Riding with Allergies

I forced myself to get off the sofa and make a snip.

Here's me trying to ride my bike yesterday, even though my allergies made me feel so tired.

I rode with a surgical mask on to try to not breathe in any more pollen. It wasn't pretty, but then again, I didn't make it far enough for many people to see me.

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P.S. Here's me a month after starting my pre-op diet and two weeks post op. 28 lbs down. The loss will start to slow down now to probably 2 lbs a week.

The Fat Fairy Takes Flight

Hey, Y'all..........Thank you so much for all the well wishes for a safe and successful surgery. I'm home and doing very well. Everything went quite smoothly at the hospital. I'm happy as a clam.

About the only thing that isn't as planned is the amount of free time and energy I thought I would have during my sick leave. Never having had surgery before, I honestly thought that I would come home and do everything as I always had done, just a little slower. I was going to be gardening and working on school stuff. I was going to spend vast amounts of time paper cutting down in Snippyville. I was going to learn how to use my new camera.

Welp, to say I was naive about my energy level post-op would be an understatement. I've been napping like Rip van Winkle. Walking around is really more like creeping around. I've got the old lady shuffle going. Everyday I get stronger and more energetic, but I'm definitely not up to speed at this point.

The snip above is of the Fat Fairy. She's really a symbol of me. I'm hoping that as my pounds shed away I'll start feeling as though I am taking flight just as she is. I'm definitely ready for lift off!

Heart

I was one big lump this weekend. Mostly, I cooked soup and stared out the window at the snow. At some point I forced myself to do a snip.

The Fat Fairy Awakens

scherenschnitte 3 x 4

It feels like the time of year to begin the reawakening. Time to unfurl your wings and contemplate all those changes to be made in the new year.

I've got some plans up my sleeve, but they're going to stay up there for a little while.

Whale of a Time

I felt a weird pang of seasonal jealousy when I read my friend's blog. Sara, who lives in Australia, talked about her daughter's school celebrating the Winter Solstice. I love the long days of summer, and felt sad being reminded that at the coming solstice, our days will begin to shorten. The minutes of sunshine that I begin losing, she will be gaining. Ah well. Sunny days couldn't happen't happen to a better person.

Here's what she's been up to:
A printmaker, book artist and paper snipper, she created this card for a friend who is moving away. I am in love with it. This accordion folded card is bound like a book. The images are reminiscent of where they live in Aussieland.


Having artist friends is a good thing.

Art Journal Tutorial

My blog friend, Moriah Betterly, was so kind as to create a tutorial on how to make an art journal.  I've been wanting to give this a try, but so often, when I figure things out on my own, they are clumsy.  She makes it look so do-able.  I'm putting it on my "to do" list for my first week of summer vacation.

Make Your Own Art Journal Pt. 1

Make Your Own Art Journal Pt. 2

Re-Snipping Favorites

I've decided to frame some of my snips and hang them down in Snippyville (my studio.) However, a lot of the snips I did last year are glued into a book. I like the way they look on a book page, but then they are stuck forever in that book. The idea of dismantling pages in a book is not appealing to me. So I guess I'll have to reconstruct the snips that I like.

When M tells the story about cycling in hurricane force winds one day last year, he takes folks to this blog page. Since it is a story and a snip he likes, I decided to resnip and frame that one. It's interesting to see it on the printed page versus white paper. I tend to like the printed one. Since I already have mounted and hung others on white paper, I feel a little stuck to that now. I guess I need to use remountable spray adhesive and stop mounting them in a permanent fashion...at least until I have settled upon what I like best.

Sitting and Snipping

I was glad to sit down and just snip last night. After a week of lots of little stresses, snipping was the most relaxing thing I could think of. Snipping fairies and nature is the most pleasurable/relaxing subject for me.

The reason that I attached this snip on this page, is because it is solid print. There are no section breaks in the middle. But I like the heading on the page. "The Rationale of Irrationality." Reminds me of "`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves."

Fall break begins shortly, and other than cycling my arse off, I just want to snip and read during those two weeks.

