Rima Staines’ Artwork in Tatterdemalion by Sylvia Linsteadt

Artwork © 2009-2012 Rima Staines

Artwork © 2009-2012 Rima Staines

I have long been a huge fan of the artwork of Rima Staines, a UK artist based out of Devon.  She’s a friend of Terri Windling  and her artwork is unique.  It has an ancient, folk culture feel to it that I love.  It is delightfully quirky, whimsical and idiosyncratic.  She and her partner Tom Hirons, and their little son have converted a flatbed truck into a house on wheels cum stage and it is their goal to provide traveling theater, storytelling, music, and all those other important “folk” things that the modern world is swallowing up too fast, and that we are in danger of losing irretrievably.  Rima has teamed up with writer Sylvia Linsteadt to provide the illustrations for Sylvia’s book Tatterdemalion.  I have seen copies of the book and it is a beautifully bound, high-quality hardback book with full color illustrations.   Below is a little video Rima and Sylvia made to tell you about it. (That’s Rima you hear singing on the video.)  My very own copy was obtained today and hopefully will be in my little hot hands before too long.

Artwork © 2009-2012 Rima Staines

 

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

First, the good:  The Iris is blooming.  I shot the picture on the right over the fence right behind it and, yes, it is an escapee from my neighbor’s bed — and welcome.

(Oxalis dillenii), wood sorrel

Another good is this: It’s called wood sorrel (Oxalis dillenii*) and it’s all over my lawn and blooming. Very pretty dainty little yellow flowers. The examples of this I found on line show a taller plant — probably because it’s not getting mowed every month.  Also, the leaves are folded down.  Ordinarily they look a lot like clover.  I suspect that, as its name implies, it grows in woods and doesn’t get as much sun as it does out in the middle of my yard, and the folding of the leaves may be a response to that.  It may also mean it could use some water.

Also to the good, I am acquiring a third rose bush and maybe a fourth.  The third one is a single cane which is a good three feet high now. No blooms, but plenty of leaves.  Go figure.

The bad is that my friend from knitting group, LB, who has gone two rounds with breast cancer already including a double mastectomy, has had cancer cells turn up in her bones.  She had lesions on two ribs, where a biopsy was taken on 12 April, and yesterday she had a chemotherapy port placed.  She had her first round of chemotherapy today.  (She’s also supposed to have cataract surgery on 26 April and that’s still on schedule.)  Unfortunately, her doctor has mentioned the dreaded words “quality of life” which are truly frightening.  We both share a love of reading as well as knitting, and I’ve turned her on to both the Foreigner series and the Sebastian St. Cyr books.  Not to put too fine a point on that bad, her husband turned up with follicular lymphoma and has undergone radiation treatment for that.

And now for the ugly.  Saturday night when I went in to go to bed, I found little insect wings all over my nightstand — no actual insects, just about a hundred wings.  I did find one dead bug with wings still attached, and yes, the internet confirmed, it was a termite.  Then Monday when I went to take the garbage out, I found this:

It’s on the door jam of the sliding glass door.  I phoned the landlady and told her what I’d discovered.  She received the news with remarkable sangfoid, and told me who to call.  The guy came out later in the day and confirmed the obvious.  They are now in discussion as to just what is going to happen next.  Tis the season for their swarms and since it was rainy last week, there may be a backlog of people needing “intervention” before they can get to me.   At left is either how they got in, or how they were already in and got out.

In a way, I hope that they were already in the wall by the door and that the edge of the door is all eaten up and they have to replace that sliding glass door, which I hate.   Took me a little bit to get over sleeping in a room with an outside door which not only doesn’t lock, it doesn’t even latch.  I’ve got a piece of PVC pipe cut to length and put in the door track to prevent it from opening, and I did put a padlock on my back gate for all the good that does.  Knowing the pipe is there helps.  Kinda.   Now I have termites.  Ugh.

Well, here’s something nice to take my mind off it.

The Quiet Music of Gently Falling Snow

Is a wonderful book by writer and illustrator Jackie Morris that blossomed from the series of Christmas cards she has done each year to benefit the Help Musicians Charity.  She collected all the ones she’s done so far into a book and then hand-crafted an equally exquisite series of interconnected stories to go with each of them.  Her delightfully detailed paintings beg to be poured over and examined for every delicious detail.  Yes, you could read this book aloud to some lucky child, or you can read it silently to your own inner child.  It’s one of those books that sings a siren song about the hours you might spend snuggled up in some peaceful comfy place savoring a truly special read.  Give yourself a treat.

Hold Onto Your Brain

Got this from Twisted Sifter’s site here.  Truly mind blowing combination of art and baking.

