Black Hours, Mary Oliver, October 2020

 The Black Hours pieces I've done are so striking, that it seems like as soon as I complete and show off one, I get another potential client asking if I'd be willing to do another. That was absolutely the case following September's Walt Whitman quote, "Keep your face always toward the sunshine, and shadows will fall behind you."

In this case, the client wanted a quote from Mary Oliver's poem, "It Was Early", wherein the narrator is taking a nature walk just at sunrise and marveling at the beauty they see. I'm not familiar with Mary Oliver's work in general, which is just a shame, because I've had two clients come to me with quotes from her work and they both really spoke to me. In this case, after the year I and my family have had, "Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed" was just an amazing sentiment.

Text mockup, checking letter forms and filling the border with various sketch ideas for the roundels. There might be some leftover images there from the previous commission, as well.

After that, it was time for margins, the text block, and of course all the vines. I believe I did still copy a page from the manuscript facsimile for this one, just to make sure I got the density right. I have a tendency, when I'm not working from a source, to be too timid and end up with very open vines and a lot to empty space that I then have to fill in.

Text in silver, with the word "blessed" in gold. I'm using Finetec/Coliro metallic paints for this, just thinned and loaded into the pen with a paintbrush rather than dipping into the paint cake. Colors are Sterling Silver and Arabian Gold.

Time to start those large elements in the border. If you follow this blog at all, you'll know by now that I work largest to smallest, and usually these large acanthus leaves are in silver and gold.

I'm just going to take a moment to tell you how VERY proud I am of this pinecone. I found reference pictures and drew two or three to practice before drawing this one, and then painting over it in silver. It turned out even better than I had hoped. The shadow of my phone is deliberate, to ease the glare from the metallic paint, so you can see the details a little better.

Silver and gold all set! This was a fairly balanced piece, but I remember being surprised by how much silver and gold was in that narrow left border compared to the rest of it.

The poem has several references to elements of nature, including a weasel hunting mice, an owl, and of course trees. Here's the weasel with base coats laid in; I am very grateful to the mighty Google for providing reference images that worked. Without a sense of scale, many people looked at this critter and thought he was an otter, which is fair considering that weasels and otters are related. But no, not an otter.

Not sure how well the details show up here, but I've added whiskers and claws, and a bit of shading and texture to the coat.

A barn owl I was also really, really proud of, and the first roundel, with pines on a hill.

Here's that same roundel with some better highlight added to the trees; they were a little flat before.

For my second roundel, I wanted a weeping willow tree, and I thought I had it right, but then I realized, no, this is a pretty sad looking tree. For one thing, it doesn't have any leaves on it.

There we go, much better. But still kinda missing something...

Oh right. Highlights! A little bit of rose on the tree and in the water to indicate a sunrise, and more definition for the cattails, and it looked waaaaay better.

After that, it was time to add field mice! These are such adorable little critters that they are a favorite of photographers, which meant lots of reference shots for me to work from. Very helpful. Thank you, photographers of the internet.

I mean, just look at those little tails.

So here's that stage of the coloring complete; the only area that I didn't give you a detail photo for were the pine needles that I added beneath the pinecone above. Now it's time to color in the flowers, with red, blue, and white. All these flowers are part of the original source material from the 1480s.

After that, there were green things to add as well, including the pears on the top, to the left of the pinecone; strawberry tops; and leaves and such throughout the piece. I love how with each stage, the border comes together more and more. It's also fun to show pictures to people and have them remark on what they think is the finished piece, when there are more stages yet to add.

The next stage is to add the silver and gold highlights to the leaves, fruit, roundels, and critters.

The shaping and texture of the gold on the weasel came out really well. The mice also look lovely, but the owl is the one that really blew my mind.

The added texture in the wing feathers and the tail just really made the owl leap into focus for me. I was very pleased with how that came out!

And here's the finished border; all that's left is to outline the roundels and border in silver, and erase my pencil marks inside the text block. I never worry about erasing the pencil marks anywhere else, because for the most part, they get buried under all the busy-ness and color.

Signed, sealed, and delivered in October of 2020, a little before Halloween. My client was thrilled, and so was I.

I got a little tired of doing Black Hours pieces back to back, though, so my next one was something completely different! I dropped back in time a couple hundred years and got to practice human figures with wonky posture, which is always entertaining.

Until next time!

Adventure, mayhem, and pretty things

Hello folks.  How ya been?

I keep forgetting to mention the embroidery project, which is in its final stages for color.  I'm working on the blue background, finally, or I would be except the project is currently stalled.  Why? Well, because, it's sitting in top of my scanner, waiting for me to take pictures of it to share with all of you.

***

I also keep forgetting to mention that I've been given an art commission to paint some Celtic knotwork on a large antique metal milk-canister.  I've spent the past several days drawing out the knotwork on paper, reworking it to my satisfaction, and the past two days using an exacto knife to cut the drawing into a decent stencil.  Relax, it's just to get the guide lines on.

If we hadn't killed my van today, I'd be heading to the store first thing tomorrow morning to pick up paints and such so I can begin the transfer onto the can.

***

Related to the knotwork is the fact that I recently claimed an SCA "scribal" assignment - a request for volunteers to do calligraphy for our society's award certificates (we're medieval history buffs and re-enactors, did you think we were going to print awards off on a computer?? Psh!) - for the first time in about five years.  The SCA is, by and large, a game where we dress up and pretend to be medieval, but like anything, it has its group dynamics and its politics, and between the political stuff and some honest burnout, I haven't really had the heart to do a "scroll" in about five years.  If you look back through the archives, you'll find a private commission for a gentleman's SCA award from about two or three years ago, but the regular stuff with deadlines hasn't held any interest for me in quite some time.  I think it'll be good to get back into the swing of things; here's to hoping I'm right.

