Ice, Ice, Baby!

My M!

Oh, dear... I just discovered that I did not post this! That is not good at all! So, without further ado, may I present Mason!

A bit of a catch up! It is only February 9th and it has already been a very busy month!  On the very first day of the month, I became grandma for the 10th time - a sweet little boy! He is my youngest's first and he is beautiful!

I spent a few days traveling to the hospital, staying for hours, returning home, and coming back the next day for more!  He was able to go home on Monday and the forecasts began predicting SNOW on top of the chilly air we already had! I know, most of this country has had more than its fair share this winter, but it has been quite spring-like here in Portland.

A ferret looking for its home

On the fifth, the temps dropped - windchill of minus 1 F at night. The winds howled, steady at 10-15 mph, with frequent gusts up to 45 m.p.h. We also had a visitor... we didn't know what it was and by the time we discovered that it was a ferret, it was gone. It was quite friendly, but it really startled me. Poor thing. It was just looking for a handout and I ran! Good thing it has a very thick winter coat!

The next day, the snow started and with the wind still howling, the flakes were tiny and dry. More blew down the street than stayed in the yard. Someone must have a huge pile of snow.

Icy cold Anna's Humminbird

The Anna hummingbirds have been really cold - puffed up like a ball. Why they don't migrate is a good question, if you ask me. I have noticed that whenever there is icy weather, the female disappears. The male spent time in our porch, getting out of the wind by sitting on an empty bird feeder part of the time. Mr. R has been rotating the hummers' feeder to thaw every few hours. We discovered that also brought in ants who love the feeder, too. Those stinking ants are a favorite treat of hummers and chickadees but getting the frozen feeder covered and sealed to prevent them from taking over the house even more was very important.

Coming home from my walk...

We got several inches of snow - not the norm for Portland - the most we've had since 1993.  Yesterday, I walked around the block and on a side trip - about a mile altogether. This is almost home - the middle set of Douglas Fir on the left is ours.

Ice covered snow - Golden Desert Ash on the right

White, winter wonderland - and not one human footprint to be found. It has been a long time since kids lived here! Our son brought his kids over to sled on our slope a couple of years ago - not much snow but it was fun! This year, it wasn't easy to get around.

Ice on the Japanese Cherry...

 As it usually does here in Portland when we have a lot of cold air, last night we got freezing rain. It was just starting when I was almost home and got serious in a couple of hours. It is an amazing sight to see everything coated with a coat of ice. If you don't have to go anyplace and your power doesn't go out, it is beautiful!

Shooting through binoculars

Finally, my camera since 2006, a Canon IS-3S, seems to have finally given out. I have been forcing it to keep going by using very fresh batteries, but today, it has refused to start. The photo of the iced branches was taken with it today. It has 12x zoom - a 400mm lens equivalent - and has been delightful. It also has a flip-out screen on back, making it possible to take selfies with my grands for a long time!

For now, I have to compensate with the little Pentax we have. It is compact but only has 3x optical zoom, making it difficult to get the long shots.  Today, I tried putting the lens into the eye-piece of my little binoculars - and it wasn't too bad... not great, but it is interesting. The dried up hydrangea flowers are the same as on the right side of the Golden Desert Ash in the photo up the page a couple of shots.. It definitely had a vignetting effect. I put it on super-macro in order for it to focus on the lens. Very tedious trying to find a spot, but it is worth a shot!

Acanthus... twisty leaves

Acanthus leaves have been used in decoration for over two thousand years - and I love them - on carvings, paintings, old manuscripts - wherever they appear. I once tried growing the vine but it disappeared. I grew up with wooden plates and baskets from Norway that had been painted in Rosemaling/Rosemåling - rose painting. I found this photo on the web showing the stylized acanthus leaves - the blue and green scrolls on the wooden plate.

Rosemaling began during a period when Rococo was popular - vines decorated ornate mirrors and carvings in wealthy homes. Paint, however, was more affordable. The rosemaling scrolls and vines were the reason I started decorative painting back in the early 70's when it seemed that all of my friends were Tole Painting and I was at home with my first babe.

I wasn't fond of painting the mushrooms, apples and such that my friends made in class, and being a new mom and a student's wife, the budget allowed for either classes or books I bought books.  I hunted down wooden plates and plaques to decorate with scrolls, dots, and swirls in wonderfully smooth strokes of oil paint in traditional rosemaling. Before that, I spent hours practicing mixing paint and brushing stokes, swirls and comas on paper before I attempted my first strokes on an old piece of board. It wasn't long before I was painting on anything that didn't move - and my old bicycle's fenders that, when I traded it in for something with more than one speed, I got quite a bit more than I thought it was worth - just because of my stroke-work! I wish I had photos! I always wanted to cover my kitchen cupboards but that hasn't happened.

Eventually, my older two were in school and a friend was willing to trade babysitting - she watched my younger two and I started taking lessons. I wanted to learn new things! The problem was that in a room full of women painting with oils, turps and other thinners in a not-well-ventilated room was much different than just me painting at home and I developed severe headaches. I had to find other paint, as did most decorative painters. Acrylic craft paint was being introduced, pre-mixed in lots of little bottles. Instructions no longer told you how to mix the right color - you had to buy a bottle of each color indicated. Brushes were developed out of synthetic fibers that were inexpensive and tossed after a few months because the much coarser paint destroyed fine bristles. My Kolinsky sable and other good brushes were put away until many years later, I began painting with watercolors.

