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.

Facelift

I got this shirt in Minneapolis for $6.00. It was missing some buttons but I didn't care because I wasn't a big fan of the cheap blue hearts anyway. I went into the bead shop yesterday for something else and asked if they had buttons. They had a great selection of Czechoslovakian glass buttons that were beautiful. I was limited by the size of the button holes, but it was a good thing, the ones I wanted cost $1.85 a piece. The ones I got were .85 each. So I spent $6.80 on buttons and spent yesterday sewing them on.


So much better! The buttons are much more substantial than the flimsy shirt, but that's alright. Now I just need to wear something other than pajamas or work out clothes on the weekends!


I watched this great movie called Microcosmos and loved it! I'm not a weirdo that usually takes pictures of my tv set, but some of the images were so beautiful I'm going to try to batik them. I love the swallowtail, and spent a fair amount of time last night trying to figure out what kind it is. It's hard since I have no idea where it's found. I want to do an egg, caterpillar and adult butterfly batik, and want to make the egg and caterpillar match the adult accurately. This movie had hardly any words, but with the way it was filmed and the music it had me laughing out loud several times. I don't think this is purely because I am a bug lover. Kay, have you seen it?

Getting Out

I called a friend yesterday and he asked me what I was up to. I said, I'm gong for a hike. He said, where, with who? I said Corvallis, with me. He kind of laughed, like who goes hiking by themselves. But I've been going hiking by myself nearly every day after work for a while now. I love it. Sometimes I go with someone, but really I actually prefer to go alone. There are so many beautiful trails around Corvallis, I've been using this book. I was going to try to do them all, I've probably done around 10, there are 60 in the book. I end up going back to my favorites. Sometimes I think, oh I've done that one a few times, maybe I'll get bored with it, maybe it's not as pretty as I remembered. But they are as pretty as I remember, and I see something different every time I go. Yesterday I saw two different pink flowers I didn't recognize, along with these teeny tiny spiders, they looked like ants, but they were unbelievably fast and shimmered metallic purpley pink. Not too far up the trail I saw a ground beetle the exact same shade of purple.
The bugs are starting to come out, I got my first legitimate bite yesterday. To me it meant it was officially summer. I was walking back and it was about 7 pm, the sun was still high, and the breeze was warm and I couldn't help but think that nothing beats a summer evening. I started going out hiking in February, and really it's not bad if it's not too rainy or windy or cold. But as nice as those early days are with no bugs and no people, it doesn't compare to long days, sunshine and perfect temperatures.
Also on the way back I saw the 3 Sisters in the distance, all snowy and beautiful. I don't know how I would survive in a city, with no escape to the forest. It is a life line for me. I am excited to live in Eugene and have all those trails and hills nearby for exploration. The landscape is so different for only being an hour away.
In other news I am blogging this early because I am an idiot. I woke up at 6:27, and thought, oh my alarm is going to go off soon, I'll just turn the radio on and slowly wake up. I had the hardest time waking up this morning, usually it only takes me 15 minutes to be up and moving. This morning it took me half an hour. Well I took a shower and got out and looked at the clock, 7:06? I had been off by an hour, I could have slept another hour. Not thrilled.