Hello from Sunday night!
Well, welcome year of the horse! I have high hopes for you. Not only have I just bought a cheesy 1956 paperback western called,"Thirty Notches" by Brad Ward. (gotta love those macho names), but I also painted this little painting of three horses to celebrate you.I love threes, don't you? For me it represents all sorts of wonderful groupings: R, C and me, my three children, my three cats. Does anyone remember that Schoolhouse Rocks little vignette "Three is a magic number"? It rather is, isn't it? Ok, I just had to link to the Blind Melon version now that we're adults. :DThis little painting started life as a left-over art card. I used a purple-ish vintage wrapping paper that then I wasn't crazy about and so I painted the horses over it with acrylics. Then I wasn't happy about the chalky, blocky look of the acrylics so painted over that whole painted and collaged mess with my oils. Ahh, that's better. Soft, misty, blended colours. Horses coming form on high down to Earth for the lunar year. So GONG XI FA CAI everyone!
Outside the few early snowdrops have opened. Those precious few immediately were brought inside and put into one of the little ink bottles I bought at the car boot sale. I could hardly wait. I'm sure my neighbours thought me strange peering down into the shade garden every day, (seventeen times/day) checking on them. There are hundreds coming but these six first ones are just so very welcome. As I write this they are beside me and later will be moved to my side of the bed. They have a soft, gentle fragrance and I don't want to miss a moment with my first garden flowers of the year.
Today I had it in mind to organise and cull my overflowing book collection. So I dove into the library and then the arduous task of deciding which books to actually let go of began. The thing is that sometimes I don't remember that I have the book and have to put it aside to read thru it to decide whether it's a keeper or not. Some books I've completely forgotten about, like this lovely 1941 "A Choice of Kipling's Verses Made By T.S. Eliot", and then read it over lunch completely forgetting that I actually set out to clean up the library. But with a thousand books in the house...well...I do understand and appreciate that I really don't need two copies of several Simon Winchester or Diane Ackerman books...even if I love them to pieces, and so get on with the task.
So, in the end I enlisted Chloe's help going thru the books and took about one hundred books to Dalyce at our most favourite Booklovers used book store. If you're anywhere within fifty miles of the Lower Mainland, it would so be worth your while to come visit.Mind you, the minute we drop off books we're buying new ones. And by the way, Dalyce gives a credit for books brought in, which applies to books being bought. How can you go wrong? Anyway, if you come, let me know when and I'll meet you. :D
So back home now with a few of new books and looking forward to cuddling up with a soft, warm blanket, my snowdrops and books. The empty bags are waiting to be filled up with more books to bring to Booklovers, (except this one, which seems to have been expropriated by Morgan), and in a day or two the library will be organised and orderly. (then I'll take a photo to show you.)
Sharing with The Dedicated House for make it pretty Monday
Really random Friday
It's funny but today I don't seem to have much to say.So...I'm glad it's sunny this morning.
Woke up at 3am from a nightmare. Nightmare carried on each time I closed my eyes and so I just got fed up and got out of bed. A family issue which is causing me a lot of pain and reflection keeps being played out over and over in my no-limits imagination and sometimes takes hold and 3am and then that's it. No amount of meditation, self talk, or any other activity can lessen the pain and then I just spend the next day or two seeing things in black and white, and so I'm trying to concentrate on the good things.So...I'm happy that the morning went from this:
To this:Also happy that I live in a city where the snow knows its place...on top of the mountains.
Yesterday I had very low energy and so spent most of the day playing with some mixed media in the studio and came up with these art cards.
So now I have a stack of mixed media art cards around...these are just the ones I had on hand, never mind the ones in the drawers.Don't know what to do with them. A new friend on FB asked me if I sell them...more to the point...where I sell them, and honestly I don't know what to do. I have absolutely no idea if they are sell-worthy, although I suspect not, and sort of prefer the thought of actually sending them out to people who want them, or who would like to trade art cards or something...maybe sending one out with a purchase from an Etsy shop, (which by the way I still haven't started...need a good kick in the...)
I asked Robert if he liked the little thoughts i constructed on them and he said the sweetest thing. He said, "Your words are like a trampoline for my imagination." Couldn't you just melt? I know!The sayings are a little bit of found poetry from the pages of a weird little book called "The Brief History of the Wellington Boot." I'm always amazed at the good words still left in that much used book.
Aaand...... Oh, bought a pretty little beaded purse for no reason at all except that it's pretty.
Sharing with Nancy and all my random Friday friends.
