Bike Nutz pt II

My bike has nutz now. They are glittered walnuts! Oh yeah. Here's a little pictorial of the fun!

my super cool copper bike

Tim's bike

Micah's bike

the turquoise ballz got a full on photo-shoot with lights all all

5 year old Micah got his glitter nut groove on!

here are some nuts waiting to be glued (Tim is the master nut cracker that can get the nuts apart perfectly in half like this - thanx Tim!) - I like the reflection of the nutz in the glass in this picture

me getting my glitter on with the bandage and all... my thumb is doing much better - see I can use it!

Naomi admiring her work!

We spray-coated them in clear acrylic and looped them under the back of the bike seats. Bike Nutz. I love em!!!

Bike Nutz

I am lost in a whirl wind of shipping, teaching classes, holiday vending and shopping for my own family... add in a little bit of crazy crafting :)
I glittered walnut shells to attach to my bike seat. Just now I clear-coated these golden nutz with some clear acrylic spray. They are glued onto elastic cord for easy attachment to my bicycle. Not that I ride it in the rain, but come next spring... :)

Calder Le Cirque

One of my favorite things about the Calder exhibit at the Seattle Museum of Art was the video running of his circus. I found these videos on YouTube to share here on my blog.



Calder started performing his circus while living in Paris around 1930. I read somewhere that he took apart an old sculpture made of wood planks and made a set of bleachers for his friends to sit on. These friends included the likes of famous artists and philosophers like Joan Miró, Jean Arp, and Marcel Duchamp. The "circus" was a series of wire figures that cranks and strings enabled them perform different amusing acts. I love the whimsy and silliness - the peanut poops are hilarious!

There are around 200 of these different figures and Calder would fit them into 2 or 3 suitcases to take them across the Atlantic when he traveled from the US to France. I love the idea that this circus was the way he entertained his friends! Fortunately some of these friends took videos and pictures of his performances. Calder's circus figures now reside at the Whitney Museum in NY and they are now far too old and delicate to still perform, so these videos are the only way we can see them move.

I can only imagine how much time Calder must have spent playing around making these gadgets - what fun!

Truck Farming

Don't Worry Be Happy

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

Mobile in the Dishwasher

I heard a funny story at the market this weekend...

A customer came up to me and told me she has had one of my little mini glass mobiles hanging above her stove for a few years now. She said when it gets dirty, splattered with grease and whatnot, she simply hangs it in the dishwasher and sends it thru a cycle - voila it is clean again. She said it works great! I asked if she just hangs it from the cup rack and she said - Yep!

I just love the image in my head of the mobile dancing around in the dishwasher while its running, water splish-splashing and whatnot.

U-Pick Strawberries

Strawberry parfait in mason jars. Um yummy. They are sitting in the fridge right now cooling and waiting for us to eat them for dessert. I made key lime yogurt by combining Nancy's plain yogurt, sweetened condensed milk and key lime juice.... and I cut up a pint of berries that I picked this afternoon, sprinkled a little sugar on them... I layered with a few graham crackers - bam - key lime pie strawberry parfait. Oh yeah.This afternoon I had a wonderful time out on Sauvie Island at Kruger farm. Strawberry U-Picking time is in full swing, there were still loads of green berries, but plenty of red ripe ones for eatting and taking home. I am sorta a slow picker, there were just one or two good berries in each bush... and some were too perfect to take home. Woop - gotta eat them right on the spot :). But I took plenty home to eat over the weekend.
We filled the car with berries, okay so we could have gotten a few more pints in there, but it was hot and sticky and 90% humidity with random full sun (it was a few hours before a crazy wind/hail/thunder storm hit portland and took the city down). And I won't eat all of those, there were 4 of us picking and we brought home a flat for a friend to make jam with. I just picked 5 pints, cost me $7. (we were "silver pickers" just 3lbs shy of the "gold pickers" discount and too sweaty to go back for more)
Update: the key lime pie strawberry parfait was so so very tastey, we gobbled them up! You could hear our spoons rattling around in the jars scraping out every last lick of goodness... the graham crackers turned into cake-like layers from soaking up juices and expanding and the sweet/sour combo is just oh so tastey!

