More ATCs

I am being self conscious. I did another "water" related ATC for the swap. Only two are needed. This isn't a commission, but I feel as though it is. Commissions make me overthink things, and I obsess about them.

The ATC for the illustration of "There Was a Crooked Man" was more fun to do because it was only done for my own edification.

Artist Trading Cards

The jury is out on some of these ATCs. They may end up in my permanent "homely" collection. Some of them were for a swap with a water theme. Another is for a crafter.

Working Out to Get to My Work Out

This afternoon I rode my bike to Jazzercise. To drive my truck there, it's a four and a half mile trip that takes 15 minutes on a good day. To ride my bike there off road, it's a two and a half mile trip that takes 15 minutes any day.

By truck, I have to mix in rush hour traffic. Ugh. By bike, I ride through a park most of the way, and have little interface with cars.

By truck, I don't have to sweat on the way to work out. By bike, I have to ride uphill about 70% of the way there.

On the way home, by truck, I mix with Northern Virginia drivers again. Yuck. On the way home, by bike, I ride 70% downhill including mountain bike singletrack through the woods
(WheeEeEEeeeEEEEeeee!!!!!!)

I wish I could get my lazy self to ride my bike there more often. I definitely will enjoy saving gas money doing it that way, and I could afford to spend the extra calories.

Artist Trading Cards

Someone asked me recently what I did with my snips. I attach many of them to the fronts of note cards and send them off to friends as thank you notes or greetings. Mostly, however, they sit in a drawer....accumulating.

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I was talking about "swaps" a few posts back. One kind of swap is an Artist Trading Card (ATC) swap. I've seen workshops at art ed conventions for having kids make ATCs, but I've never really done one myself. It occurred to me today that this might be good inspiration for doing snips and a good way to use them, a bonus being that I get someone else's ATC in return.

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I'll give it a try. I posted on the elementary art teachers message board in my district to see if anyone there wanted to swap. I also signed up for an ATC swap group on Flickr. It will be something new to entertain myself with.

New Wheels

Guess what! My new wheels arrived Thursday evening!!!

No. Not THOSE wheels.

These wheels:



I've been wanting a set of these babies for a while now. 20" Scotts Classic Reel Mower. I would think about getting one of these every now and then, but figured they were not worth the money to buy one. I didn't know they'd improved these since I was a kid. A few weeks ago, while driving down my street, I saw an elderly woman pushing one. It put a spark behind the idea to get one.

Our 3/4 acre lot is not the ideal lot for one of these. From what I read, they work best on those lawns that look like golf course greens. Our yard has roots and holes, weeds, and every type of grass you can imagine. But with a little elbow grease, and by putting the mower handle under my fleshy upper torso parts and rib cage, I did just fine. (I may have odd bruises in strange places tomorrow.) The back yard actually wasn't too hard.



I figure that since I love being outside, and actually love finding things to do that double as exercise, this will provide me with pleasure.....not fun pleasure......but pleasure none-the-less.

Swag

Here's the one knock I have against the education blogs that I read: NO SWAG. Craft blogs have contests, "swaps," and give aways. All the time.

Now my friend, Jackie (in Missouri), does lots of swaps. In a swap, a craft blogger throws down a creative challenge of some sort. All the participants create something, and then send it to another participant, selected at random. Kind of like a Secret Santa kind of thing.

Jackie and I did our own little swap. When she posted about these odd pod things, I was fascinated by them. So she offered to send me a few. So I offered to send her some goodies. And then true to our natures, we kept piling it on.

Here's what Jackie sent me:

Actually, the very cool framed quilt pieces are from a contest I won on her blog. (200th comment. Woo hoo!)

The green and black framed piece is a scherenschnitte that she made for me. The seed pods are from water lilies that she and her boys found on a canoe trip. The egg looks like one PapaMark brought into the house the other day, only his was a fragment. And that beetle. Isn't that the coolest looking thing? I am going to keep it on my dresser. (Hey, my friend, JoJo, has a collection of mouse skulls on her kitchen sink window sill......)

Here's what I sent Jackie: http://smoothpebble.wordpress.com/2008/05/05/mail-therapy/

Now bugs, bones and rocks may not be your cup of tea, but it is the perfect gift for nature loving blog buddies. Thank you, Miss Jackie!

