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Houseplant maintenance

I hurt my back this morning, and my knee last week so that took out most physical things I wanted to do today, but the back was feeling well enough that I opted to get some stuff done around the house. I wound up dividing and repotting several plants that had been looking a little sad.

  • This burros tail had lots of fallen ‘leaves’ that were rooting. I gave them pots.
  • This was getting too shaggy so I took cuttings.
  • This was a rooted cutting I finally put in a pot.
  • Mama peace lily was divided into 4 pots.
  • This aloe was getting a weird curly stem. Trimmed it back and potted the pup.

I also repotted my orchid and took a leaf cutting from an African violet. The mama plant is looking sad, but the one I pulled out a month ago looks fantastic.

Update: I felt the need to take a photo of all my variegated plants because I love them and then I also did a little update on ‘what’s outside’. The outside garden had a rough year.

  • varigated spider plant
  • reverse varigated!
  • marble queen pothos
  • more varigation!
  • variegated jade!
  • Caladium didn’t die, barely
  • coleus, looks good
  • hens & chicks everywhere
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Soap Test

Just testing a new fragrance for fall – Pumpkin Spice, of course. What I can say so far is that I really want to eat it. I’m never sure if this is a good quality in soap, but it smells great.

  • Pumpkin Spice Test
    Just poured
  • ATTACK! Of the Pumpkin Spice Latte

I woke up in the morning, cut the soap, and decided it should be named “ATTACK! of the Pumpkin Spice Latte”

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Sunflower

Latest pysanky. This is another duck egg and I had a hard time getting the purple to take evenly over the red. It was coming out very dark in the purple area, but also not really covering the red in big blotches.

I used a paintbrush dipped in water and vinegar to brush off the dye around the wax and when the shell was nearly white, dipped it into the purple for just a few seconds. This was the result!

There are some flaws in my design and in my wax lines, but overall I like how it turned out. I plan to get a cap and hang this one as an ornament.

Flower on purple pysanka
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Eggs

Last month I volunteered to teach a class for a youth creative arts club and we made Ukrainian eggs. I haven’t made these for a while so it was a good excuse to try again.

  • Some of my eggs from 20+ years ago
  • 2019 egg
  • chicken vs duck egg: size comparison

I need to get a few more practice eggs under my belt, but it was fun. I bought 2 dozen duck eggs locally thinking that they’d be fun to work with. I tried some local chicken eggs – but it turns out everyone raises chickens that lay colored eggs and I wanted nice white shells. But when I did a search to see how to clean the duck eggs all I could find were articles telling me you can only wash them with water and if you wash them with soap or scrub with baking soda, the shells won’t take the dye well and they will wind up pastel.

I scrubbed that duck egg with baking soda, wiped it down with vinegar and then rinsed it. It seems to have taken the dye just fine. There are a few irregularities, but nothing I don’t also see in chicken eggs.

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Blackberries

Blackberries & thorns – ready for a soap label
Blackberry thorns alone
3 Blackberries

I spent a surprisingly long time arranging the berries. I may still go back and add the little hairs to them and possibly a shadow. It may not be noticeable, but each berry is a slightly different color because I wanted to make it clear that they were distinct even when they were on top of each other like this.

The hardest part of the thorns was getting the lighter color to run down the middle. I’m still not 100% happy with it, but after spending hours trying to fiddle with ‘mesh gradient’ until I gave up, I’m going to call this good enough for now.

Edit: here’s my soap label made from the above images.

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Cow Manure Theft

I may have stolen manure today. I was told, several years ago, that I could come get some compost from the bio-digester energy company ‘anytime’.

By ‘several years ago’ I mean 2014. 

I didn’t take them up on it. A PTA member called them last year and had permission for the school to go get some, but then the school said they weren’t allowed to use it because it’s not a proper commercial product. But I thought ‘well they said we can have it – let’s go get some!’

Today we went. I couldn’t find anyone to ask/tell about what we were doing.

I went to the spot where, in 2014, they were dumping the finished compost and took some. But the pile was still heating up, which made me think that maybe this wasn’t the finished compost and was I maybe rooting around in their ‘stuff to go into the digester/sarlacc pit’ pile by mistake?

The ill-gotten compost
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France – Narbonne

France Trip – Summer 2018:  I need to learn to take photos of all my adventures, not just things that are pretty.  We arrived in Narbonne and had one day there before we were to head off up the Canal du Midi to Carcassonne. This was our best chance to be close to the Mediterranian, which I had never seen, so we drove out to visit the beach.

No photos from me because when we got there, there was a pretty brisk offshore wind that was blowing sand everywhere and I didn’t want to risk getting sand inside my lens/camera.  The beach was a long, shallow sand beach and the water was a perfect temperature.

The excitement happened on the way back – in a crowded intersection in Narbonne (when we’d made a wrong turn and we’re trying to get back on course using the GPS) we were hit in the right side passenger door by another car.  Yay! Rental Car! Our car had some dents in both doors but the other car.. the whole bumper fell off.

The other driver asked us to follow him, to his home, as it turned out, where we were invited inside and had the fun of filling out accident report forms, in French, with the help of his family none of whom spoke much English and we did not speak French.

We had some questions about WHY he had a stack of accident reports in his home and HOW his entire front bumper fell off (and he had a bunch of twine handy to tie it back on – had it already fallen off??) But he was so very friendly. It’s a bit of a mystery, but the insurance is sorting it out.

Once we finally made it back to the canal it was time to move onto our boat for a week of travel up river to Carcassonne.

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New Mexico

Back in the fall I took one day to make a loop through the Jemez.  This is a favorite day trip of mine and each time I get to see a little something new.  This time I took a side road up to see some tunnels through a steep pass that I’d never been out to see before.

Here’s a deep red mud puddle after a rain.

One of my favorite petroglyphs on part of Bandelier.

More petroglyphs

Friendly spider crossing the road

Albuquerque knows how to do sunsets

The color on this truck was amazing: no editing!

Fall colors in the Jemez

Final sunset with the city lights below

Mountains near the train tunnels

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Final word in 2018

Obviously just making horse HEADS wasn’t going to be enough so I made a wire frame and made a whole entire horse.

I don’t yet know how to do the fine details or smooth out the tool marks, but here it is. It’s about 6 inches tall. Once I had it made in modeling clay I realized that I don’t know how to cast this, even if I made a two part mold for two reasons. 1) the shape and 2) the only time I’ve done a two part mold I embedded the original in modeling clay to make the first half. This is made of modeling clay so what do I embed it in?

horse sculpture

And finally, for a year-end wrap up, I made a gallery page of the ‘best of’ 2018.

I never finished cleaning up or posting my photos from France – I still intend to do so.

  • Bishop and Warder

I also did a few more test paints of the chess set. This is blue, with a metallic blue finish and the Warder has his shield, helmet and sword painted with an ‘interference’ paint – it will shimmer green or red depending on the angle of view.

It has been suggested that I’ve gone a bit off the rails since I went to New Mexico to learn how to make SOAP MOLDS and this is clearly not a soap mold. But I learned something very valuable: making custom molds is expensive and I should definitely do everything I can to avoid having to make custom ones from silicone!

I’ve been puzzling over the size and shape of conditioner bars. I now have a formula I really like but I still need to settle on the packaging and the shape. I think I’m going to try a round column mold – I might make out out of PVC with a teflon liner – and since PVC comes in all sizes I can probably find one to exactly fit the 2 or 4oz tins I’ve been thinking of using as packaging.

More soap to come in 2019