to the right shape and size, then selected the fabrics that I might use. Then put those by my machine and folded up the rest of the shirt with everything pinned in place.


So then I had a blank area of my table so I started another one. After a little bit, I had a different idea, and started all over. That one is different.


After only about an hour, I am sewing parts on.

If you thought I just sewed random stuff on any old way, think again!

This last picture is how it will be except for the rabbit.

I have more interesting things to post later today. This morning, however, I am out of time!

What color is the rabbit supposed to be?

Where should I put the rabbit and what color should it be? Not a dutch belted, to challenging! White seemed to eastery, black too dark. I got out all my browns. This is the lightest.

It is too dark. Maybe grey? I got a piece of rag wool sweater. No. too dull, blends it too much. Well, I could use a variegated grey and sandwich it in with white, and make chenille.

I could select parts of the grey that I want for different parts of the rabbit, depending on value, and sandwich that into the chenille! Great idea! No, lint lint lint, and lots of work. So the rabbit will be white.

It's supposed to have a bunny

1 I can't figure out what I should do with this. It's very light pastel, which is nurturing and OK, but I don't want it to fade together and blur. The primcess has dark hair.

2 3 4 6
5

browband bling

LiquidSabre, an online acquaintance showed me this bracelet she made. I remarked that is was nice, it would be really nice on a browband. She asked "What (the heck) is a browband?" I could have used the old line: "It's a dressage thing, you wouldn't understand."

Instead, I took pictures of mine and added some explanation to the pictures. I posted them here for her to see.



And that will help you understand why I took all these pictures of my hairy horse wearing his dirty bridle!

If your monitor is showing the pictures too small to read the text, and you are really interested, you can click on the pictures for the McGoo View.
Liquidsabre's blog