Coneflower Ranch

Happy Independence Day!

Unintended Hiatus

Let's see. The last time I posted anything I had insulted a journal with some bad art and had promised to continue doing so for the month of March. Well, I didn't.

Instead I procrastinated cleaned my studio space. That took two weeks. Partly because it was a huge job since I'd never organized it in the first place and partly because I was home alone with five children and they expected to be fed periodically. They can be real sticklers about the whole 'parenting' thing. As much as I like the idea of 'Foraging Fridays' and 'Serve Yourself Saturdays' they haven't really caught on.

When we moved in here I took over one corner of the family room, boxed myself in with bookshelves and had an old kitchen table as a work surface. Over the years I've slowly spread out and now occupy half the room. It wasn't a planned expansion it happened organically and so the result was more like a mess of bindweed than a trellised climbing rose. This is the 'after' picture. I'm not showing the before pictures. Just imagine most of that stuff in piles and boxes on the floor and you'll have a pretty good idea of the mess. It's now organized chaos and that works for me.

I finished this just before Dennis came home for two weeks leave.

I picked him up at the airport on Thursday and on Friday evening he had to take me to the ER. Honestly, I felt fine except for the heart palpitations and the inability to take a deep breath. Two months prior I had had a physical and was perfectly fine. Seriously, my blood pressure has never been more than 110/70 and my cholesterol is in the 170's. I knew there wasn't anything wrong with my heart but you never know. So the lovely people at the local hospital hooked me up to an EKG and sure enough my heart is fine. They sent me for a chest X-ray.

Dennis and I are standing in the hallway as the x-ray technician looks over my paperwork. He looks up and says, "Oh, your pregnant." Years ago we officially, and permanently retired from the baby making business so it's no surprise that at that moment all the color drained out of my husband's face and my jaw hit the floor. We both turned on the guy and said, "WHAT?" I swear to you, he took a step back and nice and slow said "Are you pregnant?" You know, it didn't sound like a question the first time he said it. Jeese, these guys ought to speak up. It's not nice to scare people like that.

Turns out I had bronchitis. I had no idea you could just get bronchitis. The only other time I've had it was the result of a nasty cold that moved into my chest. This time I went from healthy to sick in no time and it takes weeks to recover. It's kind of scary. 

I spent the next two weeks coughing and getting reacquainted with my husband. On April 5th I drove him back to the airport at four in the morning. That was really hard to do. He flew back to Kansas and two days later he and the rest of his component of Task Force Phoenix left the U.S. for Afghanistan, because, as Dennis says, "Insurgencies don't counter themselves."

Sullivan Ballou he is not

Some women get letters like this. We here at the Coneflower Ranch get letters like this:

(to add ambience you could have this playing in another window)

                                                             19 March 2008

Dear Emily,

For eight weeks I have continuously been in simulated combat. Facing simulated death with simulated courage. Overcoming every simulated adversity with simulated tenacity. Now I'm getting some simulated rest and rehabilitation. But I seem to be suffering from simulated post traumatic stress disorder. The simulated memories of all the simulated friends that I lost on the simulated battlefield overwhelms me. I'm going to need years of simulated therapy just to deal with the simulated depression and the simulated nightmares that haunt my simulated sleep. Perhaps I'll get some simulated medals in recognition of my simulated heroism.

                                                             Love,

                                                             Dad

I don't think Ken Burns will be looking for a copy of this letter anytime soon.

Submitted for Your Approval

Here it is. My very first attempt at an art journal page. I don't like it. It was fun to play and I did learn a few things:

- Cartridge pen ink doesn't bond with gesso so if you write a lovely quote in beautiful green ink on a gessoed page and then wash watercolor over it, the ink will wash off; sort of. It will blend in with the lovely yellow watercolor paint and make a greenish yellow mess while destroying your quote. The quote, by the way, is "Gnothi Seauton" - Know Thyself. I thought that appropriate for the first page of a new journal.

- I like watersoluble oil pastels. They are fun and feel good when they glide on the paper. This is especially true if you dip them in water first. I will be using them again.

- Gel pen ink is as unforgiving as ballpoint pen ink and works it's way through successive layers of paint and whatnot so it takes a lot to soften the look of words written with it. (It's my favorite quote from Hope for the Flowers "You must want to fly so much you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.")

I will keep at it. I did say I would do this for the month of March. It felt awkward in prospect but when I sat down and got to it, I got caught up in the experience.

