values quilt

No, not family values or morals type values but color type values. Lights and darks. I found a tutorial here and decided it might just help gnat brain to focus. Lots of small steps and quick results.

It's fun to combine the colors, trying not to look at the cloth as my favorite this or that but just as lights and darks. I tried it with a dark center, but didn't like it.

fall

I was going to call this post "autumn" to sound more sophisticated, but fall is more appropriate. We went from a 3 month burn ban due to dry weather to flooding and erosion due to torrential rain. I heard reference to a typhoon today...We fell into autumn.

Ages ago I did an on line dye project with a group from Delphi. We all dyed a rainbow of fabric with a set formula adding a little more of each color to the dye bath for each next color. It wasn't bright primaries. I made a simple quilt top to display the fabric then folded it up and forgot about it. Today when I was looking for fabric for another color based quilt I found it. It's bigger than I thought, with an additional border, it's ready to be sandwiched and stitched into an actual quilt.

I kind of like it but a border will make it so that middle strip of red to purple doesn't run away off the edge. Wow. It was so long ago that both Mom and Dad were alive when I did the dye project and I was living in my favorite if decaying apartment in Juneau. Huh.

harvest

I took the buckets off of one of the potato plants today. Here they are back in June, one bucket deep and looking nice and healthy. The one in the back is the one that's now a pile of Yukon gold potatoes.
Geez, the grass was green in June. It's black and brown now with late season sprouts coming up now that it's finally raining. Black grass is really ugly.
Here they are, my first potatoes. Ever. It sort of freaked me out to have them actually appear in the pile of soil. It's been a tough summer for cool weather crops, too hot for months and suddenly rainy as hell. I was afraid the plants were going to rot with out making potatoes, but here they are. Food. I think I might just do it again next year. Isn't that what planting a garden is about, giving hope, thinking ahead and doing it again, but just a little better?

normal weather for now

It's finally cooled off a lot, back to 50's and light rain...like a good summer day in Haines. Inspiring enough to get back to the bead table where this fine gentleman waits for me. He's a scientific replica of an adult male skull I got ages ago in Ketchikan at the Ray Troll store. I was still working on the tour boats at the time so 130 bucks for a life sized skull didn't seem outrageous. He's been my traveling companion for a bunch of moves in and out of storage and various houses and apartments but I still haven't given him a name.

The new bead project is a smaller fish called a stickleback. A 3 spined stickleback to be precise. When the tide is really high, parts of the golf course where we walk most days floods and these wee fish get washed up in to the grass. There was one in a shrinking puddle one day, I either gave him a heart attack or he survived the sweaty-palmed run from the puddle to the stream. I have this idea that he was a little shook up when he hit the water and totally confused as to how he ended up in that stream instead of the one he came from!

fair hair

I got fair hair at the Southeast Alaska State Fair this weekend! Alaska is soooo big (how big is it?) we have more than one state fair. This is the smaller, more funky version of the agricultural fair in Palmer where they have those big-ass cabbages. I sold some stuff, volunteered a couple of days and got fair hair...in other words the hermit participated! ...and had some good fun. Hermit participation is a very good thing. Fair hair is a pretty good thing and chatting with a really interesting guy until all hours of the morning is REALLY good!

If any of my 5 followers are voters in Alaska, time to jump on the Bob Poe bandwagon (see Mudflats for more info on this potential governor dude). He was here for the fair, he campaigned some, bought coffee at the Market and had the patience to stand in the really long (local brew) beer line yesterday! Bob Poe for governor!

annoyed at best

One of our best weekend walks is a trail that goes from the end of the road above us to Allen road over closer to town. About 3/4 of a mile through the woods then back through a neighborhood, along the highway, up the hill then home. It's the only long walk that doesn't involve a lot of time walking along the edge of the highway. Summer road construction means lots of trucks carrying fill and asphalt are zooming up and down the road.

