I've
been relatively busy the past three days making more samples though
not as many as previous firings, about half of which are transparent
powders over white, and another blue heron feather. In true Ellen
fashion, I did not take a picture of the kiln shelf before it went in
the kiln with a slightly altered firing schedule. This week I'm going
to try a hibiscus flower.
Back
in the days before digital photography, we took slides of our work. I
have four binders of slides of old work, stuff we don't do anymore,
so I took four of the slide pages and dumped the slides in a paper
bag and used plastic sleeves to hold my samples. Much better than the
jar I had been keeping them in. I should probably do that with the
samples I have of different transparent frit combinations.
I
finally got a halfway decent picture of the goldfinch. This one got
over its fright and perched on the tea cup and chowed down but the
lighting wasn't great and mostly it showed me it's belly perched as
it was on the hanger.
The
last weather forecast on Saturday had the temperature dipping down to
30˚. Hmmm, 32˚ I don't worry so I checked to see how long it would
be below freezing. About 4 or 5 hours. It was so windy Saturday and
cold, low 50s, which make it an unpleasant and difficult struggle to
get the ponytail palm covered, I rolled the dice gambling that it
would not get cold enough to do damage and did not cover a damn
thing, not the angel trumpets or porterweed coming out nicely after
our first dip into freezing weather, not the little jasmine which is
already putting on buds and hasn't bloomed for the last two springs
because of freezing weather. Sunday morning, this time the House paid
me. Not a single ruined leaf or bud.
Speaking
of windy, I've written about the howling wind which before the house
reconstruction I never seem to remember hearing. You can stand at the
door to the garage and hear it wail, open the door and nothing. Very
peculiar. As it turns out, there is a 1/4” gap between the bottom
of the door and the threshold on one side tapering to none on the
other side and cold air was pouring through the gap. A well placed
hand towel stopped both the cold air and the howling. I'll have to
see about a more permanent fix for that.
I
set my alarm for 11 PM last night as I nodded off trying to stay
awake. At 11:15 I stepped out the back door to gaze up at the Blood
Wolf Moon almost directly overhead and the blazing stars, at 11:40 a
bright thin crescent of white light was edging it and off I went to
bed.
Photo
credit: Jim Wright of Stonekettle Station
I was awake when the moon was doing it's thing, but did I go out & look at it? No I did not. Mike did. His pictures aren't his best work, but I think he was half asleep (he fell asleep in his recliner waiting - ha!).
ReplyDeleteWell done for managing to get a view of the moon. I've heard really strange howling wind sounds as I walk down the lane here, been puzzled by it for months. Just discovered it is a new farm gate, the posts for which are hollow metal and they catch the wind and play howling flutey noises - a most peculiar sound. I must get something to bung up the holes. It is amazing how much noise a small gap can make!
ReplyDeleteLove your moon shot.We had a house that the windows moaned during high winds when I was a kid.
ReplyDeleteWe went out at 9:30 and could see the partial eclipse. At 10:20 we were supposed to go back out and look, but we forgot. So that's our eclipse viewing.
ReplyDeleteWow! Your color samples tucked into the slide sheets. Beautiful re-use. I, too, have binders full of slides of my art work. I love spending time looking at photos of your garden. Sweet to see a goldfinch. I don't see them very often. That is the state bird for Washington, and I lived here for several decades without seeing a single one. Now you've reminded me of the sound of the wind howling at the tiny window in the bathroom next to my bedroom in our house on the San Francisco peninsula between 1957 and 1967. Only once did I see a total lunar eclipse. That was here in Washington. Impressive. I'd love to see one again. Glad you saw this recent one.
ReplyDeleteAbout our ancestry. The family resemblance is on my mother's side. I've had my DNA tested by both 23andMe and Ancestry.com and have many distant cousins in Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Texas. My mother's mother's family is English, Irish, Scottish, coming to Canada in the 1800s and then to the New England States and migrating all over the country from there. My mother's father's family came from Germany in 1800s to Massachusetts and migrated all over the country from there. Are there redheads in your family? Does anybody have Raynaud's? That is on my mother's side. On my mother's German side, our family tree is full of artists! Although I can trace half of my German ancestors in the Black Forest back to the 1600s and those in Stadtlengsfeld and Alsfeld to the 1700s, my DNA shows very little German or French ancestry. There is some Spanish and Portuguese, some Southern European, and a trace of East Asian and Native American.
My father's side is almost entirely Norwegian, except for one mysterious German/English great great grandfather who didn't marry my great great grandmother and apparently married and divorced at least two women who were substantially younger than he was. Genealogy fascinates me.
You made Kenny Rogers proud with your call on covering the green stuff. My entire little English flower garden got a good covering, too. Sixteen inches according to the National Weather Service. This was settling into a regular January, and then the Wednesday forecast was rolled at fifty degrees and rain. Trump is really voo-dooing around.
ReplyDeleteThat's a clever way for using the slide sheets. It reminds me of the colour theory by Goethe, which is big here with some artists.
ReplyDeleteAnd your colours reminded me of this one as well: https://c82.net/werner/#intro
ReplyDeleteI had a fleeting thought about staying up and venturing out to see the bloody wolf moon, but it was too cold and I was pissed off about it. So I went to bed at 9P. Great reuse of those slide holders. Our entire childhoods are on slides - they are fun to relive until you run across too many awkward teen shots. I'd love to see the heron feather!
ReplyDeleteGreat idea for storing the samples! Just don't toss those slides -- you might want them someday. I somehow lost track of that whole blood moon thing -- I'm not sure we could even see it here. Glad the plants didn't freeze!
ReplyDelete