Close to Home

Posted on by Sandy Webster

I have still been walking over to the gym in the morning. It is getting greener and denser along the way.

On my way back it was sunny and the meadow was filled with spider webs.

A half moon just hung there in the sky watching.

Mostly I have kept my walks to right here in the neighborhood. Later in the day I am accepting invitations to sit on porches and have a glass of wine. Soon there are several neighbors crowded in.

This past Saturday was a town garage sale and plants available to buy.

I was tempted by nothing except raffle tickets to benefit the veterans and coffee and a biscuit to benefit the local historical society. It was nice to have so many people know my name and ask how I was getting on in the new surrounds. It is a very friendly town full of kind people. Where I came from was more on the clique-ish side and few crossed the borders of their controlled comforts.  The welcome mats only came out if you could think and behave as expected. Although we were always popular when financial assistance was needed. With Lee’s decline it was apparent that that town was not the place to be by yourself.

It is so much the opposite here. Neighbors and new acquaintances have gone out of their way to introduce me to those I might have things in common with.  It was a good move.

I have been trying to organize writings into poetry, essays, and short stories. Over fifty poems look promising for inclusion into a book. The short stories will need serious editing. But today I am enjoying going through the random writings about recollections and observations. This morning I worked on Recollections – Australia.  Always a good place to lose myself. Especially now that I bought some lovely reds from the Yarra Valley being sold through the local wine tasting event.

Last night I woke at midnight and never did get back to sleep. So at four with the addition of cuddly cats, I took a half hour on the Migun bed. Lovely right before the shower and heading off to the gym and coffee on the corner after a quick trip to the store for donuts.

Tonight will be a sound sleep for sure.

Tomorrow is a weekly check with the doctor to see if blood thinning medicine is working correctly.  An irregular heart beat was discovered a month ago and medication is needed. Of course, thinking of my Aussie friend who has prepared her and her husband’s “Daisy Boxes” for burial, I went back to the funeral home and made those final arrangements for myself this time. Seems a good thing to do as I approach seventy-nine.

BUT in the meantime, the only friends from my previous town took me out for a Mother’s Day dinner to a town I have not been to for a few years. It was exciting to see all the new shops. And two of us are heading back to do some serious shopping. I saw so many perfect Christmas gifts and there are several new places to eat. We will make a day of it for sure.

Yesterday I made Anzac cookies and am thinking I will take some in to a young man from Australia who opened a bicycle shop in town. I just want to hear him talk. Not interested in a bike.

My lunch yesterday of savoury scone and Romaine lettuces from my pots outside.

Til later….Hopefully with more sketches in sketchbooks and river pictures.

 

Strawberries and Colored Pencils

Posted on by Sandy Webster

One over-filled gallon box of fresh-picked-that-morning strawberries. And the field is only about a quarter mile from me. They are beautiful, sweet and so many big ones!

Now most of them are in the freezer packaged up in servings for one.

The last few mornings have been frosty walking to and from the gym.

And now back in the studio and the struggles with the dragon scale book illustration. I tried, I really did, to get the right colors and mood with the colored pencil collection that I have, And when I put the guide drawing up to follow for the next section of several half inch exposed fore edges, I realized the plain graphite was better…somehow better….

So I took my kneaded eraser and daubed at the pencil drawing of the first full page over and over again to take the color back, way back.

The softness of the image seems to go with the softness of the paper. It felt more “comfortable” for me. Odd choice of words but if I have to spend so much time sitting over a project I set up for myself, I might as well be comfortable with it.

Putting color in only to take it back out was driving me to think the whole idea was beyond where my capabilities now lie. But for right now I am going to blame the colored pencils. Some just have too much pigment in them and you don’t realize how much until the mark is made. The whole bunch will be put away as soon as I see this through.

Then I went back in with the oh-so-much-better graphite pencils and finished it up. Anyway, I think finished. But on this side only.

It is a dreamlike image of the river flowing by. BUT what goes on the back side when I flip all the folios back to the left? The larger page will be on the right…opposite the way we “read” left to right.  Should there be something on each page if they were turned individually like a normal book? Seems like a dumb idea for this binding designed for continual movement.

I thought of making the “backside” a long image of what is under the water. Decided not to. Too much drawing! So maybe, just maybe the large exposed full page when flipped to the left will be a poem about the river. That appeals to me if done in cursive, using a graphite pencil.

Now, how to present it? I will likely do what it was intended to do in the first place, and make it into a scroll. And if I only have the poem on the back side, having another long image expected to lay flat will not be an issue.

But best of all, when I finally finish this I will have learned the following:

  1.  Pick your challenges carefully.
  2.  Keep your limitations in mind when you make the decision in the first place.
  3.  And never, never quit until it is seen through.

I will write the poem over the weekend and roll it all up with a tie to hold in place. Then I will get my table space back to work on something new and SMALL.