***

Oh, and I'm also auditioning tomorrow to join the Lafayette Chamber Singers, one of those very small groups where you can only get in if someone else dies.  Fortunately, no one died this time around, but they did move far far away, freeing up one slot; and the conductor has decided to expand the soprano section so they can take on more ambitious compositions, which has opened up another one or two slots besides.  Talk about luck for me... wish me some, if you would.

***

Finally, in addition to the van, we're very sorry for breaking much of the rest of the Lafayatte area earlier today.  The van broke down on the access drive to Wolf Park, where we had been planning to observe their weekly wolf-bison interaction, only it got cancelled for the first time in pretty much ever due to the potential for more storms (yesterday's were "apocalyptic" according to Amy Prettybaby) and the heat index heading toward the ridiculous zone (kind of like Ludicrous Speed in the movie Spaceballs).

Once we got the van towed, the husband's car acquired, and the rest of us collected from the park premises, it was time for an early dinner.  So we headed to Pizza Hut, ordered our meal, and watched over drinks while the lights flickered impressively for about half a minute before going out altogether.  The manager came out and told us he was very sorry, but the transformer out back had just shot "really kinda beautiful" sparks and lightning into the air in all directions, caught fire, and fallen into the street, and he hoped we wouldn't be too upset that our dinner wasn't going to be happening there that evening.

At this point, after starting as, "oh, bummer" and progressing to, "eh, it's a nice day to be stuck at a nature park, and hey, y'all are really nice people", the day's catastrophic failures became completely hilarious.  I'm still chuckling as I type this, to be honest - I mean, what are the odds of all this happening at all, much less happening all on the same day, back to back, while my father-in-law is in town visiting?  Plus there wasn't any reason to actually be upset - we weren't in any hurry, no one was hurt, and it really was a nice day to be stuck at a nature park with really nice, gracious, and extremely helpful staff.  While we were trying to see if we could fix things ourselves and/or jump-start the van, my daughter and I got to check out the nature along the side of the road, in the form of wildflowers and a whole crowd of butterflies and other harmless bugs.  She was an angel the whole time and thought that riding in the tow truck with Daddy was cooool.

Anyway, after everything else, we were almost afraid to go to the next-closest Pizza Hut, since we weren't sure what other damage might be caused just by us being near the place.  Luckily, nothing went wrong (except that their cable and radio had gone out shortly before we arrived, though I don't think we can really claim that as ours), dinner was yummy, and we had a good visit with my father-in-law after all.

Our motto for the day: If you know where you're going, it's not an adventure.

Hope to see you at the Farmer's Market if you live nearby, and if you don't, then maybe some other time.

Cheers!

Little of this, little of that…

The following is likely to be a little disjointed, because I'm very tired and have a lot of random… stuff… going on in my head.  You've been warned.

***

First and foremost, though, I need to let folks know that I will not be at the Farmer's Market this Wednesday.  The Daughter has been taking a kiddie-level gymnastics and ballet class, and they're giving a "performance" for all the parents.  Husband offered to take video for me, but this is not something I intend to watch second-hand if I can help it.

I'm not that great a fan of gymnastics; I am, however, a huge fan of my kid.

Be seeing you next week, weather willing.

***

I realize most of the Internet-surfing world likes to download their music, anymore, but since I'm now actually old enough to be able to talk about The Younger Generation, I've decided I have the right to be crotchety and old-fashioned at will (although I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the idea that owning a compact disc is old-fashioned, seeing as I was around when they were invented).  I like owning CDs.  I like having a cabinet full of them.  It's anybody's guess which of us brought the larger music collection into the marriage, me or The Husband – it's hard to tell since we both brought a number of cassette tapes with us – but I daresay my personal stash is bigger now, after working for five years for an arts presenter and getting lots of free autographed CDs as thank-you gifts from well-fed musicians.

I mention this because I'm listening to Pandora Radio as I write (see, I can be hip and with-it too) and making a mental list of CDs I need to own soon.  And I don't care that I'm probably way, way outside Lady Gaga's target demographic.  I was around when Madonna was invented, after all.

Also, Hans Zimmer is a living god.  If you've never heard of him, that's okay, because you've probably heard of the movies Gladiator and Sherlock Holmes, and he composed (and performed on) the soundtracks for those among many others.

Have I mentioned my birthday is coming up in less than a week?

***

I know I've said before that being around pretty colors, if those colors are for sale in any shape or form, usually means I need a chaperone and someone else to hang onto my wallet.

Have I mentioned that I work at a greenhouse?  And at the moment, practically everything is in bloom?

I've had to make myself promise not to buy anything more until I've finished planting what I've already got… but at least I get a wicked employee discount.

***

I've got an odd schedule this week, with three days off in a row.  I've been hoping to get a little space like this where I could get some things done around the house, so guess what I did today?

Pretty much not a damn thing.

This never feels good, and I do it anyway, and I hate it when I do it, and that won't stop me from doing it again.  I mean, I hit the hardware store and bought some stuff I needed, but that's pretty much it. No laundry folded (my kid deserves a room she can actually play in and not to have to hunt for clean clothes), no dishes put away, none washed, no recycling run to the center, nothing planted… oh, although Daughter and I did water them this morning and she and I both enjoyed that.

