august break ~ day 4

ayakulik river, kodiak island



august break ~ day 3

oregon sand dunes

august break ~ day 2

august break ~ day 1

(i'm going wordless for august break. also, most of the photos i post will be from my iphone and will be

unedited, unfiltered, untextured. that's the point of a break, right?)

click on the august break button to the right to see other participants!

liberated~

this is the second year of kat sloma's "Liberate Your Art" post card swap. this year there are over 200 folks participating from all over the world. (if you click on the button above it will bring you to the participant page so you can visit them all!)

i love seeing stuff in the mailbox when i open it. i also needed a prompt to get me in the creating mode again, so this swap came at the perfect time. i just liberated my post cards friday.



kat deserves a standing ovation for coordinating this huge project all on her own. can you imagine sorting, labeling, stamping and mailing over 1,000 postcards??? yikes. at least she gets to see them all. i look forward to the next few weeks, as five of the little beauties find there way to my mailbox.

august break 2012 with susannah conway~

i'm just back from a quick overnight trip to our cabin. we went for fun (a rare treat) and to try out the new outboard on the little skiff. lucky for me, the water was flat calm all the way to the bay. look at it up there - can you believe it?!

it was a wonderful, slow trip, which gave me a chance to take some photos - usually not an option on the need-for-speed blackcat... i'll post them as soon as i get them off my phone.

i blame my new phone for my severe "blogger's block" as i have become a slave to Instagram. what a wonderful world that is! i feel like i'm traveling the globe every time i take a peek. i like that it is what it says "instant."

to try to get back to my blog, and my art in general, i have decided to joined up with Susannah Conway's August Break 2012. i invite you to click on the link and sign up too. here's a snippet of how susannah describes august break (copied from her blog post):

How it works: you simply share one photo (or more!) each day on your blog – Monday to Friday, or every day. Or whenever you feel moved to share. Using any camera – DSLR, compact, Polaroid, Holga, iPhone (my choice), Instax, film or digital – with or without words – anything goes! – for the whole of August. No pressure – just looking at August through your camera lens as a way to be more present this summer. And to have a little break from the pressures and expectations of regular blogging.

There are NO RULES, people! Just sunshine (hopefully) + a bit of fun. And lots of lovely photos to look at and new blogs to discover.

see, easy-peasy. at a great time of the year. even if you aren't interested in joining, i really urge you to go meet susannah on her blog. i have been following her for over a year, she is a wonderful artist of photography & words all wrapped up in a beautiful soul. and she shares it all with us. i recently finished her new book "This I Know"

everyone needs to read this beautiful book. i'm not going to try to describe it. just find a copy and read it. it will make you cry, and smile, and laugh. it will make you feel like all those feelings (and all the rest of them you have inside you) are valid. there, off my soapbox.

duff & i are ready for our august break~

 

moving on~

after returning from a spur-of-the-moment long weekend at our cabin, i finally feel like i can breath again. it was great to be "home" on the bay, disconnected electronically and technically, surrounded by the beautiful quiet. we put in a new hot water heater (YAY) and got the second set of solar panels up. and de-spidered. it was a good break.

now i feel ready to get the lead out and start making things. i've found some great help for mom, so have some time to myself again, and that is a wonderful thing. right up there with not having to carry a diaper bag anymore.

i'm participating in kat sloma's Liberate Your Art Postcart Swap again this year, and just finished my card. it's off to Moo to be printed. last year my postcards all came to me while i was living in a tent at the outcamp, and i treasured each one. can't wait to see who comes to kodiak this year.

my inspiration for this year's card came from my tea bag. even the tea gods are out there seeing to the good of the world and all of us in it ...

if you are interested in joining the swap, there's still time - you can sign up until july 17. click on the link, there are over 200 participants from all over the world! it's a huge undertaking, and kat is wonderful to do this for us.

until next time, duff & i give you our love~

off balance~

i know how this guy is feeling.

i've hit a rut, i've lost my balance, i'm going down...

caring for my aging mom is probably the hardest job i have ever had. sometimes the things she says to me, this tiny little silver-haired gramma, have the same impact as clobbering me with a steel beam. a big one. and then the next minute she wants to get bananas to make banana bread.

i know there must be a way to balance caring for {a very cranky} mom with continuing on with my own "stuff," but i haven't found it yet...