Til later…

Walks and Ferns and End Results

Posted on by Sandy Webster

The walk to the river a few days ago.  And then a few trips to the nursery resulted in planters and ferns.

The purple finch just flew off but I did catch the goldfinch staying to check out the dogwood blossoms.

My yardman came this week and fed my winter-weary plants some extra food and trimmed out the dead wood. We talked about adding a stone path between mulched areas and grass/driveway. It would give it more of an Asian garden look and prevent the mowing men from doing wheelies too close to the mulched areas. He will also harvest some bamboo to make some short garden fence to place along the back side of the raised garden and pond out the window. Something that will say this is the end of my space and give a nice look behind the dogwood, etc.

This morning I unwrapped the two shirts I bundled with Eucalyptus leaves and pods. Gave them a good hand wash and ironed them.

Here is the pale grey linen one I made several years ago. More mottled look than leaf print. But more interesting than it was.

And then this recycled men’s shirt I bought from Aukje Boonstra several years ago in Australia. She had colored it with rusting patterns in a striped look here and there. So it was dark brown on a taupe tone cotton. Now this.

The leaves showed up better on this loosely woven cotton than the tight linen above. And the rust marks took on a greenish yellow tone.

Aukje’s shirt took on more of the iron in my bath to tone down the beige-ness of the washed out color it had turned into. I am happy with them both and am saving all the leaves used to add to fresher ones the next go round of contact printing. I could not resist buying four meters of a finely woven white linen for some more summer shirts. Maybe one of those will get the leaf treatment.

I know better than to print pants after a man at a nursery several years ago assumed I had fallen into the mud and wanted to offer assistance.

There have been so many opportunities to meet different people here in Hayesville. Sometimes I will walk around the block with a neighbor and get cooking tips or planting ideas. I am actually talking more to them than their dogs these days.

And the other afternoon one of the younger men at the ‘coffee in the morning’ meetings took me up on my offer for us to continue conversations here at the house over his favorite type of wine. We sat at the dining room table for over two and a half hours sharing opposite political views. When he returned home he messaged a thank you and a thought that he might be able to bring me over to the dark side. I replied that I was equally sure that I could enlighten him to a more generous way of thinking. We agreed that it would take another bottle of wine. I look forward to the next time. Maybe since he likes to cook and is Italian, I might get some lasagna out of it by having him cook a meal here.

I asked him over because he always thanks me for the conversation when he leaves the coffee shop. I think there is always more to say and more importantly ask….so he accepted my invitation. He is one year older than my daughter and seems to have well-considered opinions.

His taste in wine is a sweet moscato red that I was surprised how much like a bubbly Kool-aid it tasted. Don’t you just love our differences! I switched to a Pinot Noir while he enjoyed the sweet red.  The meeting ended in a hug. Can’t beat that.

Til later….

Dogwoods in Bloom

Posted on by Sandy Webster

Coming into the neighborhood these blooms have popped out. And my first dogwood bloom on the tree in the back.

Signs of serious Spring out there.

And more dogwood at the river….

All these pictures of my river walks will feed in to how I try to capture the river in this prepared Chinese Dragon Scale Book. I avoided the extra small folios by gluing the spine folds of each folio together by just a half inch….each of the twenty some were also carefully measured to be one half inch apart. This was a big challenge because the book had to feed from the left, then reach underneath to do the pasting along a metal rule while it was being fed back over my hands to the left again. All without tearing the fragile paper.

I am thinking of doing the illustration of the scenes along the river directly on the 12″ high by 10.5″ wide first folio and continuing the scene along all the 1/2″ exposed folio folds at the foredge. When flipped the other way (to the left) it will be an illustration of the rivers underwater. That will leave me the unseen parts of each page (unless you turn them individually) for drawing artifacts from the river. Such is the plan.

The other day was poetry meeting day. I read another poem, The Position of Periphery. It was well received. They are very encouraging and told me that even though I know nothing about how poetry adheres to certain parameters for different types of poetry, I am doing everything right and to please keep writing. So I will. I did learn about ellipses, though.  The little series of…should not exceed three and not have spaces before or after.  So I will go again next month.

This morning I went out to get myself some hot cross buns and a chocolate bunny to bite the ears off Sunday morning. There was also a small bag of jelly beans that needed to come home too. Then I went to the garden center and bought some romaine lettuces, rosemary and a few plants…mostly shade lovers for the pot out front.

And the other day I decided the frames were just fine the way they were and popped the small stitched animals in them to hang behind the studio door until I decide how to get rid of them.

My friend Marla is wrapping up her trip to Australia and I am enjoying seeing  the pictures. She is now in her last city before flying out from there tomorrow. Sydney.

It is time for a glass of red but a walk around the block first because the rain has stopped.

Til later…