***

Pause to try and cuddle Daughter as part of her bedtime routine – enter argument about whether or not she gets to have any kind of snack after she's brushed her teeth.  I. Freaking. Hate. This.  I'm tired, I slept for crap, haven't had much appetite today, am unhappy that I got nothing done, and now I've got a whiny argumentative overtired monkey trying to rearrange reality: "No those aren't the rules, Mommy, the rules are pretzels, I waaaaaaannnt pretzelllllllllllls…"

I'm a better mommy when I've had rest and am not irritated with myself.

***

I'm a lot less depressing to read when I've gotten some food into me, I promise.  But once I've finished eating I intend to crash, and hopefully get some real sleep tonight.  Last night, heat and the need for a midnight snack had the kiddo awake, and therefore had me awake, three separate times, none of which were the usual wake-up time around this house.  At least it was light out for the last one, but I wanted to still be in bed, not dragging on a pair of shorts and trying to work my head around deep concepts such as Feeding The Child Is Important, or No Going To Preschool Naked.

I don't know how you people do it.

So I'm working in a local greenhouse.  Given how much I adore color, this is kind of like turning a kid loose in a candy store.  With a paycheck.  The problem is, I work enough hours that I don't actually seem to have time to even weed my flower beds, much less plant anything.  (Oh, but we have plans, my precious, yes we does.)

Embroidery happens on my lunch breaks.  I leave it in the van, and then drive somewhere to pick up a quick bite, and use the remaining time to listen to music and add a few more stitches here and there.  At this rate, if I'm lucky, I'll have the piece finished in time for, oh, August or something.  Certainly by the time it's done, the portrait itself will no longer be accurate because it shows me with my hand on my teeny little daughter's head as she stands next to me.  She's already outgrown the pink dress depicted.  By the time I'm done the height won't even be close, either.

Outbound email is still not working on my regular account, although I've finally gotten my gmail.com account set up to access through my regular email.  So at some point I might be able to call tech support, again, and convince them to pass me along to someone who doesn't read from a script, and won't try to tell me that the problem is my software.   My regular email leaves my inbox just fine, hits their server, and vanishes.  My Gmail leaves my inbox just fine and actually arrives at its destination, so now I have proof that it's them and not me.

Not sure when I'm going to call them, though.  At this point I'm not quite sure when I'll have time to run a load of laundry without it going moldy before I get a chance to toss it in the dryer.

In other words, kids, I'm still adjusting to life back in the Land of the Gainfully Employed, and at the moment I have nothing like an established routine.  The rest of you may laugh as much as you like, but for now, I'm still trying to set up some kind of daily pattern that allows me to do all those things that are not-the-job.  Like put clean underwear in my dresser drawers, for instance.

Hence the title of this post – after five years out of the workforce, and never having had both a kid and job before, I don't know how the rest of you people manage.

On the other hand, I seem to be doing all right at the job itself; probably the best part, aside from all the pretty colors and windchimes, is not getting penalized for using my brain and thinking for myself.  As opposed to those jobs where you're supposed to do what you're told, and if you show initiative you are clearly a threat to someone else's job security.  Bleah.

To those of you living in cubicle hell, I don't know how you do that, either.

One thing that's different this time around?  I'm going to be thirty-eight years old at the end of this month.  I've gotten hired into what is ordinarily a seasonal/summer job, among a mob of high school and college students, and I find that I'm carrying a little bit of Attitude.  Nothing rotten or snobby, I promise; it's more… how do I put this… I'm approaching the work as if I've been hired as more than just a temp.  I think, and often behave as if I'm one of the permanent employees.  I do a little more than just stand around and wait for orders.  I expect not to be treated like one of the kids anymore, and I carry myself accordingly. 

And it works, too (although to be fair, a lot of that is that I have an excellent boss): I don't get ordered around, I get asked to do things; I volunteer to help with work outside of my official department and people thank me rather than asking if this is where I'm supposed to be; that sort of thing.  It's nothing gigantic, but it makes a world of difference to me and my willingness to show up in the morning, let me tell you.

Speaking of showing up, I need to tomorrow as well, and since I'm still figuring out this whole scheduling thing, that means I don't have time right now to tell you about the nifty art commission I've just been asked to do, by someone from the Farmer's Market staff.

Perhaps next time.

Sneaking into henna season

*sigh*

The farmer's market kicked off this past Wednesday.  The mayor was there, news crews were there, and I was there.

However, my sign was not there, friendly and non-threatening skies were not there… and customers were not there.  Not for me, anyway.

I've recently been hired at a nearby greenhouse to help with the spring rush (and hopefully beyond that), and I will be putting my first or second paycheck into getting a decent sign for the booth.  I'm thinking of going really over the top and getting something visible from more than three feet away.  Maybe even something that I didn't make myself on a disposable plastic tablecloth with Sharpie markers.

I know, I know, I'm out of control.  Wooo.

(Don't knock the Sharpies-on-tablecloth thing, though; that was my sign for the past two years and it did its job well.)

***

This past Saturday was the first Mosey Down Main Street, which I really wanted to attend, but all that day it looked like it was going to turn out to be the Shiver-In-The-Howling-Wind Down Main Street instead.  So I stayed home, switched the house's furnace back on, and tried not to regret my decision too much.

Next time, Mosey… next time.  We will meet again.

***

In other news, I'm working at a greenhouse!  I have a steady paycheck!  I'm surrounded by green and growing things and so far I haven't had to water any of them!

I'm still new enough that I haven't gotten all the shiny rubbed off of me yet, but I have figured out pretty quickly that it's nearly impossible to be grumpy when you can look out across a sea of blooming plants in every color of the rainbow.  Even the customers aren't grumpy, or at least they get noticeably less grumpy as soon as they cross over from the store/checkout area into the greenhouse proper.

Yay, plants!

