Rhetorical question: How cool is my wife?!?

Kim called me at about 1:45 this morning and said, "I just delivered a baby. I just ****ing delivered a baby. In a recliner."
 

 

buffalo

Here the first buffalo nickel I've found with my detector! Dad found one first, then I found one about five minutes later.

 

 

 

 

 I walked into my living room a few days ago to find this. I thought it was pretty comical.

 

ink trouble

I tried to run a few more of the garlic prints tonight, but discovered that 39% humidity presents a real challenge when using waterbased inks without anything to slow the drying time. The black ink I was using really was drying out faster than I could use it.

Normally it dries annoyingly fast. I often have to add a little water after each print, and it never lasts through two prints. Tonight, though, I really didn't have enough time to roll it out once. Pretty weird.

I think that if I had worked really quickly, I could have done it, but I think I'd be better off either getting some oil based black (slower drying) to finish out the prints, or buying a medium to add to the ink to slow drying.

Frustrating!

Latest house drawing

This one is 8 x 10 inches, in black and white. It's the first b & w house drawing I've done.

I'm somewhat annoyed with my camera skills. The photos are dimmer than I had thought. I really just need to experiment with the settings, and stop being lazy and get out the clunky old tripod I have instead of holding the camera in my hands. I got a little bit of a headache trying to use photo editing software on these.

The customer picked up the drawing today and seemed very happy.

dream art

 

I had a vivid dream last night that I had painted a somewhat large, detailed painting of the central area of Fourth Street Live; the scene included desks and tables for the Waterfront Development Commission and a bunch of store display mannequins in coats.

 

That's not something I would normally choose to depict in real life, but in my dream it was a pretty impressive painting. I was getting a lot of praise for it and was considering producing and selling giclèe prints of it.

 

My alarm woke me from this dream, and I was disappointed to find that my accomplishment was imaginary.

 

This morning at breakfast, while discussing putting out cookies for Santa:

Kim: "You know, some people put out carrot sticks for the reindeer."
J: "My Amelie [the girls' imaginary playmate in various capacities] leaves out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and also puts out twelve marshmallows for the reindeer."
E, sounding a little annoyed: "OK, now you're just making stuff up."

It doesn't look as good in writing. The delivery was great.

finally done

I finally finished my second reduction cut linoleum block print, except for the actual printing process of the remaining 15 or so to which I still need to apply the black.

 

This is done with water based Speedball inks, three colors, on white paper. 6 x 9 inches.

 

I'm happy with the results.
 

 

St. Nicholas Day

On the fifth, we all polished our shoes. Before bed, we sat them outside our front door.

Sometime during the night, somebody --St. Nick, presumably -- moved the shoes to the inside of the door and filled them with treats. I wonder why he moved them inside? Perhaps the thought crossed his mind that a raccoon or possum might just loooooooove a few chocolate oranges.

A few links

Well, I don't have a lot to say right now, so I'll do what people all over the Web do and just put up some links I like.

This first one is my favorite site for art. There are dozens of forums there for all sorts of art discussions; I think it's fantastic. It's a wonderful place to browse to look at both professional and amateur artwork and see it discussed by the artists themselves and other artists; I've found it very entertaining and very informative:

http://www.wetcanvas.com/

This metal detecting forum is my favorite. It was one of the first I found, and I immediately took a liking to it. Then the site was hacked and shut down. I thought it was gone for good, but then I found out that it was brought back up a few months after closure. It now has more traffic than ever, and there are lots of good discussions about metal detecting, equipment, research, fun finds, etc. One thing I really like about it is that it's not as visually irritating as some other sites. The profile pictures and graphics aren't as big and annoying. One other site I can name is a really good place for discussions and information, but aesthetically it's somewhere between The Redneck Comedy Tour and the singles ads in the back of an AARP magazine. I find The Friendly Metal Detecting Forum much easier on my eyes:

http://metaldetectingforum.com/

Here is a blog I put in the links on my sidebar here, but I like it so much that I must give it a mention in an actual post. Phil Plaitt, AKA The Bad Astronomer, focuses on astronomy (often with dazzling photos) but also delves into other science topics, skepticism, and the way science is discussed and presented in mainstream media and popular culture. He's also pretty funny.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/

Coin club newsletter

I got this in the mail yesterday; since I've been unable to attend a meeting for a few months, I opened it to see what I had missed. Some people who read this blog will find the first paragraph as peculiar as I did; the rest of you may not want to ask.

detecting

Dad and I went out detecting for a couple of hours on Saturday. We hunted the grassy slopes around a middle school that was built in the 1930s. I found a wheat cent from the 1950s and some odd little machine parts. Dad found a huge drill bit lying on the ground near the street, no doubt left over from roadwork. He also found about sixty cents.

 

I had a really good time, despite the lack of interesting finds, and I'm eager to get back out again.

 

 

Another Thanksgiving

Just as I am typing this I realize that I have no photos from Thanksgiving day at my parents' house. That's a shame, because it was a lovely afternoon with lots of loved ones.

 

This is a photo from my father-in-law's on Saturday, when we had Thanksgiving there. That gathering was a lot of fun, and very delicious; after the meal were some games of Uno and Clue Jr.

Grasshoppers

Erin's class studied bugs for the last few months, and they recently ended their studies by doing research projects. Each student could choose a topic, and Erin chose grasshoppers. We learned about them together, and then she had to prepare a tri-fold board for presentation.

 

She and I went on an expedition to E. P. Sawyer to catch a grasshopper for study. That seemed like a bit of a challenge for the middle of November, but since it was a sunny afternoon I thought we'd have some luck. After a bit of hunting we found a little one to examine and use for photos.

 

Kim and Erin worked hard together on preparing the board and setting out the important points of information. The grasshopper was set free where we found him. A few days later, we all attended the bug festival at school, where all the kids' projects were displayed.

 

Thanksgiving at Pewee Valley

Another late photo: The week before Thanksgiving we all had lunch with Jill and her class at school. It was lots of fun, and the food was great.