Upside-down Tomato Time

Its that time again! This will be the third year for me planting tomatoes upside-down. I love it! Its due time I got started (its been a late spring here) so I picked up a starter at the nursery...
Here are all the materials and supplies I used... both cats came out to help me :) (not pictured is a bucket) I use a hanging plastic planter that I've drilled a large hole in the bottom and a piece of flat foam that I've cut a slit and a small hole in the center.
I put the foam around the base of the tomato plant, cut so it was bigger than the hole in the planter. This is not necessary, but it prevents any dirt loss and just makes life easier for the tomato plant.

I prefer to use Sungold Orange cherry tomatoes. They are the bestest ever yummiest tomato ever... I swear. :)I stood the tomato plant up on the bucket (the bucket was turned over) and brought the planter down over the starter... slowly started getting the delicate plant thru the hole. This year I only lost one little leaf. In past years I've surrounded the plant in a tube of paper and/or put a bag over the plant to protect it from going thru the hole... but honestly its easiest to just be careful and slowly get the plant thru the hole with no special tricks
Once the whole plant was thru I was able to just rest the pot on the foam circle...
Then I flipped the bucket over and stood the planter up in the bucket with the plant resting unharmed inside the bucket
my starter was not so tall which made this was possible, in past years I've needed a helper to hold the planter while I fill it with dirt before I hang it...
You can see the plant sits happily upside-down on the piece of foam
I filled the pot with some organic potting soil...
And then re-arranged the hanging chains so I could pull the plant out of the bucket and hang her!
Day 1 2009 Upside-Down Tomato

New Glasses Arrived

My new glasses finally arrived in the mail (via ZenniOptical.com)! I like em! They are cute (and orange on the inside, which makes me happy) and they fit and I can see perfectly fine thru them. The best part - they cost all of $24 including shipping. The bad news (isn't there always bad news) they took 3 weeks to arrive rather than the 2weeks that the website claimed. But they arrived safe and sound in a neat little plastic glasses holder wrapped in a pale green gentle lens cloth. I am pleased. Just thought you'd want to know :)

Sauvie Island Strawberry Picking

I went to Sauvie Island today to pick strawberries.

warm from the sun, delicious sweet strawberries... yummmmmm.most of them were green still, seems this year everything is 2 weeks late
but there were plenty to nibble and praiseKruger's Farm now has animals :)
there was a fat pregnant pig sleeping in a barnand chickens running aroundwhat a cute funny looking chick eh?!There were peonies blooming in a fieldI took lots of pictures of the round buds just ready to burstI find the round shape of the peony bud to be so amazingly gorgeous. I love the way it unfurls to become this sweet sultry perfumed huge flower. They are amazing. The bugs seemed to agree, in many of my pictures there were flies or ants or bees hanging out on the buds.

Mystery Egg

Found this little egg pierced by a stick in my backyard as I was hanging my hammock this weekend.

This little egg is so beautiful, and so sad, and so interesting all at the same time... the mystery remains: how do you think this happened? Your guess is as good as mine

so far here are the going theories:
1. the egg was pierced by a crow (they use things as tools)
2. the egg shell was soft and it must have fallen and bisected on a small branch and the baby bird inside stopped the fall and thus the shell now remains half cut in half on the stick

Personally I just don't know. Theory #1 seems odd to me, interesting though, but why wouldn't the crow just use his beak. Theory #2 is also interesting, but improbable as the egg would have had to hit the stick in a very particular way to bisect so perfectly. Personally I think I must have mini monkeys in my trees outside. Or the loud blue jays that mock me in the early morning with their songs, they must be getting crafty and breaking the other birds eggs.

I think Myth Busters might have to perform some experiments to see if a soft robbin's egg falling could actually bisect on a branch :)

Birthday Sunshine

Okay, so it was my birthday yesterday. I didn't turn on the computer all day!!!
Some friends came by and Tim and Tony helped me throw a little BBQ bash for the holiday. I put out some wire and glass beads so everyone could create birthday tiaras (Alexander Calder made some tiaras back in the day and this cracks me up - I thought it would be fun to see what everyone made!) Aren't they great!!!