***

Hope your Mother's Day was a good one, whether you are a mother yourself or just descended from one.  We collected the kid from her grandparents' house where she had spent the weekend, ate seafood prepared in a variety of unhealthy-yet-tasty ways, and drove home.  While she was gone, I got to watch not one, but two movies (in an actual theater and everything), which is more than I've seen in the past six months, easily.  The last time I saw a movie at all was in December when Sherlock Holmes came out, so you'll forgive me if I seem a little over-excited about actually getting to another film without having to wait to get the DVD as a gift from the in-laws.

All I can say is, Iron Man 2 is good, and How to Train Your Dragon is breathtaking, great, amazing, and I want to go watch it again right now.

***

There's other stuff, but I'm a little tired – seeing great movies keeps me awake because my imagination keeps either reliving or adding to the story – and I have to work tomorrow, and so on and yadda and all that.  The only thing I have left to say is that my outgoing email continues to not work, and we can't figure out why.  Inbound email operates just fine, but I can't send anything – so if you're trying to reach me for a henna booking, or any other reason, I'd appreciate it if you included a phone number and a time I might be able to reach you.

Cheers, and talk to you soon.

Relearning loveliness

I have a book here at home called Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness, which is something of a primer to Buddhist practice.  Unlike most of the books I've seen that try to explain Buddhism, this one focuses on the practice first, with Buddhist thought explained second.  After all, once you really grasp what Buddhism looks like in the day-to-day, the philosophy becomes much easier to understand.

The second chapter is titled "Relearning Loveliness", and begins with a poem that moves me to tears every time I read it.  I am passing it along today as my gift to you.

The bud

stands for all things,

even those things that don't flower,

for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on the brow

of the flower,

and retell it in words and in touch,

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing.

--Galway Kinnell

No, this isn't my typical blog post, but it seemed like the right time of year, or the right thing to do, or something.

Peace.

Winding down

Well, here we are.

The Farmer's Market had its final day yesterday; I decided to run an end-of-season special and hung a giant "$1" sign on the front of my booth, figuring I would rather do henna for cheap than sit on my behind for three hours and be bored.  I had fun doing a couple of large, intricate designs for a couple of ladies who almost certainly would not have stopped otherwise.

What this really means is that, apart from one booking coming up in November, I have nothing going on henna-wise, and I would very much like to change that.  I have way too much fun drawing pretty designs on people, plus it gets me out of the house.  So book me!  I've added a phone number to my contact information, over there on the sidebar, to make it easier.

I believe I mentioned in an earlier post that there are plans in the works for an indoor winter market.  I've been in contact with the organizer and she has graciously decided to accept my ideas and suggestions for ways to get things off the ground and working smoothly.  It's a bit of a stretch to say that we're actually working together, though - I'm presenting ideas pretty much as a volunteer at this point, in the form of a proposal, with no way to predict which if any suggestions will actually see the light of day.

Gives me something to do, though, and I'm having fun pretending that I'm in charge... you know how sometimes, you sit back and you go, "well, if I were the president" and proceed to solve all the world's problems in twenty minutes or less?  Yeah.  Putting this proposal together is giving me a great outlet for that energy.  The trick is to keep from sounding too obviously as if I'm trying to tell this nice lady how to do what really is her job.

***

The garden is nearly put to bed for the winter; only a few more plants that are still kicking and asking for water and the occasional trim.  My friend Amy Prettybaby says that if I run out of room over here she has plenty of yard begging for attention, but I don't know.  First of all, I'm only pretending to know what I'm doing, I just happen to be very very skilled at pretending - skilled enough that sometimes even the plants believe me.  Also I have the Internet, so if I don't know what I'm doing now, chances are good that I will know in a half-hour (I could say "five minutes", but the Internet is like potato chips. You can't just dip your fingers into the bag once and be done, unless there's something wrong with you.)

Second, her yard is way different from mine.  I live in a cookie-cutter house in a division that used to be a cornfield; backyards resemble the Serengeti Plain, except when it rains and then they resemble either a mud-wrestling pit or a demolition-derby arena.  Amy, on the other hand, lives in the kind of yard I always had growing up - even through college, moving out on my own, all the way up to our previous house - an older neighborhood with actual trees and lots of shade.  Deep shade in some places.  Where my yard is the Serengeti, hers is more like the Hoosier National Forest, except with kids and a dog.  Where I have Grass That Will Not Die, she has rich dark soil underneath pine trees where nothing wants to sprout.

Uh-oh.  Writing about this has gotten me thinking about it.  Now I have ideas.

Dammit.

***

Daylight Saving Time ends this weekend.  Thank GOD.  I despise Daylight Saving Time with a passion, and refuse utterly to "let it go already".  The logic escapes me: the idea is supposed to be to shift your clock to take advantage of the extra hours of daylight you get when the sun is up for more than twelve hours.  That only happens between the first day of Spring and the first day of Fall. So could someone explain to me, please, WHY are we still using daylight saving here at the tail end of October?

I also am perpetually irritated that the experts in Washington DC (which is, of course, the center of the universe) placed our state in the Eastern time zone when geographically we belong in Central.  This means that our clocks are already shifted by one hour year-round, and by two hours whenever we have to adopt Stupid Daylight Saving Time.  We get two obnoxious results from this: First, our kids are getting up and going to school in the dark, as early as the first week of September.  A couple years ago this got a little girl killed in my area.  Second, we don't see sunset until a ridiculous 10pm in midsummer.  You try putting a preschooler to bed when it's still light out and see how well that works.

There's a third irritating result, though I admit it's pretty minor: people insist that their sundials are wrong, or that we've wasted money putting up the ones in public areas that are "inaccurate".  I'll save my educational rant for another time, though.