Enjoy!

Septover, Octember, and a Nearing Vember

Thirty days have September,
April, June and peanut butter
All the rest have 31,
Except my granny
Who has a little red wagon. . .

The Autumnal Equinox has come and gone, when day and night balanced in the scales of the year.  The nights lengthen steadily and the world is cooling.  We’ve been in the mid-80’s F/26+ C for about two weeks now, and this weekend we are predicted to dip down into the high 70’s F/23+ C.

We’re going away this October, mom and I, back to Pearland, Tx, to stay with cousin EYJ and her husband.  Mother will visit her only remaining sibling, a brother, aged 96.  He is still doing well physically, but mentally he has begun to deteriorate.  As the saying goes, the lights are on but nobody’s home.  We will be taken to Galveston to meet Miss Raelyn Rose, for whom I knitted greatly earlier in the year.   On the way back, we will stop in Round Top, a town knee deep in family history and famous ancestors, and sojourn a night in a house of historic significance on several counts.  The black cat will stay in the pet hotel at Petsmart for the duration.

I’ve been in kind of a lull lately.  I’ve grown obsessed with the art of Anne Bachelier, she of the flaming oranges, whose art is shown in castles and cathedrals, and other old dwellings repurposed into galleries (which is where I first discovered her), and in New York and San Francisco, and other far flung cities, whose blog I have been following for some time.  Ms. Bachelier is four months my senior, French, and her blog, written in French (oddly enough) is as impenetrable in its way to my two years of high school French as her paintings are mysterious and  imponderable.  I have made a host of her paintings into puzzles on Jigsaw Planet’s website, where one may convert any image into a jigsaw puzzle.

I loved working those 500- piece and 1000- piece jigsaw puzzles one could get when I was a child.  My dad and I would work them on a card table.  He got onto them when he was a traveling salesman as something to do in the motel room at night in the days before there was a television in every room.  We had a collection of them tucked away.  I associate them with school holidays at Christmas and Thanksgiving and with boiled sweets and ribbon candy from Christmas stockings.  You can’t buy jigsaw puzzles like that any more.  Photographs of foreign places or works of art.  Two houses ago, when you could still buy those kinds of jigsaw puzzles, I worked puzzles on the big dining room table I had then.  I bought the table from a colleague at work.  It had been her parents’, stored in a storage building in the back yard, whose roof leaked on the top (particle board and veneer) and ruined it.  But my dad and I took the top off, stripped the legs and skirting, put a new top on, and refinished it.  I acquired chairs, and that was my dining room table for years until I bought the table and chairs and china cabinet I have now.

That was in the days of portable cassette players, when I recorded my own cassettes, and listened to the tape du jour on my portable player on endless loop while I worked puzzles and let my mind wander where it would.  But puzzles got harder and harder to find, and I got cats (one of whom would eat cardboard, which is a form of paper, after all . . .).  I framed about six of the puzzles after I worked them.  I still have a couple of them.  One of the puzzles was of King Tut’s gold coffin — I sold that one when I moved.  I still have one of a painting of a vase of flowers which hangs in my bedroom.  Another one I still have is of an embroidery sampler, whose motto reads “So much of what we learn of love we learn at home.”   It hung in the kitchen of the duplex, and now hangs on the wall between the dining area and the living room.

So for a couple of weeks now, I’ve been working jigsaw puzzles of Anne Bachelier’s paintings I’ve created on Jigsaw Planet, and listening to various Rhapsody playlists.  Lately it’s been the music of Erik Wøllo, a Norwegian composer.  As I type this, the song happens to be a dialog between acoustic guitar and oboe (cor Anglais?). Typically, I’ll be listening to internet radio, hear something that strikes my fancy, see who it’s by and look them up on Rhapsody and make a playlist of what’s available and listen to it.  Rhapsody lists an artist’s work from most recent to oldest, and I deliberately construct the playlist chronologically from oldest to newest.  That way I get to listen to the artist’s work evolve through time.

I’ve started knitting projects but haven’t finished any yet.  I have a baby afghan to finish before we leave on our trip in October, which is tomorrow (October, not the trip.)  I have to go out tomorrow to get my flu shot.  I’ve ordered a new mouse.  I go through them fairly quickly.  I have a style I like.  It should come tomorrow.

In the latest episode in the unfolding saga of my BFF’s life, her car was acting up.  It’s a 22-year-old Honda.  She hasn’t had it that long — she bought it used.  The engine kept trying to die.  Turns out only two of its four spark plugs were working (!) and the spark plug wires needed replacing as well.  That’ll be $300, thank you very much.  At least it was something fixable, and relatively cheap to fix, as fixing cars go.

