Apparently I'm good with a shotgun. Who knew.

I should have known a bbq at the Jones' would be anything but ordinary. I shot a shotgun for the first time and hit a clay pigeon on the second try. I hit another one not too many tries later as well. It's good to know if I ever need to kill a bird to survive, I can do it. The look on my face is hilarious by the way. So focused!


Toby found this awesome tiny praying mantis. So little and fast!

Blueberry Pizza

It's blueberry season! I went picking at Blueberry Meadows yesterday and made blueberry pizza for a bbq today. It's shortbread crust with a sweetened cream cheese layer, a layer of blueberry sauce and topped with fresh blueberries. Total Gallagher favorite.


Aaron, this is the cactus we gave your parents last year, so pretty and big! You can't see it, but the stamen is in the shape of a white star.


I found this June bug in an unlikely and unlucky place, right outside the door to the City Limits country store. I very rarely go in there, so I thought it was pretty fortuitous for this guy that I did. I moved him across the street to a field. I'm not sure he was doing so great anyway, his antennae are all folded up, and he didn't weigh very much.


Off to the bbq!

My Fourth of July

I made this awesome heart in Oregon shirt today...Now that I know how to set the dye, I can boil the wax out! It's definitely not perfect, Oregon is a bit square, but I'm excited that I turned a white shirt into this on my first try!


The sheep were shorn today, they needed it! How frustrating to have wool in your eyes and not have any hands. The guy let me take pictures of the process, more here. It is definitely is an art form.


Pinned sheep


The wool was so much greasier than I thought it would be, I just touched some of the wool barely and my fingers were greasy. You can see how oily his arms are. I love how clean and pure the under wool looks.


All trimmed up


Flowers in the backyard


California poppies




Succulent bloom


These pictures are from my favorite hike near my house. There is an old growth stand just a 7 minute drive from my house. There is a pond there, from some sort of quarrying, and this is the reflection of the bluffs on the pond.


This pond is swarming with Taricha granulosa



Crazy horse fly I saw on the way back to the car. I thought about taking my macro lens, but decided against it. I'm glad I got a few clear pictures of it without. It was weird, and kept climbing slowly onto my lens.


The view on the drive home.


The hill near my house that I walk up frequently


The sky was so pretty tonight

I opted out of fireworks tonight, I didn't feel like dealing with the crowds. It was still a nice day.

Thursday

We have new babies!


Elephant ear at the Red White Blue Festival. Yum!!

The Death of My Pig

So I had this piggy bank, I'm pretty sure Megan gave it to me, perhaps on a birthday. It's been painted several times. I decided it was time for piggy to get a new paint job.

So I picked out a nice green color from my collection of acrylic paints. But the paint dried darker than I thought. And I thought maybe I would leave parts of it pink. But I hated it. And decided it was time for the pig to die. I am all about purging everything I own right now. I'm getting rid of 10 pairs of pants, 7 pairs of shoes, and boxes of other stuff that I no longer want.

So I took a hammer to the pig, and as per Aaron's suggestion, I filmed the death. Now, I swear, SWEAR I put a $20 bill in the pig at one point. So imagine my disappointment when there is only $17.05 in this pig. It is all going in my travel account. I know it doesn't seem like much, but everything helps. I don't know what this thing was made of, but it was some kind of composite that made dust when it cracked. I'm thinking about sending it to a lab to get analyzed for asbestos (I can have that done for way cheap through my work).




Sorry for the dark video, it was filmed in my garage at night. You still get the idea.

Irises

I've been working on a small scale project. I love watching the dye as it mixes with water, you never know which colors will show themselves for a moment before losing their identities.


The finished iris project. I did two because I want to try boiling again, now that I have a few more tricks up my sleeve. I will boil the one I like the least and see how it turns out. Dee, my batiking mentor, tells me the color shouldn't fade. I got the right soap and I changed how I add the fixative, the only thing is that I like to paint on some of the colors, so I don't have to worry how they will react with the other colors, for example I wanted both purple and green in this one. There is no easy way to over dye to get those colors. I don't know how the painted areas will do yet, since I can't fix them the same way. If I don't like the result I can iron out the other one and still use it.


Sometimes you just get a craving and it won't go away. Like my weird one for Kraft Mac and Cheese, I haven't had the stuff in years. I gave in. I love this Pyrex bowl, I have a larger yellow one too that is my fruit bowl. Amber and I were just talking about this site: Pyrex Love, it is the definitive place to go for all things Pyrex. Aaron and I used to go on and drool over all the cool patterns.

Off to a kind of busy weekend...A quinceanera tomorrow and to Salem on Sunday. Ugh then back to the grind, work has been pretty stressful lately. I hate coming home and being too drained to exercise or cook or batik even. Soon enough, I will have all the time in the world. For two months at least.

In Conversation

A Corvallis resident on the phone today:

"Where are you located?"
"We are at 3rd and Western"
"Oooh, well I know where Western is..."

It was all I could do to not say, Well, 3rd is between 2nd and 4th, I'm sure you can figure it out.