Peter Ash: new crime series with echoes of both Spenser & Reacher

 I spent most of this summer reading when I wasn't painting the fence or catching up on years of garden neglect.  Most of the books were ones I had read before.  I wanted the certainty of knowing how the story would go.  This also meant an emphasis on the mystery/crime/thriller category where chaos is conquered and the bad guys lose in the end.  Which brings us to a new to me series:  Peter Ash & friends written by Nick Petrie.

The Drifter is the first book and it introduces Peter as a war veteran dealing with his PTSD by going alone into the woods in the north Cascades.  The similarity to Jack Reacher is obvious in his lack of possessions, his solitude and his direct dealing with problems.  While responding to a call for help for a widow of one of his Marine friends, Ash is brought into contact with a fellow problem solver who becomes a continuing character in the series.  I liked Ash's voice, his morality and his approach to problem solving so I continued on to the second book.

Burning Bright starts in the ancient redwood trees in California and brings in a female character who is the third in the group that continues the series.  This immediately brought to mind the Spenser novels by Robert Parker.  Again, excellent action, good writing, good characterizations.  

I finished the whole series (through The Breaker, #6) and pre-ordered The Runaway which is scheduled for January 2022.  If you liked either Spenser or Reacher, I would highly recommend this series.

Kingfisher at Zuanich Point Park

 Summer is heating up so I went to the harbor early for my morning walk.  It was breezy and sunny and a lovely walk along the water.

The gray blur along the horizon is a line of clouds coming in.

Gulls were hunting breakfast and there might even have been a couple of terns fly by but the highlight of my morning walk was a really closeup look at a belted kingfisher flying along the rocks the length of the shore.  I'm using the Cornell ornithology photo below since I have never gotten a good shot of a kingfisher on the wing.

The female is the one with the rust colored belt.  The one I saw this morning was unbelted so likely male.   

A lovely start to my day.  I hope your day is as good.

BirdNote podcast: Bring birds back

 I love BirdNote.  Their 2 minute radio clips won my heart years ago and I have appreciated the bird poetry podcasts from BirdNote Presents.  And I'm on their email list so I heard about their new podcast, Bring Birds Back.  I listened to the first episode and found out that bird populations (with 2 notable exceptions) have seriously declined over the last 50 years.  What can an ordinary person/birder do about it?  That's the focus of the rest of the episodes. 

The 2 exceptions to the decline?  Raptors (cause we got rid of DDT) and waterfowl because of the Wildlife Refuge system.  So, I was heartened to learn that if we take action based on what we know, we can have an impact.  

Here's the link to their webpage which gives all the current info.

Fast & Easy Coconut macaroons

 It's been a while.  The covid vaccine seems to have reset my immune system.  Good news, most of my allergies are gone.  Bad news, my Chronic Fatigue is fluctuating wildly.  But, despite the erratic energy, I have made cookies!  

I love coconut macaroons and these are so fast and easy.  Takes about 10 minutes to mix up (while the oven is preheating) and then 18 minutes to cook.  I'm using allulose sugar as part of the sugar because it keeps my blood sugar lower.  (Yes, I'm eating cookies to be healthier. Go me!)

Here's the recipe:

1.5 C unsweetened shredded coconut  (in bulk at health food store)

1/4 C sugar + 1/4 C Allulose

2 TB all purpose flour (I'm using up the last of my GF flour)

1/8 tsp salt

4 TB egg whites (I'm buying these by the carton since I make these so often.  Should be 2-3 eggs worth.) at room temperature

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

optional add-ins:  1/3 C of choc chips & pecan bits

Preheat oven to 325.

In a small bowl, combine coconut, sugar, flour. optional add-ins & salt.  Add egg whites and vanilla and mix well.  

Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto greased baking sheet or use parchment paper.  Bake 18-20 minutes until golden brown.  Cool on wire rack.  I get 2 dozen from this recipe.  

