Colorado Days

Aspen trees turning

For the last two weeks I have been enjoying southern Colorado. I have family here and I have picked apples, worked in a permaculture garden, built a compost bin, shoveled bear poop (!) out of the back yard, attended a fabulous concert at Steve's Guitars in Carbondale, and generally enjoyed the beautiful weather.

My aunt has a big apple tree in the backyard and for the last several nights a bear has climbed the tree to eat apples. He or she shakes the tree, chomps, grunts, and causes apples to fall. This all takes place right outside my second floor bedroom window, but I have never seen the bear. It's too dark, even with a flashlight shined from the window. This morning we shoveled up a 5 gallon bucket of bear poop. (I debated whether to post a picture of the poop, which is quite interesting, and have decided to spare you.)

My son Henry's girlfriend Shannon

My son has launched a business of installing permaculture gardens in Durango and thereabouts, and I have been assisting him with marketing, setting up a blog, and so on. I visited a garden he installed in Carbondale, and was amazed at the continuing yield of a small garden. (If you'd like to contact him about a garden for your backyard, it's henryellisjohnson (at) gmail (dot) com.

Prayer flags for all beings

I have been enjoying The Prayer Flag Project, and I finally got organized enough to jump in with a few of my own. Instead of overplanning, overthinking, and generally acting perfectionistic, I just did it.

A 50 cent garage sale sheet yielded 72 - 5x7" rectangles to play with. Having so many inexpensive pieces of fabric made me reckless -- if I did them wrong, it wouldn't matter because they were so cheap and there were so many of them. (The obstacles we make for ourselves!)

I dug around in my art supplies and found some fat tubes of Crayola finger paints, Radiant Rain, and big bottles of Colorations liquid watercolors from Discount School Supply. These materials, like the cotton fabric, will deteriorate rapidly. I think that prayer flags, like prayers, are meant to be transient and vanish into the universe.

I grabbed a few tools for making patterns and textures. One of my favorites is the purple rubber brush thing. It is soft and I can use it on my Gelli printing plate safely.I grabbed a few tools for making patterns and textures. One of my favorites is the purple rubber brush thing. It is soft and I can use it on my Gelli printing plate safely.

I placed the fabric on waxed paper on my worktable. I don't have a photo of this part, but I rolled out some blue fingerpaint on the Gelli and scribbled in it with the purple brush. I mashed each flag into the paint, adding more as needed.

And I painted. I globbed yellow finger paint on the fabric, then brushed it around and let it dry. I sprayed on some green Radiant Rain and when that was dry, added some orange. I like the Radiant Rain because it is sparkly, always a good thing in a prayer flag, I believe. I dropped the watercolors on the fabric to make blogs. When I decided that the colors were what I wanted, I had to decide how to add the lettering. After considering handwriting, image transfer, and printing on tissue paper, I decided on the latter. Easy and quick and more predictable than handwriting.

I stuck down the tissue paper captions with gloss lustre Mod Podge, then later wished I had used matte medium. Too shiny.

In order to hang the flags I added 2 machine made buttonholes to the top of each flag and then strung them on some orange twine I had around.

The flags read as follows:
May all beings be safe.
May all beings be well.
May all beings be happy.
May all beings be loved.
May all beings love themselves.

These flags are intended as a housewarming gift for my son and his partner, Shannon. I want them to always be safe, well, happy, and loved.

The gig is up

The emma & abby gig is over. It was fun while it lasted -- going to garage estate sales, arranging the finds in the shop, and eagerly watching what was selling (or not). It began to be less than fun when I realized that I was barely working in my studio, I was spending more time scrounging through other people's castoffs that I was spending cleaning out my own closets, and, well, the glamour was gone. Worst of all, I was not making a profit. It would have been fun for longer if I had been making money, I think. I gave Colleen notice, and packed up my remaining "treasures" on Friday. The boxes, thankfully there are only a few, are in my studio waiting for me to decide the fate of the contents. My son has just rented a house in Durango, and I am going for a visit next week. Gee, I wonder if he needs me to help decorate?

Patience, nature, and addiction

Clouds over my house

No internet connection. No netflix, books, Instagram, syncing 2Do across devices, syncing calendars, uploading and downloading photos, Pinterest, no nothin'. We have had only the most sporadic connection for the last two months. (It's a long story and the ending has not come yet.) We have paid AT&T an obscene amount of money so that we can limp along with an air card and an account for my iPad. I used my iPhone so much that, even though I have an unlimited data plan, they retaliated by slowing down the connection. I depend upon the mercy of my friends and local coffee shops. 