...and that leaves me feeling like this guy...



we take things one moment at a time right now, the good ones with the bad.

and while i have no time for the art that's unfinished on my bench

i am so grateful for coffee

and quiet car rides

and my pal duffy who is never cranky with me~



home~

i absolutely loved portland. there was art everywhere. folks even dressed artfully.

even my food was beautiful. what a great place.

hello folks, i'm back from my big adventure. it was everything i hoped for and so much more. the best time i have had with my girl since...well since she still let me pick out her clothes for her. it's been a while.

and look what happened to my blog while i was gone! it got a wonderful spa treatment and face lift from the amazingly talented and very sweet karen valentine of valentine designs. i can't say enough about how swell karen is. a couple of emails, a phone conversation, and pow! she totally "got me."

if you are thinking about starting a blog or getting a new look, please go visit her & view her intro video. i know you'll love her too.

i have lots of stories about my trip, lots of photos i haven't yet downloaded (i haven't even unpacked yet) and great spots i found i want to share...

sadly, the day before i returned, my mom had a fall and broke her hip. luckily gerry & my youngest son were here to take care of her until i got back. it was a long plane ride. for her 83rd birthday she had surgery, got three nice new pins in her hip and a room full of nurses to bring her cake and sing her happy birthday (which is a good deal because when our family sings the neighborhood dogs howl for hours.)

i find myself now in the role of primary caregiver to my dear mom, who is healing well but is fighting the battle of tremendous memory loss and dementia. my days are full of repeating myself over and over and her days are full of wondering why her hip hurts... throw in the small white dog and my world is an episode from the 3 Stooges.

i'm not sure what will happen in the upcoming days. there probably won't be a lot of artsy posts for a bit. but i wanted to say hello, and take a minute to bask in my new bloggy look!

texture wednesday??

i bailed on texture tuesday this week...i've been trying to finish up lots of odds & ends in the sewing room & studio because...

i'm leaving!!! yeehaw, i'm getting on a plane and flying off this island!! i'm so excited i could just spit because

1. i haven't been off this island in three years

2. i'm going ALONE

for the past two weeks we've had a couple of male house guests here on a welding job. guests are great, but there is already a husband, a 17 year old (injured) son and a small white dog in this house. the warm fuzzies for male companionship wore off about 10 days and two containers of clorox wet-wipes ago.

so how convenient that my daughter is moving into a new apartment right now. her first one that is all her own, no roommates. it's a landmark moment and call it grasping at straws, but i'm pretty sure it's required that mothers assist in these situations. i'll grasp whatever i have to to get out of this house.

so i'm off tomorrow, prepared to be amazed at how fast my new 4G iphone will work in the states. i can't wait to get on an escalator - love those things - smell a skunk. go to dairy queen. finally step foot in an IKEA store. and anthropologie. and see all those cherry blossoms everyone posts about. and eat sushi without a husband asking why anyone would pay for that when he can grab a raw fish anytime...

before i leave let me share what i've been working on. it's been a long winter.

i've been knitting and felting bowls...

lots of them. it's like knitting pets, they're small and warm and soft.

some of them i lined with my hand-dyed fabric scraps,

 i like how sturdy it made them.

this is a cowl knit from a beautiful merino yarn by Katia.

it's fluffy and soft and i like the subtle pops

of colour here and there in it.

this scarf is called "Loreli's Gift," i found the pattern in the book

Sock Yarn One-Skein Wonders by judith durant.

i knit it in a beautiful heathered baby alpaca - soft as a cloud.

this shawl is probably my biggest knitting achievement to date. it's just a simple triangular lace pattern, easy to follow. i started it last summer, and brought it down to the lodge/outcamp with me. i tore it apart and restarted it many many times after losing my place. i worked on it until my hands got too sore and chapped at the outcamp and my fingers were snagging on the fibers, then i put it away.

i finished it just before xmas, and decided i couldn't give it away.

i love it too much. love the colours, and the silkiness. the yarn was a gift

from my daughter, it's an extra fine italian

merino lace weight by ella rae.

like knitting a lamborghini.

and then there's these guys

the socks.

 it wasn't enough that i didn't finish the first pair i started, i had to start a second pair.

i don't think there is a winter long enough for me to be able to finish knitting socks.

but sock are patient creatures.

that's it. that's all i got. i'm off to pack for my fabulous, man-less 13 days

of no dinner-cooking. i'm sure when i return i'll have great stories

of being lost in an elevator, or a parking lot,

or arrested for jay walking...

it's going to be so much fun.

texture tuesday ~ little things

well that was a fast week... it's texture tuesday again already!

this week ms. kim didn't give us a topic, just asked that we use at least one layer of her beautiful and subtle texture "Little Things"

my pal duffy and i have taken advantage of the few sunny days we've had to head out to the beaches and gather some fresh new springtime sea glass. it's still cold and my fingers froze, but it sure feels good to see those glistening gems in the sun on the beach. and duff does love his ice water swims.

