A week of Christmas movies

 Traditionally our family watches Die Hard and It's a Wonderful Life for Christmas.  This year, since we aren't able to gather with the kids for our daylong bagel buffet and present unwrapping, Jeff & I have expanded the movie list.  In part to give us more seasonal things to do and in part because of some interesting discussions among my FB friends about their favorite Xmas movie.

Last night, we started with Long Kiss Goodnight.   Clearly in the Die Hard camp, it's also one of our favorite watch things blow up movies.

We'll also be adding one of my top five movies, The Lion in Winter.  Definitely a family movie and set at Christmas but not a feelgood film.  Lots of family infighting and emoting, but at the end of the film nothing has changed.  Great actors and excellent writing.  We like the original with Pete & Kate. Altho I'm just now realizing I haven't seen the one with Patrick Stewart instead of O'Toole.  

Also new on our list this year, Love Actually.  This is a more traditional sort of holiday movie which is also a favorite in our rom com category.

That will pretty much round out our week ending with a zoom call with the family on Christmas Day.  I hope your holidays are healthy and happy.  

Finding joy during studio sabbatical

 My back is still being cranky so I am mostly doing not much of anything but read and watch the hummingbirds through the window.  This is annoying as I was really enjoying working with the alcohol ink but I will get back to it in a few weeks, I'm sure.  And when I do, I will use some of my bird photos as a starting point.  So today, I'm sharing some of the ones I'm considering.  I'm mostly looking for a good silhouette altho if it's a stunning bird shot, I may just interpret it in ink.

First up, my favorite Steller's Jay photo.  Part of what I'm doing while not in the studio is learning my new photo software (Affinity) and I'll be creating a layer off this photo with lines that can be used as a silkscreen.  

And of course I have to have a Great Blue Heron shot.  So many choices.  Here's a flying heron that I love because of the water background.  I think the alcohol ink will be great for doing that background.  If I use this one, I'll probably crop it in but that will be a balancing act between focusing on the heron and keeping enough of the water to give that spacious feeling.

The other candidate is one taken at Tennant Lake in April so we joked about the heron keeping social distance from us on the boardwalk.

This one is more of a classic standing pose and that's always a popular choice.

Alcohol Ink monoprint on fabric

 I'm experimenting with alcohol ink because it's a really quick drying fluid way to create color and it works on both paper & fabric.  Today's experiment was to see if an alcohol ink bird done on glass could be successfully printed on fabric.  Here is the starting bird shape.

This was done using a nasal syringe to blow the ink around and see if I had enough control to create shapes.  If I were finishing this as a bird piece of art, I would add details and more with ink pens along with a background.  But first, I wanted to see if my ideas about how to transfer from the glass to fabric would work.  

I stabilized a piece of white cotton by ironing it to a scrap piece of freezer paper.  I let that sit overnight, and today I sprayed the fabric with 90% isopropyl alcohol to reactivate the alcohol ink that is on the glass.  Then I used my favorite brayer to rub to make sure the ink transferred.  There was some ink left on the glass but what did transfer did not seriously run or bleed so I'm fairly happy with this outcome.

There is some blurring of the edges so I would definitely want to sharpen the details with the ink pens if I was using this technique for the foreground of a piece.  This will however be an excellent way to create moody backgrounds and I'm looking forward to more experimentation.

Halloween treat: caramel apple cheesecake

 A recipe for Caramel Apple Crisp cheesecake bars came across my FB feed and since I love cheesecake and Jeff loves anything he can put caramel sauce on, this seemed like a winner of an idea.  I printed out the recipe and successfully made some but the recipe didn't include eggs in the cream cheese mixture so I added one and I found the results tasty but bland.  The rest of the family came back for seconds so it was a success but since I only get dessert once every 2 weeks, I want something more.

So, here's my plan.  I'm going to take my favorite cheesecake recipe and use half the cheesecake filling amount since I'm doing an 8x8 pan not the 9x13 it calls for.  I liked the crust in the above trial which added rolled oats to the graham cracker crumbs, butter, and sugar that is traditional for the cheesecake crust.  (We used GF graham crackers, of course.)   To add the spicy apple part, in addition to the peeled & sliced apple, I'm going to sprinkle the cheesecake with fresh ground cinnamon before putting the apples on. And maybe a bit of ground ginger too. And then there's the crumbly topping from the above recipe which needed way more than the recipe called for: The original recipe called  for 1/4 C AP flour (GF), 1/4 C.  rolled oats, 1/4 C brown sugar, 1 tsp cinnamon, 2 TB coconut oil  (I subbed butter since Jeff doesn't like coconut oil).  I'm going to add some ground cloves.  If this doesn't cover well enough, I'll make more because I like the crumbly bits all over the top.  

