Otis went to his sulky place. He thought to himself "I wonder what would make me feel better?"
Recipes you know so well you can make them without looking...
Scones. Recipe from Alice Bay Cookbook.
Vegetarian Shepard's pie: split peas + onions + walnuts + cauliflower + kale + spices, topped with mashed potatoes and baked.
Inspired by a recipe at 101 Cookbooks and one from My New Roots.
Paper collage + a little sketching + two layers of photos + a filter.
2 torn pieces of paper + 2 photos, blended + a filter + a bit of sketching = something else than the beginning but not really an ending.
There's been a flock of robins in and out of the garden today. They are working on the neighbor's holly trees.
Five or six will perch at any given time in one of my fruit trees that are by the entry gate. They are fluffed out full, facing the wind.
It's supposed to snow part of the night and be windy...gusts up to 40 MPH. It's 7 F/-11 C with the wind chill right now. Not nearly as bad as other areas but cold for us.
This makes me think storm.
Collage + layering of two photos + filer.
I've been stitching today and, of course, watching the snow fall.
Prompt...to be on time or to encourage, to suggest.
Most of the watches I've owned in my life time, just missing one I think. I'm a bit bemused about there being two watches with cartoon characters on them. Classic Cinderella was a gift from my grandparents. I believe I picked it out at a gift store in San Francisco when I was nine.
The Tweety Bird watch plays "I'm in the mood for love." I used to wear it to work as a necklace but the kids would want the button pushed over and over and it drove me a bit crazy....
The only time that I regularly wore a watch was in college, so that I could be on time for classes.
"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." Thoreau
A response for April Love 2017. The prompt was "favorite quote." I don't really have one but this one is a long time favorite. It was included on my college applications and essays that I wrote for scholarships. I've always thought of education as a foundation.
Responses to 365 days prompts:
There is something about prompts and dead lines and due dates and challenges that works for me. I think it's because daydreaming, playing and generating ideas is easier for me than finishing something.
Following my own impulses...
creative mess:
laundry (first batch taken outside to dry in the sunshine, and isn't that piece of fabric a prompt in itself?):
tea
I'm going to fill a jar or bowl or something with words and draw a word each day and then post an image on Instagram each day, maybe weekly here. If anyone wants to suggest a word or two or more I'll add them to the mix.
Since I'll finish the prompts for April Love, I'll start officially drawing words on May 1st.
At the moment, I don't have any pictures of the boat that seems such an integral part of my childhood, so I sketched a bit.
Well, it is definitely a boat.
I spent a good part of my childhood and early teen years curled in the bow reading. And napping. That too. I still like a good nap and can sleep in the sunshine as easily as anywhere else.
I have memories of singing with my mother, mostly when we were running from harbor to harbor. Especially while crossing Chatham Strait. "You are my Sunshine," "Bicycle built for Two," "Red River Valley," "What Shall we do with a Drunken Sailor..."
There was a cassette player at some point, during the late 70's. I still have John Denver's Greatest Hits around here somewhere. I'm not sure what else. By the time we move to Washington and fished around the San Juan Islands I had a radio and could listen to that too.
But there were always books. I read a lot.
....
Books I am currently reading or will read sooner rather than later (I always read more than one book at a time.).
Books and authors I have loved starting from about age nine...
Not pictured:
We can create our own world....
One of the prompts for Carla Sonheim's class, 365; is to make a list. This is the one I wanted to make.
What books do you love? What are you reading?
...
Field notes: lots of April Showers this week and today high winds, gusts up to 54 miles an hour. The house has been shaking.
The Camellia is covered with blossoms for the first time this year. So beautiful...
"To hope is to gamble.
It's a bet on the future, on your desires, on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty is better than gloom and safety.
To hope is dangerous, and yet it is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk."
Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark
Rebecca Solnit is quickly becoming a favorite.
The photos are part of a prompt to take 16 photos, as part of Carla Sonheim's 365 class. This prompt says "look closer" to me. I'm going to do it again.
Three hours in the garden today, plenty of hope to be found.
I grew up knowing there were bears in the woods, bears on the beaches, bears going through the garbage at the garbage dump (It would be reported in the community newspaper, something that always seemed very funny to me...).
I remember another summer camp hike in SE Alaska that my brothers and I went on where we wore bells and sang for a good part of the hike...one of the rules for living around bears is make lots of noise so that you don’t surprise them.
When we moved to Washington (where bears are still a possibility but less likely in the areas where I have lived) my bedroom was located at the front part of a daylight basement, with the windows pretty much at ground level. I can remember (age 10) laying on my bed in the dark thinking the bears were outside the window and that I needed to lay very still so they wouldn’t notice me. Another bear rule, for brown bear and Grizzly bear only, play dead if necessary.
This was also a stage of my life that I was sure there was something scary under my bed and that if I let my foot dangle over the edge while I was sleeping that it would be grabbed and awful things would happen. I am so thankful I never shared that with my brothers. Sure enough one of them would have been under my bed waiting for me to fall asleep...
...
This year I decided to participate in Carla Sonheim's 365 day class. Like my friend at handstories, I realized very quickly that a drawing assignment was going to take me right to a Jude inspired beast...
Still in progress.
...
Vulnerability has been on my mind, still thinking about how and what we share. How it ties to taking risks, being willing to get lost occasionally. About being willing to be a beginner.
Found this morning in Rebecca Solnit's book, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, "Between words is silence, around ink whiteness, behind every map's information is what's left out, the unmapped and unmappable."
...
Stars
I revisited making crackers, this time adding sesame seeds (stirred into the flour not as a topping). The crackers are really best rolled out as thin as possible but the cookie cutters are so much fun to play with.