And I set up the frisbee bowling - oh yes - you read correctly, Frisbee Bowling. :) Its sorta like frisbee golf but with bowling pins. Yup. And its pretty difficult, no matter how close you get! I couldn't get a single pin down. In fact, I even tried hitting some golf balls at the pins and launched one ball into the neighbors yard two doors down where they were having a party as well. Oh my goodness! I had to holler "sorry!" over the fences!!! No one was hurt. But the frisbee bowling was not entirely a flop - Byron and Judi both rocked out and got 4 of the 6 pins down. A tie for gold. To see action shots of their games click on their names :)

Tim helped me set up the hammock earlier in the day. It was such a sunny gorgeous day. I took the entire weekend off and relaxed casual style. Today I lounged in the hammock all afternoon reading a little Bill Bryson. Okay, so I fell asleep, and it was a glorious nap. I love my hammock.
Oh and of course I must add the gratuitous cat picture from this weekend - look at my cute cats sunning themselves in front of the beautiful flowers:
I've had a good weekend, ups and downs including. Good news: I'm one year older and had a fun birthday. Bad news: some drunk *&%#$@ drag racing in the middle of the day nearly killed Tim when he was out at the grocery store getting supplies for the BBQ. F*ckers raced right thru a red light and bashed right into Tim who was crossing the street. The new Hyundai took the impact amazingly well, the bumper is a mess but Tim is fine and I got to spend a few quality hours on the phone with police and insurance. Gotta love drunk f*ckers who drive on holidays. It was a hit and run, so we will have to pay our insurance deductible to fix the car and I doubt the f*ckers in question will ever get caught... at least their car got smashed in all along the side. But I found that stressful, I cannot lose Mr Tim, and I cannot handle any more people running into me or my cars! I swear its a life-long struggle. I wish this hadn't happened. The car is so new!! And the thought of Tim having gotten hurt is just too much to consider.

I dunno why I couldn't just have a happy-go-lucky easy birthday. I tried my best to make a stress-free birthday for myself, but some things are not control-able. There is always the up with the down. I do believe in balance, and life certainly seems to agree, but I find it sad and painful most of the time. Luckily seeing all my smiling friends (and cute baby Orson in his golden track suit outfit!!) makes me happy, and honestly Tim is fine and cars can be fixed.

I smashed my eyeglasses today :(

What a huge bummer. Here's how it happened: I was wearing a particle mask in the studio today and at one point as I took the mask off I didn't realize my glasses came off too! I didn't even hear them fall, I simply felt myself step down on something and crush it. Some swearing and profanities followed as I picked up the pieces.

I cannot tell you how much I loved these glass, they were troupers. And expensive...

But I must move on, find new glasses, and I don't want to spend much money. I have contacts and I dug up an old pair of glasses to wear tonight... but new frames are in order!

Here's a picture of the new glasses I just picked out and purchased online:
A friend told me about this online company ZenniOptial, that has the best deals on glasses anywhere - and I've always wanted to try them out, so now I have a reason to. Here's the deal, ZenniOptical.com uses no middlemen, no retail overhead, and no advertising. The glasses range from $8.00 to $25.95 - including lenses! Seems too good to be true - $8 for glasses!!! Wha?! Shipping only cost $4.95.

I've seen my friend's glasses that she has ordered from ZenniOptical over the years and they are great!

These frames I picked out (I bought the black/orange frame) cost $23.95!!! That's my grand total for the frames, lenses and shipping, total, INSANE!! I was able to enter my prescription from the last time I visited the eye doctor and place my order in a matter of minutes online.

I am wowed. And sad all at the same time, I liked my old glasses. Hope I like the new ones, if I do I'm going back to order 3 more pairs. :) You can even get sunglasses tint for a mere $5 more, so I could get prescription sunglasses for $20! That's just crazy-talk :)

Two of my favorite things...

My Fat Cat that is oh so hairy.

I spent 1/2hour brushing him out yesturday and the day before I took a pair of scissors to his dreads.

And my magnolia tree - it blooms right outside my bedroom window. Spring is my favorite time of year, and this magnolia tree always welcomes the season so brilliantly... just as my daffodils start to fade in the front yard, the magnolia springs to life with pink and white.

Cute Little Monsters

I made these little guys today. Had a beautiful morning hanging out with my crafty lady friends, which I LOVE, and we played around with babies (Orson and Ayla were such a pleasure to see today - I especially enjoyed getting to dress little Orson - oh and Ayla's outfit was to-die-for) and we made clay monsters. I haven't played with this bake-able clay since I was a little kid. Oh the memories. I used to rock out with this stuff.