Bake at 350F for 40 minutes, a bit longer if you want totally soft apples.  Cool for 15 minutes.  I'm not sure if the refrigerating overnight is actually required.  But add caramel sauce when serving.  We used Trader Joe's GF no-corn sauce and it was quite tasty.

 

Studio Sabbatical or reading instead of doing

 Thanks to my back having it's every 13 year super spasm, I am not doing much in the studio.  For the last 2 months.  *sigh*  Once I got over the worst of the pain, however, I was thankful the library sent me a book on alcohol inks.  It's a fairly popular book so I had a several month wait for it and had forgotten about it.  Having it pop to the top of my hold list gave me a lovely distraction.

Pigments of the Imagination is a guide to learning the medium with a series of explorations.  I sometimes think of this type of book as an art cookbook as I'm one of those people who actually reads cookbooks all the way through to find ideas & recipes.  I bought an inexpensive set of inks to try it out and will get the more expensive brand name inks if I decide to pursue it.

One of the things I do when browsing books like this is write the things I particularly want to try on a post it that goes on the inside cover.  (My cookbooks have the recipes & page number written on the book pages rather than a post it because I like annotating them.)

I filled 2 post its before deciding I should try things out first.

Part of the appeal here is that the inks are very concentrated, like the Derwent Inktense pencils/bars, and work on both paper and fabric.  So the experimenting will begin soon, once I'm over the flu/sinus infection that is adding to my wonderful medical life right now.  Hoping you are in much better health & also enjoying making art.

Annual prepping for power outages

 Our first windy storm that causes power outages has hit so fall/winter is officially here.  And while it's easy to find a list of things to do to prep (heat, light, amusements), my 2 most important things aren't usually on those lists.

First up, making a latte without my electric espresso machine.  Because if I don't have my morning latte, well, the whole day is not going to be pretty.  Thus my excitement this last week when a stovetop espresso pot came up on the local Buy Nothing list.  And I won!   

Of course, once you've got the espresso, there's frothing the milk which is the point of the battery powered whisk on the left.

The second essential thing for me is a battery big enough to run my cpap overnight so I can get some sleep.  Because I am a truly cranky bear if I have no sleep and no latte.  After the last power outage, I went online and shopped for battery packs and picked the one below because it can be charged from a car (and our Prius is great for being a huge battery backup) and can also have a solar panel added.  Just in case you want to go camping.  And it has plugs for charging phones & tablets which makes it an excellent multipurpose battery.

We have the heat covered by having a coleman heater with a catalytic converter so we can use it indoors altho they do say not to use it while sleeping in case the fire goes out.  And we have lots of flashlights and candles, so light is covered.  Our stove and water heater are gas so the basic cooking and showering are covered.  We have a bookcase full of board games and lots of reading materials at all times so we are now  ready for the 2020 winter.  

Remembering birding in So Cal

 My back is keeping me out of the studio for now and I've been catching up on some of those computer things that wait until I have time for them.  This has meant organizing my ebook backup directory by author and sorting through some bird photos.  Which led to my discovery of a report of a birding trip in 2005 when I went to San Diego and then the Salton Sea for birding.  I went with a birding friend, Tina, who took this picture of a cactus wren.

I used this photo, printed on silk with some color changes, to try out some various ideas about using bird photos to make art.  These 2 pieces are in the finished but not happy with them drawer for 2 reasons.  First, I wasn't happy with the pieces themselves and second, the stitching required to do this was just too difficult.  

So, as part of going through and cleaning stuff up, I'm looking at these older unsatisfactory pieces and wondering if they would work better as collage rather than piecing.  I keep coming back to this idea for 2 reasons.  One, I'd like to use my bird photographs in my work.  Second, I really liked this bushtit piece which was done using piecing and some silkscreening.  Also Inktense pencils.  