Maybe education blogs don't really need swag. I love them for what they are. (But if any of my education blog buddies want to send some funky teacher supplies my way, I'm okay with it.)

Ants at a Picnic

Teaching 5 year olds to weave is one of the most challenging lessons I have to teach all year. Some kids have great difficulty in recognizing the alternating pattern. I'm scheduled to teach it around Thanksgiving, but I never do. I try to give them a few more months of development before I give it a whirl. Kindergarten weaving is not a favorite lesson that I teach.

So, to lessen the pain of weaving, I have them make picnic lunches to go on their "tablecloths." You would not believe how much fun kids have making pretend food out of paper.

Since they are studying insects in kindergarten, I was going to have them draw ants too. I forgot in this particular class. = ( But the kids are forgiving and I told them they could add the ants at home.

I have one of those coughs and headache combos that make me wonder if I should be pulling out all my sub folders for tomorrow.......

How Many Weeks Til Summer Break?

The illustration above of "Snippety Gibbet" pulling out her hair, would be the illustration I would use for my afternoon. Let's just say that the defining moment was when the first graders tattled on the little girl who drew blue Sharpie marker all over her lips.

Good times.

Paper Molas

Third graders are studying the metamorphosis of butterflies, so we tied that into their art lesson. These are "paper molas." The real molas are appliqued pieces of cloth done by the Kuna Indians of the San Blas Islands, Panama.

Gifts That a Mother Could Love

It's been a yarn-fest in the art room this quarter. From first attempts at stitchery up to tapestry weaving, the kiddies have been busy. Many of the pieces went home last week, so I'm sure many of them were given to Moms today.

Kindergartener's' First Stitchery

Third Grade Weavings

Fifth Grade Tapestry

Second Grade Animal Stitchery

Stitchery Fairy

Bike Lust

When you come to my home, don't expect to see designer fabrics or well appointed decor. Don't expect to see much that hasn't been "well loved" to the point of being slip covered. The automobiles in the driveway are far from new and are sans bells and whistles. We're frugal and happy to be that way.

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Except in the bike department. That's where you'll find the "well appointed" features along with the bells and whistles. We do like some nice bike-age.

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Today we drove out to Plum Grove in Leesburg and got measured for our new bikes. Independent Fabrications customs. Woo hoo!! These will be the bikes we will do the 340 mile ride in the fall, from Pittsburg to Georgetown to our doorstep. And hopefully, at some point take them on a cross country trip.

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Mark's is a Planet X, I.F. bike. Mine will probably be Planet X as well. I hadn't planned on getting a custom bike, but being so short, I am hard to fit. And if we are going to do really long distance trips, I want to have something that fits me perfectly.

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And it is, of course, blue, like all my other bikes....and my truck....and most every garment in my closet. ETA....one month.

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Thank you, Commonwealth of Virginia, for my anticipated National Boards stipend. And belated, happy birthday to me.

Twitter'n Me........and Them

Two folks at school have added me to their....twittering. Twitter has now become more valuable to me than when I was following only one person. I guess that's why they call it SOCIAL NETWORKING instead of "IMing YOUR BROTHER."

My biggest concern, however, is that this will provide yet one more venue for me to stick my foot in my mouth. I have mastered the skill in other formats.

......sigh........

Twitter'n Me

I consider myself relatively up-to-date on Web 2.0 kind of stuff. I have a MySpace page to communicate with my daughter and my best friend from high school. I have internet dated, chat roomed and IMed in my past. I blog. I belong to a group on Ning. Now, I Twitter. But I don't "get" Twitter.

My brother, who is an IT guy, enticed me to sign up. He is the only person I follow, however. Maybe that's the problem in why I don't "get" it. I don't know what most folks Twitter about. I rarely have anything profound enough in which to keep folks apprised. From what I see, I'm not alone.

I looked at Twitter where you can see what "everyone" is Twittering. Here are some comments that came up. See which one you think is mine.

