Kreativ Blogger Award

Carla, over at Carla Nayland Historical Fiction bludgeoned me with this colorful award. As with all bling, it comes with strings, namely some play along questions. So here they are, in no particularly coherent order . . .





List 7 of your favourite things.

• paper - forms:art papers with all their wondrous weights and textures, books, and Post-it® notes – savior of the absentminded.

• dogs - The only beings that worship me as their god. Please don't tell them I'm not omnipotent.

• the Internet - Instant gratification for the terminally curious. I want to bake the inventor of Google Earth a cake for allowing me to see what's parked in my British friend's driveway. (Hi Oonah!)

• Wool and wooly things - From alpaca fleece to Rambouillet roving to yak yarn and everything in between.

• National Forests and Parks - Legal trespassing on spectacular scenery, and source of inspiration for poetic and theological treatises.

• Poetry - Saving my sanity stanza by stanza, line by line, rhyme by rhyme.

• Mythology, sociology, theology, and physics – The cause of inner dichotomy since the dawn of time.

List 7 of your favourite activities.

• hiking/walking meditations - AKA wandering aimlessly/purposefully through vast uncharted (by me) areas of wilderness in a never ending quest for inspiration/spiritual enlightenment, and a nagging obsession with Man vs. Wild – note to self, bring plenty of power bars, since eating bugs/snakes/yak eyeballs is out of the question.
  

• Spinning/knitting/dyeing wool - OR 101 things to do with a sheep fleece. What? Everyone doesn't like making their clothes from the animal up? Yes, I have a loom too. Don't come whining to me for a loincloth when the zombie apocalypse hits. Plan ahead.

• Printmaking/drawing/graphic design – See zombie apocalypse. Your only news and cartoons will come from me. Reduced to bare essentials and printed with the finest ink and papers harvested from the undead.

• Reading/writing poetry and other fiction – I want to create an earworm so insidious schoolchildren 200 years from now will be belting out my verses instead of "The Midnight Ride Of Paul Revere" or "Casey At The Bat". A really annoying rap song would be quicker, but I do have standards.

• Mad Scientist – otherwise known as cooking. I almost never make a recipe the same way twice. Usually because I've lost the recipe, or forgot to write it down while creating a new dish. ADHD Rule of Cooking: If it has more than 7 ingredients, it probably didn't need those extra ones anyhow. Better off leaving them out, no one will miss them.

• Philosophical Discourse. Name the topic. AKA Will argue for coffee, with coffee, over coffee, about coffee.

• Home Repair – It's my house - if I want my living room to be burnt orange, I can do that. What's not to like?

List 7 things no-one knows about you.

• I once spent 4 months in the jungles of Honduras learning: The velocity of a fist size beetle determines how badly the windshield will get broken. If you accidentally kill a chicken, villagers will take the equivalent of $2.50 in compensation. Plus the dead chicken. Toenails do grow back from jungle rot. Eventually.

• I can sing the Canadian National Anthem in both English and French. Yes, we had a minor league hockey team in my hometown, why do you ask??

• If I had to do it over again, I'd be a physicist of some sort. Astro or quantum. Oh, and I'd pay more attention in math class.

• I took a train trip from Siena, Italy to Amsterdam by myself one weekend just to go to the Vincent Van Gogh museum. I also went to the Rijksmuseum and Stedelijk Museum, back to UNISI just in time to take an art history test. Van Gogh wasn't on it…

• My eldest child and I have the exact same birthmark, in the exact same place.

• There is rap music on my iPod.

• I originally wanted to fly UH-60 Black Hawks in the Army. Instead of going up, in the air, they thought I'd be happier blowing things up, in the air. Go figure.

Pass the award on to 7 others.

• Since, as Anonymous always reminds me, I don't have seven friends, the award is up for grabs. Just follow the loose-goose rules and let the rest of us know you played, so we can go read all about YOU.

Back to Printmaking

It's printmaking Exchange time again over at the Baren Forum. Well, actually, the signup for this exchange was July 1st with prints due November 1st. I actually had my images partially carved by August 1, put them aside and promptly procrastinated by doing other prints.

The gory details

• Medium:Woodblock print (hand rubbed or pulled on a press, B&W or colour, any pigments, any paper). Note: The Baren Exchange is a program for forum members to create, exchange and display editions of woodblock prints. Relief prints pulled from wood substitutes and wood-like materials, including linoleum, corian, MDF, resingrave, and similar are acceptable as are collagraphs. Coordinators are obligated to reject prints whose primary method of production is by other means. For example: monotype, intaglio, stencil, lithography, ink jet, laser, photocopy, etc are to be rejected by the coordinator.

• Theme: Open
• Image size: Any size and orientation within the paper
• Paper size: Chu-tanzaku, about 3 x 9 inches (7.62 x 22.86 cm)
• Paper type: No restrictions

I was a bit flummoxed by the paper size requirements at first.

