A recent photo from the backyard. I'm sure those leaves have all blown away now. We had a big windstorm last night that blew down a section of our old fence. Oops.

From a walk in the woods this weekend. We walked over the same path a couple of times and each time I wanted to stop and take pictures of this tree. The range of colors was so amazing. As I tinkered with this in Photoshop I could see why. There are so many subtle shades of red, brown, purple and green here.

When I was younger fall was my favorite season because it had the moodiest weather. Now it's become my favorite because it's the best for photography.

Our backyard is FULL of mushrooms. There are at least four different kinds. This is the most spectacular, a Fly Amanita almost as wide as a dinner plate. There's a stand of four or five of them but this is the biggest.

Aidan was impressed. I gave him the speech about never eating any mushrooms he finds. Something is eating them, though. I'm not sure if it's slugs or squirrels.

After I posted yesterday I remembered that I still had 1000 Artist Journal Pages from the library. I glanced through there and was inspired by the huge variety of styles. judywatt is in there!

I'm trying to get back to editing my pictures when I upload them. Here's one from today's walk.

I was going to do NaNoWriMo for November but I didn't want to write a traditional novel. Since I've been trying to get deeper with my art and uncover my own symbols and meaning, I thought it would be neat to stretch the limits of NaNo by writing something totally stream-of-consciousness.

Then I started worrying that my consciousness would not be able to stream for 2000 words a day.

I had intended to re-read books like Poemcrazy and Wild Mind for inspiration. A strange thing happened. These books are all about words and I got irritated by the thought of dealing with words.

I had planned to try making an art journal with whatever images came out of each day's writing. I found that I was much more excited about the journal part than the writing part.

I decided to create my own challenge of writing around 300 words a day to get me going, then working on a journal page out of that.

Mixed results so far.

Man, this journaling thing is not as easy as it looks. First there's the challenge of just making a goodlooking page. I know a lot of techniques but it's not easy to combine them into something cohesive on the page. Then there's the problem of having to wait for everything to dry between layers, so each page turns into an all-day project. And finally, what am I supposed to write in this thing?? I feel a lot of confusion between the type of journal pages I see people sharing online, and the type of thing I would normally write in my journal.

Little by little I'm creeping along. I spent the whole weekend watching tutorials that Teesha Moore kindly posted on Youtube. I followed along and did a spread in her style.

Her pages are absolutely beautiful but it turns out her style is different from mine. I'm more of a "tear it off and slap it down" person, especially for something like this. It's important to me that it be spontaneous. I got frustrated with all the different stages. Of course, if I didn't plaster everything with gel medium it would dry a lot faster. Teesha uses adhesive tape so her work is faster and neater and her pages don't buckle.

But to me, the mess is part of the appeal. I like the idea of slapping something down that captures my mood for the day.

Next up, Juliana Coles, with her "Extreme Visual Journal" style. Her methods are geared toward getting at the raw heart of things and they're supposed to be scary. Which is good, because they terrify me.

That was a lot of rambling. Here's a random photo from the other night:

In case you haven't heard, November is Art Every Day Month. This is a daily challenge similar to artsomofo but organized through Leah's website. It's a little cumbersome because people post links to their blogs and you have to click on the different links to see what they're doing, but there's also a Flickr group.

It looks like a great group of people so if you didn't get enough daily art in October, you can sign up for this. Leah stresses that you can sign up any time so don't worry about missing the start of the month.

I looked at my Etsy shop stats this morning and my Ice Cream Sandwich cat toy got almost 450 views overnight. I don't think it's featured in an Etsy treasury but I have no idea where else it showed up. These little mysteries drive me crazy!

Oh well, I'm glad to get the exposure wherever it happened. Maybe it will show up later on Google.

From a walk last week. I wish today was as pretty. It's dark and pouring. If I'm going to get anything done I'll need to turn on all the lights in the house and crank up some energetic music.

I just looked over my 101 Things in 1001 Days list. Turns out I had completed several things this summer without really noticing. Those were the easy ones, the things that weren't too much of a stretch to do. I went to the Seattle Art Museum while on vacation and took Aidan to the Enchanted Forest while my mother-in-law was visiting. Things like that.

Actually, it seemed effortless to go to the museum while I was in Seattle, but one of the reasons I chose Seattle for vacation was because I had that item on my list.

There are a lot of items that I don't care much about anymore, either because my goals have changed or because I was padding the list in the first place. I have a little over a year to finish up and I expect about half of them won't be done. I'm not going to work on crossing off items that don't fit my current goals and it seems unfair to just delete them. So lots of money will get donated to charity in the end, which is also a good outcome.

( The state of the list now. )

I interviewed Nicky Falkenhayn yesterday for the Portland Open Studios Tour. We talked for about an hour and a half and she is SO nice. She started out as a fiber artist, and we talked about what I do, so she asked if I had seen Mandy Greer's installation last spring at the Museum of Contemporary Craft.

No!

I hadn't even heard about it. I would have loved to see it. Now I'm cranky that I totally missed it.

On the positive side, now I know about her art and it's fascinating. She's a Northwest artist (Seattle) so there should be other chances to see her work.

A friend asked for info about jam making. I'm not the best source since I am very lazy and do the minimum that yields edible results, but I'll post this here in case anyone else can use it.

I make freezer jam so I don't have to worry about canning. Since I can't be bothered to have pectin on hand, this is a very loose (ie: runny) jam that could also be called berry sauce. It's delicious heated up and served over ice cream. You might need to use a spoon to get it onto your toast but that doesn't stop my kids from devouring it almost faster than I can make it.

