First of Fifth

Here are some pictures of the first day of 5th grade at Pomeroy School. Grandparents and other relations can right click to get the pictures into their hard drives.

Joseph's class is a mix of 5th and 6th grades. His teacher, Ms. Maultsby, is really on top of things. I helped in her classroom a little last year. Mrs. Torres drafted me for an art project.

The truth is out there.

Very busy here. New furniture, old furniture moving around, computers turned off and moved, power outages, road repairs and walking home, first day of school, PIQF entries, making curtains for three rooms.......
Mary Shelley looks like I feel.

Do-Dads

This is my recent listing on eBay. They are kind of silly, made on impulse. Well...... the idea was an impulse anyway. They actually took much longer than I thought!
Do-Dads on eBay

Just the four Do-Dads are for sale, all the other stuff is just for ideas of what to do with them.

Of course, I made more than four. The other ones will be available at Doublecatbatik.com soon. How soon? Good question!
Click on the sign to go there.

Another thing that has recently occupied my time -or my mind, anyway- is the demise of an eBay Group, AKA message board, that I belonged to. The group was originally set up for communication among members of a Folk of Art.com. I joined the group, then became a selling member for 5 months. Even though I was no longer a member, I stayed with the group, about 80% of which were not members either. It was decided that the members needed to have a site for their own use. Rather than one faction or the other leave, it was decided to disband and form two new groups. They are Beneath The Attic Eaves, or BtAE, and TWOTH. I now belong to BtAE, which you can search on eBay( not a case sensitive search) or click on the new link that you can see on the right. Searching TWOTH will get you some nice primitive folk art things too.

For my Family

These are from our recent visit to Sparks.

Ironed Curtain

These are some boring pictures of ongoing projects. I am making tab curains for the window by my dinning table. I have started with osnaburg fabric, and batiked stripes with wax, then dyed light brown. Now I am ironing the wax out.

The top picture is the waxed fabric before ironing. The bottom one shows after ironing.

Next comes boiling water and Synthropol. I have a huge stock pot that I boil water in to remove the rest of the wax. You swish the fabric in the boiling water, then weight it down to the bottom of the pot while the water cools. The wax floats to the top and hardens.

I have to take the wax out because these will go in the window and get hot. Any residual wax would then soften in the heat of the sun and rub off onto other stuff. And, cat hair would stick to it.

Osnaburg may not have enough hand for curtains, so I have Stiffy to add to it after.

Here is a quilt back that I made yesterday. The top came out bigger than I thought it would, so the piece of fabric I bought for binding was too small, and I had to use some other fabric instead. The back, of course, needed a bigger piece of fabric than I bought, so I was going to take the piece I had intended for binding and add it on, but that was still to small. In the end, it has more of the fabric that I used for binding, and some pieces that I had left over from the top. Something that should have taken maybe 15 minutes ended up going on for an hour and a half.

Raingutter Regatta

This is an annual Cub Scout event. They make the boats from kits, according to specifications, and then they race them in Rain Gutters. Each has a spotter(unrelated) to keep the boat upright. The Scouts themselves cannot use their hands.


It takes a lot of air, but they got "breathers" between heats so nobody passed out.



There were lots of trophies. Even the moms had their own race!

Climbing the Walls

While in Downtown Sparks for the Hot August Nights cruising, we scanned the farmers market and craft fair booths and saw the rock wall. Grandaddy sent Joseph up. He was doing very well, but came to a place were he could not reach the next hold.

The wall seems to be made for the average adult reach, but at 4'3", Joe's options are limited. Since he was doing so well, the attendant let him come down and start over, beginning with the other hand/foot, and he made it to the top easily.

By ringing the bell at the top, he earned a certificate for a free giant cookie at a local bakery.

A couple of other kids saw him go up and they decided to try it. Without two summers of experience at rock climbing camp at City Beach in Fremont, it was harder than it looked.

Emigrant Gap

Here we are, at Emigrant Gap crossing the Sierra mountains from Sparks/Reno to California. Don't lean back, they'll never recover the body.

The camera was sitting on top of the car, and I figured out how to set the delay so I could run around and get in the picture. Of course, by the time I figured that out, Joseph was bored.

I had wanted to leave Sparks by 9:00, and we almost made it. I just didn't want to miss out on too much camping stuff. Of course, everybody in Sparks thought 9:00 was way too soon! But since we had missed Thursday entirely, I wanted to get as much camping as possible.