Before Dennis left I started stocking up on art supplies. When my sister was here for Christmas I showed her my stash. She said there will be a whole chapter in my biography titled "The Celibate Year: not surprisingly her most productive" Along the lines of channeling unused energy into art, I've been taking a watercolor class.

 

I took an introductory oil painting class in college taught by Pat Passlof. She's a lovely woman and successful artist but her teaching style was not compatible with my learning style and I spent the whole semester feeling completely lost. Imagine my surprise when she came up to me while I was working on my third or fourth painting for this class and grabbed my face and kissed me right on the forehead. "You got it" she said. To this day I have no idea what it was I got. All I know is she hung that painting and the one after it in the student show and one of them sold. Whatever it was I got didn't keep me from failing her class.

Turpentine was the preferred method for brush cleaning in Prof. Passlof's class, and I discovered, after I left college, that I'm allergic to it. That explained the headaches and rashes I started getting in her class and mistakenly associated with the oil paint. I still like oil paints but don't work with them much.

   

I switched to acrylics and loved them. I could do alot with them and they dry so fast I never accidentally smudge my work. They are much more non-toxic than oils so when I felt the need to paint with babies in the house I didn't worry so much.

I've always love the look of watercolors and have wanted to learn how to use them from someone who knows how. Lori is a Botanical Illustrator and was an instructor at the New York Botanical Garden. Painting with watercolor is very different from anything I'm used to using. They aren't very forgiving.

These are class sketches in paint so we can learn how to create basic shapes with watercolor. They are from two different classes and I can see I've already gotten more control over the paint.

You can see on the right that we then had to make sketches using the cylinder and cone shapes we learned so we could practice painting and shading. The goal, of course, is to capture in paint the gentle curves, the rounded length, the tapered tip of...

Foxglove. What did you think I was painting?

I did do a painting of roses. I don't like this one much either. There are elements I do like but the overall effect is more of an acrylic painting than a watercolor.

 

The thing that bugs me the most is the glaring composition error I somehow missed until I was halfway through with the painting. That big, full grandiflora is dead center and that's no good. I will probably cut this up at a later date to salvage bits of it or maybe I'll crop off the bottom and a few inches off the left side. 

I felt a bit frazzled by all this swimming in the deep end so I spent Sunday stringing beads on to crochet cotton to make myself a necklace.

Yes, that is size 80 crochet cotton and those are cylinder beads and they are a hair smaller than 11/0.

They are a gorgeous metallic purple with almost an Aurora Borealis finish but not quite. I needed to work on something where I felt confident in my skill and that's usually something crocheted.

   

After the first two or three rows this works up nicely and I love the effect. The beads are captured around the outside of a crocheted tube and the resulting necklace is fairly lightweight and very flexible. This will be the third necklace I've made this way and aside from some hand cramps from working so small I have no complaints about this.

The gold necklace is made with white crochet cotton, I think it was size 20, and size 11/0 gold-lined clear seed beads. The green necklace I made while teaching this technique in a class. It's on lavender size 10 cotton and green glass cube beads. It's slip stitch crochet and the beads are snugged up against each other tight enough that you can't see the lavender cotton thread. So, when class was over I just kept going until it was necklace length. There are several books on Bead Crochet that cover this technique. I used the first book on the list that comes up at that link.   

Art Journal Box full of Hope

I've been toying with the idea of starting an art journal for ages. Part of what's been stopping me is startitis and part of it is a the very stupid fear of doing it wrong. Rationally I know that there is no penalty for ugly art. No one is going to take my children away or foreclose on my house because my art journalling is dumbass. I think it's the ingrained training from years of Catholic school that keeps getting in my way. There was a right and wrong way to do things and when I did things the wrong way there was always some sort of penalty. It has taken me a long time to wriggle out of those constraints and to understand that mistakes aren't fatal or indications of anything wrong with me. I don't know who said it or where I heard it first but hearing "Mistakes happen. That's why pencils have erasers." was very liberating to me.

I've come a long way since High School, (it was an all girls Catholic high school :::shudder:::) and I can start things now without having to know every single step I'm going to take from beginning to end. I can let go enough, most of the time, to just see where an experience or experiment is going to take me. Most people who achieve anything worthwhile didn't know how they were going to get from where they were to where they wanted to be. Learning that freed me up quite a bit. And yet, when I start something, or contemplate starting something, completely new to me, or outside my comfort zone, the old what-if-I-do-it-wrong monster rears her ugly head.