For reasons unknown, I have a connection right now. It could go away at any second. I don't like living in this risk zone.

I tell myself, "Well, buck up, girl. You lived without the internet for most of your life." Problem is, I have come to depend on these devices and apps to keep me organized, focused, and of course, entertained.  

I believe that there are important lessons in this experience and that I had best pay attention: patience, nature, and addiction. Without dragging you through the depths of it, I have realized that I need to cultivate patience. It's not natural in my family. When I am holed up in the air conditioned house, I am not outside working in the garden or just being with Mother Nature. When I am on the internet, as we say, it's like being on a drug. I am enthralled and I can't Just Say No. I have to look at one more blog, one more Pinterest item, upload one more photo to Instagram. I think this interruption of my addiction is a good thing. I am learning how to survive on my own without my drug of choice. As any addict will tell you, this ain't easy but it's worth it.

emma & abby

It started out as, "We need to sell all the cool stuff cluttering up our houses." Then we added, "Hey, we could sell stuff that we make, too." And it went on like that for a while. All talk and no action. Left up to me the idea would have remained only in my head. My friend Colleen, however, is more of an action person. (Granted, she is younger and has more energy than I.) One day she simply found a location for us to sell our stuff and the next day we were moving in. emma & abby was born, named after our dogs, so creative. That's how I got into the "antiques" business. It's not really an antiques shop, but it is located in the back room at Bruce's Vintage Guitars & Antiques.
For the last several weeks Colleen and I have decluttered our houses, stuck price tags on our belongings, and hauled them to our shop as we grandly call our corner of the back room. And that should have been that. Like the rest of my life the situation quickly developed a complication. Colleen suggested that we go to some garage sales and estate sales to pick up a few things to sell. Sounds good, right? Get some great bargains and move 'em quickly through the shop. Wrong. So wrong. Those bargains have trickled into my house faster than the original clutter has gone. A blue and white Portuguese tray with adorable animals painted on it? Wow! Let's put it in the dining room! Hand crocheted pillowcases for $5? Good Lord, I'll never find a deal like that again. Those things are becoming scarce as hen's teeth and this color would look so great in the guest room. And that cherry bookcase? Back the truck in here and let's see if that guy over there will help load it!

My patient husband has refinished a simply darling vanity, a large 5 drawer chest, and has a dining room table and a bed frame stacked in his workshop. My studio is stacked with items that need to be priced. I've lost track of how much I've spent and I am so tired from schlepping stuff home from estate sales on weekends that I need a vacation to recover.

Okay, it's still all pretty good, you're thinking. Have I mentioned that I have sold virtually nothing? Or that Bruce, from whom we rent, has put up the only identifying sign behind some trees? So this is retail. And the contract for the space runs through July. I have an awful feeling that we will be having one big garage sale in early August. See anything you want?

What, me watercolor?

Curves & intersections

I've discovered a meditative experience in slowly drawing intersecting curving lines without lifting the pen, then painting the openings with watercolors. No planning, no stress. I just swirl lines and then paint with my kid's box of watercolors. I've used one of these as a tiny journal by writing (in tiny letters) in the openings. It takes about 15 minutes to do one of these, if I dawdle, and when I am finished I have a little abstract painting and more peace than when I started. Give it a try, it's very calming.
It just occurred to me that the seed for this process was planted at a retreat I attended last fall in Austin, TX at Turtle Crow Studio. Jane LaFazio and Pamela Underwood are wonderful teachers, and one of our exercises was a continuous line drawing of a rock cairn near the studio. Thanks, Jane & Pamela!

A kinder, gentler way of drying clothes

I have become my Grandma.

It's the launch of a greener method of getting our clothes dry, and it's great exercise for me. Behold, the clothesline! The sheets smelled wonderful, they dried quickly, and best of all, no gas dryer was killed in this process. The only alarming thing that happened was that I viewed this photo of myself and decided that not only was hanging clothes to dry like my grandmothers, I look like my grandmothers. While that's to be expected, I don't think of myself that way. In my mind, I feel about 25, and while I realize that I don't look 25, this photo was a rude reality check. Oddly, I don't feel different after seeing the photo, evidence of aging to the contrary.

I plan to put wood chips under the clothesline and plant some lovely flowers around the area, which is just outside my studio and only a few steps from the laundry room.

I have to go now because I found a tick crawling on my leg and I am just about to freak out. I guess hanging clothes out to dry could be considered high risk behavior fitting for a twentysomething.