Here Comes the Sun

Two blogs in two days? I know, I can hardly believe it myself but here we are. Today Joel and I went on a bike ride up to Smith & Bybee Lakes which are at the northern tip of the city limits. On our way there Joel spotted this house: with a purple lawn no less!



I'm not sure if they were crocuses but if they weren't they were very similar.

Then we rode along the Columbia Slough and I found a duck skull. There was also another skull close to it which looked more like a squirrel skull or some medium sized rodent.



And we also saw this hole in the clouds, you know what that means, good moods are around the corner!



Then we followed a bike path for a mile or two and then reached Smith & Bybee Lakes. This is the trail leading to the wetlands. Everything in this area is covered in bright green moss in the winter time.



At the end of the asphalt trail there was this "observation deck" with kodak-moment frames.




We saw a couple of little tiny bird nests, probably belonging to little hummingbirds.




The wildlife was nowhere to be seen but we heard lots of bullfrogs and saw the evidence of beavers. Apparently they are nocturnal creatures and you're more likely to see them in the middle of summer and not winter.




Then we road back just as the sun was coming out! We found this wonderful bike path/dike that followed the slough. We saw only one or two other bikers the whole time while we were on it.






And lastly, I decided to change my thesis idea again to something a little more akin to my previous work and less rigid than what I had proposed initially. I also felt a little like I was pigeon-holing myself and the idea I have now is a lot freer and workable. I'm really looking forward to this work (fibers)! I'll keep you guys updated.

Odds & Ends

Life has been more or less filled up with school and things related to school, just as I had anticipated. Now that I have a 5-page paper and presentation out of the way I'm not going to be as busy as I was the first week and a half of school. And now I have a little bit of time to write a blog post before I start at homework again.

The first business of note that will more than likely shock the pants off of a couple of you: I dreaded my hair.



I started it on December 29, 2009 and now this is how it looks. For those of you who don't know, I had dreads a couple of times while I was at MICA but it was never very good and the way that they would loosen up just drove me crazy and by that time I would end up just cutting off my hair (if you're on facebook, I have a couple of shaved head pictures in there...). Anyways, this time I employed all my felting know-how and have kept up with them so that they don't get loose. Because they're in such an early stage they're not completely "locked" yet. I don't know how long that process will take but trying to do it right this time and so far, I'm feeling pretty good about them.

Yesterday in Portland we experienced a rarity: sunshine and warmth! Its not fair to say that that is completely true, however, its a rarity for winter to have a warm sunny day. So I took the opportunity to work outside on homework and soak up the sunshine as thoroughly as possible. Today of course is grey again but I won't dwell on that too much.



So I ate lunch outside which was delightful. The bottle in the picture is of some homemade kombucha, we finally got a kombucha baby to make more again (our last one died in the summer time last year when it got too hot).



And while I was working this little guy said hello for a couple minutes.



I also snapped up a couple shots of the chickens hanging out. Here they are dust bathing. They were really funny, all lined up in a line along the garage.




I also found this bitty egg in the middle of our yard. I'm pretty sure it doesn't belong to our chickens because it was so darn small and when I cracked it open I'm pretty sure the yolk was in transition to becoming a recognizable embryo. But it matches the colors of eggs our chickens lay and because it was so small it would make sense that it was in a weird spot because the chicken didn't realize it was an egg coming out and not a poop (which happen to be slightly larger than this egg). Imagine if you will the egg being the size of your index finger curled over and touching your inside thumb joint crease. That's how little it was.




And here is the only thing growing in our yard at the moment. I'm a little nervous that its so warm right now and how big they are because if it gets really cold again (below freezing) I'm afraid we're not going to have any onions or garlic. I don't know if they'd be able to withstand that much cold. In other news, some garlic that I planted last year never came up but this year, they are! These are the fellas I planted this season.



In other news, Orson is still being super cuddly.




And some remaining Christmas things. With some of Joel's Christmas money he got these patches (places he's lived) for his bike bag.



And I made Clara this sheep for Christmas.




That's about all. Not a whole lot to report or show. Last night Clara, Joel and I made dinner together and it was really fun. We made egg rolls, black bean and garlic beef and fried rice. It was the equivalent of getting Chinese "take-out" except there was no high fructose corn syrup or msg. And it was way more fun to cook together than to wait around until the food gets there. Cooking together is one of the most fun things to do when everyone works together and it comes out well. :0)

New School Year

As some of you know, I am heading into my first week of my last (senior) year as an undergraduate. I just finished my first week back and boy am I intimidated by the work load! I probably won't be doing too many blog posts in the upcoming 4 months but I will try where I can, especially with artwork. We'll see what unfolds. This semester I will be taking:

