I went for a walk.


Down the tracks.


Over a bridge.



I saw birds. A couple yippee dogs. Some cats. Domestic. No mountain lions, thank goodness.


There's not much color in February.



Even with a limited palette, there's beauty in the details.


Is this like an elephant's burial ground?


Wouldn't it be nice to be a kid again some days?



Sometimes things are still beautiful even when they're past their prime.



All the way to the top of town.



Hey, they really DO fly!

When I was in my early twenties, fresh out of a college art degree - okay, let's not put on airs, shall we - a two year art degree that I fell half a class short of actually receiving - I had the opportunity to go into commercial art. It was for a company that designed and printed labels, signs,whatever the customer wanted.

Unfortunately for me, the design room was simply a squared off corner in the same warehouse that the printing machinery was housed in. It was very, very loud. I only lasted a week. I'll never know what uncharted direction my life might have gone off on if the artists had a decent room in which to work.

I found myself thinking of that today as I walked up main street of our small town on the way to pick up my car after an oil change, armed with sunshine and my camera. I walked into a small family owned corner market that I've never managed to enter in over a decade of living here and discovered rows of wonderful and quirky wine for sale. I spent a good long while enjoying the "wine art".


This one is just nice. I mean, it's really gnarly, man.

You can't really see the art work on all of these bottles of mead - well you probably can if you click on it to make the image larger - but I included them anyway out of friendship. A couple I
know own this company, Mountain Meadow Mead. They are great people and their meads regularly win awards.


Still enamored of all things French, I had to include this cute little one.


What's the story behind the selection of this name!? Bad boy makes good - wine? It's even more amusing to find it on the shelf here, being a "prison" town.


Maybe not as unusual as some of the other labels, but since hubby loves monkeys, I had to include it.


My mom loves mooses.... meeses.... moose? But one has to wonder, did they go blind from drinking too much wine? And don't miss the tasteful white label on the left with the gold hippopotamus and the classy name - Fat Bastard.



This is, hands down, my favorite. I need to go back with my wallet and buy some of this and save it for when I have "one of those days".



Simple, colorful, eyecatching. But you wonder what they were smoking that they decided to name their winery Fish Eye. I'll have the cabernet salmon please. My friend will have a sweet Perch.


Well, yes, it is. Let's call a spade a spade. I'll have some smashed grapes with my seared dead cow please.


This last attempt looks a bit inebriated. I guess the camera had a few too many wine photos in it hold steady any longer.

Not surprisingly, now I feel like having a glass of something smooth and alcoholic m'self. I think I'll go polish off that last little bit of spiced mead in the refrigerator, left over from the holidays.

I finished my new scarf a couple of nights ago, getting pictures posted finally. I gave up on using the multi-color wool yarn I showed you a few posts back (I'll use it for something else), when I discovered this fuzzy yarn that was PERFECT for my jacket. Since it was all about being warm and fuzzy, I just knit it up without fanfare on size 10-1/2 needles and it came out just right. At first I thought I'd made it too wide and I wouldn't have enough yarn to make it as long as I wanted, but it turns out it thins and stretches when I wear it, so, like I said, PERFECT.
Here's a somewhat smudgy photo of me wearing the jacket and scarf. I guess I need to clean the bathroom mirror. Heh.


And here's a close up so you can see how fuzzy it is and why it's perfect - it's dark pink show up on the light pink, but it has this little light pink secondary thread that is the same color as the jacket.

Yesterday I stopped by the local library to order an interlibrary loan book and discovered that a whole bunch of books had been taken out of circulation and put on sale. Fiction - fifty cents for softcover, a dollar for hardcover. Cookbooks, art, and history books, apparently less important, were priced three for a dollar. That strikes me as sad, but still, my gain. I bought a whole box of books yesterday and blogged about it over on Beach Treasure. If you want to see the whole shebang, go on over and check it out. But the art books, I saved to post here.

I bought a half dozen old art books. Let me restate that - old art books. I emphasize that so you won't gasp in horror when I say that I plan on using them mainly as altered books or to mine the images and photos for use in altered books and collage work. (of course, if you're worried about books getting cut up, you can sigh in relief that I bought them because they're
probably safer with me, currently in the midst of a creative block, then they'd be with anyone else)

One of these has a broken binding, but the other one is still sturdy. I bought them for the beautiful gold embossing that covers the bindings and both the front and back covers. You can see it really well if you click to enlarge the photo. There are some neat art images inside as well.


