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Getting back to normal....
Sep. 10th, 2018 08:44 pmFinally this week the air is back to where it once was. It's clear again. Tonight we had a gloriously normal looking sunset. No intense reds in the sky indicating the particulate counts are high. The haze is gone.
I'm making travel plans for this weekend. My niece delivered last night, a healthy boy, 7lbs 7 oz, after a rather unremarkable, albeit fast labor. My sister was on a plane for LAX within an hour of the birth and is already making arrangements for the Brit Milah early next week, right between the high holy holidays. I suspect the date will be on Monday. Tomorrow night I light Yarhtzeit for my father, but yet this year my heart is light with the thought that I will chant Kaddish for him this year the day after his 4th great-grandchild has made entry to this plane of existence. The baby has been named Henry Jack; the name in Hebrew will be Yakov Yosef ben Yakov after his mother's father, Jack and his father's paternal grandfather, Joe. I knew both men and rest assured they would have been pleased.
I'm sitting here on the front porch, listening to the chirruping of the crickets, as lights glisten in the distance across the lake. It's warm here still, warm enough that its comfortable to feel the evening breeze caress my shirtless chest.
The afternoon was marked by the harvest the the peach seedling; despite its size and youth, in its first season it produced a respectable 7 nicely sized peaches, now on my counter for the final step in ripening. The concord grapes are rapidly approaching ripeness and hopefully will be pickable before I head south this coming weekend.
To my surprise, the plants are doing some unexpected things. The pear seedling put in this past March, put out a solitary flower in the middle of August. Somehow it got pollinated and there is a very juvenile pear developing, at a time I would normally be expecting to harvest such fruit. Too boot, the Satsuma Mandarin is putting out a couple of more flowers this week, at a time of year I wouldn't expect that either. Unlike the pear, this potted tree has about 2 dozen maturing mandarins on it, which should be ready for harvest come January. The two surviving fig cuttings are flourishing. Every few days a new leaf emerges on each of them and the larger of the two is starting to produce some tiny figs. Both cutting remain in small pots for the time being. I plan on putting them in the ground, along with the two potted blueberries this January, when all are supposed to be dormant.
On my return from LA, I need to read up on Walnut harvesting. There are 1/2 a dozen old trees on this property and I need to get to them before the squirrels and chipmunks. I also need to read up on how to process the hulls for dyestuff. It yields a rich brown dye, that requires no mordant. I have some pure white Samoyed fur for spinning and dyeing some of with that rich natural brown, then blending back some more white for a heathered affect should work well, I think. Friends of mine save me the groomings from their beloved Wyatt, a veritable sweater on four paws, if there ever was one. In the last two years he's produced as much spinnable coat as a yearling Merino lamb, sans the lanolin. Wyatt's favorite two humans are dear friends of ours and a hat for each of them is on my list to spin and knit. Yet another thing to try and complete before the holidays.
Speaking of those two friends, I ran over to their place yesterday, rather than work on making the yarn I need for another great-nephew due next January. Last month when we evacuated due to the Mendocino Complex fire, the bulk of our artwork went to our friends' place for safekeeping. Theirs was one of two homes in their subdivision to survive the firestorm in Santa Rosa last fall. What safer place could there be during fire season, but a house that survived in the heart of the burn zone and no longer has any fire fuel around it? Well, living amidst the burnt shell of their old neighborhood has worn thin for them, emotionally. Labor Day they decided to list their place for sale and look for new digs in town. Tuesday, they saw a place on the same mountainside, but outside the burn zone, a home both gorgeous and ten minutes closer to work for each of them. They made an offer Wednesday and after counter offers were in escrow by Saturday. They called me Sunday morning to say the photographers would be at their place Monday to photograph their current home for listing this week. Subtext? Do you think you could come get your artwork soon? So yesterday, rather than work on the house here and on projects for the babies, I made the round trip to Santa Rosa and packed it all back home. I was just finishing getting the last of it back onto the walls, when my husband got home from our old place, which should soon be ready for market on our end. Knowing how much work goes into selling a home, I couldn't say no or even "not yet" to my friends, in regard to fetching our things. Plus the act of getting it all back onto the walls was very therapeutic.
