Goodbye 2013

The last piece I will ever make -- in 2013.  I've been thinking about the seriousness of resolutions, how they are actually promises you make to yourself, and so have decided a good resolution needs a reliquary, a place to honor it and keep it close. So I made one from an old bottle, found buried in a house lot in Sedro Woolley, Washington.  It is marked "FF" in a circle, which identifies it as made by Foster Forbes Class Co., probably around 1942.  It has the beginnings of iridescence here and there, and it had no top.  I made a stopper from a crystal bead, rhinestone spacers, copper tubing and paper torn from a 1880s schoolbook, which was also the source of the pretty floral line art used to collage the front and back. The bottle was drilled to add a rhinestone fob salvaged from broken earrings, and then suspended on salvaged chain from an antique button.  It was then finished with more of the salvaged chain, spliced to six crystal beads, also salvaged, and a pretty hook to close. The stopper can be removed to insert the resolution represented as a written word, or another symbol of your promise to yourself for the New Year. It will soon be listed in my Etsy shop.

Good Movies for Holiday Sharing

My favorite comes first.  With Peter O'Toole's passing, we need to say goodbye, and fondly thank him for his gift.  There's a perfect movie for that:  "Dean Spanley."  It's a New Zealand jewel, based on Lord Dunsany's short novel, My Talks With Dean Spanley.  Sam Neill plays the Dean, a delightful performance, and the central gem of the piece, but Peter O'Toole shines even brighter. It's about reincarnation, and it's about dogs, so what's not to love?

Next, a film from Russia, historical, fascinating for the sets, costumes and ravishing portrayal of court life among the descendants of Genghis Khan,"The Horde."  As long as you are wanting a bit of delicious escapism, why not really, really escape, far, far away?

 

And, a third, another Russian work, "The Russian Ark," filmed on location in the Hermitage -- a bit like being invisible passing unseen through moments of history, and among the fabulous treasures of that great assembly of the greatest art. In one scene, you can see the reflection of light shining off the surface of a Reubens, so finely painted the texture is more of canvas than brush strokes, and in another, a glittering Romanov ball scene with a huge cast in the finest formal court dress dancing the mazurka, in the waning days of the Winter Palace.

  A feast for your eyes and imagination; bon appetit, and happy holidays!

Floods of Stone and Ice

Friend Jena and I made a timely escape from the gloomy weather on the west side of the passes, over east, to the Columbia basin, to an area geologists call "The Channeled Scablands." It's a fabulous landscape, created by ancient floods released from continental glaciers in Pleistocene times. But that's not the whole story -- long before the glaciers began to melt, even long before the glaciers, in Miocene times. great lava flows flooded the area over a period of thousands of years, thousands of feet deep.  When the glacial floods came blasting through, hundreds of feet deep, armed with boulders and grit traveling at highway speed, the lava was scoured and sculpted into a regional-scale picture of drainage patterns.

Our hike covered five miles of trail in the Ancient and Dusty Lakes area, near Quincy, Washington, rambling through two embayments of scoured lava cliffs, over a frosty sagebrush steppe ecosystem, under bright skies in blustering northerlies, that kept us moving briskly, but not too fast to enjoy our glorious surroundings.

Frozen sagebrush

Frozen lava

Jena views the Columbia

Priscilla views lava cliffs

A closeup view of carved lava

Going east for a day-long dose of sunlight is the best way to make up for the short, dark days before winter solstice.  Today, sunrise was at 7:51 am.  Sunset will be at 4:18.  'Scuse me while I take my Vitamin D.

Sparrow Is Seven Years Old This Month!

Still glossy, happy and occasionally popcorning, my sweet Sparrow is 7 years old this month.  She is proof that GPs are not just "pocket pets," but can be companions for a nice slice of your life. She wants you to know certain things are necessary for happy healthy GP lifestyles, though:  Guinea pigs need to have Vitamin C supplements, first of all.  Sparrow takes chewable Vitamin C from my hand just as readily as carrots.  I provide her with timothy hay, dandelion greens in season, fresh water, an orange crate for hiding and a salt lick, along with good quality guinea pig feed.  She has learned to wheek when she hears the crackle of vegetable bags, the regrigerator door, or the knife chopping vegetables for stir fry.  She knows her name and responds to "hello piggie."  She is also grateful that I don't handle her alot and disturb her peaceful existence, but she is not fond of getting her nails clipped, although that is one of the necessary things.