here's a bit of what we came home with:



and here it is after a photoshop spa treatment:

i set the image on soft light blend and adjusted the levels and contrast a bit. i added a cooling filter at 17%. then i placed one layer of kim's "little things" texture set on multiply at 74%, and one more set soft light at 45%. i like the grungy-beachy look.

now click here to go see what my fellow texture friends have done this week!

texture tuesday ~ soft

it's been far too long since i've had some texture in my life...so i'm back to linking up with ms. kim klassen's texture tuesday group.

i'm excited to sink back in and start seeing things with a camera eye again. since getting my new iphone, i am very guilty of leaving my camera on the shelf - i love everything i can do with that phone!

but i also love my camera, and here's what we came up with for ms. kim's prompt for this week ~ soft

i set the background on soft light blend. adjusted the levels & contrast a bit, then added a layer

of kim's "little things" texture set on multiply at 53% opacity.

removed a bit of the texture from the eggs. that's it.

how lucky are we to have friends who share their fresh eggs with us!

just in time for easter!

here it is before:

now click here to see what everyone else has done! it's all fabulous!

it's all about the pin~

i managed to resist it for months. scorned the very thought of the time wasted with it. felt so smug knowing i wasn't being lured in. then one morning something caught my eye on a blog i was visiting. i clicked to get a closer look and  BAM - just like that -  that fast, i was reeled in on a barbed hook and landed in a bucket of pinterest.

oh how far i've fallen. i had just managed to overcome the shakes of etsy addiction. i'm back to setting the timer on my stove so i have to physically remove myself from my computer. oh wait - now i have the dang pinterest app on my phone.

for pete's sake.

as if i didn't have enough ideas of my own banging around in my head, now i can add hundreds more in a matter of minutes. i've accumulated enough pins to build 17 dream houses, four just for duffy. 

i have, however, drawn the line on food. i will not pin photos of food. i pin enough food to myself as it is, i don't need to do it electronically.

at any rate, there are some amazing things out there. thanks to pinterest i recently found a fabulous artist i would invite you to go visit. her name is thespoena mclaughlin, her blog is here. i came across one of her dolls on pinterest at the same time the new "studios" magazine came out, and she is one of the featured artists this spring. wonderful mixed media pieces using found objects and my all-time favorite item - rusty bits.

thanks to pinterest, i haven't started any of the large and looming projects that are on my list for this winter. i have found all kinds of crafty things to do though. like this:

 

no more boring earbuds for me & my new phone

thanks to the nifty tutorial i found here.

 

all it took was a few skeins of embroidery thread and my

hands were kept busy while watching Hoarders four nights in a row...

 

fun, huh? there is the added bonus that the wires don't tangle anymore, i love that.

i also made a few of these:

 

 

what's so special about a little round pouch? look what goes inside!

 

 

so dang slick! all they take are four charm squares (or if you're like me,

some of your hoarded fabric scraps,) a 4" zipper and a bit of interfacing.

 

 

i followed the pin for these back to their originator, erin erickson.

her blog, and the tutorial for the earbud pouches can be found here.

go visit, she has a great site. lots of nice sewing.

 

finally, in honor of springtime

(the snow piles are shrinking slowly here)

i made a batch of these little clucks:

 

and several of these:

 

i firmly believe every home needs a hedgehog.

this one is a handy pincushion.

let me know if your home needs one too!

where the heck have i been!?

isn't he the bees knees? he's a year-old cub who was a great source of

entertainment all fall as his mom tried to

teach him the basics of river crossing and fishing for dinner.

holy cow, it's been a while...

i have a hard time finding the words to begin a post.

let me just do a little show & tell of what i did this summer.

such a big huge summer full of  long days in the kitchen. larger-than-life weather.

wonderful, fantastic people from all over the globe - iceland, germany, denmark, even texas!

the first thing i saw every morning...the last thing i saw every night.

God bless the coffee pot.

summer at AlpenView lodge was full of...small events like running low on eggs right before eggs benedict morning... falling short of flour...exploding cornbread (that was a fun one.) i loved being followed to work some mornings by the sweetest little doe & fox...and later in the fall being swooped on by bats...i really don't like bats.

you can't always predict what's going to happen when

sports fishing on kodiak, but you can count on this -

sourdough pancakes for breakfast on sunday mornings!

...huge events like sewing up gerry's leg after a power tool fiasco (and we did it - outside, on a deck bucket by the woodshed, with a continuous shower of bug spray, a needle, thread, and the quintessential bottle of whisky)...

we had a couple of downtime days between clients, mr. dave & the boys drilled a new well at AlpenView...and amy and myself got to make homemade tamales for "the family."

my favorite event- a surprise visit from my dear friend & hair fixer, valene, who boated down for a weekend to cut and wash that grey right out of my life. i love valene.

fresh silver salmon caviar & buckwheat blini appetizer

sizzling crab puffs never sit long enough to cool off

assistant guide connor patiently waits for the clients to head in for sushi

thanks to mr. dave's green thumb, this year i had a beautiful crop of fresh herbs, a large variety of lettuces & greens, and some stunning beets & peas to cook with. nothing's better than the aroma of just-picked cilantro in a just-caught halibut ceviche...