To complicate things even more, the only time I ever kept a journal was in Freshman year religion class. It was part of the curriculum and it was graded. Looking back on that now I'm stunned that anyone would think that was a good idea. How on earth are you supposed to open up and express yourself if someone is going to grade you on it? A journal is supposed to be private. It's supposed to be a safe place to vent, ponder, complain, dream and wonder about all that is. How can you do that if you know someone is going to judge it and perhaps find it wanting? What were they thinking? It would be like standing in front of the class, naked, while they all voice their opinions of your body.

Anyway, Michelle Ward, whose work I love, has posted her Crusade for February. She calls it Pandora's Box. Participants are invited to make a journal kit. Pandora let all the evils of mankind out of the box, but managed to close the box before Hope escaped. So the box is full of hope. I like that idea.

Michelle's reasoning is that it will be much easier to keep a journal, no matter how artsy you choose to make it, if you have all the stuff in one place. You can get as elaborate as you like but that sometimes get in the way of creativity.

I kept it sort of simple: colored pens, water soluble oil pastels, my little travel box of watercolors, glue sticks, a package of ephemera from Silver Crow and of course a blank journal.

The colored pens are a reaction to Catholic school. We were only allowed to use blue or black ink and in grammar school they insisted on cartridge pens. I like cartridge pens but now I fill them with green ink. They do make beautiful marks on the paper and make you be more careful about how you write. I didn't appreciate that as much when I was twelve. I did love it when a friend of mine discovered turquoise ink from Schaeffer and we could use that at school. I felt like such a rebel.

 

I've also included scrap art from different experiments I've done. The angel is a photo of a cemetary monument printed with an inkjet printer and covered with gel medium. The watercolor sketch is one of my very first attempts. It's Pook wading into Lake Wawayanda. There are also scissors and the foil I took off the last can of coffee I opened. It's got a nice heft to it and I have no idea what I might use it for but I threw it in there anyway.

More bits and bobs: a stamped, embossed and colored piece that never got used as originally intended; there are a few sandwich baggies with blank paper tags; double stick tape; an ink pad to use with the number stamps and a set of Inktense pencils.

I guess I'm all set now. I am a little nervous about this but I'm going to do it anyway. To take the pressure off I've mentally committed myself to just journalling for the month of March. How hard can that be? And because I am the person I am and when I want to learn something I find a book on the subject, I went and got this:

Okay. Here we go.

By the way, I'm not promising to post any of these journal pages. I might post them but then again, I might not. It all depends on how naked it makes me feel. You understand.

Total Eclipse of the Mood...I mean Moon

I stepped outside Wednesday night to see the Lunar Eclipse. It looked much redder than this photo shows. I took several photos, but it was only 14°F and I had trouble holding the camera steady. Most of the photos look like this:

I stood outside alone to watch this; the kids weren't interested or they were already asleep. It was amazing. There are no street lights where I live and with the exterior house lights off it is very dark outside. Just my camera and I on my front lawn mesmerized by the earth's shadow passing across the moon. After a few minutes I started to feel how alone I was. I could see lights on in my neighbor's homes. Once there was a passing car but I was the only knucklehead standing out in the cold staring up at the moon. At that moment I missed Dennis and I nearly started to cry. I didn't because it probably would have frozen to my face.

In November, 2004 we all, Dennis, the kids and I, sat in the Totally Rockin' Minivan, that we'd pulled around the back of the house, drinking cocoa from a thermos and watching a total lunar eclipse. We ran the heater now and then and took a bathroom break during the totality phase. It was the dorky kind of fun we always have together. This past summer we got out the telescope, turned off the house lights and tried to see how many of Jupiter's moons we could make out. That was after trying to see how many were visible to the naked eye.

He's been gone for a month now and I was too cranky to blog for the first two weeks. Then I had blog fodder log jam (blogjam?); lots on my mind, stuff on my needles and hook, I even started a watercolor class but I just couldn't compose a coherent sentence let alone a whole post. He came home last weekend. A week ago today I was picking him up at the airport. Five-thirty Monday morning I was driving him back. It was wonderful but much too fast.

This is a very strange experience. Over the years I have adjusted to his going away for two weeks now and then. When he came home last weekend it felt like he had just done one of those two week trips. In the back of my head I knew that wasn't so but I couldn't shake the feeling. Wishful thinking I guess. Truth of it is this hasn't even really begun. He's not home but he's still in the US for training and will be for awhile. I knew this wasn't going to be easy but I didn't think I would have such a hard time. It's kind of like having kids: you think you know what you're in for but you can't really know until you're knee deep in it. You read the books, talk with people who've done it but talking it and walking it are two very different things.