There was a book filled with black and white photos of abandoned homesteads of Nevada. I looked through it, was about to put it back on the shelf, when I came across this photo. It's hard to see this small (again, click on it), but it's very haunting. Old peeling wallpaper covered, covered, and covered some more with religious images. I added the book to my toppling stack to bring home with me.

Another book I brought home was filled with Owl Art. Say that three times fast - owl art owl art owl art. I have a love/hate fascination with owls at the moment - I think they're fascinating, but I'm also afraid they want to eat my dog. Since I'm pretty sure I'm just paranoid about that last bit, I thought the images are pretty cool.

Another coffee table sized book was called Roman Art in Africa and was filled with all sorts of crumbling columns and half missing statues. How intriguing is this screaming dude?!

Hey, maybe I'll be inspired to actually dig out the rest of my supplies and and scissors and.....

mwahahahahaha! Books beware!

More Edinburgh, but not more cows. Here are three photos of our visit to Edinburgh Castle that go along with the Holiday Photos #20 post over on Beach Treasure. I try to divide the photos up into touristy ones and artsy ones, sometimes that works out in a pretty even split, sometimes it all seems to fall one way or another.

Choosing what photos to upload, and which photos to upload to which blog, it continues to amaze me that I somehow managed NOT to take any photos of so many scenes or objects I wish I could share with all of you. Mainly what I missed capturing were the small repetitive things that we found different and unusual (to us, as tourists) but grew used to and forgot we wouldn't see anymore when we got back home - signs, post boxes, little "ordinary" things. The other thing I wish I'd taken more photos of were larger street scenes. I was so busy pointing the camera up or down or at something, I often forgot to take photos of the "ordinary" settings I found the photo worthy images set in. It was an ongoing balance between capturing an experience in photos and simply enjoying the experience in the moment itself.

This is William standing inside one of the first gates of the castle. Notice the nasty spikes above his head.


This shows the view from up at the top. You can see a bit of that large park down below, and out at the edge of the horizon, water, although it just looks like sky in the photo. Maybe if you click on it to enlarge it. I'm not sure exactly what water it is, but it's a large body of water. If not the English channel, then probably it flows to it.


One of the buildings you could tour in the castle had recreations of what it must have looked like when it was used as a prison, mainly for sailors. This was supposed to be a shadow of prisoners that spread against a high wall across from a window into the cells. They had movement and sound to go with it. I suspect the real environment would have been far gloomier and it would have undoubtedly smelled horrible. Still, it was more interesting then being shown bare rooms with signs that said "here's what used to be here". There wasn't enough light to take photos of most of the recreations.

More cows. More art cows in Edinburgh. If you don't remember, or didn't read the other post about the art cows, here's a link to more info about them.

These cows look rather small, don't they. But no, that's a big ol' building - the national art museum actually. How did they get all those cows up there!? Remember, you can click on any of the photos to see larger images with more detail.

We thought these cows weren't part of the art cow exhibit. We thought they were a "real" sculpture - by that I mean a statue that was there all the time. But nope, these were just a more sophisticated take on the art cows.

This one is covered in pets - made by a pet shelter organization of some kind.

This one was atop the Mercat Cross. Again, we thought this might be a regular feature, being as it was a different shape than most of the other cows. But it was an art cow. A whole different take on Braveheart, eh?

I liked the "orangeness" of this cow. I like orange, it's an often misaligned color, in my opinion.


This was such a cool cow. When we came across him, he had graffiti all over him. It was so sad. I managed to wipe the paint off the head to take this photo. I didn't notice until later that I had caught an orange cone in the background. And that tiny man on the right edge. Although, perhaps those unexpected and odd distractions make the image more interesting. I'm not sure. I find I often have a love/hate feeling towards this sort of detail that "sticks out" or seems "out of place". For instance, an image of a country lane - does a modern car driving down the road make the image seem more active or does it spoil the picturesque setting? Does a sign on a street or a person in the doorway or a scrap of garbage laying in a pristine setting help or hurt an image? Back to the cow, I would have liked to take a photo of the entire cow, but there was too much graffiti to wipe it all down. Now that I think about it, maybe that would have been a picture worth taking in and of itself. Hmmmm.