I did the actual framing on a number of the pieces that went back up. I learned a good bit about framing art back before we moved from San Francisco, when I had the chance to frame things myself at a do-it-yourself framing shop in SF. They provided the tools and raw materials, and either they could do it all for you, or you could learn to do it all yourself. After we moved to Sonoma County there was one framing shop that would allow you to come in and do your own work. Sadly, both those places have stopped allowing folks to do things themselves. Insurance costs were too high for that business model. Sad. I did very much enjoy framing things myself. I don't have either the more elaborate tools I'd need to do a full conservation frame job at home, or either a complicated or large mat board cutting. I could do it for a simple piece up to about 20" wide or tall, but larger than that, sadly no. However, I am capable of taking something apart and putting it back together again, in the case where the original art has fallen or shifted out of its matting. The largest of our lithographs required that, before it could be rehung. I did that this afternoon. Its now found a new home on a different wall in the living room. Where it used to hang is now the home for a 50" Roku TV, which also got mounted today. One of our former tenants needed a place for it, for 'live' storage. It will live in the living room for the foreseeable future. We're both quite fond of this boy, so we're happy to keep this for him. Knowing him as well as we do, I fully suspect it will be a year, if not longer before he'll be in a stable enough living space for a piece of electronics this size. At least, I had the mounting hardware already, intended for a screen half the size of this one, that I just hadn't gotten around to hanging yet. That screen will now head up to the attic for the time being.
Indigo dyed romney wool is on my spinning wheel at the moment. This is the third skein I'm working on. Two more and I might have enough for a baby's blanket. Well, maybe three more. I'm thinking of something cabled. Folks look at cables and those who don't know how to knit are in awe. If only they knew just how simple they are to do! I'm sure what ever I produce will not be as intricate was whatever Mom puts her hand to. Mom doesn't spin, or crochet, but can she ever knit. Complex patterns, subtle twists with yarnovers, passed stitches and other esoteric complexities. She's a bloody perfectionist as well. It's been forever since I've watched her at it. I'm not certain if we actually knit the same way; I'm a southpaw and she's hopelessly right handed.
Enough navel gazing for now. I have eBay sales to pack up and get ready for tomorrow's mail. Two cast iron skillets sold, as well as a pan lid and three pairs of my old pants. I also finally got paid for a couple of pair of boots that sold last week. Those are for local drop off at least. I've been meaning to drive out towards Cobb Mountain since we moved here, but have never gotten around to it. Dropping off those boots is the perfect excuse, especially given the buyer is covering the cost of my driving over and then some.
EBay sales have been a boon the past 6 months. I'm jettisoning things I no longer want or need and turning them into a modicum of cash in turn. My space is getting decluttered and at the same time, money is going into the bank and not just out. This is a very good thing.
I still have to get the Etsy store set up. I recently found out that wood from our Manzanita trees, which needed pruning for their health anyway (not to mention the complete taking down of one tree that had died, after being shaded to death by oaks that grew up around it), is at a premium for both bird and reptile owners for their pets. I started crafting bird perches last month and have the makings for one, if not two serious bird play stands. There are a number of listings on both Etsy and Ebay for these and they are apparently selling. Elaborate large play stands for Macaws or Parrots are listed on line for up to 5 grand! So far, I've made a couple of dozen perches for mounting inside bird cages. I need to figure out shipping costs as well as packaging of the larger things, and then open up an Etsy shop. Manzanita specifically is at a high premium, as its both extremely hard and completely non-toxic for birds, as well as reptiles. The more I get sold off on Ebay, the more room I have in my studio and workshop to use them for what those spaces were designed for, and that indeed will make me very happy. That studio space is for me to be creative in and damn it, I will have it that way soon. Right now, it's go in there, retrieve what I want, and carry it back to the house to play with. The sun room is the staging area for photographing, packing up and then finally shipping the eBay sales. By winter I want it my haven. The dyeing bench can easily double as a place to work with wood and not just wool. The more I move out and shed, the better. So far I think I've sold off about a 1/4 of that I want to shed. Alright, back to the grind stone.