Looking at the piece I like in comparison to the 2 I don't like, I can see a couple of major differences.  The contrast between the photo colors and the other fabric is one.  The second is the thinner pieces of fabric work better in the bushtit piece.  So while I work on getting my back happy again, I'll be contemplating these pieces.

Murphy's Law in the Marbling studio

 Last week, I attempted to do a whole lot of marbling.  I did actually do a bunch but everything that could go wrong, did.  Hence Murphy's Law.

I was using the palette from a NASA photo of the earth from space: blues, white for clouds, green for continents with a dash of orange for not green land.  And these colors worked well together but the first thing that went wrong was I tried using a white paint that I've never used before without testing it for spreading on the thickened water.  Lots of it fell to the bottom so the first thing on my list of things to fix is to check all the paints I'm planning on using for proper spreading on the medium.  The blues were mostly okay but the greens and the whites, not so much.

  Then the medium was a bit thick. I hadn't checked that either, using my tried and true formula for mixing it but apparently age of the powder and humidity do indeed affect the consistency.  This is not a fatal error since all it means is I have to rinse the fabric more thoroughly after marbling to get all the goo off, but again, something to fix.

I couldn't find my marbling notebook with all my notes of things I learned from experience so I had to rediscover some things.  Like the first color put on the medium is not as noticeable in the overall design as the last color.  In this example, the orange was last following the green.  Way more of those colors than I wanted altho I think it's still pretty fabric.

After that day of surprises, I switched to the shaving foam to try out some blue and white ideas.  I got the white swirls I was looking for but also learned I can't do a thinner layer of foam just because I'm running out.  It just won't allow the manipulations I want to do.

I like the bottom one better as it has more of the swirling look I was after.  The top one suffered from my not remembering the correct patting technique for making sure paint transfers completely.  

And to end off a frustrating week, I managed to mess up my back on Friday.  I spent the weekend resting, did lots of studio stuff on Monday but woke yesterday with yet more back pain.  So, it will be next week before I get back in the marbling studio.  I can only be thankful I have a massage appointment in a couple of days.  

My favorite Marbling tools

This last week was supposed to have me back in the studio doing some marbling inspired by one of the earth from space photos from NASA.  Alas, I was unable to sleep through the night at all this week so I was only able to get some marbling prep done.  So, here's my current state:  marbling gel made, fabric treated, cut and pressed, ready to go, and colors selected.  I'm hoping some of you are looking at that picture and asking what's that thing? cuz that's what I'm going to talk about: my favorite marbling tools.

I learned to marble from books and an artist friend who took a weekend workshop.  I didn't have a ready source of tools and I wasn't sure how much I'd enjoy it so I decided to diy most of the things I needed.  This meant re-purposing plastic pans and shoe boxes for marbling trays.  The rakes used to create tight patterns come in different sizes for different trays so I also needed to make my own of those.  In general, the only thing here that's recognizable as a commercially available marbling tool is the pile of black whisks which my artist friend gave me.  Everything else was improv.

Going left to right, we start with a cardboard tube which I use to wrap the fabric around so I can unroll it on top of the marbling gel after I apply the paint with the whisks and manipulate it.  Using the tube as a roller makes fabric much easier to marble and allows me precise placement without much worry about errors at all.  To the right of the tube are all the paints I've selected for this palette.  I spent one summer trying out different paints I had and buying some samples of new ones for colors that my current paints didn't do well.  (Once applied to the marbling gel, the paints spreads quite a bit.  In particular, all the reds I had turned pink because the pigment was in too thin a layer.  One of many reasons why starting marbling is a steep learning curve.)  

Now we get to the real tools.  I made a few rakes/combs to fit the size of the trays I had available.  My first attempts used foamcore as the handle and various sizes of pins for the comb part.  Foamcore doesn't stand up well to wet so I used some trimmings from sheets of honeycomb plastic.  And I ended up using T-pins because they worked so well being inserted into the white plastic strip.  Waterproof, not going to shift around and easy to adjust the spacing if needed.  These turned out to be my second favorite tools. 

I've already mentioned the black whisks which are used to apply the paint to the gel surface.  I also use them to do the marbling strokes by flipping them over and using the solid end as a one pin comb.  This is easier than making really tiny rakes to use with small trays.  And my favorite tool is last.  The ceramic chopstick rests that I repurposed because the glossy glaze means the acrylic paint can be easily scraped off.  