Oh well, too late now. I guess that just goes to show that, when it doubt, snap the picture. Particularly now that digital photography means one doesn't have to count how many frames are left on the film or pay to develop it to see if you want it - just delete it.

Are there any more cow photos left? A few, I think. I know there are still a lot of Edinburgh photos left to share. Stay tuned for the next batch. And you can go on over to Beach Treasure to find some more, non-cow tourist photos too.

It all started, really, with pair of pink suede snow boots. I saw them on sale at Payless Shoes a few years back and thought they looked both cute and warm. They weren't serious snowboots. They were more snowslippers. All suede and fuzz. Even with soles, they aren't any good in slush or serious snow. But they're warm and flexible and work well for just popping out to Walmart, if I avoid the dirty puddles.

I'd wanted something like this. Maybe not pink. But the pink was cute. And on sale, so even if it wouldn't work with all my outfits, so what. I bought them.

It turns out, surprisingly, that pink plays well with lots of colors and even though most of my outfits are green or black or red or something else that isn't pink, I've gotten a lot of wear out of my pink snowboots.

So when I saw the fuzzy pink jacket at Macy's (which, normally, I wouldn't be shopping at a Macy's, but I was just along for an outing with some other shoppers), I knew I wanted it. Even if it didn't match anything in my wardrobe. I stood there in the store, fondling the soft minkee-like fabric, unhappily looking at the expensive price tag, trying to justify a new jacket - when it popped into my head that I already owned pink boots. That was the excuse I needed, and the jacket went home (well, back to Joe and Lisa's home) with me in a big holiday shopping bag. And, pleasant bonus, it ended up being on sale.

Unfortunately it was a Macy's in San Diego and it was waaaay too warm in San Diego to wear it at all until I flew home. I had to carry it onto the plane in San Diego, but when I stepped out of the airport in Reno into a freezing wind, I quickly slipped into it and - it's nice and snug.

It's so warm. It's so soft. And everywhere I go now I hear "Where did you get your jacket!" and "Do you mind if I touch your jacket?" And again, I'm happily surprised at how it goes with just about everything in my wardrobe. Unfortunately I can't find my snowboots. I probably put them away somewhere for the summer. Hopefully I can find them before the winter is over.

But that's not stopping me from wearing my new, soft, fuzzy, pink jacket. Except for one thing. It might match most of my clothing, but it doesn't match ANY of my scarves. And when it's eight degrees fahrenheit outside, one really needs to layer on a scarf. No problem though, it's a good excuse to knit a new one.

Here it is. See, it needs a scarf.



I found some pretty multi-colored 100% wool on my last shopping trip to Reno. It has a dark pink, a dark purple, a soft teal blue and a warm green. All colors that I don't have in any of my other scarves (that all tend towards warm colors I realized), so it was a good choice - the dark pink would match the light pink in the jacket and the other colors mean it might work well worn by itself with some of my other long sleeved winter shirts and sweaters.

Next step, come home and spend hours looking for a new pattern, something easy enough to do while watching tv but not the same ol' same ol' boring knit purl knit purl. I finally settled on the basketweave pattern I found on Crazy Aunt Purl. (I tried to link directly to the post but I couldn't get it to find the specific page - oh well, you can go to the blog and click on her knitting posts link.)

Here it is laying on top of sleeping William. Why? Because it's less boring and less embarrassing than laying on top of my kid stained and cat hair covered couch. You might notice that the colors of the yarn do NOT match William's wardrobe.


I've spent two evenings working on it now. I thought the pattern looked too thin, so I made it wider. Now that I've got a swatch of it done, I'm thinking - crap - now it's too wide. I don't want to keep knitting knowing that it's not working for me. But I don't want to tear it all out either. Sigh. Like it or not though, that's what I'm gonna have to do do. Maybe start over with just four "alternating sections - knit five/purl five/knit five/purl five. Maybe do something different. Make it ribbed instead. Tonight I'll wind it back up in a ball and decide what to do instead.

And it all started with a pair of pink suede snow boots...

