Cherry Spoons

My spoon carving doesn't start happening until after Easter.   This year, I had a difficult time coming across green wood to carve, so I got a late start.

On a recent trip to West Virginia, the friend from whom I rent a mountain top farmhouse told me I could cut a limb off her cherry tree.  Oh happy day!!!!!!!!!  Cherry is one of my favorite woods for spoon carving.

I carefully selected a limb that would not be missed. Probably I got about 10 spoons worth of cherry.

My first spoon was carved for my friend.  When I carve there, I hole up in a funky side porch area that is out of the wind. Many times when my friend visited the farm and came over to say hello, she picked up the spoon to inspect it.  I don't think she knew it was intended for her.

When I was finished the carving, I wood burned "County Line Cherry" into the side of the handle to show the wood came from her farm.  Sometimes it is so very hard to let go of these things!

(In the background is the "mother" tree.)

Busy Days

Oooooh, today feels like Fall.  It is dreary and gray out. I'm at home alone, so it is a great time to try and catch up here.

We were away from home a lot this summer.  West Virginia was home for a month.  I spent all of August at my favorite place on earth; a farmhouse on the top of Allegheny Mountain. Friends came to visit.  Family came to visit.  We crafted.  We spent nights outside watching major meteor showers.  I saw the Northern Lights!!! I sang to cows.  I missed friends while I was there, but never missed a day of living in the suburbs.

The week after we came home, we hosted family as my uncle was to be buried at Arlington Cemetery. As always, it was a sad day but visiting with family felt warm and fuzzy and comfy.

Days later, Mark and I headed down to Florida.  Friends rented a house on the water for a month and invited us to spend a week.  We did a bit of paddling, including sharing a paddle with an alligator.  Trying to maneuver myself onto a sit-on-top kayak from a dock, as a gator was watching nearby, really freaked me out.  It turned out to be a four foot gator who could not have cared less about us, but it was very exciting.

From Florida, I drove to Charlotte, NC to spend a week with my daughter.  She flew east from L.A. for training related to her job.  As she did work things, I spent my days in the pool, thrift shopping, and working on my TeachersPayTeachers shop.  Few people can make me giggle as much as my daughter does.  We slept a lot and giggled a lot. Luckily, we left town a day or two before the riots started.

Now that I am home, I am carving like a mad woman; as non-stop as possible.

Farmhouse Scherenschnitte Sculpture

I just got home from two weeks in the mountains.  It sure was a great break for my brain.  Lately I've been stressed out the ying yang and this trip really calmed me down.

Every year I rent a farmhouse on Allegheny Mountain in eastern West Virginia.  The lady who owns the home is such a wonderful hostess, so I always make a gift for her while I am there.  Here's a paper cutting of the home she rents out.

And here's the house.

 It took me hours and hours to do this.  Not until I made the very last cut and all the pieces came apart, did I realize that I had made two houses and not one.  I had cut through four sheets of paper instead of two.  No wonder it took so long to cut this thing.  So I left one paper sculpture for the hostess and kept one for myself.

Busy Summer

Hey, Y'all....I'm still here.  I've just been crazy busy.

School has been out for a little over a month now and I have less than a month to go before I head back to school.  (.........sniff, sniff)  A few days after backpacking in West Virginia, I went back again for a week and a half.  I rent a farmhouse on the top of Allegheny Mountain every summer that is full of fresh air, cool breezes and no internet.  And as attached as I am to the internet when it is available, I do not miss it, not even for a moment, when I am away from it.  So, anyway, I had a lovely "Jan-cation" in WV.

My theme for the summer was going to be "Cooking, Cutting and Crochet."  My goal was to improve my skills in each area, and I did a lot of all of those things on my retreat.

Before coming back home, I incurred a nasty mountain biking injury in which I thought I had broken my kneecap.  X-rays showed that I had not, but even now I am still in some amount of pain from it.  That's limited how much I've gotten around the last couple of weeks.