Of course, Jospeh had so much fun camping that he wished we had got there sooner. It did no good to remind him that he had not wanted to leave Sparks as early as we had.

Our Trip, well...Some of it anyway

Here is a picture of my mother, Jana, AKA Grandmother, at Hot August Nights. She says she had a car like this, but it was a different color.

It is a relief to get home. I went to the movies yesterday, just to make myself hold still and not do too much. All the driving, less than friendly bed (air bed on sleeping bag on nearly flat ground!)and the day in bed with a migraine was not nice to my back. If I had stayed home, I would have had to live with all the unpacked stuff and I would have messed with it.

I went to the barn and saw Janow, but didn't ride. He needed grooming badly, so I took him for a walk and groomed him. He did the horse version of "oooh, aah!"


I saw The Listener, with Robin Williams. It was OK. I also bought the game Tripoli, and we learned to play it last night after dinner. I got a tri-tip roast and cut it into small pieces and cooked it with garlic and a sliced up lemon, then put it on salad. I had some black grapes and I cut up peaches and mixed those for desert. Everybody ate everything and nobody complained. Then we got out Tripoly and Dave and Joe learned to play it. We had a really nice family time. That was the best!

We're Back!

We got back yesterday at about 12:30 in the afternoon. I got a migraine in the wee hours of the morning and by 9:00, I knew it was going to be bad. If we had stayed for the entire clean-up and left at noon, as planned by the camp leaders, I would have been too sick to drive, but would have had to cool our heels at a coffee shop until we could check into a motel at 3:00, the usual check-in time. So we left early, I felt bad about not helping with the camp sweep, but I was really sick.
Good thing too, because traffic was already getting bad from people returning to the bay area on Sunday. Our first slow downs and a complete stop happened before the Altamont Pass. Joseph fell asleep before Lodi. He didn't even know he was sleepy!

We had stopped in Placerville because I needed something really cold to drink(helps the headache) and we needed to call Dave, no cell phone reception in Coloma because of the mountains. When he fell asleep, his drink tipped a little and spilled on his pants, but he decided he could live with it.

The camp was fun, but it would have been more fun if my foot and back had not hurt. We had a tour of Sutter's Mill and the museum. There was a pool at the campground and the boys spent a lot of each afternoon in the pool. The American River was beautiful. You could go rafting on it, and tubing.

Jeremy said you could go tubing for free if you started after the resort ended, and that if you stayed on, you could go all the way around. "Around?" I asked. I clarified: "Back where you started?"

"Uh-hunh." He confirmed."That's funny, I replied, "I thought this river went all the way to the Pacific Ocean."

The boys went on a hike to see John Marshals grave. I decided not to go, but I gave Joseph the camera so he could take pictures. He filled up the card. It already had a lot of pictures on it from Hot August Nights. He had the camera for that too.

All in all, it was a positive experience, but I wouldn't recommend the camp ground. Sure, it had flush toitys, but there were two, for about 50 women and girls, and two sinks and two showers. We had to walk quite a ways from our site. It was icky dirty.
The campers were packed close together and you could smell their cigarette smoke and hear their snoring at night. Many of them had music.

Many of the scout families camp all the time and they are used to it. We only camp at the scout camp-outs and we are not used to it.

Raingutter Regatta is nest Saturday. I have a book to give to Jerry. Maybe I can get it to him there.

You Can See Sparks From Here

I am in Sparks for a few days. After our heat wave in the San Francisco Bay Area, this is not too hot. Reno is hosting Hot August Nights this week. It's a huge classic car show. We are going to go watch cruising tomorrow night.

The old joke is that Reno is so close to hell that you can see Sparks from there.

On Friday Morning, we leave here to go to a Cub Scout camp-out that is about half way between here and home. Two nights of camp-out and then we head back to the farm. By then we should be ready to sleep in our own beds and potty in our own litter box.

Sittin' on a Ritz

It's hard to get back into the rhythm of everything after the heat wave. It's finally over and the temperature is back to normal. It's just hard to pick up where you left off.




Lots of weird things can happen in unusual weather. This is one of the things that happened at our house. It's made of Ritz and pepperoni and toothpicks.