Triple Berry Freezer Jam

4 c strawberries, hulled and halved (it's good if some are slightly under-ripe)
1 c blackberries
1 c raspberries
1/3 c lemon juice
3 c granulated sugar
1 tsp butter (optional)

Put the berries into a heavy-bottomed pot and mix in the sugar and lemon juice. Crush the berries with a potato masher until most are smashed. If you like large chunks of fruit in your jam, you can leave more of them whole. Let this mixture stand for an hour.

Add the butter if you want. I've read that it helps prevent foaming and it does seem to help.

Cook over medium heat, stirring often, until the mixture comes to a full boil. Boil for about 10 minutes, stirring almost constantly. The jam will get very soupy and some foam will form on top. Skim that off if it bothers you. If you want the jam thicker you can boil it for longer but you may lose some nutrients.

Turn off heat and let the jam cool until it's not steaming in your face. Ladle it into clean pint jars. Be sure to leave some room at the top for expansion in the freezer! Loosely cover the jars and let them cool to room temperature on the counter before tightening the lids and putting them into the freezer.

Makes about 3 1/2 pints.


Some notes about jam: Strawberries that are not completely ripe are good because they have a little more pectin, which helps the jam thicken. Not that this jam will ever get very thick. Don't try to double the recipe. If you want to make a double batch, use two pots. I can't stand the canning jars with the rings but some genius decided to manufacture plastic screw-on lids for the Kerr jars. That's what I use.

Oh, and this recipe doesn't have much sugar. A lot of jam recipes use 6 c of fruit and 6 c of sugar. That seemed excessive so I cut it and so far everyone's been happy.

Good luck!

Christian and I went to Seattle for a few days to celebrate our anniversary. We had a lovely time. Since it's not far from Portland, I'd been up there a few times but this was the first time in six years.



We walked a LOT. We had a nice dinner with friends. We saw Moon in the theater that was half a block from our hotel. We napped. We rode the monorail. We shopped a little and ate quite a bit. We saw an entertaining, thought-provoking exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum (Target Practice: Painting Under Attack 1949-1978).

We also went to the sculpture park.



That's the Space Needle framed by an Alexander Calder sculpture called Eagle.

On the way there we stopped near Castle Rock, WA. This was the view when we got off the freeway.



That's the Cowlitz River. If Castle Rock were a little more of a town, instead of 2000+ people, I would really be tempted to live there. This spot has a great feel. People floating down the river on rafts added to the relaxing atmosphere.



I miss rafting. Haven't done it since I lived in Sacramento. This is the kind of rafting where you get in the raft with your cold drinks and float downriver taking in the scenery, not the kind in The River Wild, which we happened to see on tv at the hotel. It's a peaceful pastime.

But even without rafting, after a few days away I'm feeling pretty refreshed. :-)

I'm having a hard time settling down to get much done. Saturday Christian's mom arrives for a two-week visit. Normally I'd be running around cleaning in preparation but we already did major cleaning for our previous guests so I'm free to slack off.

I want to be on vacation already! Next week we are going up to Seattle for a few days for our anniversary. Can't WAIT. We're going to go to the Seattle Art Museum and the Frye Art Museum and do some touristy stuff.

Then in September I'm going to SF to visit museums. A friend from San Diego is going to fly up and meet me there for as much artsy stuff as we can pack into a couple of days.

I'm ready to go somewhere else and see something new, but instead I should be editing the photos I took for the Portland Open Studios Tour.

Gotta focus.

I've been working on stitched pieces and on paintings but have been slow to take photos and get them uploaded. Here's one that I finished in July.

Nest


It's 6" by 6". The photo looks ok on my computer but now that I uploaded it to Flickr it looks out of focus. That's why I'm posting the small version here. ;-)

Despite spending so much time on photography the past couple of years I am still struggling to get good shots of my own products and art. Might be time to invest in a lightbox.

My husband set up a new site for me. Many smooches to him! It's here if you want to take a look. Most of the stuff in the galleries has been posted here already but on the new site it's collected in one place. This one will be replacing the old Caelista site.

Let me know if you have any thoughts. :-)

It's been crazy hot here. Yesterday was 106 and today is supposed to be 108. Last night we took Aidan to the fountain in the park to cool off along with about 100 other kids.

Right after arriving and getting wet:


He discovered there was an ice cream truck parked nearby:


After ice cream is the best time to practice your "Jedi moves":



This last one is a shot that I took for my mom to show her some of the changes in our house but I'll show you too. For the last couple of months we've been painting, moving furniture, etc etc. This is part of the family room after we painted the walls a very pale blue called Constellation, got a slipcover for the dark red couch, added some throw pillows that I made, and rescued a coffee table from Goodwill. I am SO happy with this table. Christian was not convinced we should buy it. It was dark wood, tall for a coffee table, and had about 3" of metal tipping each of the legs. We cut off the metal and painted the table and it's perfect. Not bad for a total of $40.


I think the coffee table might have been from Ikea or someplace similar, originally. Does anyone recognize it?

I came across this tutorial for making shades out of recycled milk jugs. I saw something like this on Design*Sponge or Apartment Therapy but can't find it now. The design reminds me of a couple of Ikea lamps.



Caroline Saul is making fantastic sculptures and lampshades like this one



out of recycled plastic milk bottles.

And here's a lamp that arrives packaged in its own shade:

Since we've been doing a lot of painting and reorganizing in the house, we've also been changing out some of the lighting. I just ran across this Copper Pendant Lamp by Tom Dixon and I totally covet it now.



Here's a link that talks about how it's made.

Too bad it's a little out of my price range!

Here's another picture with a bunch of them.

This was my Project 365 photo from October 15. Sometimes I was really scrambling for subjects for the daily picture.This little lady was right outside my front door.

Field near my house on a fall morning. My first experiment with processing other than the most basic functions. Still working my way through the backlog!

Ok, I admit that I was at a lovely zoo filled with exotic animals and I was shooting photos of...plants.