I have spent the past 12 years being as responsible a dog owner as I can, keeping her on her leash if there's a chance she'll get in trouble, picking up poop if it's where other people might walk, and doing my best to keep her out of fights. When Ceilidh was younger, she was a fighter but now she's 12 or 13 years old. Enter asshat "babysitting" a pitbull. As in pathetic plea "it's not my dog, I'm babysitting" when I screeched at him because the dog had just attacked Ceilidh as we walked up the road. I fucking hate that sort of helpless crap, control the dog! This morning it happened again, but I was carring a stick just in case. I hate to hit a dog, but I'll defend mine if he won't control the one he's "babysitting" from inside the house while it runs loose.

sunny still, distracted

I'm supposed to be getting ready for the Fair next week, good thing I had a shit load of earrings and a stack of cards already made! The sun makes me do stuff like scrape and paint and caulk and rake and weed and plant and (according to my bff neighbor) sit around and read all day.
A fine example of what I've been doing, see the board under the door that her highness is stepping over? There's a second one at the top of the door. These cover the huge gaps left by the rocket surgeon that did the remodel and just didn't see fit to actually finish the job! I'm finding more and more stuff like this, places where rain can get in and cause rot and damage. WTF?

Dad would have yelled so loud about how I reached the top of the door to screw and glue that board! Step ladder on the left...2 legs on the top stair, two legs on blocks of wood on the bottom stair. Can ashes roll over in their 'grave'?
A wee painting, 2.5 inches square, I'll sell at the Fair along with some earrings and lino cut cards.

yum.

My trip to Juneau was just what the doctor ordered! 3 days of fireworks, parades and sunshine all under the special glow of 'our governor is a quitter!'. Happy Independence Day Alaska, she quit!

Friday night was fireworks as seen from Frederick and Terry's balcony above my old apartment. They're done on the 3rd just before Midnight so Juneau can be the first capitol city to blow them up...I had no idea that's why they're on the 3rd, but there ya go. Lots of bang crash and sparkly shine, I love fireworks.

Saturday I watched the Juneau parade with Theresa, Carol, Chelsea, Dave and Chris. Blazing sunshine, no wind...the kids in the parade were wilting by the time it passed the 2nd time. Yup, long parade short route is typical Juneau, I love it. Mrs. Palin didn't show up for that or for the 49 star flag raising 50th anniversary celebration...even though she was in town. (quitter face) Stuart Sliter and some of the other Miss Alaska representatives were in the Juneau parade though! Much better image of an Alaskan woman than the former governor.

Traffic getting out of town was hell so we didn't go over to Douglas, just too hot and too congested. Chelsea and I drove out the C&C's in their truck while Chris and Carol tried to dodge traffic on their motorcycles...we got there first even after buying ice cream down town!

Lots of beer and bugs at Carol's repeated again Sunday. Big wide grin spending days with friends.

Joab and I hung out a bit, he had some of my furniture to give back from when I moved south (hated it). He was also on his way to pass through here (yesterday) so he brought the rest of the stuff. He's been having a tough time, Natasha got hooked on oxycontin and then heroin! He's helping her through it with some sort of shots...methadone? Poor kid, poor Dad!

Ok so (catching up)...I went to pay the water bill today. Crappy water big bill...but nice folks. Anyway...I go to pay the bill and what do I get?
Seriously, can you believe it? About 1/2 a gallon of fresh strawberries! They've got a big garden that was a homestead and the strawberries are running amok... run this way, baby!

4th of July

I may just have to go to Juneau for the 4th of July celebrations. I just read that the community across the water from Juneau is going to have Miss Alaska 1958 as their Grand Marshall. She's the mother of one of my high school friends...a friend that died (she "drank herself to death") in her early 30's. Jill was always obsessed with her weight and physical beauty...I didn't even know her mom was Miss Alaska. I feel like I should honor Jill's mom, I can't imagine having a child die a sorrowful death.
Here is Miss Alaska, Stuart Sliter, getting Casey Stengel's autograph when she did a tour of the states when she was the reigning queen. When I knew Mrs. Sliter, she was the wife of a commercial fisherman, mother of 3 kids and usually hosting a party of some sort. Their house was a lively, rough and ready place that I loved to visit.

a little solstice

We all walk in the same places. It's been a few weeks since these tracks showed up down by the golf course, Ive been meaning to get a picture to share before the rains come. Small moose, small bear and average woman feet.The cabbage before.

Nancy Pearl shushing the cabbage that is overwhelming her.

A potato flower! Now that there are flowers, the tubers are forming under the earth...magic.