Too Hot

It's been too hot to do much. The computer overheats during the day. Can't use it much. Yesterday Joseph and I went to see the movie Cars, just to be out of the heat. We went to McDonald's for lunch, but it was hot and crowded in there, so we went back to the maul to the food court and it was hot and crowded there too. We had lamb curry and then went back to see another movie: Monster House.

Last week was Cub Scout Camp at Lake Cunningham. That was hot, but not as hot as this weekend. He caught a summer cold, but pulled through to win the Den One 1st place and the Webelos (4th and 5th grade) first place in both BB Guns and Archery. Friday night he developed pink eye and we were on the phone and to the pharmacy within an hour getting eye drops.

Ferm went to the vet on Saturday with lethargy, it doesn't look so good for him, then I spent the rest of the day in bed with a migraine.

There was a grass fire started by heat near Ed Levin Park and a lot of people at Indian Hill were worried for their horses. The Dept of Forestry and the fire dept had the road blocked so you couldn't get to the barn anyway. The only people who could do anything were the people who were already there. The helicopters got the fire out before it got close to the barn. Sunday morning there was still some smoldering. Driving past it was enough to embed the smell into the car for the rest of the day.

Well, Ferm is howling over a fur mouse, so he must be feeling better.

Nancy's Quilt Progress

here it is in a further stage of progress. It is still a little further than this picture shows. It has a border and a machine quilting flange. The flange is a temporary piece of fabric to made it easer to quilt the edges. I will be removed before binding. The binding is selected, but not cut yet.
I had a quilt top from Community Quilts to quilt first. I have not machine quilted in a while and the community quilts piece will help me get my sea legs back.

Janow remains his peachy self and I love him dearly. I'm reaching him to bow, against my better judgment. Everyday I give him a bite of carrot and hold it behind his knee so he has to reach back to get it. I have been doing it in his stall, so he wouldn't anticipate and molest me at other times and places. Right now it is making it hard to clean his stall. Nothing like being in a 12x12 room with a 900 pound pirate who wants 4 grams of carrot that you happen to have in your hand. I guess I need to move this activity to the paddock.

Joseph went to a birthday party as Raging Waters waterslide park yesterday from 10:30 until 5:00. Dave thought this was a long time to be at Raging Waters. Joseph didn't. He had a blast. He knew a lot of kids at the party, and he met some kids he had met at last week's rock climbing camp.

Paula and Chicka pretty mush know their jobs by now. When they have been out long enough and you go out to get them, first you check the food and water in the coop, then get the chickens. They are very likley to go in by themselves while you are fixing the food and water. In August, we will have to add a nesting box to the coop.

I have been looking half heartedly for a Creative Memories consultant to do little informals at The Little Table. So far, no lick. I looked a little bit into stamping up but them heed a water supply and that will not be good. The cafe has is, but it is for food.

Ideas are welcome in the comments section here.

blah blah......

It's up! My gallery for the All-For-One doll challenge for Folk of Art Friends. We all made the ssame doll with the same pattern, just to see how differently each dollmaker would treat the same instructions. The variety is amazing! I didn't even make a doll, I made a skirt.
Click on my banner to see it.


The pattern we used was Pioneer Girl, from AntyMs Garden. She has an ebay store where you can buy the pattern if you like it. It is available as an e-pattern that you can download and print out at home, or as a snail mail pattern that will arrive in your mailbox. Click on the banner to go there.



More USS Hornet pictures for friends and relations.
Here is Joe, getting into a fighter plane. It was just the nose of the plane, but he got to sit in the cockpit.
Fighter pilot's briefing room, fully restored.


On the flight deck with Lou. He really was a fighter pilot. He gave a great tour!


Here is Nancy's quilt on my design wall. It's further along than this, but this is the most recent photo.

USS Hornet

Cub Scout Pack 92 just completed the Live Aboard on the USS Hornet, a WWll aircraft carrier docked in Alameda. It's an historical landmark and museum.

We got to go after hours for many tours, eat in the mess, and sleep in the bunks. In the morning, after breakfst, we got more tours and an award and patch before the museum opened.

It was a great experience!

These pictures are of the flight deck, on the top of the carrier, and the hanger deck, just below it. There are huge elevators to lift the planes, and smaller, but still big elevators, for bombs. The pilots had an escalator.