The new spring-like feel in the house
I do have the best intentions but get so sidetracked that my butterfly brain lets those intentions go and flutters on to a different, more interesting project.Going through my past posts yesterday I suddenly remembered that I wanted to show you the results of the wallpaper board and the more spring-like feeling in the house. I'd always been fascinated with the idea of decorating the house, and so, had scrounged the internet for more info on some really good ideas.Milo and I keep looking down into the shade garden. He for birds, me for snowdrops. I think the very first ones might open today.
If they do I'm going to snip them and bring them inside and put them on the table where I can see them all the time. Then I'll bring them into the bedroom with me for the night. Yes, I get that selfish with winter blooming flowers.So this is what I did with the living room for spring. Gone is the heavy old mirror, the black wood candlesticks with the melted candles, and the angel and new is the fresh slap of paint from Image Line Painting , some pictures of birds and eggs, a parasol and some potted and cut daffodils. I also had made some changes to the roof of the house, and added some ledges by calling up professionals from this website.
Everything is still layered and the silly cats have stayed so far. So has the hand crafted kaleidoscope and Sanctuary, and, I took the branch away, and then missed it, so put it back and strung the copper fairy light chain thru it. (guess I'm not done with the branch since it was such a palaver to get...lol) Soon I think I'll add my ostrich eggs and maybe some more green plants.
I hope you like the fresher look; I do. Morgan's not impressed though. If there isn't food in it or a good cuddle she's not moving. (that can't be comfy - you pretzel cat) :)
Tea on Tuesday and reflections from the weekend
We had some friends come for Sunday supper. It's always so lovely, to catch up with friends.
These days I'm thinking that spring can't come too soon.
Sunday morning, while I was shopping for groceries, I bought some tulips and daffodils to "spring the house up". Later, I used my colourful and crazy Bopla plates on the table. Enough of the sombre winter hues.
In the garden, the only fresh green is the ivy and the rosemary. I keep looking into the shade garden for signs of snowdrops and crocuses. They're coming. :)Today Chloe and her school mate Brianna had to work out a business proposal for a client and I offered to make us a big, sunny salad nicoise for lunch.
As I was boiling the beans grown in Mexico and tearing up the hot-house grown lettuce and spinach, I thought back to our Sunday supper and tomatoes imported from California. It'll be good to have some fresh greens growing in the cold frame and in my garden.
To that end, I brought out some of my vintage gardening books while I had a cup of tea.I chose this sweet, little Lady's Slipper cup. Doesn't it look so very sophisticated and exotic? It's Merlin Ware by Royal Stafford china.
And opened some of my books to the coldframe pages. My ancient coldframe needs a bit of repair because the wooden sides are rotting and I'm going to have to do that rather soon because I couldn't resist buying some seeds from one of my favourite seed supplier, the Hudson Valley Seed Library. I suspect that veg and flowers seeds are probably the same from one supplier to the next, but you've got to love a company who hires artists to design the seed packets, don't you?
I was thinking that it would be lovely to grow a lady's slipper orchid in the shade garden. There are seeds available on line actually. I wonder how hard that would be. I have seen some orchids in the forests around my cabin, but not this one.
So I'm sitting here sipping some Lady Gray tea, (because which other tea would one have in a Lady's Slipper cup?) and listening to a finch singing outside in the dreary, foggy coolness that is our last few days of January, and willing spring on.
Oh, and I remembered that I promised a post of the new springed-up living room mantle. Post coming tomorrow then. :)Sharing with Terri and Martha and Sandi and Bernideen.
Basic silversmithing...would you like to see how it's done?
Come, I'll show you then.This Saturday I took the best course from a great teacher: Walt. The course was very small, only five students, so loads of personal help. The object of the course was work with sterling silver, to learn to cut, solder, shape and polish rings and to solder holders for bezel stones onto those rings, to fit the stones and then to actually make an odd shaped holder for an odd shaped stone from scratch.Here is my workbench station with the tools I used.
There don't seem to be a lot of tools involved, just some basic tools and, if you've ever done anything like stained glass or even used a kitchen torch on your creme brulee, then you'll be able to handle silversmithing, but I'd advise to take a course, (if you're in the Lower Mainland, I'd really recommend Walt's course for personal assistance, friendliness, camaraderie and general good time.)Silver seems to come in these lengths, like wire. Some are plain and some are patterned. Some are flat and some are rounded. Chose the one you like. I chose a plain one for my first ring, but later found out that the patterned ones were infinitely easier to bend.To make a ring, first twist the wire around a tool called a mandrel. It is a long metal ring form which tapers smaller and has ring sizes printed on it.