I stood there in the cold and dark on Wednesday night, wearing my pj's and my winter coat, staring at the moon missing my partner in dorkiness. So, I texted him and I was grateful. Grateful that I can text him even though I knew he wouldn't respond until the next morning. Grateful because I get to talk to him every night. Mostly I was grateful that the reason I miss him so much is because we have such a good time when we are together.

Brigid's Day

It's that time again! Not just Groundhog Day. Not just Super Bowl Eve. It's time, once again, for the Annual Brigid in Cyberspace Poetry Reading. So I turn, once again, to my favorite poet, William Butler Yeats: an Irish poet for an Irish Goddess and Saint.

A Poet to his Beloved

I bring you with reverent hands

The books of my numberless dreams,

White woman that passion has worn

As the tide wears the dove-grey sands,

And with heart more old than the horn

That is brimmed from the pale fire of time:

White woman with numberless dreams,

I bring you my passionate rhyme.

Aum Voyage

My friend, Maureen, teaches bellydancing and used to hold her class at a community center in her town. The class before hers was a Qigong class taught by a very nice woman named, Dahlia. About two years ago, Dahlia began hosting an Aum(Om) meditation once a month and Dennis and I have been going just about every month ever since.

There is a small group of us, sometimes only four and we chant for an hour then meditate for twenty minutes. It's a wonderful experience. Once in a while there is another man who participates but usually it is all women and Dennis. The sound we create is amazing. Last night there were eight of us and it sounded as if there were twenty. Everyone finds there own pitch; the tone that resonates for them and we chant "Aum". Adherence to a particular belief system isn't required to engage in and benefit from this powerful experience.

"Aum" is from Hinduism and the symbol represents the absolute and unknowable creator of all. The sound itself is said to be the sound of creation. It is all the sounds and transcends sound. My response to statements like that is usually "Okay." Because, really, what can you say to that? Having participated in many Aum chants I can see where this idea came from. It is a very peace-inducing, spirit-lifting, community-making experience and I'm grateful to be a part of it.

Dahlia rearranged the original plan for this month so Dennis could participate one last time before he left for Afghanistan. The other women have grown quite fond of him and there were hugs and tears and well wishes and prayers for his safety and safe return. We will be saving his seat for him in the coming months expecting him in it come January 2009.

Namaste.

Have a cookie

Can you hear me over the cookies? They came out a bit... what's the word? Saturated? Bright? Loud? Let's just say that we way underestimated the intensity of paste food coloring. I'm glad we decided on lavender for the bells instead of gray or you'd be looking at some black christmas cookies and that is even more wrong. These did taste good even if the stars look like they are covered in honey mustard. Yes, they would make good Mardi Gras cookies. The little kids liked them though not as much as we thought they would and we still have a gallon zipper bag full of honey mustard, Mardi Gras cookies. Pook is even sick of them and they were her idea.

I think the trees came out okay and the non-pareils do a decent impression of lights and ornaments. That was the plan anyway.

We had a houseful for Christmas and it was fun. Of course, Dennis, the children and I are a houseful by ourselves. Add my three siblings, their spouses and children, throw in my parents and somehow a full house is even fuller. Grandma bailed on us and stayed home. She is almost ninety and it's at least a ninety-minute ride from her house to mine so I don't really blame her. She spent the day with her youngest daughter who lives nearby.

I made the Figgy Duff anyway and it didn't come out quite right. Turns out that when Grandma's hearing aid acts up she just agrees with whatever you say to her. I guess that is less trouble than making everyone repeat themselves but it makes for subpar recipe directions. So when she was discussing the proper cooking techique for the Figgy Duff with my sister, Dot, she gave bad information. You're supposed to put the batter in a cloth bag, tie off the bag and submerge the whole thing in simmering water. It matters a great deal how much room you leave in the bag between the uncooked batter and the tie. That's where Grandma's hearing aid screwed us. We both made Figgy Duff and left too much room in the bag. Dot's came out like pudding and mine was about half Duff, half pudding. It tasted good but was completely unworthy of a photo.

Of course that doesn't go for Grandma.