***

My overall point, though, is that with the garden winding down, the henna season ending, and the days getting shorter, I'm finding my energy shifting inward.  I've been re-reading lately the books Digging Deep by Fran Sorin, and Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, while also slogging through some self-help titles.  One thing these books all have in common is an examination of the creative process, and the process of discovering: whether it is discovering your likes and dislikes, or your writing style and voice, or your beliefs and values and power.  I'm finding that these books all connect to one another without intending to; and that I'm uncovering new territory, or maybe unburying old territory, that makes me uncomfortable.

Of course I'm uncomfortable.  No one likes to feel vulnerable, after all.  People might not like your choices, even if they're only the flowers you chose to plant in your bed.  They might reject your expressions of self, disagree with your beliefs, dismiss your deepest values as wrong or misguided, or worst of all, irrelevant.

I've been struggling with this vulnerability for awhile now.

I have this story I've been trying to write.  I have a setting, sort of a character, but I've been unable to come up with a plot to save my life.  And I'm reading that plot comes from characters, and that characters in some ways have to be naked before their readers.  No one in our real world gets to see inside one another's head, but in a story, you get to see the characters' thoughts, fears, dreams.  You get to see how those influence the choices a character makes and the actions they take as a result.

Author Holly Lisle, to paraphrase, says that characters who don't make choices are not characters, they are victims.  And they are boring to read.  It follows that characters who don't make choices don't take action; in other words, they don't build a plot, which means they're not contributing anything to the story itself.  They're a waste of a reader's time.

Both Lisle and Demott are telling me that characters have to really feel and choose and move; they are both saying that in order for those feelings and choices to resonate they have to come from someplace real; and that the only real place any would-be writer can pull from is inside themselves.

Yeah.  In other words, for your characters to work, you have to get naked.  Did I mention I've been struggling with this for awhile now?

It's no wonder my story is going nowhere; I can't let go and loosen up long enough to give my character any real motives, or choices, or feelings.

***

Hmm.  Should I have titled this post "winding down", or "winding in"?

End of the season

Well, henna is winding down for the season, at least for us Western folks - there are a couple of big holidays coming up yet in Islam between now and the end of December - but the farmer's market will be closing the week after this, and I don't have anything else lined up just yet.  I'm considering the indoor fall/winter market that is being proposed over in Elmwood Plaza, but I still have several questions for the organizers and they've been slow to respond.

For the record, data entry isn't nearly as fun as putting henna on people, so don't you want to help me out here?  Of course you do.

***

The prairie grass is gone, the clay masquerading as soil has been hacked into a less cratered surface, a couple bags of potting soil have been spread over the top of that - it's pretty much bulb planting time.  The challenge will be to remember to hold a few back for my daughter to plant All By Herself.

I've been up off my behind for the past few days, and it's getting to where it feels good - there's a threshold there, I'm sure other people have noticed, when you've been geting not enough exercise for way too long?  Where the inertia is telling you to go sit down and get some potato chips, and moving is the last thing on your mind, even when you're already up and moving?  Yeah. If you can just suck it up till you're over that hump, it gets way easier.

(Thus Spake The Not-Actually-Exercising Exercise Guru.)

Point being, the stiff muscles just feel like they need to be warmed up now, instead of being put back to bed, and I'm plotting my next moves in the garden eagerly, as opposed to whining that I'll have to get up and get all sweaty and stuff.  However: I went back to bed this morning after seeing the kiddo off to preschool with her daddy, and the next thing I knew it was noon.  I mean, it was good sleep, but jeez.

***

Let's see, running through my "tag" list... I was flattered to get an email asking for information and tips on putting together some mosaics that a friend wants to make for her own garden.

A few days ago, my daughter and I modified her school "scarecrow" project and made princesses (you glue paper shapes to the edge of a paper plate that has a face on it).  We used the paper I bought ages ago for origami, and every time I use the phone downstairs the book I have with so many bazillion origami patterns in it is now staring at me from its spot on the shelf.

Darling daughter's closet and dresser have a lot more room in them now that the stuff she's outgrown is out of the way...

I finished outlining the leaves in the ongoing epic embroidery project and discovered that using the dark green was a bad idea.  So I got to rip all that out and I'm now doing it over in black. Sigh.

***

And that's all I can think of for the time being.   Cheers, y'all!

On gardening, or, what a pretty way to pound out stress

So my last post was all about the henna fiasco, my stress levels, and the challenge of Just Shutting Up About It and moving on.

When it comes to stress levels, and/or actually getting off my butt and getting some exercise, nothing beats my ongoing battle in my flowerbeds against the Stupid Freakin' Prairie Grass That Will Not Die.  Up and down our street, a lot of the landscaping consists of decorative grasses, which are fine, except when you want to have a flower bed instead.  I've been spending the better part of this year's growing season trying to commit herbicide, with no remorse or guilt feelings whatsoever.

I make a terrible Buddhist.

(All that "nonviolence toward any living thing" just flies right out the window when I start trying to get my garden into shape.  (Or whenever I see a hamburger, but let's not go there for now, 'kay?))

Anyway, the struggle/kampf/jihad/violent-outlet-for-my-aggressive-tendencies took a massive turn for the better Saturday, when beloved husband agreed to put his bigger stronger self behind the shovel and uproot nearly every single clump of the stuff taking up space in my garden.

I am so far beyond tickled about this I can't even tell you.

Try to imagine having a really pretty picture in your head, and all the crayons and markers and sparklies you need to put it together, and then having to wait months before you could finally get a blank piece of paper.  And now I got one!