So there we are.  I made 2 gallons of gel, have my 11x14 tray set up and all my paints and tools ready to go.  Monday I start throwing paint around.  

Toffee, the gateway to candy making

Despite getting my annual summer cold, I am continuing to make favorite dessert foods on the weekends.  The latest treat was toffee, an easy candy and a good introduction to candy making.

There are lots of recipes available on the net and in books.  I used Better than Anything Toffee from "Mom on Timeout" because it came up high on the list and I love pecans.  You can use any chopped nut instead of the pecans, or leave them out entirely. 

Ingredients:  1C chopped pecans, 1C unsalted butter, 1C sugar, 1/2 tsp salt, 1 tsp vanilla extract and 1C chocolate chips.  The recipe calls for milk chocolate and I subbed dark. 

After prepping the 9 inch sq baking pan, put butter, salt and sugar in a large pan (she calls for 3qt but 2 would probably work).  This calls for patience as the toffee mixture has to heat to 290 F, aka hard ball if you want to use the water test instead of a candy thermometer.  And stir regularly to avoid scorching. 

Once the candy has turned brown and hit the required temp, add vanilla and pour it over the nuts in the pan.

Cool for 5 minutes to let it get solid, then put the chocolate chips on top and spread.  Then it goes in the fridge for 2 hours or more before getting cut/broken  into pieces and eaten.    Yummy stuff and next time, I'll use the candy molds I ordered so I can better control the portion size. 

Reading during my month of downtime

I took June off.  I usually go slow on goals during the month between Jeff's birthday (6/5) and my birthday (7/6) but this year, I just needed total downtime.  So, I read novels, comfort reading.  Novels I had read and enjoyed before.   And here's what I read.

First up was the new release of Patricia Briggs' latest novel, Smoke Bitten.  I read the entire Mercy Universe series as a run up, most of that being in May. 

While I like the Mercy books, I prefer the Omega books in general as I'm not that keen on vampires.  This novel, the 12th in the series, is more about the fae coming out and how the werewolves are dealing with it.  Very enjoyable expansion of the series.

Then my friend Lisa decided to start her second novel based on a witch near the local prison who can see ghosts.  She was starting from the very spooky setting and doesn't read urban fantasy herself so she wanted me to help her out with the fantasy elements.  So, I went back to the Kalayna Price series about a grave witch who can call up the shade of the deceased and question them.  This series also has a major fae element and tends toward the romance end of the urban fantasy spectrum.  Enjoyable beach reading, definitely.

After that series, I was craving shapeshifters and B&N told me about a new Psy-changeling book from Nalini Singh.  I enjoy this series a lot when I'm in the mood for some fun paranormal romance.  Great sense of humor especially the excerpts from the Wild Woman columns.

I finished off the month with the Iron Seas series from Meljean Brooks.  Steampunk pirates in an alternate history with lots of adventure, swashbuckling and romance. 

So now I am refreshed and destressed and heading back into the studio. 

Selfcare: Literally stopping to smell the roses

As my stress level has risen, I've been prioritizing self care.  And today, that inspired me to go for my morning walk in the Cornwall Rose Garden where I did indeed stop and smell the roses. 

The most fragrant was this luscious deep red rose that was the first I came to after entering the garden.

Next up was this  peach & yellow rose with a delicate light fragrance.  

After three or four with no fragrance at all, I came to this lovely purplish red rose with an intermediate fragrance.  Almost enough to cause me to look for the 3 bears.

At this point, I decided the camera was interfering with the experience so I continued my walking and sniffing but no more photos.  I hope you are all taking care of yourselves as we cope with these very interesting times.

Studio help from inhouse 3D printer pro

I've maxed out on stress the last couple of weeks so I'm spending lots of time reading and finishing up the reorg of my studio space.  The last little bit is labeling all the rearranged elfa drawers that contain my fabrics and art supplies.  Now, elfa makes an acceptable label holder that fastens onto the drawer fronts but I really wanted a larger one without the not quite transparent plastic over the label.  So I turned to James, the inhouse 3D printer meister to see if this was feasible.  Why, yes, of course, he says.  And voila, a larger label holder appears. 