******
i can only imagine all the various forms of bacon you have in the pantry. bacon paste, evaporated bacon, baconcicles in the freezer.

eating scallops at the bar and watching the Yankee game

ガンダム オペレーショントロイ 特典 「MS デカールセット ダウンロードカード」&「Xbox

I have nothing to say. I had hot dogs for dinner. That's it. = )

Sometimes I just don't feel smart....

I require pizza.

My deck furniture waterproofing skills apparently aren't very good. I guess I should just stick to being a programmer.

i miss my pinky
*****

Several of those could have been mine. One, I'm thankful is not mine. My over-use of the smiley face may have given mine away.

If you want me to follow your Twitter in order to better enlighten me, I'm game.

Where Were You and What Did You Think It Was?

For my local friends...........where were you and what did you think it was?

For my far away friends.....We had an earthquake today. (About 10 miles outside of D.C.) It was a 1.8 on the Richter Scale, so not big, but noticeable. If you look on the news sites at the epicenter, my school is less than a mile from it. Exciting stuff for a place that doesn't usually experience such things.

I had first graders lined up to go back to their room when we heard a big BOOM. I thought a child must have pushed my SmartBoard, with its brakes on, and it hit something....though that didn't seem too reasonable. Someone from the office came up to my room to see what on earth had fallen over to make such a noise. One of my friends, who teaches math in middle school, blamed it on her students. She thought they were goofing around and pushed the laptop cart into the wall. I think it is funny the things our minds grab hold of to explain things. Makes me wonder what kinds of explanations people in times of yore had for natural disasters or oddities.

More Appreciation or......

NIGHTMARE ON SNIPPY STREET 2!

Revenge of the Art Supplies!

When the tiny second grader brought this to me, I was sitting in the floor helping first graders with stitchery. I quickly scanned the card and hugged her, but I didn't fully get the gist of the humor. After my first graders left, I looked at the card again and got a good giggle. I'll have to find her tomorrow and tell her that I thought it was pretty funny.

This tiny girl is so quiet and unassuming, you'd never know that she had a Stephen King lurking inside.

Teacher Appreciation Week

What a sweet gift. A mango and a "moon pie." It made my day.

Tour de Pollen

We had a relatively short ride on the C&O Canal today. We went 12 or so miles from Carderock over to Roosevelt Island. In this photo, the bikes are parked across the canal from Dean & DeLucca in Georgetown. Sushi.....mmm...

The pollen was thick today. I felt as though someone was pelting my eyeballs with sand. Folks all down the trail were snorking, coughing and rubbing their eyes. Or at least it appeared that way from behind my pollen coated eyeballs.

We stopped at one of the Lock Houses on the canal and met a couple who was doing the dream trip that I spoke of yesterday. This young Utah couple was only seven miles into the trip from Georgetown to Pittsburg. It was fun chatting with them.

New Bike

New Bike

Mark and I are contemplating doing a 318 mile bike ride in October, from Pittsburg to Georgetown. It'll be on rails-to-trails paths. Up in Pittsburg we will ride the Allegheny Passage down to Cumberland, Md. From there we will pick up the C&O Canal trail. (I've done the 185 mile C&O trip a couple of times, and that's where I discovered this sort of thing is actually do-able for me.)


So, I'm in the market for a new "cross" bike. It's my 50th birthday present to myself.



The photo above was on my 6th birthday. July 19, 1963. We had just moved into this house near West Point, Va. from Richmond. It was so hot on this day that the top layer of my birthday cake slid off.


I loved this bike. My first two wheeler. It was a red Western Flyer with streamers on the handlebar grips. My loving, yet short on patience, Dad tried teaching me to ride, but evidently, I didn't pick it up as quickly as he would have liked. He threatened to take it back to the store because I wasn't "trying hard enough." (Geez, the things that will cement themselves to a kid's brain.)

I do remember when I finally did get my momentum going on our 1/2 mile dirt road. Not knowing how to engage the brakes, I remember the panic of seeing the drop off of the sea wall at the edge of the river. Right before plunging in, I guess instinct took over and I fell off the bike. I probably cried like a six year old girl, but I think I was pretty dog goned proud too.


I must have outgrown the bike quickly. My next birthday also brought a new bike with it, which I rode for several years. However, memories of this first bike remind me of a dear old friend.