The only images that came readily to mind were a train (horizontal), but I'm not really into choo-choos, guitar (horizontal) but I've had my fill of guitars - a later post - and a rock climber rappelling (vertical). Liked the idea, still do, but none of my sketches were coming together. Then I remembered a Japanese printmakers, Hiroshige, a ukiyo-e artist. He did a lot of Chu-tanzaku images.


Now I had an idea, a print with one of my favorite creatures, a red winged backbird sounding off.Since this was a new print size for me, I chickened out and carved in linoleum rather than the shina plywood. Until I can afford some good quality moku hanga carving tools, I'm going to stay away from anything more than the basics in wood.


Two of the carved lino images. I added some reeds to the cattail the red wing is sitting on, and decided on a fall cattail, beige and fluffing out. So five colors for this print, baby blue sky, tan cattail (olive where it overlaps with the sky color) light black bird, yellow beak, feet and shoulder patch, and a dash of red for the shoulder patch. We'll see how it goes, registration is not my strong point.

I have the paper soaking for printing in a ZipLock bag. Stonehenge Natural White, I'll probably try some prints on Masa paper, maybe some Mulberry paper also. If I'm happy with the results, you'll see a final image. If not... back to the studio and some frantic carving. Keeping my rock climber drawings close - just in case.

Calling All Poets: Not-So-Shameless EDP Promotion

You!

Yeah, you, I'm talking to you.

The one with the poetical bent.

Every Day Poets needs you. Submissions are getting low, I can almost see a light at the end of the tunnel. I know you wouldn't want me to edit my way to a clear cyber-desk, now would you??

Submit a poem, and actually get paid for your work, if it is accepted. Okay, it's a token payment, but still, it gives you bragging rights, the chance to be ridiculed/admired in public, link back to your blog/website, and a shot at inclusion in the as yet to be named upcoming anthology of Every Day Poets best poems.

So dust off your best work, and hop on over to Every Day Poets for the easy-peasy on-line submission process.

You wouldn't want me to be underworked and overpaid, now, would you?

Didn't think so.

Guest Dog Makes Himself At Home

This is the Guest Dog, Buster. I can only get pictures of him when he's asleep, because he's a perpetual motion machine. I've had to relearn about dogs with tails. His is a lethal weapon when he's happy, which is all the time. A big, lovable goofball of a dog. Four and a half months, Weimaraner/Shepherd cross. Did I mention he was big??


Feet the size of salad plates, and a mouth big enough to swallow a cat's head. (Ask me how I know) He's made himself right at home. The Corgis are accepting, but disgruntled. Buster has all the coordination of a drunken sailor on shore leave. Every time he crashes into something, Merlin lifts a lip. Max attempts to ignore him, but it's hard when something that big stands over you and blocks out the sun.

The cat remains underwhelmed. Especially when Buster tears around the house with a catnip mouse hanging out of his mouth.

Taking three dogs to the park is a feat of skill and coordination, not to mention the requirement of tons of treats crammed in all pockets. I decided not to attempt it today.

Although Guest Dog sometimes behaves better at 4 months than Merlin does at 4 years . . . . Selective hearing hasn't kicked in in puppies yet, I suppose.

And it is far easier to photograph nature without 40 pounds of gallumping hound plowing over your subject matter. Happy Labor Day, where the only things working are rambunctious puppies and industrious bees.

Pre-Hike Cooking, non-Corgi Type

Yes, it's over 90 degrees out and I'm baking. But I wanted something to take with me on a hike this weekend and frankly, commercial granola bars are icky. Commercial power bars are worse - do they save the old chalk from elementary school to mix with the chocolate?

So I set out to make my own version of a power granola bar.

Oats, wheat flour, real butter, the last of my Montana raspberry honey, dried cranberries, chopped up nuts (cashews, almonds, peanuts, walnuts, sunflower seeds), some shredded coconut, chocolate chips, cinnamon, dried milk. . . and probably other things I can't remember off hand.


As you may recall I'm a wing-it type of cook. I kinda sorta have a piece of paper with scrawled notes, measurements, and grease stains all over it. Hope I can resurrect my basic steps. I'm going to need them. The Corgi-Slave Energy Bars came out great, very tasty and chock full of Stuff. Wonderful, except for one thing. They didn't stick together as well as I wanted them to. I'm going to have to make another pan and tinker with the ingredients some more. Hmm, I see there's a stray box of Rice Crispies on my shelf . . . I could throw those in too.

While I was concocting, I decided to make some hummus. Yes, I know hummus and power bars really do not go together. The beans were on the counter, begging to be used. As long as I had dishes to wash I might as well make it worth my while. The hummus is another wing it recipe, but really hard to screw up. This version was roast garlic, with some extra roast sesame seeds.


Now I'm off to do some Internet shopping to replenish ingredients. You know hard hard it is to get tahini in Wyoming? I just hope I don't end up on someone's watch list for ordering garam masala, tahini, Masa paper, dioxazine purple, and a new folding knife, all at the same time. The only thing all those ingredients adds up to is a very colorful mess. - Kids, don't try this at home. -

Boy, I'm so glad I'm not a kid anymore.