Elfa label holder on the right, prototype on the left.  And below the production run for 42 label holders on the printer.  This is exciting, I get to finally be able to read the labels on my drawers without bending over and squinting. 

Once I've put them on and used them for a bit, I'll probably add them to my etsy store for those other elfa users who want bigger labels.

Birchwood Park birding

Last week, one of my birding trips was to Birchwood Park.  It's a small neighborhood park, mostly urban park style with picnic tables, basketball court and a kid's playground.  But all of those things are closed off right now and it abuts the trail that runs from Squalicum Creek Park down to Squalicum Beach.  I have had good luck finding warblers along this trail so I went to check it out.

I was pleasantly surprised at the variety and number of birds.  Alas, only one warbler, an orange-crowned, but lots of other birds and lots of good camera shots.

White-crowned sparrow was my first camera volunteer. 

The next up for the camera was a Spotted Towhee.  There's a staircase up from Squalicum Creek and at the top of it, there's a cluster of trees that get sun so it's usually an excellent place to catch some birds singing.  Spring is the time to see these towhees as they are usually shy and skulking in the bushes.  In springtime, they are bold and fearless. 

My final camera volunteer was a Bewick's Wren found along the side trail that leads down to Squalicum Creek from the end of a neighborhood street.  He was at the top of a snag where I often find hummingbirds. 

Also found but not photographed:  bushtits, chickadees, flickers, gulls, crows, robins and a finch.  For a short walk, it was a good birding experience.

Birding continues with baby wood ducks

I've been very busy this week, between the 4 birding trips and finishing off the taxes.  Then I had to upload and sort all the photos.  So it's taken me until today to have time and energy to blog about all the fabulous birds.

Baby Wood Ducks!  Jeff joined me on a trip to Scudder Pond to see the reported baby wood ducks.  It was a warm sunny and there were lots of other folks there so we had a chance for some safe casual socializing and talking about birds.  It took us a while to locate the mama duck and her 9 ducklings but we had lots of other birds to distract us so that was cool.  Once we spotted them, the ducklings headed straight for us in that cute wandering all over the lily pads way that ducklings use to navigate.  So I got many wonderful shots of them.

I also got my first of the year rufous hummingbird.  It's fabulous when they sit at the very top of a leafless branch catching the sun with all their glorious color lighting up.  It's times like these that I start rethinking my decision to not have a honking big lens to carry around.

There was also an unexpected cedar waxwing spotted on the way back to the car in addition to all the usual inhabitants of the area.

It was a glorious day of birding and I am looking forward to more days this next week.

birding 2020: awesome week with 2 trips to Tennant Lake

This week I went to Tennant Lake to see swallows.  Twice.  The first time was cloudy and fairly breezy with a definite chill but I got some swallow sightings and got some excellent photos of a couple of Common Yellowthroats having a song duel.  Since this is possibly the second or third time I've seen one, I was thrilled.

Not only did I see a bird which has not been at all common for me, but I got the traditional spring bird singing with his head thrown back pose.   So even with not much in the way of birds, Tuesday, my first day out there, was good. 

So I talked Jeff into going with me on Thursday as I wanted to try the boardwalk.  Between my CFS and my ankles, I was a bit leery of going by myself so I was really happy he came along.  And what a great birding day it turned out to be!

We got swallows, almost immediately, and then heard lots of birds but didn't see so many until we were about halfway through the boardwalk loop in the marsh.  Then the birds just came flocking to us.  A mourning dove, a common merganser, a marsh wren, all good sightings and easy to spend some quality time with.  Then the timer went off so we headed back at a brisk walk since Jeff had a zoom meeting scheduled.  Two twists of the boardwalk later, we surprised a Great Blue Heron fishing from the platform.  He squawked, I squawked (those beaks are big and sharp) and he did a small flight hop away.  I was disappointed I didn't get a chance at a photo but we continued on.  And ran into him again a couple turns later.  This time, he didn't startle, so I got my camera up and focused and we followed him slowly down the boardwalk, pausing for good photo ops.  I got some excellent shots and it was a wonderful ending to our trip.  (Yes, Jeff made it to his meeting with plenty of time to spare.)

I posted the full body shot on Instagram, here's the head shot.