*happy squeak*

About a month ago, I bought roughly 100 bulbs to plant – for non-gardeners (which still includes me if I'm being honest), most bulbs need to be planted in autumn so they have time to settle in and start growing, otherwise you won't get to see any blooms the next spring – and I am now less than two days' work away from being able to plant them.  Let's see…

• Ripping out grass was interrupted by a visit from friends we haven't seen in over a year, so there's a little of that left to do, and then
• a bit of time making sure that any roots still left are dead;
• I need to add some decent soil to the clay that we have,
• smooth out the craters – each of these clumps of grass had root systems at least a foot wide and about 8-10 inches deep
• plant, plant, plant!

I've got tons of crocus for early spring, some red allium (I think; they're in the garage, it's cold, I don't want to go check), some Asian lilies I've relocated so they can actually have some sunlight to grow in, and these really gorgeous exotic-looking things called crocosmia that I stumbled across at the grocery store earlier this summer.

Plus if I'm feeling ambitious, I have a pile of gigantic hostas that I think I'm supposed to dig up, divide so they don't get overcrowded, and then replant… anyone want some?  The leaves right now are the size of dinner plates, and each year they send up stalks over 6 feet tall, with these very very pale lavender-white blossoms that the hummingbirds actually seem to enjoy.  If you're not familiar with them, hostas like shade, so they're great for all those places that, y'know, don't get enough sun.

Wow, do I sound brilliant or what? Real Live Garden Expert, that's me.

The crocosmia, still in its pot after all this time, actually produced lots of seeds, so I'm hoping to start some of those over the winter as well, in which case I may have some babies to give away in spring.  You want hummingbirds, holy cow, expect to be buzzed by annoyed hummers every time they come to feed and find you in the way, watering them.  I've never seen hummingbirds so fearless outside of nature programs on TV.  They WANT your crocosmia.

For that matter, I even got unexpected seeds from some of my daylilies, and I may still have some seed pods from the cold-hardy hibiscus; so if anybody's interested, just let me know.

Pretty colors!  Plus butterflies and hummingbirds, aka flying pretty colors!  Whee!

Hmm.  Wonder if I have enough dirt to fill all those craters in… if not, I was sort of wondering what a multi-level garden would look like.  I just wasn't planning on part of it to be a pond.

The usual

I've signed up for OctoberFest, to be held on Saturday, October 3. This is their third year running an event that drew 3,000 people in its first year, and 10,000 last year. I'm hoping to sling quite a bit of henna while I'm there.

***

Speaking of henna, Global Fest was a success even with the scheduling conflicts - a home football game, the last Mosey of the season, and the Lay Flats music festival all on the same day made for smaller crowds than last year, but I still topped $250 in henna sales.

***

Embroidery - the stupid trees are finally done! I'm working in a color that isn't brown or gray! Wa-hoo!

***

Geocaching: in which one uses one's GPS (or iPhone with a GPS function) to find hidden "treasure boxes". The family had our first successful find today, and the three-year-old loved it. Of course, now she's holding a non-violent protest against the institution of napping, but we did have fun right up until that point. She declared that we had to follow her down the trail because she was the "know where we're going girl".

***

Gardening at this point involves not quite watering or weeding as much as I ought, while planning the seed purchases for next spring and plotting a faster way to heat up water to scald the prairie grass to death. It's effective, targeted exactly on the plants I want to destroy and nothing else, and non-toxic. Apart from annoying the earthworms, this has to be the single best weed-killing method I've ever seen.

***

I'm sleepy. My kid is not. I should be used to this by now.

Various and sundry

Hello, all ye faithful readers (all two of you, or whatever).

I have a personal motto that Pennsic, the massive camping event I went to a couple of weeks back, isn't over until you've gotten all the dirt out from under your toenails. While this sounds icky, it's actually pretty accurate, because it usually takes that long to put the camping gear away, do all the accumulated laundry, and otherwise recover from the vacation that was supposed to be helping you recover from life.

Man, I love Pennsic. I had forgotten how much; the last time I went was two or three years ago. I took all kinds of classes, learned nifty historical things, and fed my troubling obsession with colored string. I learned something called stick-weaving, another embroidery technique, bought some yarn for no good reason, and some filament or "flat" silk thread to go with the new embroidery technique. Luckily I don't have any projects to use it on just now. I also painted a bedsheet-sized banner as a tongue-in-cheek response to an award a friend was recently given.

Any banner that has "The Man, The Myth, The Legend" across the top is a good banner.

***

Speaking of embroidery, the project I've been working on all this time is still progressing. About the most exciting development is that I got thoroughly sick of gray and brown tree trunks and treated myself to some rust (I know, try not to be too scandalized) for the sleeves of the lady figure. I know how boring neutral tones can get, and I thought it would be smart to get them out of the way first, but they're driving me so batty that I don't want to pick up the needle and do them. 'Specially the tree trunks, because the shading there isn't straightforward the way I expect it to be everywhere else.

Okay, the design is of a woman and child in medieval dress, standing between two trees. The whole look of the thing is meant to resemble a medieval manuscript, and I'm using a medieval technique called opus anglicanum to work it. Mostly this means everything is done in split stitch except the outlines, and I get to use different colors for shading. The shading had me worried, so I finally traced a copy of the design, and then sat down with a pencil and went over the gowns until I had a good range of lights and darks. Then I outlined every section where there was an obvious difference between the tones - so now I have a shading map that pretty neatly tells me where to put which color to get the results I'm after.

The tree trunks don't work that way. I'm basically winging it with two shades of brown and two of gray. They're skinny enough that it shouldn't take me much longer to finish them - I'm on the second one now - but they're still bugging me, and they're boring anyway.