I'm enjoying the allulose cookies for dessert so much that I bought a glass cookie jar so I can see how close I am to needing to make more.  And this week, I can only be thankful for our AC which makes it so cool that baking cookies is still fun.

I hope your weekend is healthy and not too warm.

Using Rapid Resizer to experiment in the studio

 My alcohol ink experimentation continues.  This last week, I tried using a stencil to paint over an alcohol ink background.  This was not as successful as I'd hoped (see below)  and I decided to try just the rose from the center of the stencil after blowing it up in size.  

I could do a black and white version of the rose and then pop into my photo software and scale it that way but I decided to give Rapid resizer a try.  The stencil rose is on the small sheet and the 2 different sizes from RR are to each side.  This turned out to have a couple of advantages over using gimp:  one, I don't have to organize the images on my computer, RR keeps the designs for me and 2) if I want to scale up a design for a larger piece, I don't have to do the dividing it into pages for multipage printing.  

Next step is making the 2 stencils with the scanNCut machine and then I'll play with what color to use for the rose.  I have a fun week planned.  Hope you do too.

western Washington quilt shop hop on for June in 2021

 Well, I just booked the last half of June for my post-vaccination activities by adding this year's shop hop.  I haven't done this in several years due to medical issues and now that I'm recovered enough from chronic fatigue to go do things, I am looking forward to fondling lots of fabric.  See all the details here.

For those who haven't done this before, each shop gives out a free pattern and has a kit for purchase with the theme fabric to make the block of the free pattern.  The quilt above is what you can do if you get all the patterns.  It's a lot of fun and a particularly nice way to restart some socializing if you have quilter friends who are also vaccinated so you can all carpool.  I'm going to start organizing my car full right away.  Here's the map of the participating shops and of course the home page gives the list and more details.  

Alcohol Ink Experimentation continues

 Having finally mostly recovered from my sinus infection, I've been back in the studio this last week.  I'm doing some color palette pieces and playing with different ways to move the colors around which has all been a lot of fun.

Each day, I did a different color.  So far, I have red, orange/yellow, blue, green and a second green on different paper.  Here's most of the colors at once.

Here's the 2 greens next to each other.  The small one is on an 8x5 piece of Yupo and the larger is the back of a piece of photo paper.

The yupo paper had better movement and layering to my eye.  

And finally, here's my new wall rack for my alcohol inks.  I could not pass up the tree with all the birds.  The shelves are deep enough that I can put the concentrated ink in the front and the bottle of diluted color behind it.  

Next week, I'll do a similar set of colors on glass and see about printing them on fabric to sell in my etsy store.  I've gotten a fair number of comments about the colors & the blending being great from my quilter friends so this seems like an obvious progression.

Electric Vehicle battery breakthrough coming soon

 From Grist.org, we have wonderful news about new batteries for EVs that can recharge completely in 5-10 minutes.  Current in-use technology takes several hours.  This breakthrough means that gas stations could add charging stations and by the time everyone goes to the bathroom and picks up some snacks, the batteries are all charged up for another 250 miles of road trip.  Woohoo!

Read the whole article here.  The optimistic estimate is 3 years for making it into available vehicles.  The pessimistic one is 5 years.  So, coming soon to a car near you.

A Year of Experimentation, Take 2

 Last year was supposed to be me experimenting in the studio as I healed from ME/CFS and explored what I could do within my physical limitations.  Then, well, 2020 happened.  

So, I'm picking up where I left off when my back went kablooey in August by taking some baby steps this month.  Normally, back recovery from a serious blowup takes 6 months so I am being careful as I start up my studio time again.

I'm still working with Alcohol Ink and will be using the lovely little tool kit I bought to play with marbling and other fun color swirling.

I've been watching videos and reading in the FB groups dedicated to the lovely inks so I was already looking at silicon brushes with interest.  Then Mighty Girls had a post about the above mandala painting kit and I checked it out.  Very good price for all the extra stuff that comes with the silicon brushes.  I start tomorrow with playing with these new tools and seeing how the ink behaves when manipulated.  