I promised photos of the things I made recently as gifts, after they were gifted. Well, I didn't get as much done as I'd hoped, but here are two things I managed to finish. The first isn't anything spectacular, just a polar fleece blanket. Buy the polar fleece, tie the edges. Nothing could be easier. (except maybe buy the polar fleece, don't bother to make the tied edges, which is what I usually do for my own blankets). I made it for my daughter-in-law Lisa because she was complaining about how it didn't feel wintery down in sunny, warm San Diego. I couldn't resist getting this Charlie Brown and Snoopy winter comic fabric.

Here it is opened up so you can see the comic strips aspect of it. It was really cute because Lisa opened it and looked a little disappointed. I asked "Don't you like it?" or something like that. She said yes but "did she have to share it with the baby?" She thought it was yet another baby blanket. I told her no, it wasn't for Joli, it was for her, whereupon she got a big grin on her face.

Here's the other finished gift, this one indeed was for baby Joli. (if you've stumbled in here and don't know who Joli is, she's my new granddaughter - you can read all about her arrival here.) It's a little painted sign, done up in red, black, and white - the colors of her nursery. It didn't come out quite like I imagined it, but it still came out cute, doncha think? It looks washed out in the photo, in real life it's very saturated, bright colors.

I had a hard time finding a spot with a solid background to take a photo of it. I finally settled on this spot.

Fred says "Hey, I was trying to get some SLEEP HERE!"

Just poppin' in to say "Hi! I'm still here! I'm sorry I haven't posted anything new in a gazillion years."

I have been working on some crafty things. Unfortunately (for you, the viewers), most everything I'm working on is for holiday gift giving, so I can't show any of it just yet. As soon as anything is unwrapped (assuming I finish any of the projects), I'll be sure to post a photo or two.

In the meantime I spent this evening watching television (I can justify this in the middle of the holiday rush by the fact that I'm still a bit under the weather with some stomach bug thingie) and making new dolls for my blogs. I had an autumn themed one up at Beach Treasure, so I made a new winter themed one. Then I realized I didn't have a doll for this blog, so I made one. I couldn't find any dolls holding knitting needles or paint brushes or anything crafty, so I put myself in front of a quilt background, and I'm wearing a sweater and scarf that, theoretically, if dolls could knit and if that doll were actually me, I could have knitted. (Huh?) And I gave myself, meaning, my doll, a haircut because I got one in real life. My bangs aren't quite that short, but that's pretty close. Of course in real life there's a bit of gray in there, although I'm thinking of doing a bit of red henna in it. That might be nice for the holidays, yes? It looks a lot better then the straggly mess it had become, providing I remember to comb it.

And now I'm off to bed with the fourth Harry Potter book. I've been trying to finish rereading this for months now and one thing or another has gotten in the way. I really want to finish it up finally so I can watch the DVD with the Yule Ball scene before Yule.

Stay warm and dry folks. Keep those sewing machines whirring, knitting needles clacking and swishing.

You can go to Beach Treasure Holiday Photos #18 to find the post that corresponds with all these cow photos. I had a lot of fun trying to find different ways to take artsy photos of all these artsy cows. Here's a website to find out about the Cow Parade. And another website about Cow Parades in other sites.

Edinburgh is such a literary treasure, it's quite appropriate that the first cow we stumbled upon was a literary cow.

I think this cow was named "Summer". Here she is longing to join the other petals in the flower bed beyond. Please forgive the fuzziness of a lot of these photos. My new camera wasn't a big fan of low light settings and I couldn't tell that on the small camera screen. I didn't find out until I was back home viewing the photos on my computer.

Er, both William and this cow are giving me somewhat disturbing looks.

Here we have a cow on her way home from a trip to Edinburgh's free fine art museum. She looks like she was very inspired by the visit.

Here's a very modern art cow coming....

And another more pragmatic cow going.....

Where is she going? I don't know, but I'm sure she knows as she's obviously bringing a map.

Finished? Only for today. There are plenty of cow photos left for your viewing pleasure. I'll try to get moooooore cows uploaded tomoooooorrow.

Moooooooo.

Howdy folks - how is everyone doing? Working on all those homemade holiday gifts? Like I am?

HAHAHAHAA! That last little bit - "like I am" - that was really funny!