The only other colors I have completed right now are white, cream, and a very light yellow, so the rust is actually the snazziest thing going right now. Plus the sleeves are a teeny area to work, so they make a nice diversion that won't keep me off the tree trunks for too long.

***

Beloved Husband took a hedge-trimmer and helped demolish massive amounts of Stupid Prairie Grass. Another thing I learned from Pennsic is a medieval way to prep the ground for gardening: It's this nifty period weed killer called scalding hot water. Now that the grass is mowed almost to the ground, I'm going to go back through, trim it as close as I can, and then use our tea maker/hot pot to boil up a few liters at a time and go cook me some unwanted plant life.

Yes, prairie grass can be lovely. But you need to make up your mind whether you're doing a prairie grass sort of landscape, or a flower garden, and then keep the damn grass out of the flower beds.

***

Classes resumed at the local university today. I have to quote my friend Ned, who always liked to say that "it's a lovely campus - shame about all the students." Not only have several thousand freshmen arrived who've never driven in this city before, there are a few hundred students from abroad who have likely never driven in this country before. Campus will be an interesting place to GO NOWHERE NEAR for a few weeks, until things settle down a bit.

***

On the other hand, all those students make for lots of potential henna clients. I'm still at the Farmer's Market, will be at Global Fest in two weeks, hope to get in at Octoberfest in the early part of the month, and now I've got a classified ad running in the campus newspaper. Now I just need to get my booking "brochure" up here and run a few hundred more business cards, and I ought to be good to go.

Odd, I certainly don't feel like I've been this busy.
Cheers, y'all.

Henna absence - noooooooo!

Well, everyone, it had to happen sooner or later.

This coming weekend is the July Mosey Down Main Street, and I will be in Wisconsin. I am disappointed about this because the Moseys are so much fun (and I get money and everything!), but the Wisconsin thing has been in the works for months, so...

The August Mosey is iffy for me right now, because I'll be on my way back from Pennsylvania, and might not get back in any shape to do henna, much less in time.

The September Mosey is opposite Global Fest, held at the Morton Community Center, and you can bet your sweet bippy I'll be over there instead. Last year was crazy, and I'm not about to miss this year's.

However, you can look for me at the Farmer's Market tomorrow in my shiny new EZ-Up shelter. It's definitely built to be sturdier than the last one, and hopefully less prone to wind damage. I have a brand new batch of henna waiting for test subjects, I mean clients. The test patches I did on myself look very, very promising.

***

Embroidery is happening. I'm doing tree trunks at the moment, trying to get all the boring neutral colors out of the way so I can start putting in some greens and reds and fun stuff like that.

At the moment, the embroidery is even more fun than usual, because The Husband has a small project he is working on, as well. It's a gift, so I can't talk about it more than that, but it's nice to have something that we can sit down and do together. When we're on the computer, we're usually not facing one another, much less talking while we do our separate things. With this, we keep up conversation and show off our work and all that.

Embroidery as marital aid... I can just see someone writing up an Expert BS Article on that.

I'm considering getting or making some kind of peg-board just so I can display all the embroidery thread skeins I have, up on the wall where they'd kind of count as decor, and add some color to a fairly bland space. I haven't cleared space to work in the studio in too long, and it shows.

***

I recently rediscovered my mind-mapping account over on bubbl.us (no "e") and I've been trying to use it to get a handle on my life. Probably the project management apps at either TaskWriter or Todoist would work better for that, but I like the pretty colors at Bubbl.us.

Of course, this also keeps me from "having the time" (oh darn) for data entry or actually working on the projects that the apps are supposed to be helping me manage... hmm.

***

Watch this space for henna "brochures" that I hope to keep permanently accessible via the category tags on this page. You should just be able to click on "info" or "brochure" or whatever and get the main information about booking me, about henna body art in general, and about henna safety.

"Safety?" I hear you say. "I didn't know henna had a safety concern!"

So, to keep you from freaking out, here is the short version:

Public Service Announcement: If anyone is trying to sell you "black henna", say NO. At best, you're looking at a mix of henna and indigo, but it's much more likely that you're looking at black hair dye. Hair dye is not intended for use on bare skin, and it can leave scars. If you really want to see some good gross-out photos, you can follow this link, but you might prefer taking my word for it.

I do not, have not, and will never use anything other than pure henna powder, along with other safe ingredients. Feel free to ask me for my ingredient list, anytime, or to request a special batch made without a particular ingredient (ie, without lemon juice, or without a specific essential oil to which you are allergic).

Anyway, there's more information on safety that I will include in the brochure, but those are the basics. It occurred to me that if I mentioned safety, I'd better clarify or people would freak out.

***

The flowers that I got from the hardware store? Some of them we got for a quarter because they were teeny, scraggly things and the lady just wanted to get rid of them. Yeah, they're blooming now. This makes me happy.

Till next time, y'all.

Gosh golly, I'm so tech-savvy...

I've noticed that I often want to update my blog even though I have very little to actually say (maybe I should become a politician...?) I've also noticed that the only way to keep Facebook from eating my life was to subscribe to a feed that just shows my friends' status updates. It's looking like short-and-sweet messages just work well for me.

So yeah, I went ahead and put up an account on Twitter, and yeah, it's linked to this blog, over there on your right. I'm wondering if the "tweets" will show as updates to the blog or not, 'cause if they do, you could be notified when I update. That assumes you don't have a Twitter account and don't want one, 'cause otherwise you could just follow me there.

***

Embroidery is progressing. Maybe when I unbury the scanner (currently there's a box of data entry work on it) I'll get some pictures in for y'all.