I find birding to be a wonderful stress reliever so I'm feeling great today and looking forward to setting up my backyard birding area this weekend.  I hope your selfcare routines are working as well.

Staying with a series

Given my time and energy limitations, I'm experimenting with sticking with a series.  This has been an interesting challenge but once I made it clear to my brain that we were doing snails, nothing but snails, and all other ideas were not going to be acted on, I started getting tons of ideas about snails.  (I used to have 2-3 different projects going at once so I could switch between them when I needed to think about something on one.)  So now, I have 2 snails going at once.

The first pair used the painted snail on watercolor paper with a marbled background.  I found two different ways to use the background and one of those used the onpoint orientation that I like a lot.

Snail #1: Persist!  started with an idea based on a photo I took of a yellow snail crawling across tiny gray gravel.  I mentally added big grass stalks behind the snail and started to do that idea.  During the process, I remembered I wanted to use marbling so I pulled a marbled fabric for the background and then put stone fabric against it.  No way.  Not a good visual.  So I dropped the stones for later and went with the marbling.

Snail #2: Go With the Flow continued the use of the marbling with the hand painted snail.  I liked the change in the flow of the background.

With the next pair, I went back to the grass & gravel idea.  Snail #3: Journey of a 1000 Slithers (title still in flux since snails don't actually step) got the gravel added back in but while I was selecting the background fabric, I was captivated by one of the spiral pieces I've got in my stash.  So no grass yet.  That's coming in #4.

I'm learning things with each piece and getting more and more ideas so right now I have at least 4 snails jockeying for position to be piece #5.    Right now, I'm feeling good about the whole process.  My energy is up, I'm finishing pieces fairly quickly and the ideas are surging.  I am in the zone!

2020 Birding: a swallow hunt

Today I went to Scudder Pond to look for swallows.  It's not the best place for those birds locally, but I also wanted to see Wood Ducks and look for any lingering warblers.  Alas, I missed out on all 3 of my goal birds, a frequent event in birding.  So I enjoyed the birds that were there:  Red-Winged Blackbirds, Spotted Towhee, a surprise group of Pine Siskins, an abundance of sparrows and one active and feisty Black-Capped Chickadee.   Later this week I will venture out to the best swallow spot I know (Tennant Lake) where I can see the swallows from the parking lot.

Here's some photos from early May of last year.

swallow at birdhouse off of boardwalk

And my favorite funny shot, butt end of swallow.

My blood pressure is up slightly, I'm assuming from the lockdown stress, so I am going to up my birding since that's one of my selfcare practices.  I hope you are taking care of yourself too.

CFS/ME update

It's been a bit over 6 months since I started the Myhill supplement regime along with taking D-Ribose regularly and I am really pleased to say I am getting better.

I hit a plateau after our October vacation and was struggling to make more progress so I reviewed Dr. Myhill's book.  That caused me to visit my doctor and see about getting off the beta blocker she had prescribed for my blood pressure.  Once I was off the beta blocker, I felt better immediately and have been improving since.

I am mostly doing art now but I am able to do the household chores in addition to my studio time and, most days, I still have energy after dinner.  This is a *huge* improvement.  I still feel like a snail rather than the energizer bunny but I can see the progress so I'm focusing on persisting.

Snail #1 in Persist! series

The stress and uncertainty of the current coronavirus situation, especially here in Washington, means that I'm not trying to make big changes now.  I am starting to do regular walks outside.  This has not been on my list of activities for months so that I am doing some is also an improvement.  I'm sleeping well, making art, and my daily energy is growing.  I'm now going to just keep on doing this because it's working.

Birch Bay trip cut short

So, stuff happens, right?  We ended up coming home after a couple of days since all the restaurants in our area along Birch Bay closed completely.  I can understand not bothering with takeout since they're not that busy this time of year anyway but if I'm going to be cooking dinner, I'd rather do it in my own kitchen.  And they closed the Canadian border, or at least limited it enough that day trips to Canada for birding seemed unlikely.  So, we came back.

But not before trying out some of the birding possibilities.  We got some great views of scoters from the walkway in front of our condo on the 5th floor.  Alas, my eye issues meant I needed to use the big screen to aim the camera and the glare from all that sun on Monday made that not work well so I only got one good distant shot.  Not bad for no walk birding though as long as you don't mind the gray wires slicing through the view.

