every-single-day

Dreaming of Soupie and the Yummy making Boy....

Not so long ago me and my Man had dinner with some friends! For lack of permission, I will call them Soupie and the Boy who made the Yummies. They made fried tofu with roasted red peppers and lightly dressed greenbeans.
I have daydreamed about the tofu ever since.
My version is not quite what they served. I mixed flour, seseme seeds, cumin, ginger and salt together. Tried to get as much of the water out of the tofu as possible (the Boy who made the Yummies was quite good at getting the water out of the tofu, his tofu was dry as a bone on a Utah desert). I then breaded the tofu, and fried them in canola oil with a tad of sesame oil. I am making a salad to go with.
Yummy!

This week the Crook Club got together. We call it that because it is a combination CRaft and bOOK Club.
We worked on decoupaged lanterns. Mine is not complete. I would like to do more collage before I paint that little mama.
The trick about decoupaging inside the glass lamp is that you cannot leave any bubbles and must press as much glue out from under the image as possible. It gets tricky if you use thinner papers too, though it is not impossble. It take patience, as most good things do.
You also need to be careful about leaving glue on the glass, all of it must come off before the final step, which is painting the inside of the lamp with a solid layer of paint.
So neatness is key!

Moleskine!

I thought I was going to paint a bit more on this trip but I ended up drawing the whole time. I had recently bought a Micron .01 pen, which made me want to crosshatch and shade in great detail. Funny how supplies dictate in that way.

As I have recently "discovered" that I have a chair series going, I had to draw this chair, found in the lodge at Old Faithful. It is made from branches that were naturally bowed. No lines were straight within the entire chair. I loved it.

This Bison got top billing in these last two posts! This is what I am pictured drawing in the last post. Don't I look studious?
This old bull was huge! He didn't hang out in a family group and was found really close to the walkway at Old Faithful. Because he was so close and intent on eating grass, I sat and drew him for a good half hour or so.
One of the neat things the park service sells as a souvenir is a Parks Passport. I have never bought one, though I thought about it briefly. Instead I have decided to draw images from the parks in my journals and stamp them! Very official.

Slowly Re-entering Society

Hello all!
All I can say is, I wish every day in life had the shiney, new quality of a day of vacation. I know this to be a daily goal but have not quite gotten to that point!

I love taking abstracted views of texture and color. This is from the Canary Hot Spring at Mammonth Hot Springs in Yellowstone. I fell in love with the Hot Springs of Yellowstone above all others. The colors were out of this world, the textures created by the movement of water over algea was just phenominal. The smell of sulpher was a bit overwhelming at times though.
I had no idea. We had no idea.

It is just other worldly. Breath taking, beautiful, odd. On the morning these photos were taken we woke early, leaving our cabin to the hooting of two nearby owls. We had left aroun 6 in the morning driving through snow that did not touch the road but piled two inches deep to cover the trees and surrounding mountainside.

After the awesome drive up to the Mommoth Hot Springs, we hiked the Beaver Ponds Trails. On this hike we saw Moutain Bluebirds. Incredibly beautiful beings! I have never seen a bluebird before. I have read about attracting them and seen photos in magazines. They stopped us in or tracks. They are royal blue, and somewhat turquoise too. Scrumptious.

I drew some too! I must say, I was photographed drawing! I am now someone elses vacation memory! I will post my drawings later in the week.

I fell head over heels in love with Bison. Huge, gentle, fierce and majestic beings. We got a video clip of these babies mooing(?) to thier mom.
Later in the week we went to the Buffalo Bill Historical Museum, where I learned that it took the European Settlers 23 years to bring the Bison population to near extinction. 23 Years! The bulk of the drive was to obtain the skins, not to feed the masses! Ouch.
This museum was quite good! We checked out the Natural History and Plains Indian Sections of the museum. Well worth checking out.
Cody also has an awesome yarn and needlepoint store but thier web site pales in comparison. The women who ran the place were inspired and commited and helped me to fall in love with the city of Cody!

This photo was taken during our Slough Creek trail hike. It is difficult to find information about hiking Yellowstone, This trail was 20 miles long and left the boundaries of the park. We probably hiked about eight miles in total. It was gorgeous. We saw a few horse drawn carts, and many fly fisherfolk.
Yellowstone is huge and seemingly geared toward the driving public. Trails were beautiful and difficult to find out about.
We saw, Bison, Moutain Bluebirds, Prong Horned Sheep, Elk, Mule Deer, a Pika, a few spectacular waterfalls, Hot Springs, Geysers, The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. I could go on. It was awesome.

While visiting Jackson Hole we saw a showing of John Buck's artwork at the Center for the Arts. It doesn't seem he has a web site of his own. I am smitten by his work. The layering of imagery, the depth and how polished his presentation. Seeing his work over the web, like so much of our art, does it no justice. but click here to learn a little about him, here, here and here to see some images of his wood block prints.
He has made me rethink my approach to quilting The Man I am working on right now. His sculptures are incredible too! Please check him out!

Baby Steps

This is what I have planned for The Man so far. As I have begun to use silk organza in my work, I have decided that it is about time I use some shantung and charmeuse too. I feel shy about this but excited too.
the circles in the foreground of this photograph is a stroke of brilliance too! I struggled on Monday with how to interpret that aspect of the painting. Everything I came up with was heavy and said, no!
I took a break to eat lunch and half way through my lunch a dumb look crossed by face, mount it on sheer! Yeah!

This photo shows a bit of the background drawing in the white area of his body. That is my favorite part of this painting. I like how I worked it out in cloth so far!

We are going hiking! I mean to say, we are going hiking. We may be eatten by bears, trampled by moose, and I may never finish The Man. You never know.

My web server has been wonky lately. I may not have recieved your emails. This is an alternate address: hippochic (at) gmail (dot) com.

My Favorite Smell...

...is the smell of warm sewing machine. It's the oil, metal and memories connected with sewing. I get high when I create. Music playing, focus to a bare minimum, artwork in front of me. Sometimes I even forget to breathe!
I was a woman on a mission this weekend! I have been updating my website, adding more artwork, putting prices for my pieces on each page , you know-wrapping up loose ends (more on this later). All of this brought me to the fact that I don't make large works of art as often as smaller and easier to finish ones!
So!

Out came the journal. Off to the art supply store to buy a cheapy projector, I am off and running on a new piece! AND for the first time ever, this piece is male oriented! omigoddess!

I know this is a wonky photograph and it really doesn't explain much but it's blogable.
What do you think about 'blogable' as a word?
Yesterday, I washed, figured out and got the whole thing basted. I did so much creating I felt awesome today (at work even)!

Diversionary photo:

We made salmon stuffed dumplings on Sunday. Salmon, cabbage, ginger soysauce, and mustard all wrapped up and lightly fried. it reminds me of being in my late teens, sailing the Long Island Sound with my mom and pop, coming home, hot, tired and hungry to make a double batch of these little guys.

I finished Repose, formerly known as 'The Bitch'! She is in my gallery

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All of this was done in the comfort and safety of my dry, quiet studio. I pray to the Goddess for everyone affected by hurricane Katrina, human and four legged alike.
We have decided to donate to a fur person related hurricane relief center, please consider it. The Humane Society