 

 

this year we had several wives & daughters join their fishing husbands and dads. it was really nice having ladies at the lodge, and even nicer that one of them now holds the season record for largest halibut caught!

guests always enjoy AlpenView's formal "tie night" dinner and

the traditional poker game that follows

the end of the lodge season was followed by four weeks working at the outcamp on the ayakulik river...surrounded by fishermen, bears, beautiful country, and very little else. the silvers were running great, and i finally got to see some beautiful steelhead.

see the camp? it's the group of tents just left of center of the photo, perched on the river bank.
yes, the plane lands on that twisty windy river. we have some awesome pilots on kodiak!

fresh, beautiful silvers headed for the smoker...

 i got to watch flock after flock of geese & swans migrate. so many i lost count. i could hear them coming for miles before i could spot them, and then the sky would go dark there were so many.i shared my tent with a tiny little ermine who loved hiding in the bounty paper towels and would wake me up at night scampering across my cot... (too fast for photos)

 my "room" ~ home sweet home!

assistant guide craig olsen and mr. joe from north carolina
reluctently give up fishing rights in the home pool to momma bear

there were beautiful sunny autumn afternoons of total silence with that wonderful fall smell in the air. i had the company of big fuzzy bear who joined me many afternoons for a nap in the sun behind my tent. i read out loud to her just to hear a voice...

tundra cotton

we had huge storms, with wind gusts that blew my pots & pans off the shelves and the tents back off the platforms.

we had some magnificent rainbows this fall...

honest, this is not photoshop

 i watched the thermometer drop lower and lower. some mornings i woke up to a ring of ice frozen around the "breathing hole" of my sleeping bag and my tent zipper would be frozen shut.

those mornings were very hard to get out of my sleeping bag, and frankly, around my last week mid-october, the only reason my fishermen friends got their coffee in the morning was thanks to my sorry full bladder....

that's frost he's walking through...it was such a cold morning...

the cold didn't bother my little pal at all...

when the termination dust appeared on the mountains,  i was really ready to head home. there's a point when there simply can't be enough layers of long johns, fleece and smart wool. my hands were chapped and bleeding and i couldn't knit anymore. i never want to smell bag balm again. should "Survivor" ever want to film an episode on the ayakulik river, however, i will be ready.

at any rate, the last switchout day finally came, and i was one happy happy camper when this landed and one of the seats was for ME:

i love pilot stan...

assistant guide isaac, myself and mr. dave.

it was hard to say goodbye to these guys! they both stayed another week to break camp and do some hunting. i was very happy to not do that. i was very happy to get get to see valene again.

returning to town, and everyday life, after a few months of remote living can take the breath right out of a person. when i got off the plane back in kodiak i was overwhelmed with the noise, the smell of vehicles (and as i walked across the bridge - mcdonald's - ohh those greasy fries).

back at home i had to figure out who the person in the back room was...turns out it was my son cullan but lord how can a boy grow so much so fast...
i had to face the fact that my dear mom had really aged and could no longer live on her own.
i had to find out why my pal duffy the small white dog thought it was okay to nest on my side of the bed...

it took me awhile to get used to how warm the house was. it felt odd not having 3 pairs of socks and rubber boots on all day. i wept when i reunited with my bathroom, and hot running water, that came out of a faucet.

for weeks it was wonderful to...sleep til 8 a.m.....read for hours....never leave the house...drink really good coffee...see the new geico commercials... i haven't done a lot of artwork yet, and this is really the first quality time i've spent on my computer. it's just been nice simply being.

now it's time to get the lead out. i've visited my favorite blog friends and see spring is happening everywhere but kodiak. we still have several inches of snow, lots of ice, frequent flurries. but it's all good. i've got sheets hanging on the line, maybe we'll be able to smell the snow on them in july...

in ending this very long post i have one last thing to share with you. i know many of you gals out there have wonderful spouses who gift you with thoughtful things like fine jewelry or lovely dinners out for special occasions. i would urge you to not take those things for granted, because you could be the wife of gerry. see what i got for my birthday this year:

a lovely new seat for the outcamp outhouse. oh yeah.

("not just any seat," his note said to me. "it's blue foam. the Cadillac of outhouse seats.")

i have to hand it to him, it did ward off the chill.