Tuesday we went to Semiahmoo fairly early.  Small birds weren't out in numbers altho we did see a Bewick's wren in the bushes.  Again, lots of scoters and gulls.  And lots of benches so I didn't get a chance to use my new stool altho I carried it along with no problems.

There were clouds and early morning light so the colors are very different but this is good enough to see the distinctive scoter beak.

But the best shot of the day was a closeup of a gull. 

I'm not great at gulls but I'd call this a Glacous-winged Gull.

We'll be trying out the monoscope and the walking stick at the heronry here in Bellingham while doing our social distanced birding.   I'm going to do as much birding as possible because it really helps me stay calm and happy. 

Birding accomodations for CFS/ME

Jeff and I are heading off to Blaine for a week, roughly 35 miles away and we'll be cocooning in a condo near a fabulous birding spot.  Lots of reading, videos and takeout food in our future.  But to make it easier for me to go the whole 1.6 mile roundtrip distance at Semiahmoo Spit, I have some accommodations I'll be trying out.

Here's everything but the electric scooter. 

A folding, adjustable stool so I can sit instead of standing when we pause the walking to look at birds.  Standing causes more fatigue than walking or sitting so I want to avoid it as much as possible.  A walking stick to help reduce the fatigue.  And because I love multitaskers, the stick has had a bit of hardware added to the top so I can mount my new monoscope on it.  The scope comes with a phone camera attachment to allow digiscoping and the complete setup is smaller and much lighter than a full scope with tripod.  Here's hoping it works.

The stool is super easy to fold and collapse and comes with an attached strap for either hand or shoulder carry.  The claim is it can support up to 330 lbs so it should be very stable and easy to use.  Here's the shot of it at full extension.

We're looking forward to a week of no news reports, lots of birding and enjoyable reading and movie watching.  Here's hoping you're doing the same!

Bellingham Heronry is under construction

This last week Jeff & I went to Fairhaven to visit the heronry and try out a new restaurant.  The herons have started building and remodeling their nests and the deciduous trees haven't leafed out yet so the viewing was fabulous.  Alas, while I took my camera, I left the SD card sitting next to the computer so all the photos were taken using my phone camera.  Next time, I'll prepare better.

The largest lumps in the photo are the nests and the other ones are herons.  Binoculars or some kind of scope are very helpful as the nests are up in the top of trees and the trees are separated from the path by a generous fenced greenbelt area.  However there are at least two dozen herons there working on the nests so it's a wonderful opportunity to observe them.

There were also lots of other birds as it was a sunny day. 

Mallards and buffleheads predominated but we got some quality face time with a couple of chickadees who wanted to chat. 

A good day and the kind of stress reliever I need right now.  Hoping you are coping as well.

visual decision making using a phone camera

I've been making slow progress on the snail series due to life throwing some troublesome things my way but I finally finished up the first two snails this week.

I started with a memory of a picture I took of a small yellow snail on the greenbelt gravel.  The color contrast was amazing and the tiny snail was crawling over relatively huge rocks but still making noticeable progress over the length of my daily walk.  But I also wanted to bring in some color using my marbled fabrics so I finished painting the first snail, picked out a good color of fabric and laid it all out with some stone-like fabric as the path.  And wow, the stones just didn't go with all the swirls so I ended up just using the marbled fabric.

So snail #1 is done.  Unfortunately, it's an odd size since I trimmed the background piece assuming there would be rocks on the bottom so it's 6 3/8" tall and 10.25 wide.  This will require some effort to frame it, if I decide to do that before posting it on etsy.

Thinking about the framing problem reminded me to make these design decisions before cutting.  (Plan twice, cut once.)  So for snail #2, I cut the background in a square after trying out the second, slightly darker snail against the background.  But which way to put the square? 

This is where the phone camera came in very useful.  I grabbed my phone and snapped shots of the snail against the 4 possible rotations of the background and then was able to look at them side by side.  This is much better than trying to visually remember the different orientations.  I tossed 2 out immediately and was left with these 2 possible layouts.

Final choice

The runner up orientation is below but sideways.  I apparently rotated the phone while taking the shot. 

As my year of experimentation continues, it's interesting to see how many ways I can simplify things with the right tool.  Now all I need to do is add the resin topcoat to #2 and post them to etsy.