Art Club at school begins after Fall Break. There are always so many kids who want to join, I have one group of kids in the fall and one in the spring. This year is no different. The clubs filled up almost immediately.

For the first time ever, I had almost as many boys want to join as girls. There's a part of me that wishes I could have one club for boys and one for girls. There are several lessons that I would like to teach that I'm just not convinced the boys would go for. On the other hand, how sexist of me. I can adapt lots of lessons....and if I can't figure out how to do it, the kids usually can.

I never had art in elementary school, so the crafts we did in Girl Scouts and Vacation Bible School were precious to me. In VBS though, I distinctly remember feeling jealous during craft time. At the end of the week, the girls had spray painted, macaroni covered cigar boxes, generously called "jewelry boxes." The boys always had some wooden toy or tie rack that actually looked nice; something you could keep forever. We didn't even get to do the spray painting on our tacky jewelry boxes. I always felt as though the boys got to make something valuable, and the girls made, well, crap.

So, separating the groups by sex is not a good idea. What would make one kid, girl or boy, happy, would make another one unhappy. In other words, one person's macaroni jewelry box, is another person's wooden tie rack.

Floods and Funeral Parlors

Well, that weekend flew by. Sheesh.

I try to get at least one snip done in a weekend. That seems so wrong since I can make time for so many other less satisfying things. Something I love as much as snipping, I seem to barely squeeze in.



I'm going to play with the idea of architecture this week. This snip was supposed to be the facade of a building, though it mostly reminds me of an altar at a funeral parlor.


That was a first attempt. A learning experience. Which reminds me, I haven't quite caught hold of the idea that I need to change the blade on the X=acto knife more often than I do. When I go to make a delicate slice, and a big chunk of the design rips off, that's not good.

Since the rain from Tropical Storm Hanna kept us inside, I spent most of yesterday playing on the MacBook. When a school friend posted on Twitter that the creek behind her house was flooding, it reminded me to go check the one in front of my house.

Lord have mercy. This first photo was taken an hour after the 5 1/2" of rain fell. The trails were mostly submerged and I could only walk in about a tenth of a mile before it became impassable.

Mark says that the flood gauges on the internet say that the water over there went from 2 feet deep to 13 feet deep during the storm.

The second photo was taken tonight. 24 hours later. Amazing. Aside from the mud, some downed limbs, and a lot of dead fish on the trail, there didn't seem to be a lot of damage.



Today was phenominally gorgeous. Mark and I got in 55 miles on the W&OD Trail...along with all the hoardes of other folks who were housebound yesterday.

We did manage to narfle some garthoks, so the day was a good one.

Miss Gibbet and Judge Judy

My biggest projects of the semester are done and I am seeing the light at the end of the tunnel for the smaller ones. As a result I'm starting to accumulate some guilt free lazy time.

I don't watch a lot of television, but one really guilty pleasure I indulge in is watching judge shows. I looooooooove judge shows. I envy Judge Judy in that she appears to see right to the heart of every matter, and speaks her mind completely. Boy would I love to do that. Unfortunately, if you speak your mind that freely and you are a woman who is NOT Judge Judy, you come off as just a crusty old lady. But you know, if I had Judge Judy's money, you could call me a crusty old lady all day long and I'd smile all the way to the bank.

So this snipping is a dream of Miss Gibbet, reclining in a Lazy Boy, watching a judge show marathon.

Ten more days until the kids are out for the summer.............

Pressed Flowers

Sometimes I cannot figure out what to do with the small pieces that I do, so I have begun adding them to altered books.

On the left is a pressed flower and a watercolored flower. I balanced the left page with scherenschnitte on the right.

Scherenschnitte in an Altered Book

I've been playing with different papers lately, trying to get away from a bit more traditional scherenschnitte. The paper I chose for this piece was a calendar page showing a quilt. I've also been cutting freehand lately, just to try and improve my visual thinking skills.

I've never done an altered book before. In this one I'm experimenting with a lot of different types of paper cut designs.