Or maybe some dessert first.
I'm making travel plans for this weekend. My niece delivered last night, a healthy boy, 7lbs 7 oz, after a rather unremarkable, albeit fast labor. My sister was on a plane for LAX within an hour of the birth and is already making arrangements for the Brit Milah early next week, right between the high holy holidays. I suspect the date will be on Monday. Tomorrow night I light Yarhtzeit for my father, but yet this year my heart is light with the thought that I will chant Kaddish for him this year the day after his 4th great-grandchild has made entry to this plane of existence. The baby has been named Henry Jack; the name in Hebrew will be Yakov Yosef ben Yakov after his mother's father, Jack and his father's paternal grandfather, Joe. I knew both men and rest assured they would have been pleased.
I'm sitting here on the front porch, listening to the chirruping of the crickets, as lights glisten in the distance across the lake. It's warm here still, warm enough that its comfortable to feel the evening breeze caress my shirtless chest.
The afternoon was marked by the harvest the the peach seedling; despite its size and youth, in its first season it produced a respectable 7 nicely sized peaches, now on my counter for the final step in ripening. The concord grapes are rapidly approaching ripeness and hopefully will be pickable before I head south this coming weekend.
To my surprise, the plants are doing some unexpected things. The pear seedling put in this past March, put out a solitary flower in the middle of August. Somehow it got pollinated and there is a very juvenile pear developing, at a time I would normally be expecting to harvest such fruit. Too boot, the Satsuma Mandarin is putting out a couple of more flowers this week, at a time of year I wouldn't expect that either. Unlike the pear, this potted tree has about 2 dozen maturing mandarins on it, which should be ready for harvest come January. The two surviving fig cuttings are flourishing. Every few days a new leaf emerges on each of them and the larger of the two is starting to produce some tiny figs. Both cutting remain in small pots for the time being. I plan on putting them in the ground, along with the two potted blueberries this January, when all are supposed to be dormant.
On my return from LA, I need to read up on Walnut harvesting. There are 1/2 a dozen old trees on this property and I need to get to them before the squirrels and chipmunks. I also need to read up on how to process the hulls for dyestuff. It yields a rich brown dye, that requires no mordant. I have some pure white Samoyed fur for spinning and dyeing some of with that rich natural brown, then blending back some more white for a heathered affect should work well, I think. Friends of mine save me the groomings from their beloved Wyatt, a veritable sweater on four paws, if there ever was one. In the last two years he's produced as much spinnable coat as a yearling Merino lamb, sans the lanolin. Wyatt's favorite two humans are dear friends of ours and a hat for each of them is on my list to spin and knit. Yet another thing to try and complete before the holidays.
Speaking of those two friends, I ran over to their place yesterday, rather than work on making the yarn I need for another great-nephew due next January. Last month when we evacuated due to the Mendocino Complex fire, the bulk of our artwork went to our friends' place for safekeeping. Theirs was one of two homes in their subdivision to survive the firestorm in Santa Rosa last fall. What safer place could there be during fire season, but a house that survived in the heart of the burn zone and no longer has any fire fuel around it? Well, living amidst the burnt shell of their old neighborhood has worn thin for them, emotionally. Labor Day they decided to list their place for sale and look for new digs in town. Tuesday, they saw a place on the same mountainside, but outside the burn zone, a home both gorgeous and ten minutes closer to work for each of them. They made an offer Wednesday and after counter offers were in escrow by Saturday. They called me Sunday morning to say the photographers would be at their place Monday to photograph their current home for listing this week. Subtext? Do you think you could come get your artwork soon? So yesterday, rather than work on the house here and on projects for the babies, I made the round trip to Santa Rosa and packed it all back home. I was just finishing getting the last of it back onto the walls, when my husband got home from our old place, which should soon be ready for market on our end. Knowing how much work goes into selling a home, I couldn't say no or even "not yet" to my friends, in regard to fetching our things. Plus the act of getting it all back onto the walls was very therapeutic.