Then the piece of silver, which will be your ring, is cut from the length using a small jeweller's saw. The saw needs to be fitted with a blade and the blade needs to be so tight that it sings a note when twinged. This is easy to do. It's also easy to break the blade...as I found out almost right away...you don't need to put pressure on the saw at all because the blade will simply cut thru the silver without much force. The rule of thumb is if you'd like a size 7 ring, cut the silver at about one size smaller, so at the size 6 for a size 7 ring, because you always end up cutting a larger piece because it's impossible to shape it exactly at the size you want. Below a size 5 ring subtract only 1/2 a size instead of a whole size. (Trust me, my first ring, which should have fit my middle finger is too big for my thumb!)
What you have now is a round of silver with crooked ends. Use parallel pliers and bend the ends apart. Use a fine file...we used #4 and #2 files...to file the ends so that they meet perfectly in the middle.
This is best done in this kind of a holder because it's not easy to hold the silver in your hand while filing.
When the ends are smooth and even, bend the ring so that the ends overlap and gently bring them back together keeping a slight tension on them, as though they want to be overlapped but are forced up against each other.Now place your ring on a fireproof brick and get ready to solder.Solder seems to come in four wires. They range from hard to extra easy. Walt advised that you cut yourself a small length but stick a tape on it immediately identifying the wire because it will be impossible to tell the wires apart without the label.The rule is that you start with the hard wire but if you want to add anything else on your ring, like a bezel and a gem, then the next soldering will be with the medium and then the easy and finally the extra easy.
Now comes the fun stuff...the soldering. drip a drop of flux on the joint and also a little all along the length of the ring. Carefully turn on the torch and heat the ring up. Here is my fellow student getting the ring to the correct rosy gold temperature. When your ring is so rosy, focus the torch on the seam and touch the solder wire to the inside of the seam and the heat will draw it thru to the outside.
Then plunge your ring into cold water using small pliers to pick it off the brick, and put it into a warm "pickle" in a crock pot. That's a very weak acidic solution and cleans the ring. After fifteen minutes, lift the ring out, rinse and fit it back on the ring mandrel. Hit it sharply with the rawhide hammer until the ring is round and sits nicely on the mandrel. Do not hit it in a downward motion because the silver will stretch and your ring might be too big. Now you have a lovely round ring and you're ready to polish. Polishing can be done with your dremel tool and some polishing wax.Here are the first few rings I made. The first ring took me an hour! But the subsequent rings took me much less time.
The next type of ring I made was a round band with a bezel and a stone set in it.The ring started out the same way for the band.
When the band was finished and pickled, there was no need to polish it. I chose the joint to solder the stone to and so filed a smooth, flat surface there for the bezel to fit.There is a nifty tool for holding the band upside down on the bezel on the brick to solder the two together, but mostly the tool heats up and gets in the way. If the flat part is truly flat it balances on the bezel easily.So now it is important to remember that the band was soldered with the hard wire and so the bezel needs to be soldered with the medium wire.
The the same process of pickling and polishing has to be done before the stone is fitted into the bezel and a burnishing tool is used to gently bend the sides over the stone to keep the stone in place.
And that's how I made these!I used iron pyrite and a rose quartz for my stones. I made some tiny rings for Chloe's tiny fingers, I made us matching rings, I made pinky rings, stacking rings...well, I had so much fun. :D I can't wait to buy some supplies and try again. :D
And I absolutely plan to be a repeat offender in Walt's class at least one more time this spring.
Sharing with Mary at the little red house and Ramona at Create with Joy. :)
Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world...
...You've walked into mine. :D
Hi everyone, welcome to my crazy life.I'm Veronica...as you can probably still tell from the name of my blog. This hasn't changed since last year's party.I live with these two, in two countries (Canada and Britain), in two houses, in one cabin, with three cats.
He's Robert, mad scientist, designer, inventor and builder of brilliant machines which race at 200mph, and she's Chloe, fourth year Communications student, saver of the world, of sharks and of small, squeaky things.I take photos...a lot of photos. Some are proprietary and for sale with stock agencies or for use in magazines but all the photos here are for you. Feel free to share, use, have fun with, find inspiration in them...anything you like.
I tend to draw on just about anything. Mostly I love discarded bits of ephemera...torn papers, old letters, bits of unwanted cardboard. I love to take something which someone has thrown away and give it value with my paints. And then I tend to send the little paintings off to who ever wants them.
Along with all the stuff I drew on last year...book jackets, bits of maps, the sawn-off end of the Christmas tree...this year I've branched off to such things as luggage tags...
...and the eggs in the fridge...lol.
But my main focus this year has been on old maps.