And, as the first tweet says, flower seeds have pretty colors on them. One packet is more expensive than one skein of thread, but you get lots more flowers once they sprout, and if you buy perennials, they're the gift that keeps on giving!

Speaking of flowers... Note to self: it was a mistake showing the kiddo how to blow the fluff off of dandelions last year. Our yard is now very, very well populated with pretty yellow flowers. Man, those things are fertile little buggers. Supposedly their roots produce a purple dye - this may be enough incentive to get me out there with a spade (but probably not).

Kid and I went to the local greenhouse for the first time today. She thought it was great, right up until the roof dripped on her nose and startled her. We now own a snapdragon start -- any flower that you can squeeze and make it go "roar" is automatically COOL -- along with the fennel I was looking for, and some delphinium seeds that I wasn't. Couldn't find the darn Maximillian sunflower seeds, though. This is getting frustrating.

New residents, new opportunities

Yeah, okay, this has nothing to do with my creative endeavors, but everything to do with beauty, so...

Our housing addition has a pond. I don't know how far I can go to call it a habitat, since they mow down to the water's edge and treat the water to counteract all the lawn chemicals that wash in and cause algae blooms, but still. Pond, fish, frogs, and drop-in visits from ducks, geese, and about every other year a family of muskrats takes up residence in one of the culverts and starts undermining the bank.

Well, we also get great blue herons, one of my favorite birds. Last year a really HUGE one got his foot caught in a muskrat trap - I know this because I was the one who noticed he'd been in the same spot all day, and got close enough to confirm how badly he was stuck.

This year it's either a different heron, or he was immature last year and has come into his full color this year, because he is spectacular. All the pictures you see with the shiny white head, black streak across the eye, kind of shaggy feathers on the throat and chest?... This particular bird looks like he has a sideline modeling for the Audobon calendar.

Yesterday and today, for the first time, I've seen a kingfisher in the area. Yesterday he was on a wire about a mile off, along the route I drive to take the kiddo to preschool. This morning he was sitting on the culvert at the pond. Yes, the same one that the muskrats like so well.

I'm going to miss the house swallows this year, though; they were living in a mailbox just across the street from the pond, and for some reason the homeowner wasn't too happy about that. Barn swallows are this really rich midnight blue with orange chest and bellies; house swallows are an equally rich deep teal-green, with white chest and bellies. I'd never seen them before last year, but in the fall the guy took down his mailbox and replaced it with something harder for birds to set up housekeeping in.

***

At the event where I taught the henna class, I also proved once again that I needed a chaperone anytime there is colored thread around. But they were five skeins for a dollar, and how can you pass up a deal like that?

Things are actually progressing with the embroidery thing. I'm outlining the lady's wimple and veil right now. You might recall a griffin I mentioned doing in Bayeux stitch; I gave it to a friend of mine whose "kingdom" emblem is a gryphon, and she said it would probably end up being part of the front panel for an early-period gown. Cool. Probably I should ask her to send me a picture of it, since I never thought to take one.

***

When you're clinically depressed, it's too easy to fall into the trap of struggling to be "happy" as the opposite of "sad." Thing is, happiness comes in moments and snippets. A guy I know describes it as the butterfly landing on your shoulder - beautiful, but impossible to try and keep around. What is better, according to my counselor and my college memories, is the idea of "peace" as the opposite of "suffering". So I've been checking in with myself yesterday and today, asking what feels peaceful to me, what brings me contentment, that kind of thing.

Or, as a great many sources of wisdom like to say, "Pain is; suffering is optional." Another way it gets phrased is, of course, "shit happens"... it's how you handle the shit that determines, oh, pretty much everything.

***

Had an email out of the blue (heh - out of the ether (I'm so clever)) from a guy who wants to host a web domain and site for me, for free, simply because he likes to assist artists and the arts. Sadly, I keep finding myself trying to examine the horse's teeth, just because it's been awhile since something like this has dropped into my lap without conscious effort on my part. All I did was leave some business cards somewhere and the guy found one.

Also, I have no freaking idea what domain name to pick. Just my name isn't very catchy, nor does it describe what I do... but like this blog, I do a lot more than just henna, even if that's the only art I'm making money with at the moment.

Hmmmm... suggestions welcome, both serious and otherwise.

***

Anyone know how to repair a stepping stone that has cracked into four pieces, just from having a three-year-old walk on it? This was the one I discovered had poorly mixed concrete, and was crumbling around the edges and all that.

I'd really rather not redo the mosaic from scratch, nor "recycle" the thing by chipping each piece of glass out of the broken sections to rebuild into another stone. Even though that probably would be both faster and the wiser course to take. That damn thing took me about a year to finally finish; I really don't want to dork with it anymore if I can help it.

***

I think I'm on an upswing emotionally; I can tell I'm improving when my brain starts providing me with song lyrics without my asking. Today it was "Beer Run" while at the cashier, paying with a $10 and getting back a $5. If you've never heard the song, try to imagine a nice hillbilly twang and someone going "yee-ha" in the background. It doesn't have a banjo, but it should.

B, double-E, double-R-U-N, Beer Run,
B, double-E, double-R-U-N, Beeeer, Ru-un,
All we need is a ten and a fiver
A car and a key and a so-ber dri-ver
B, double-E, double-R-U-N, Beer Runnnn.

Not sure who wrote it, but it plays on Bob and Tom every now and again, so I guess it qualifies as their contribution to American culture.

I will continue to agree with Steve Martin's (very old) assertion that it is impossible to remain unhappy when a banjo is playing. 'Course, at the time I'm sure he'd never heard Bela Fleck playing BACH on banjo... which would only serve to confirm, reinforce, and utterly and competely prove the point.