Nah, lately I'm not doing much creatively. I spent the first half of the month stuck in a circular angst - To nano or not to nano. Round and round and round. With occasional soirees to the keyboard with a bit of novel writing to try to keep up just in case I decided to choose to nano. ARGH! Grrrr! Gnashing of teeth. Wailing of spirit. There was a lot of staying up late (and by late I mean late for me, and late for me means practically dawn. Which of course led to a lot of sleeping at inappropriate hours of the day and night. Well, not night. But the day part.

Conversation with Sam yesterday when he called and woke me up at 11:30 am:

Sam: Hi.
Me: (trying to sound like I was already awake because he'd called yesterday at 12:30 pm and I'd admitted he'd woken me up and he'd lectured me about still being asleep in the middle of the day) Hi Sam.
Sam: Were you still asleep?
Me: (short pause) No.
Sam: Are you lying to me?
Me: (another short pause) Yes.
Sam: Why?
Me: Because I'm don't want another lecture on being asleep in the middle of the day.
Sam: So, now I've got to lecture you about lying instead!? Geeze woman! What am I going to do with you!?
Me: So, what do you want?....

Anyway....

Part of me wanted to write - holiday projects, cooking, cleaning, showering, laundry be damned! Another part of me was completely certain that if I didn't try to tackle a huge writing project at this particular point in time, I'd dive joyously into finishing all those projects I've somehow not managed to finish all year. And yet another part of me, perhaps the smartest part of me, figured that both the other voices were full of baloney and that no matter what I said I wanted to do, I'd probably end up doing things about the same as I always have, frittering away half of each day doing things like eating a bag of Smarties, watching Wheel of Fortune, cleaning up after the cats, fetching fast food for my teenager, and blogging (or other internet activities). Which is, basically, what I've been doing, although in theory I haven't made up my mind yet - that way I can't be said to be doing nothing because what I'm actually doing is PONDERING, which is an activity that is almost invisible to the naked eye.

I did go to an art showing the other night, Thursday to be exact, mainly by accident. I was cleaning up a pile of papers that had accumulated on the dining room table and came across an invitation to the showing at our local arts council. It said the showing was Thursday, Nov. 16, from 5-7 pm. And it just happened to be Thursday, Nov. 16, 5:15 pm.

I asked hubby if he wanted to come with me but he was happily wrapped up in his quilt, on the couch, with his tea and Rosie. So off I went by myself. It was a nice showing - a bit of pottery, a few painters, some photographers - all artists that work in some capacity for our local community college. There was food. There was drink. There was live music. Pretty fancy schmancy (or would that be artsy fartsy) for lil' ol' Susanville.

All teasing aside, it was nice. I particularly liked one artist's paintings. Vibrant colors. Really captured the idea of "light". I chatted with folks, some I knew, some I didn't. It was both relaxing and inspiring. It made me feel like I wanted to come home and create. Or take a few art classes at the college. Did you know I am one class short of getting my art degree? Of course now it's been so long that all my acumulated college credit is completely worthless. Well, not worthless to me. But as far as the college is concerned, it might as well have been classes taken back in the Dark Ages. So, maybe I'm not terribly serious about the art classes part. But it did make me want to come home and create. Okay, OKAY! It made me want to come home and watch Ugly Betty and Supernatural and eat popcorn do a jigsaw puzzle and read some blogs and a little bit of Neil Gaiman and sleep in until almost noon and then create. (No. I did not create. If you want to know what I did the next day instead, read my other blog.)

One more thing before I go back to watching comedians on BBC - I stumbled upon this little art video on YouTube and thought it was kinda fun to watch.

Oh, one more thing! And this one redeems me. I am working on a new knitting project. I can't give out any details because it's gonna be a gift and I don't want to spoil the surprise, but hey, I am doing a little creative something. Whew.

More castle photos to go with Holiday Photos #16 over at Beach Treasure. One can never have enough photos of rocks and moss, eh?

They had recreationists performing the day we visited. I liked the new through the window of the old.

Old castle, the bay in the background. A tiny glimpse of a banner in the bottom lefthand corner.

The birds took advantage of every nook and cranny.

Back when the castle would have been in use, the large concentric rings you see in the sides of this tower would have been where the wooden floor/ceilings would have been.