I'm here most days, so please say "Hello" so I can come visit you.I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. ;)
Friday photo challenges, Wordpress and Photo Friday
Juxtaposition and Beast...Hot cars in the kitchen!Had to be done. :D
Maximus Arbitrarius (Because you can't translate "random")
So this week I found out that I can't wallpaper worth a damn. This is weird because in an old Victorian house of mine I wallpapered the dining room. So anyway, I had this great idea, for a spring-like feel in the house, to wallpaper a large sheet of plywood as a backdrop to some art on the mantle. (Can't wallpapers the wall because I wouldn't be able to live with a static something for long.) I have been hording a hand full of rolls of this vintage wallpaper for a while now and absolutely love the Art Deco pattern. So I went to the local DIY shop and bought some white glue and mixed it with a bit of wood glue and thinned it with water. Would have used wallpaper paste but the stuff only came in a huge vat! Anyway, not an epic fail, but definitely needs a bit of work to get the bubbles out. I'll persevere. Sent the photo to R who said he didn't like it at all because it looked too much like day of the triffids. Poor Robbie, good thing my mad ideas tend to be temporary.
Why is it that there is always this uncontrollable urge to stick fingers into the ocean to test for temperature? Do you do that? And then do the mad crab shuffle to get out of the way of the waves, and then that one bigger one...which is it, the seventh wave?...comes along and washes over your runners anyway. But even when you know it's going to be pretty damn cold, it's fun, isn't it? :D
I went to a lecture Tuesday evening at one of the beach galleries (and took these two secret photos just to have the memory). I went to hear this woman speak. Her name is Bobbie Burgers and she is one of my favourite artists in the world. You know, I go to hear her speak about her art, or go to her gallery openings to see her paintings and sometimes, I have to admit, get terribly depressed standing there looking at her art because it's just so brilliant and I can't/will never achieve anything like it...ever...at all, and Tuesday evening she showed a slide of herself standing under a painting by Joan Mitchell, and guess what? She said she cannot stand there looking at Joan Mitchell's art because she gets depressed that Mitchell was so brilliant that she, (Bobbie), can't/will never achieve anything like it...ever...at all.Who knew?
I'm in love with this piece of wood at the beach. Not only is it about two feet across and about a foot tall, but it has this totally awesome hole thru it. All I have to do is figure out how to get it home (it's waterlogged and terribly heavy) and then figure out how to do something fantastic with it.
The plant-that-will-not-die has a name. It usually lives outside for most of the year and is ignored, and then stuck into the dark family room and ignored some more over winter, but it's such a grateful plant that I decided to treat it better and brought it into the corner of the shower for winter. (besides it's good for our house oxygen) Anyway, it's such a grateful little rather big plant, look how happily it's growing. So the other day I asked Chloe if we were to, what should we name it. She said "George" which is our standard name for random things...as in, "love him and pet him and call him George". But then I got it: it's a Hawaiian Schifflera and so the only possible name is Claudia......do you get it?...Please yourselves... I'll be here all week. :D
Sharing with Nancy and looking forward to everyone's randomness.
Let the sun shine
So this is something lovely, the Wet Coast hasn't been living up to its reputation lately. There's been some amazing fog and sunshine, and, even if the sun is that cold, blue, low in the sky, wintery sun, it's most welcome.Chloe comes home between classes and hangs out in the sunshine in the living room and pretty soon she's found, (or rather, her lap is found), by one of the cats.The house plants are starting to think about growing again and it's lovely to see them reaching for the windows.By the afternoon the sun swings around to the south side of the house and into the dining room and kitchen. Here it's illuminating a vintage beaded peacock and my orange lily painting.
We usually go for a walk or hike these days, (trying to lose those extra pesky pounds) and after we come back Chloe makes us a fruit smoothy. She's become a fruit smoothy artist these days. She adds good things like spinach and flax seeds and makes it taste delicious. Then she pours it into her camera lens travel mug. The students in her film studies class love that travel mug.
The last of the light, the evening light, usually shines intense gold and illuminates the lacquer red walls of the front entry. And I love to take advantage of the last of the sunlight with a little ritual of relaxing with a cup of tea and a lovely book. Right now I'm loving this beautiful Annie Leibovitz book called, "Pilgrimage". I'm dreaming of some sort of a pilgrimage of my own and trying to imagine what that would look like.
But I'm very excited about, and am starting to prepare for two things. One is a colour trade which is being hosted by my friend Vibeke and the second is the new Grow Your Blog event hosted by the lovely Vicki happening this coming Saturday. I'm planning a give away of some kind. Probably involving art and something vintage...lol.And sharing with Ivy and Elephants for What's it Wednesday