I later took calligraphy lessons and learned several hands - styles - and was once again fascinated with those viney acanthus leaves that often wound around decorated pages.  A few days ago, I came across a few resources for drawing acanthus and other ornamentals. You can buy various publications of it, but my preference was to download the free PDF of the Guide for drawing the acanthus, and every description of ornamental foliage.


The SCA - Society for Creative Anachronism- has the Gutenberg School of Scribes (GSS) which is a series of on-line instruction for making your own illuminated manuscripts.

However, the site that made me get out some graph paper and pencil was The Calligraphy Pen's Drawing Acanthus Leaves.

My attempts take a bit of erasure to look right and using a piece of tracing paper over my screen and copying them for my own helped me see where I was going wrong. 

I ended up printing out the sections I was using.

All of this led to getting out my calligraphy and fountain pens. Unfortunately, some were put away without a good cleaning so my hands are looking like a calligrapher's - stained with unmovable inks that reconstituted in my efforts. It is fun to see what I can still remember after a few years of absence!

Refreshing...

After not posting for a  l o n g  time, my tendency is to try to catch up. I start writing but it is not posted because it is never 'finished' - because that is an impossibility! So, this is a notice that I will not even try. But, from time to time, I will post some things that I am doing.

Pepto?

I'm taking a break from painting my dining room.
After all of the classes I've taken and books I've read on 'how to have a happy husband', I'm throwing it all (or at least the stuff that says his thoughts about how things should look and be around here are twice as important as mine are) OUT - and painting it PINK!.  "They" seem to like to tell you to make sure everything the little woman does passes approval of the big guy.  All of that accumulation of info brought me to a place where I didn't give myself permission to do what I would like around the house.
The past couple of years have resulted in two renewed bathrooms and some other things that have given  "Whatever YOU (meaning me) want!" a very new meaning to me.
I like it.
I have to get back to the Pepto - I mean pink - painting.  The ceiling and woodwork are white so it isn't ALL pink. :)
ps.  He really doesn't care; in fact, he likes it.  After I convinced him to wear a pink button-down shirt --- and he disovered that he liked it and even wore them to work,  I shouldn't have been at all concerned.

Knitting

A few days ago I finally pulled some knitting out that has been aging for a long time. I brought a sweater to work on the last time I went to New York to visit my husband's family. I didn't consider the quality of yarn, though. Although I had most of the body of the sweater done that summer, it wasn't going to be what I had planned. I bought some inexpensive Orlon - an acrylic yarn that was not the soft stuff we have now. It would be fine for a summer sweater, though. It is navy blue and I loved the color. I just gave up on it.

I didn't want to start over or throw it away, since I had spent so much time on it. I have looked at many navy blue sweaters in the past 20 plus years but always think that I 'have' one, if I could just finish it.

Recently, I decided that I need to finish some things. I haven't had a whole lot of energy so since I've been sitting, I needed to do something. I finished a pair of socks I had started last year. Of course the second one was much easier than the first. I had to rip out the toe-area on that first sock because of some miss-measuring. Now I have wiggle-room.

Next, I got out the yarn my youngest daughter wanted me to make into as scarf. I had made her one for her birthday that, in theory, would have been fun. I had seen a demo where the teacher laid out some dissoluble stabilizer, then sprayed it with a temporary adhesive. After this she layered yarns, threads and other fibers on this then topped it with another layer of stabilizer. This was then connected with row upon row of stitching - lots of rows both lengthwise and crosswise.

When I thought my effort was sufficiently 'woven', I rinsed the whole thing to remove the stabilizer and produce what should have been a lovely, soft and drapable scarf.
It was a sticky mess so I soaked it overnight. I put things in the water that were supposed to dissolve stubborn stabilizers... several times. At one point I pulled it out into shape, a chore in itself since it was still sticking to itself, hung it on a couple of plastic hangers and hung that out in a tree on one of the warmer days we had this summer. Stiff, stiff, stiff.

I continued for a couple of days to try to make this stuff behave. Thinking of how lovely it would be to get a beautiful scarf only to find that it was stiff, prickly and sticky, I kept trying. I finally decided that it would have to do because it was her birthday. Instead of softly draping, it was more like barbed netting. I tried to wrap it to compensate for what was inside but I was not successful. She graciously took it home after she tried to 'drape' it around her neck. We have since talked about it and I would still like to try washing it out some more - or make another one.

After this I realized that I needed to knit the scarf she originally wanted. It didn't take too long on size 15 needles and it is finished and she has it.

Finally, I restarted the sweater. I only needed to knit a couple more rows then knit the ribbing for the bottom of the body of the sweater. I forgot to change to a smaller sized needle for the ribbing, but I think it will be alright the way it is. I could rip it out....

I am almost finished with the first sleeve. I have a couple inches more to knit and then the ribbing. The second sleeve 'should' be much quicker. The pattern calls for using double-pointed needles (dpn), but the ones I own are aluminum and the stitches tended to slip off of it and cause a lot of re-working. I finally bought a small - 12" I think - circular needle which is small enough to do the entire sleeve. I will still have to use dpn for the cuff area but I have a set of bamboo dpn that behave much better. They are also a set of 5 instead of the 4 I was using. Five seems to be much easier to handle.

I haven't finished a sweater since I made a vest for my DH many years before this. It had a simple pattern to it that should have been attractive but, since we were in the poor-starving-student phase of our lives I didn't buy nice enough yarn so it was not really noticeable. I hope I have thoroughly learned my lesson here. I would love to do some fair isle and for all of the work that entails, it deserves to be made of nice stuff.

Back to Creativity

Back to Creativity. I've been sidetracked for a bit - we've been fixing up the house a bit. We redid the upstairs bathroom and hallway and are in the much and muddle of doing the same to the main bath.