My car, the Silver Beetil (as it is now known) has 3500+ miles on it now and is about to get 1200 or so more this coming month.  I shall have had it a year come 22 November.  I have to get it inspected and renew the registration come October.  That’ll be almost $100, thank you very much.   I can’t renew the registration until I get it inspected.  I may do it all tomorrow while I’m out getting shot for the flu.  (I’ll have to break the news to the oil change guys where I get my car inspected that the old Crayola that they got such a kick out of has gone to that Great Parking Lot in the Sky. . . .) At some point before our upcoming trip, I also need to take the glass cleaner and clean the inside of the car windows.  I still have a coupon for a free car wash.  I’ll get it washed and vacuum it before then, too.  Busy, busy. . .

I Don’t Know Much About Art, But I Know What I Like

That work of art that artists create is filtered through who he or she is, what they have experienced, and their own unique perspective of the world from where they stand within it. They imbue their works of art with their own meanings based on their own uniquely personal gestalt.  So, too, does the viewer of that art see it through the filter of his or her own self, life experiences, and unique perspective on the world.

It is the miracle of art that the work of art itself is the same thing everybody sees, yet no two people see the same thing, experience it in the same way, or take away the same meaning from it.

In this context, art criticism, art critics, and the reams and reams of writings about art are ludicrous.  Knowing about an artist may put what they might have to say in some kind of context, but when it comes right down to it, a piece of art either speaks to you or it doesn’t.  You are either interested in listening to what it has to say or you aren’t.  What makes a work of art great is how much you want to take it home with you and keep it forever.

The Littlest Birds Sing the Prettiest Songs, and Other Gleanings

The song inspired the rug for the youngest Soule at Soulemama.  If you think the saga of seven Soules (+ granny) on a farm in Maine, where gardening and raising sheep, and shearing, spinning and dying wool and knitting and cooking happens, along with a good deal else of interest, then wander over and check out the blog.  Now I’m going to have to close Winamp, so I can open Rhapsody (Rhapsody doesn’t like Winamp for some reason), and see what Rhapsody has by The Be Good Tanyas and listen to it.

Writers and their companimals.  C.J. and Jane and two kitties,  Terri Windling and Tilly (see left), Bear and the Giant Ridiculous Dog.  Sharon Lee and Steve Miller and a quartet of Maine Coons.

I neologized that word a while ago:  “companimals” — companion + animal.   I like it.  I’d like it to become the name of the cats, dogs, ferrets, bunnies, rats, guinea pigs, etc., who share our space and our lives with us, who become our companions, confidants, sidekicks.

Non Sequitur comic strip © 2014 Wiley Miller

The above one is relevant to me and to the baby girl, the grey one, who has been sneezing a lot more than I have lately, bless her.

“Something Familiar” © 2013 Peter de Sève

I love this.  I love his art.  If you take The New Yorker magazine, you’ll have seen his covers.

I’d put this on my Tumblr blog, but it bears repeating … until the world finally gets it.

For my bro. Sometimes broken cellos need company until they’re fixed.

A little symmetry never goes amiss.

Building Bridges

A bridge requires two things
As you should know,
A place to come from
And a place to go.
But as to which is which,
With fickle imprecision
The bridge can never
Come to a decision.

 

Poem © 2014 The Owl Underground
Image “A Delicate Balance” © 2014 by G. C. Myers, all rights reserved.

I’m Just an Owl in a Lark World

Today is a “hang day” — which means I’ll be staying up way past my bedtime in order to jicky my sleep cycle around so I can get up at 8 a.m. tomorrow to make a 9 a.m. VA appointment and then get up at 4:30 a.m. on Wednesday to pick up my mom at 5:30 a.m. and get her to Covenant Hospital by 6 a.m. so we can wait around half the day for her to have an upper endoscopy.  (Been there, done that, four or five times already, and have been clued that I should bring a book and a bottle of liquid refreshment. . .)

Nobody thinks it’s weird for people to go to bed at 10 or 11 o’clock at night and get up at 7 or 8 o’clock in the morning to go to a 9 to 5 day job.  It’s perfectly reasonable to want to go to work fresh and well-rested.  But somehow people think it’s weird for you to want to go to sleep at 6 a.m. and sleep until 2:30 p.m. so you can go to work fresh and well rested at 3 p.m. and work until midnight.  I’ve learned over the years that I’m fighting an uphill battle.  If somebody was expected to show up for a doctor’s appointment (at the VA) at 3 o’clock in the morning, they’d get pretty indignant about it, but it’s somehow all right to expect me to do the equivalent . . . .  I’m pretty much a natural night owl.  If left to my own devices, I would get up in the afternoon and stay up most of the night.   The different drum I march to is perforce muffled, because I’m marching when most people are sleeping . . .