I did the actual framing on a number of the pieces that went back up. I learned a good bit about framing art back before we moved from San Francisco, when I had the chance to frame things myself at a do-it-yourself framing shop in SF. They provided the tools and raw materials, and either they could do it all for you, or you could learn to do it all yourself. After we moved to Sonoma County there was one framing shop that would allow you to come in and do your own work. Sadly, both those places have stopped allowing folks to do things themselves. Insurance costs were too high for that business model. Sad. I did very much enjoy framing things myself. I don't have either the more elaborate tools I'd need to do a full conservation frame job at home, or either a complicated or large mat board cutting. I could do it for a simple piece up to about 20" wide or tall, but larger than that, sadly no. However, I am capable of taking something apart and putting it back together again, in the case where the original art has fallen or shifted out of its matting. The largest of our lithographs required that, before it could be rehung. I did that this afternoon. Its now found a new home on a different wall in the living room. Where it used to hang is now the home for a 50" Roku TV, which also got mounted today. One of our former tenants needed a place for it, for 'live' storage. It will live in the living room for the foreseeable future. We're both quite fond of this boy, so we're happy to keep this for him. Knowing him as well as we do, I fully suspect it will be a year, if not longer before he'll be in a stable enough living space for a piece of electronics this size. At least, I had the mounting hardware already, intended for a screen half the size of this one, that I just hadn't gotten around to hanging yet. That screen will now head up to the attic for the time being.
Indigo dyed romney wool is on my spinning wheel at the moment. This is the third skein I'm working on. Two more and I might have enough for a baby's blanket. Well, maybe three more. I'm thinking of something cabled. Folks look at cables and those who don't know how to knit are in awe. If only they knew just how simple they are to do! I'm sure what ever I produce will not be as intricate was whatever Mom puts her hand to. Mom doesn't spin, or crochet, but can she ever knit. Complex patterns, subtle twists with yarnovers, passed stitches and other esoteric complexities. She's a bloody perfectionist as well. It's been forever since I've watched her at it. I'm not certain if we actually knit the same way; I'm a southpaw and she's hopelessly right handed.
Enough navel gazing for now. I have eBay sales to pack up and get ready for tomorrow's mail. Two cast iron skillets sold, as well as a pan lid and three pairs of my old pants. I also finally got paid for a couple of pair of boots that sold last week. Those are for local drop off at least. I've been meaning to drive out towards Cobb Mountain since we moved here, but have never gotten around to it. Dropping off those boots is the perfect excuse, especially given the buyer is covering the cost of my driving over and then some.
EBay sales have been a boon the past 6 months. I'm jettisoning things I no longer want or need and turning them into a modicum of cash in turn. My space is getting decluttered and at the same time, money is going into the bank and not just out. This is a very good thing.
I still have to get the Etsy store set up. I recently found out that wood from our Manzanita trees, which needed pruning for their health anyway (not to mention the complete taking down of one tree that had died, after being shaded to death by oaks that grew up around it), is at a premium for both bird and reptile owners for their pets. I started crafting bird perches last month and have the makings for one, if not two serious bird play stands. There are a number of listings on both Etsy and Ebay for these and they are apparently selling. Elaborate large play stands for Macaws or Parrots are listed on line for up to 5 grand! So far, I've made a couple of dozen perches for mounting inside bird cages. I need to figure out shipping costs as well as packaging of the larger things, and then open up an Etsy shop. Manzanita specifically is at a high premium, as its both extremely hard and completely non-toxic for birds, as well as reptiles. The more I get sold off on Ebay, the more room I have in my studio and workshop to use them for what those spaces were designed for, and that indeed will make me very happy. That studio space is for me to be creative in and damn it, I will have it that way soon. Right now, it's go in there, retrieve what I want, and carry it back to the house to play with. The sun room is the staging area for photographing, packing up and then finally shipping the eBay sales. By winter I want it my haven. The dyeing bench can easily double as a place to work with wood and not just wool. The more I move out and shed, the better. So far I think I've sold off about a 1/4 of that I want to shed. Alright, back to the grind stone.
Or maybe some dessert first.