Wall Eyed

Here is my design wall showing further progress.
This one turns out to be pretty tricky to get the right pieces in the right places. If you know what to look for, you can see some mistakes in this picture that I had to go back and fix.
It's actually a lot further along than this, but I haven't been posting the pictures because of many things, like

--Getting Shanghai- into marching in the 4th of July parade

--Someone else using our computer to actually MAKE money

--Going back and fixing more mistakes in this quilt than the picture shows

--Being Owner/Operator of Mom's Taxi Co., a not-for-profit organization





Oh Yeah, and Wall Eyed, in a horse, is a blaze or white marking big enough to include an eye and turn it blue. I had a horse like this(good ol' Frix), and it takes getting used to. Horses have horizontal pupils, like goats, but usually you don't see them because the eyes have a lot of dark brown pigmentation.
You still can't tell what they are looking at from the eyes, the ears tell all. They can be paying attention to two different things and have an ear swivelled toward each. I guess not having a corpus colosum has benefits.

Misk

Here they are: Chica Chicken and Paula Pullet. They are growing. They discovered worms and how to scratch in the dirt to get worms. Then they discovered daffodil bulbs. You get those from scratching in the dirt where the worms are.

Dave finally figured out that Joseph and I were serious when we said "You have to catch Paula first." If you catch Chica, Paula knows the jig is up and then she is hard to catch. If you catch Paula first, then Chica knows its time to get caught and comes over to be picked up. But....Chica is easier to catch, so Dave always caught her first.
Here is my design wall. This is for Nancy.

Pictures, finally.

Here are the two batiks. Finally I can upload pictures. I don't know what happened, but now it works.

These birds are about 2 feet square. Sort of.



...and here are the two sleeping engineers we came home to.

Frame

I wanted to put pictures of the batiks here, but Blogspot is having problems right now. Yesterday too. I don't know when it will be fixed.

Well, the deadline for the fair is the 7th, if the entries are mailed in, the 8th if you can deliver them. It's about a 2 hour drive, freeway all the way.

I had the batik I wanted almost done Wednesday, all I had to do was iron the wax out on Thursday morning. I started at 6:30 am. There was a back up piece that was so close to done that I did one more wax and dye to it and ironed the wax out or it too. Turns out I like it better.

So after the barn,-- No Aaron, Joe was with me hoping his friend Aaron would be there but he wasn't-- We went up to Fremont to the framing gallery there. We looked and looked at frames and mats and couldn't find one that I was really happy with. Thanks to the 44oz Super Big Gulp from 7-11, Joe had to use the bathroom three times, but the bathroom at the gallery was funked out and we had to walk around the corner and down the street to Mission Coffee and use that one.

We finally found a frame that I liked. Cost? Over $500! Could have knocked me down. I said "I could never sell it for that." (That means "It's not worth that" in a way that was difficult to argue) So the frame store guy got really weird and started showing me all the "cheapest" stuff that was not suitable. Joseph asked why we were trying to get a "cheapo" one. That was exactly what I needed him to say. I replied to Joe that we weren't trying to go cheapo, but we needed to compromise and find middle ground. By telling Joe, I could also tell the frame store guy indirectly.
So we did. and we costed it out at just over $200. Better. SO I asked "How soon can you do it?" Well, the frame store guy was pissed at spending hours on a $200 sale and told me he was backlogged with work(which is why he wasn't working when we got there) and gave me a long lead time. Well, If I miss the deadline there is not point in doing it at all. So we left, everybody pleasantly pissed.

From there we went to Micheal's at McCarthy Ranch in Milpitas. Inexpensive custom framing with limited capabilities. If the computer program isn't set up to take that option, they cant do it. But.....they just has a sale last week and are backlogged and can't do it in time. So I figured we would go to Marshall's mega outlet dept store and buy a picture in a frame I liked. Dave could cut it to the right size, skip the mat. The framing lady at Michael's said, "You could do that here." So we did, and the frame I selected was on sale, so I got two, one for each piece. They are a little bit primitive, so mat-less suits them fine. Two frames, under $80.

And only 4 1/2 hours later. I told Joseph that it was a long day for him and he was very good and patient and I thought that merited 40 extra minutes of XBox time.
We stopped at Blockbuster to rent a game with the gift card he got for his birthday and he had just enough left on the card to join a new game club for a month. He can have an unlimited number of games for 30 days, just one at a time. He can trade the one he has for another one as many times as he wants.

He was happy, I was happy. When we got home, both Dave and Ferm were crashed On the couch. They looked happy too.