Fish's Eddy buckets full of whatever...

July through December 2011

Some extras here, 402nd post!

January to June 2011

These are my favorites from the first half of the year and this is my 401st post in this blog since it started!

Celebratory Crab

Christmas is coming......

There is a special birthday today

Sienna is 7!

Columbus Circle moon

Marathon Ads still up in the NYC subways

Some days are stranger than others

in my crazy neighborhood

the word for this year

I think every year should have a word. After much pondering, this is the word for the year to come.

Alexander McQueen

When I saw the Alexander McQueen show at the Met, I KNEW I had to have the calendar, the pictures were so big and clear and it was such a nice design. HOWEVER, it was, it turned out, too big for me to hang in my measley (sp?) available space and it fell off the refrigerator when hung up there with a magnet. Besides, my Spanish Water Dog calendar (soon to be available on Cafe Press and supporting the Spanish Water Dog Rescue) must be on the fridge, so there wasn't much room.

I pondered this a bit, and then I realized. My studio table has glass in some places, but not one big piece covering the whole table. Voila!!

 The picture is under the glass and the date portion is available for writing on. Of course, I could have turned it under, but I love doing little day reportage snippets in a calendar and this has now become the best place to put the little notes. Also to doodle when the need arises.

I live in a fishbowl

At least, so it appears for now. They are repointing the bricks on my building, and since I live on the ground floor, the staging area is right outside my bedroom window. Usually they just discuss who stands where and take the platform up but for the last couple of days they have been working on my windows.

It really gets weird when you consider that my bed and the window sill are just about one and the same. I have to sneak out of bed every morning or it gets too close for comfort around here.

Kitchen update

I have looked in vain for an older photo of my kitchen. Nowhere to be found, so you will have to imagine that in place of the nice skinny Ikea black sideboard on the right there once was an enamel topped kitchen table. Amazing! I got back at least a foot of open space, two drawers and two shelves... and it breathes!

Can anyone help me

Figure out how to explain to Sienna that Daylight Savings Time is over? She still wants the old time back and wants me to participate in the rebellion against Eastern Standard Time. She especially wants me to get out at 7 AM, or even a little earlier in the morning if possible. Reasoning with her has no effect. It is those sad ears and eyes.......

and a couple of hours later, there is more still

This is the view of the courtyard and it is blowing like mad out there!  January weather in October .... 

Well people, it is

snowing like mad in northern Manhattan on October 29th...

Process of building the Journal

I started by coloring a bunch of pages, inspired by L K Ludwig in her online classes, which are great fun and full of interesting ideas. Then I bound the pages with a cover that includes an old Polaroid Image Transfer that I had lying around.   Finally, I started adding images I liked to the pages. No real plan as to what images, no order, just do what happens. I had decided that since this was a theme journal there was no pressure  like there seems to be for me in a daily or reportorial journal about an event or a trip or whatever. 

This one takes whatever it takes. So this post is a sort of summary report as I discovered i was being inconsistent about where I posted pages. Some are over on the photos blog and some are here. These are the newest pages, and then some links to some completed pages.

The lyrics are from songs that were/are important to me, and I am a total sap for a good lyric, so here they are. I am not doing it from the viewpoint of finding a lyric I like and making a page to suit. I am allowing my stations on Pandora to play in the background, but once I have a page in process I find that the "right" lyric sometimes pops into my head.

I found some old oiled paper negatives I used when I was printing black and white photos in the darkroom. I cut up a couple because I think those days are gone .... sadly... and used some parts of them on pages.

This is done, I think, on the right hand page... it is THE line from a Whiter Shade of Pale...

The cover is here. Scroll down here for some pages and more finished pages here... and here.... and here.   

Hispanic Society New York

paper camera

Another paper camera setting.  I love this little app!

another page

The page on the left is the inside of the front cover, I think I will leave it as is and make this a one page spread, but we shall see

Paul Simon - Cool Cool River

I believe in the future I will live in my car, my radio tuned to the sound of a star.
I believe in the future we will suffer no more, maybe not in my lifetime but in yours I am sure.
Sometimes even music cannot substitute for tears.

Song lyrics Journal Page Sister Goldenhair

From Sister Goldenhair....
I've been one poor correspondent, I've been too, too hard to find
But it doesn't mean you ain't been on my mind

Will you meet me in the middle?
Will you greet me in the air?
Will you love me just a little?
Just enough to show you care?

Favorite jacket updated

A long long time ago... sounds like the start of a song, doesn't it? I had/have a jacket from Eileen Fisher that I adored. I loved it so much that my purse wore several holes in it. Above is only one of those holes.

I patched them, I had similar linen fabric and I decided why not just patch it and make it into a Boro Fabric creation, after all, I loved the jacket. Even after it was patched, however, the wimpy peach/pink/greypink color made it a spring jacket and I don't wear jackets in the Spring. I do wear light jackets in the Fall, however.

Finally, I broke out the dye. I hoped that the patch was similar enough to the original linen to dye, and while I was at it, I dyed a hot pink T-shirt that I never word because it was ...... hot pink. What I was thinking I don't know. I also dyed some inoffensive greyish t shirts too. Remember, my daily uniform now is a t shirt and whatever jeans/cords/shorts are appropriate to the temperature. I can't recall the last time I wore anything else.... so I now have 3 t-shirts in various shades of blue/bluegreen .. and this!

I LOVE it. It really dyed well.. that dark spot on the lower right side is where I patched another hole, so it looks ok in real life. I have a lightweight fallish jacket that I can't wait to wear. ALTHOUGH it is linen. I guess that means I have to iron it first. Or iron it second after I find the iron that I haven't seen in a year or so. Always something, I guess.

Sweet Paul Magazine - Fall 2011 - Page 1

Sweet Paul Magazine - Fall 2011 - Page 1:

'via Blog this'

I always find something to like in this ezine. He has a very good eye for styling but he also has substance. I never thought, for example, about oven drying pears and probably apples, though I have oven dried a zillion cherry tomatoes against the coming famine...(joke) but I do have a huge freezer container full of oven dried cherry tomatoes and I DO use them all winter, so why not pears since they are in the market right now. If I were Gill and had access to sloes I might make sloe gin, but then maybe pear gin would be interesting? Could you make pear gin?  I know you could make pear vodka.....hmmmmmmm