1. Professional Practices - a senior class that will help me articulate my proposal for my thesis which I will be presenting in April (proposal, not thesis -- thats in the fall)
2. Advanced Sculpture - I've been dying to take this class. It is completely devoid of directed assignments and I will be doing my thesis work here.
3. City as Site - This is an art history class focusing on public artwork, I don't know a whole lot because this is a monday class and MLK Jr. day makes us the first monday class, I'll know more this upcoming monday.
4. Homeland - This is a Theory and Practice class which incorporates both reading, writing and studio assignments this one in particular focuses on the American landscape, environment and place.
5. The Wire as American Noir - A literature class in which we are going to be watching all five seasons by the end of the semester in addition to reading several other books. Luckily one of these books is No Country for Old Men which I just recently read so I have a leg up on it there.

if you're counting that is a full load and if I provided a syllabus for each one, well, let's just say I hope you're all praying! Only two semesters left (including this one) and I want to finish strong. This has been a long long journey in the making between the three colleges I've attended and countless major changes I've made. Let's just hope I get to the end alive. :0)

RIP Delaware White

Last night I was awoken to the deathly screams of our chickens. And then I woke Joel when I heard more frightened squacking. Something was wrong and I feared a raccoon had gotten one of our chickens. I grabbed a flashlight and handed it to Joel and he shined it out the window to see the ringed tail of a raccoon climbing up the fence. My heart was racing as we put on appropriate clothes to go outside into the howling wind. As we opened the gate to the backyard we saw the raccoon slinking near the compost pile and then up the fence again. We checked the coop and saw only four chickens. The Delaware White was missing but her feathers were everywhere. We looked behind the garage and under the coop then searched the yard. We finally found her behind the compost pile where she lay dead.

I kept hearing the skittering of leaves on the concrete behind us and I was afraid a rabid raccoon was behind us, but it was only my nerves getting the best of me. Joel put the Delaware in a bag and I shined a light on where the raccoon was hiding so that we weren't caught unaware if the raccoon tried any funny stuff (i.e., rabidly jumping out of the tree and attacking us). We closed up the other chickens and irreverently put the Delaware's body bag in the trash can putting a weight on the top so the raccoon couldn't carry her away.

We waited up for about another hour while we settled down and listened to see if the raccoon would open the coop somehow. The worst part was that this was our fault. We didn't close the coop. I thought about it after I put on my pajamas before bed and thought, "They'll be fine, we forget to close it sometime and we haven't had a problem yet." Those were my thoughts. "Yet" isn't good enough and we paid for it. RIP Delaware White.




She is survived by her sister chickens.

Snow and Illustrations!

As some of you may have heard, a couple days before the new year we got a fair dumping of snow on Portland. It was beautiful because it fell so rapidly that it didn't have time to melt until it was done. And then just as quickly as it came, it melted away. But we won't dwell on the latter but the former, where it actually looked lovely.

This is our neighbors house after a two hours.



Our chickens were very weirded out about the snow and huddled into a corner of their pen.



My chicken ventured out into the snow, I think because I'm usually the bringer of food. This time I just wanted to take pictures. This is less than an hour into it.



This is about two hours after it started. You can tell just how pink the fence is.




By this time the chickens had all gotten back into the coop. They usually only go in at dusk, they don't even mind rain, snow however is a different matter, "The sky is falling!"



The next day they stayed in the coop until I made tracks in the snow where they could peck at the ground.



I think these tracks belong to a robin, who was not a big wiener about the snow.



Joel had to walk home because it was too slick to ride. Luckily fresh snow is pure joy, so it didn't bother him. The only people we saw biking were folks who have massive bike tires. I tried to take a picture of one guy but it didn't come out in the photo.



And as of late we've been having some odd eggs. This one happens to be flat on one side.



This one happens to have no shell... I think we have a new layer and not all her equipment is up to speed yet. I can't wait til we have all five laying!



In other animal news, Orson has been particularly snuggly with me and Joel and its been a lot of fun to have him hang out with us. He's generally a very independent cat and not all that cuddly. The whole reason we got him was that he's a mouser and we had a mouse/rat problem which he efficiently dealt with (thanks pal!). Here's how it works. Orson gets snuggled up to Joel while Joel is reading a magazine. Then Orson gets moved and sits on the magazine, then Joel pulls said magazine from under Orson and uses the cat as a magazine stand.





A couple days ago Joel had the day off so I taught him how to use my sewing machine. He converted a too-short Woodcrafter's athletic jacket (with the quilted insides) into a pillow. He did a really good job and learned quickly.



That night Clara made dinner for all of us, Huevos Ranchero! It was very delicious and we got to use the eggs from our lady chickens.





And lastly, I've been having fun putting together music packages for my friends across the country. I've been illustrating the covers for the CDs and have had a blast.







And that's about all for now. Its been a fairly quiet new year for us in general but its been nice.