October in Icicle Canyon

On the west side of the pass, October often brings gray, foggy days to the Seattle area, but there's a simple solution -- go east.  Over Stevens Pass to Leavenworth and into Icicle Canyon for a day of dazzling light.  The air, filled with the scent of Ponderosa pine basking in sunlight, invites you to breathe deeply.

In a darkened gorge at the bottom of the canyon, Icicle Creek carves stone walls into shapes that inform millenia of Earth going about her seasons, unhindered.

Larch, pine and fir grow tall reaching for the light from deep shadows cast by the canyon walls.

The high terrain that barricades The Enchantments also creates a localized ecosystem with rainforest features as prevailing winds rise and drop a treasure of moisture.  Here, a shaggy cedar tree supports tatters of moss, hanging over tannin stained waters that have drained deeply forested ridges.

Higher in the canyon, rejoice your eyes and body in warmth, fragrance and brilliant color.  Bottle it in your soul, etch in on the tablets of your heart to save for the long, gray days of coming winter.

And don't forget, winter means snowy days which means snowshoe trips with my dear friend, Jena.

I said, "cheese, Jena," and she said "Camembert."

Fibula

A Lohan is not Lindsey, far from that, but one of the wise men who urged the newly-enlightened Buddha to spin the wheel of Dharma, or teach enlightenment. Lohan beads are not easily found these days; a complete set is quite rare, usually very expensive, and found in the form of a mala for use in Buddhist practice. Traditionally, they are carved from Chinese white olive pits, and each face is different. This one has an intriguing set of dots on his forehead, and I am guessing it is because the face is that of a saddhu, or ascetic wandering monk, who, even today, can be seen in India, living on alms, practicing austerities, with painted faces that perhaps signify their retreat from the ordinary life, setting them apart.

A fibula of steel with a mix of Chinese antique bits: bone mahjong game pieces, antique coin, carved olive pit Lohan head, and coral branch with red African pottery bead and rustic tin cap. It measures 3" wide by 3-1/2 inches long at its longest point (the tip of the gambling counter).

This fibula has been hand wrought from steel stock with a pin finely tapered with the hammer, twisted and curled, then tempered and quenched in oil for a glossy finish. It will make a fine shawl pin, or sweater ornament, for loosely knit or woven textiles. Just listed in my Etsy shop, here.

Lord Buddha found that austerities are not the way to enlightenment, but that that the path runs along the Middle Way. Wouldn't you just know it -- moderation takes more discipline than either self abnegation or profligacy!

A Song From The Acequia

The yellow winged blackbird is a South American species. The male looks just like the redwinged variety you see each spring, but his epaulets are bright yellow. There have been sightings of the yellow winged species claimed in the western US, which experts say are actually immature redwinged types, which don't develop a fully red epaulet until maturity. Right. I could swear I saw one in Oregon ranch country, on a beautiful spring day, flashing his yellow epaulets, singing his territorial announcement from a cattail perch in an irrigation ditch. I think they are moving in on you, redwing boys!

Kim, of Numinosity, surprised me with a gift of her own earrings, and some delicious lampwork headpins, and the headpins were just too sweet to let sit for very long.  Here they are, in these earrings, together with an array of ethnic and vintage wooden holy beads.  I pulled a bit of sari silk through the wooden beads and frayed away the yellow weft, leaving just a splash of color at the top, which got me to thinking about the yellow winged blackbirds I saw one spring on a trip to Oregon's John Day fossil beds.

The wooden holy beads were originally used for a stretch bracelet, with elastic cord strung through the holes at each end. That arrangement makes them a bit of a challenge to re-assemble, but here's my solution:  first a steel half hoop with bent ends that went into the top holes; I drilled a hole in the bottom, just to the crosswise channel, and inserted a little brass eye pin, trimmed to fit and (gasp!glue!) epoxied into place.  Then, a bit of yellow sari silk with a black warp got threaded through the bottom holes.  I cut the silk to a 45-degree point and raveled out the weft, leaving just a peek of the original color up next to the bead. Next came Kim's wonderful headpin with a long long steel wire embedded, just right for stacking on two more beads and coiling closed, to jump to the bottom of the wooden miracle bead.  The tops got finished off with a pair of painted eye beads from India, with splashes of blue that echo the spatters on Kim's lampwork.  And then all except the silk got waxed and dirtied up to add to the look of something old and well traveled.

Just listed in my Etsy shop.