2020: A year of coping

 2020 was supposed to be a Year of Experimentation for me.  And then the pandemic crushed that.  Instead, it became a year of Coping.  Looked at through that bit of reframing, the ending year taught me many things.  Just very few of them the things I thought I was going to do.   We all lived through the dumpster fire that was 2020 so my purpose here is to tell myself what I accomplished besides surviving.  

Persist!

1.  Set up art area in bedroom.

2.  Started Spirit Animal series with several snail pieces. By the end of April, I had finished 6 pieces.

3.  Experimented with 3D medium (powertex) and did snail sculpture.

4.  Continued listing art inventory on etsy.  

5.  Discovered while updating inventory that I've sold 100 pieces.  That made me feel much better about having several older pieces still here.

6.  Redid studio space in garage with lower tables since standing wears me out.  

7.  Started doing regular zines again.  Another indication of rising energy level.

8.  Tried knitting for evening activity and didn't like it.  Part of experimentation is saying no to things that don't work.  This was one.

9,  Had to take our elderly cat to the vet to be put down.( 2/15)  She was failing rapidly.  We still miss her.

10.  Tried out a condo in Blaine.  Nice location, good birding but alas, our vacation was cut short by the covid-19 shutdown.  The first one, not the current one.  *sigh*

11.  Started Medicare research.  This is way more complicated than it should be.

12.  Tried needle punch as alternative for quilting.  Didn't like it.  Another nope.

13.  Made several masks for the family.  

14.  Tried braided perle cotton for surface texture.  Liked it.  Keeping this as a collage version of my decorative satin stitch.

15.  Started listening to podcasts including installing software on my ipad and finding which ones I like.  

Go with the Flow

16.  Did taxes.  This is something I put off and then am always surprised at how much easier it is than I remember.  

17.  Created abstract hummer sketch and stencils in May.  These were set aside and I'm now contemplating using them with the alcohol ink explorations I'm planning for 2021.

18.  Bought new storage boxes for my silkscreens and sorted them by type:  birds, dancers, geometrics, nature elements.  This was a great thing to do.  My studio looks better and it's easier to find a particular screen.

19.  Did new drawer labels for all the elfa shelves in my studio.  James did 3D printed large plastic pieces to hang on the drawers and I painted them white so I could more easily read the writing.  Another excellent improvement in the studio.  Now I don't have to open the drawer to know what's in it.

20.  set up marbling area and did some marbling.  This was wonderful and I enjoyed it tremendously.  And it was the last straw for my poor back in mid August.  After my back is recovered, and I'm going to the gym regularly, I'll try the marbling again and see if it's still possible for me.

21.  Added mailchimp signup to my blog.  This is another item that was started but ended up being delayed.  I plan to restart my newsletter in 2021.  

22.  Started chair yoga and other back supporting exercises.

23.  experimented with Inktense pencils.  Ongoing as this is probably going to be a big part of my future work.  Still in the exploration stage.

24.  Got flu shot in early October.

25.  Joined a monthly walking meditation group at our church.  We walk solo and have a distanced group chat after we walk. So I guess I have gotten some social interaction this year.

26.  Started experimenting with alcohol inks.  Fabulous color, great fluidity.  On my list for 2021.  I'll be combining this with the inktense pencils and we'll see where it goes.

27.  Gave up on GIMP.  The photo processing works fine, but I have struggled with printing things and cannot get it to do what I want easily.  

28.  Bought Affinity photo software after recommendations on the SAQA group on FB.  Just beginning to work with it.

29.  Did bird walks at 6 different parks with almost one big walk per month.  This was a big part of coping for me.

30.  Maintained my meditation practice, another big selfcare item.

31.  Took November & December off from the studio to focus on my back and other selfcare.  

32.  Got lots of reading done this year.  Mostly reading books I'd already read but I did get some new ones in.

And that's about it for the year.  Half the length of last year's list but I'm good with that.  2020 was a very tough year.  Getting anything done at all was a big win.  May the next year be easier & healthier.