I also came home to discover an opportunity for a project that has taken a lot of my energy all that time.  (More on that later.)  And since I can be pretty obsessive about projects, I haven't had anything else to blog about.

Since Mark has gone back to Canaan to backpack with buddies this weekend (we love that place!!!)  I have taken the time this weekend to do some snipping.  I've found some kirigami pieces on the web that have stolen my heart and I have decided to try my hand at it.

These are practice pieces done on tag board.  It's a little tricky to cut tag since it is so thick.  I may see if I can do kirigami cards with a thinner paper and see if it still will hold up.

Camp Grandma

Summer Activities at "Camp Grandma."

Swinging
...on Grandma's swing...


...on country swings...


...on that funny swing at the park...


.......on a hammock with cousins...


...and more cousins...


Water play with family.




Picnicing




Puzzles.


Playgrounds
...near Grandma's house


...and far away ones. (Chinatown, San Francisco)


Crafts.
...basket weaving...


...knitting on a knitting tower


Fashion design


Travel
...on the subway



...on the train

...on a plane


...in a car

...in boats from small

...to large


And travel.....

from coast.....

......to coast


"Camp Grandma" is my favorite camp. I just wish it could happen more often than it does.

27 Hours of Summer Vacation Done

We got out of school yesterday. Woohooo!!!!!!!!!!!! And since our school is no longer a "year round" school, I don't see my kiddos again until after Labor Day. Woohooo again!!!

There will be many lists made and goals set. It's anyone's guess how many will be acted upon. Often times, the school books that traveled home for the summer, will return to school unopened at the end of summer. So far, these are the big plans and goals:

1. Granddaughter's visit with us for a week....by herself!!! And we're two weeks away from that one.

2. Lose two dress sizes before Labor Day.

3. Make 5 ATCs for an art ed swap.

4. Make at least one art ed video.

5. Get up to 75 mile rides on the bike. (We did 30 today.)

6. Clean up Snippyville (my studio) and get a lot of paper snipping done.

I'll be ecstatic if those things get accomplished. At the end of all that, I'll probably be ready to go back to school.

Travel

Hey, Folks.........I've been on vacation for a week, and am now trying to catch up on the rest of my life.

We went kayaking on the Colorado River at Lake Powell. Here are some fun shots of the trip.

I'd been so paranoid before we got there that this was going to be a trip with a bunch of uber-outdoorsmen. I just knew I was going to be the only woman and all these men were going to be disgusted at having one woman along. When the first two women showed up, I was ecstatic. When the next three women appeared, I was so overjoyed. The trip included six women and four men.

The first day out, there were wind gusts of 50 to 70 mph. Torrential rains hit later that night.

Did I mention we were camping?

When I got lost in torrential rain in the dark on the way to dinner the first night, there were a few tears. Maybe a little cursing too, but after that it was all good.

The Dirty Dog Camping Trip

Fall break has finally come!!!!!  This is one of the reasons I don't complain TOO much about going back to school in July.  We get awesome breaks every season of the year.

This past weekend M and I went camping with old friends from back home.  Our camping spot was in the National Forest near Charlottesville at a place called Crabtree Falls.  Weatherwise it was pretty decent.  We got a tiny bit of rain, but that probably kept some people away....which is a good thing.

I ate way too much junk food, which we don't keep at home, and then was too full to eat the extraordinary food my friend cooked on the campfire. Doofy, I know.

This is one of my friend's six pooches and he was one of three that joined us this weekend.   Sebastian is 14 years old.  My friend says that he is blind, deaf, and somewhat senile.  At home he spends most of his days sleeping.  At camp, however, this fellow wandered all over the place.  He probably wandered as much as he slept.  Occasionally he bumped into something, but he got around pretty well.  We often caught site of him just rolling around like crazy on his back.  Furry critter that he is, when he got back up he would be covered in leaves and dirt.  He looked like a dirty dog Christmas tree.

I had a great time visiting with friends.  Often I felt like rolling around for joy in the dirt as well.