Weatherwise, it’s 19F/-7.22C, at just after 9 a.m., according to my weather widget.  If it’s going to make it to a high of 40F/4.44C, it had better get a move on . . .  In the meantime, it’s a mostly sunny day.

Earlier, I poked my head out to take a look around and see what could be seen.  You will notice at left that somebody has already left for work. 
Some of the local wildlife is already out and about.  See if you can spot one of our habitues in the above photo.  No?  Here’s a clue in “black and white” at right.

Somebody left a box of something, probably pizza or a similarly containerized  comestible, in the parking lot and our resident grackle contingent are making out like bandits. I did a video of them, but after previewing it, I’ve realized I’m never going to make it as a steadycam photographer.  You’ll be glad I realized the video is too vertiginous to post here.  However, here’s a still.  The male is the large and splendidly black one. 

While I’m up, I think I’m going to try starting on the vest I’m knitting for my mom and maybe watch some TV later.  I recorded the Rosetta – Philae comet landing thing, but haven’t watched it yet.  I’m sure there’s other stuff that’s been recorded but not yet watched.

While usually, when I settle down to knit, the kitties find a place near by and settle down to nap, there have been several “incidents” when I have gotten unsolicited “help” from the more hirsute members of the  escadrille . . . whether I wanted it or not.
© Brooke McEldowney, “9 Chickweed Lane”

© Darby Conley, “Get Fuzzy”

The above comic reminded me of the other day when the waste management truck “dropped*” the dumpster which is less than 50 feet from my bedroom.   We had kitties bailing out of the bed right and left. The cat in “Get Fuzzy” is named Bucky, and Conley has perfectly captured that vocal mixture of egotism and obnoxiousness that is the hallmark of the Siamese.   (I speak from 16 years of experience. The white cat is half Siamese — the wrong half.)

 

© Darby Conley, “Get Fuzzy”

*The truck can’t actually drop the dumpster, but the operator can set it down a lot harder than it needs to be set down at seven cotton-picking o’clock in the morning, already.

One Task Left

. . . But it’s a complicated one — putting the piece of foam board over the bedroom window, which I will do tomorrow.  Today, I got the slender pieces of wood screwed onto the other piece of pegboard, moved the piece of plywood out from the wall, and put the pegboard in place.  Then I got the hooks hung and everything hung on the hooks.  I taped postcards from friends and other such eye candy up above the one pegboard.  In addition, the caster on the leg of my chair had been moving back and forth across this one area of the plywood causing the surface to splinter and a rut to be dug into the wood, so I unscrewed the chair mat from the plywood, moved it forward to cover this area and screwed it back down.

Then I hung the remaining pictures over the bookcases.  All four of these are the artwork of Susan Seddon Boulet from old calendars.  There are two unicorns on the wall above my Marian artwork that’s sitting on top of the bookcase.  (That’s Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré in the gilt frame on the furthest right, and Luc-Olivier Merson‘s “Rest on the Flight into Egypt” in the gilt frame at furthest left) Seddon Boulet is perhaps best known for her goddess paintings.  I’ve two of them above the Gaelic and Chinese goddess statuettes  That’s Ixchel the Mayan jaguar goddess on the left and Spider Woman/Grandmother (Na’ashjéii Asdzáá) on the right.  Spider Woman features in Diné Bahaneʼ  the creation myth of the Diné.

I also put the plug strip on the bottom of my little reader’s table so I have a place to plug in my internet radio, a little desk lamp and my Kindle.

The only little things left to do in the office now, are get new glass for the picture that fell and rehang it, find a place for my new vacuum, and do something with the three remaining boxes and their contents.

This morning, I paid my August rent, and went to the grocery store as I have dinner guests coming Saturday (hence the “final push” to get everything done).  Then early this afternoon, I fixed my BFF’s computer again.  She had gotten a browser hijacker popup thingie that was driving her crazy, so I got rid of that, downloaded Malwarebytes and did a scan and cleaned up the odds and ends from the annoying little virus thing. I showed her how to run a scan.  McAfee came with the computer, but I don’t think much of that program.  The free version of Malwarebytes is better than the “full up” version of McAfee.

Earlier, I washed a load of towels, (including a new set of burgundy towels for my full bath) and then washed my bed linens.  I just now made my bed.  Once I post this, I’ll take my shower, and go to bed.  I go daddysit bright and early tomorrow morning (7:30) so my mom can go to the beauty saloon.