She is quite photo worthy. This was taken this year at our family Christmas Party. Grandma has recently decided to stop coloring her hair. I can't tell you how much that cracks me up. Finally, now, at the age of 89 she is going natural, which in her case is white. For as long as I can remember she has gone to the Beauty Parlor once a week to have her hair done and has come home with blond poufy hair. I actually like the white it was just a bit startingly after forty-some years of blond. 

It was nice to have little, tiny children in the house for Christmas. I love that they get excited by the most commonplace things and it's delightful to watch. Matthew's daughter, who is about 18 months old, was playing with a bowlful of Hershey's kisses completely unaware that there was chocolate under the pretty foil. The look on her face when she saw one of my girls unwrap a kiss and eat it was priceless. Then she looked back at the pile of kisses in front her and you could see the realization dawn. It was too cute.

My brother-in-law, John, my son and my daughter, Dorothy's boyfriend, Colin, played an impromptu acoustic guitar concert in the family room. They drew quite a crowd.

There was gifts, jokes, music and good food, decent wine, and way too much dessert. Seriously, we ate pie for breakfast for days. And I still have several gallon zipper bags full of cookies. It was a very nice Christmas. 

   

Merry Christmas Eve Eve

Thought I'd post and wish you all a happy holiday. It's been busy around here. My older brother and his wife and two daughters are coming to stay for a few days starting tomorrow. I had furniture delivered on Friday that was supposed to show up a week and a half ago but they had to reschedule due to the snow. So, my family room, where the aforementioned brother and family will be sleeping, is now covered in the contents of the room where the new furniture is. My two older daughters, who own all the crap stuff in the family room, assure me that they have it all under control and that it will all be clean and tidy long before our guests arrive. I'm having a very hard time believing them.

My husband is leaving for Afghanistan in less than a month. He and my older brother, Tom, were friends long before he and I ever started dating. That's partly why Tom is coming here for Christmas. My whole family will be here in fact, including Grandma Ellen. Among other things I'm making Figgy Duff. I promise you it tastes much better than Wikipedia would have you believe. I'm using Grandma's recipe which my mom said I'm not allowed to give you. Sorry about that. All the recipes I've seen on the internet for Figgy Duff have it made from bread crumbs. Grandma's is made from flour, molasses, raisins and lots of spices. It's the boiling it in a bag for two hours that is going to require some creativity on my part. Whenever I've had this it's been served warm and there are only so many burners on my stove so to have this with dinner or for dessert is going to be tricky. I'll post pictures if I manage to pull this off. If not I'll just pretend it never happened. Deal?

I did find that cookbook with the Orange Sugar Cookie recipe in it. How about that recipe instead?

Orange Sugar Cookies

1/2 cup butter or shortening

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp orange or lemon rind

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 egg

2 tbsp mik

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp nutmeg

Blend together butter, salt, rind and 1 cup of sugar. Beat in egg and milk. Sift together flour, baking powder and baking soda then add to butter mixture. Chill for at least an hour. Form into small balls about the size of walnuts. Roll in a mixture of remaining 1/2 cup of sugar and nutmeg. Place on lightly greased cookie sheet; press each ball down with bottom of a drinking glass dipped in sugar/nutmeg mixture. Bake 8 to 10 minutes in 400F oven. Yield: 3 dozen cookies

This recipe is from Blue Ribbon Recipes County Fair Winners it was published in 1968. This particular recipe is the creation of one Ms. Ann Green, Culpeper, VA from the Culpeper County Fair. It's on page 332 if you happen to own this book. I usually double this recipe and if you want to get fancy, it is Christmas after all, you can press half a maraschino cherry in the center of eat cookie before you bake them. My sister and mom both do that. Enjoy.

I still have quite a bit of stuff to do. One of those things is find the pair of sock I was knitting for Lori. I haven't finished them and I haven't seen them in about two weeks. I have absolutely no idea what I did with them. So, since she has no idea that I was knitting her socks, I decided to knit her a cowl instead. I'll post pictures of that too when the holiday is over. It's super easy. Size 10.5 needles. Thick yarn like Lion Brand Homespun. CO 35 stitches and knit every row for 80 to 85 rows. Sew the cast on edge to the bind off edge and voila. Whatever yarn you use rub it on your neck first to make sure you can stand having it there. That's why I picked the Homepsun; it's so soft.

Have a very Happy Holiday, Merry Christmas, Happy Solstice (even though it was yesterday) Happy Hanukah (even though that was over a week ago). Talk to you soon.