What's Up!

OK, first off, I can't believe that I have not posted in ten whole days! I mean, OMG! Sorry, my lovelies!

And there goes a whole lifetime supply of exclamation points. :(

Second, how about this goofy dog? It is bad enough that he's supposed to be a Golden, they of the friendly fun personalities and the gentle disposition of the late, lamented Mr. Jaspy. (And who can believe that it has been two years? I found two of his dog hairs painted onto the door of the hall bathroom. I wonder what the Sports Fan will say if we move and I want to take the bathroom door with me?) Back to Chance. OK, so he's a tripod and more of a Ruby Roo than a Mr. Jaspy-style Golden. He's really a big old sweetie pie. His father, Cody is sweet too but he's stubborn and not so anxious to please as this boy is.

Next up is what I've been up to. Quite a lot. Here's one of my two pages for the Treasure Art Trends Yahoo group's Christmas Chunky. I'd been diligently working on my idea for page No. 1 when page No. 2 pops into my head nearly full-blown. I had a couple of minor things to work out, but wowsers this one just happened and I'm pleased with it!

I stamped Versamark watermark ink on a piece (3 1/4") of pine green card stock and dusted it with Aztec Gold Perfect Pearls. Then I edged the card by dipping it in my fave Sunset Gold Lumiere. Once dried (laying on waxed paper), I ran it through the Xyron. Not good! I had to touch up most of them as the cellophane layer from the Xyron attracted the powder and there were some spots. The next time, I will Xyron first! I Xyroned a slightly bigger piece (3 1/2") of basic red card stock. Next, I worked on the backs. Finally, I added a tiny (1/16") gold-edged green reflective dot in each corner that you do not see here because I forgot to take the photo of one that already had the dots on it.Here's the back. I bought this star stamp almost without thinking. Certainly without any idea in mind. It has come to be one of those stamps you pick up time and again, particularly at Christmastime. The backs are 4" pieces of white card stock. I stamped my star in three colors of Marvy Matchables, red, blue, and pine green. Then I dotted Christmas Red Stickles randomly around the stars and signed it with a red gel pen. I love Stickles!

I also did 35 or so 4 x 4 pages for the Art Unraveled 2008 Technique Chunky book. More on those in another post. I'm happy with them but I'm not.

Finally, here's a big project that will be ongoing. I'm taking a class from Maggie Grey online. The class is free to those who purchase her latest book, Textile Translations: Mixed Media, from her new publishing company, D4Daisy Books. Maggie has asked us not to reveal the steps on our blogs. This is the cover for a book made of pelmet vilene, which is a really heavy Pellon. The decoration is a paper cast of a shell I had hanging around here. Thanks to Michelle Ward and the Street Team Challenges for getting me started on those!

Here's a shot of the entire book cover, opened out. I may add more embroidery and will almost certainly add more beads.

The Last 2008 Calendar Journal

Here's the last calendar journal of 2008 for the Yahoo group, CalendarGirlz Engagement Calendar project. This is Lisa's "Under the Tuscan Sun" calendar. I always get stumped with each and every journal I receive. I've done this one before because someone else chose it too. That was a different month though, so there were other photos. It's generally the photos that prompt me as to what to write.

I always use the same stamps to put the number of the month on the last page. So this is the last month of the project, except for doing the month of November in my own Calendar Journal which at the moment seems to be lost. I don't know if it has even been mailed! What I don't get is why I'm not upset about it. All along, everyone has said how fabulous it is. I don't think I've ever seen any photos or scans of it!

Tag Happy!

My watercolor rendering of a copy of Barbara Roth's drawing of Monet's home at Giverny. I took a class from her at Art Unraveled in August, 2008. This is what I did in class.

My pal Julee tagged me so now I have to come up with 6 secrets about myself. Do I have any secrets? If I did, I certainly wouldn't be telling, now would I? Oh. Well, yes, that is the object of this exercise.

1. Inside my head somewhere, I am 5"8" and 135 pounds. I wear skinny jeans and cashmere sweaters with high heeled boots and handknit wool socks every day, except for when I'm skiing. I live in the mountains and don't have to work. We have lots of dogs, most of them ridiculously large or ridiculously small.


2. In my garages, you can find: a green 2006 MINI Cooper S Sidewalk Convertible, a yellow Mercedes SLK Convertible, a red Jeep Wrangler, a green 1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee Ltd., a midnite blue 2007 Jeep Commander, and a yellow Lambo Gaillardo. It's a Lambo. Who cares what year it is? These are just my personal cars. The Sports Fan has his own.


3. My house is of post and beam log construction with field stone. It has lots of windows and many rooms, often with just one purpose such as a sewing room, an art room where I paint watercolors, a print room where I do bookbinding and different types of art printing, and an exercise room.


4. I have been blonde since birth.


5. I am happiest when I am making something or when I'm just spending time with the Sports Fan and our dogs.


6. Two Golden Retreivers follow me around all day.

I decided not to name anyone to do the 7 secrets post because people are still mad at me for making them do the last one. Same goes for this. I'll do the posts but not make my friends do it, okay?

After Rather than Before and After!

These are just the after pictures. And actually, they are more like the during pictures. This is a work in progress and I sure hope it continues to progress! I'm sorry that I don't have any before photos here. I know I've taken them, but I just can't recall when, so they aren't easy to find.

Even the shots that show the worktable are displaying wide open table space, according to my standards. The shiny bit in the middle is a thick piece of glass I often work over. I rarely have any but the front edge of it showing.

I'm trying to get my working space organized so that I can find things, so that I don't lose important parts, and so that I don't trip over everything! The wall of shelves that has served me so well in other homes just isn't cutting it here. Oh it is full of stuff but it looks a mess. So I put stuff in some of my baskets, then in most of my baskets. Finally, I bought more baskets whenever I found ones in the right shapes that were on sale. Everything looked neater but now I can't see it all. And worse. The spaces on the floor in front of the shelves filled up and I cannot reach the baskets to see what was inside. Somehow, tags don't seem like the answer. All of the scrapbookers organizers I'd seen were really expensive and none of the others would accommodate the things I had to store yet keep within reach.

Finally, I found some great organizers at Michael's. (I don't need to give you the link. You can find it. And if they want a link from me, they can give me a link back!) With a 20% off coupon, it seemed like the time to buy them at last. So I bought three of the sets of three shelves, three other cubes, and the carousel on the desk. Wow! That thing holds a lot! I did already have one big shelf for the table top that I bought at Recollections before stupid old Michael's closed them. I just haven't put it together yet. I've had the two tall multi-colored drawer units for a while and they work great for me, though I don't have enough space in them. I bought another tall one and a shorter one with deeper drawers. I've got the shorter one put together and it rocks!

I've had a couple of Iris clear paper holders for a while and I like them. Here in Arizona, it's important to protect your paper from dust. If you live elsewhere, you might think it is just a simple matter of dusting regularly. (What kind of time do you have on your hands if you have time to dust shelves of papers?) You cannot escape the dust in Arizona. We don't have dirt here. We have dust that is not moving right at the moment. Anyway, I found a unit with two large Iris boxes and two thinner ones where they slide in and out like drawers with lids! It was on sale so of course I bought it. That takes care of lots of paper and my Twinkling H2O paints. I wish I had one with four of the big paper holders, so I'd have a good place for the two I already have.

Today just might be the day when I get the remaining units assembled and the room re-arranged to accomodate all! And then I'll decide how best to make drawer dividers for some of these drawers. And paint the Folgers coffee cans!

I've Been Tagged!

Lovely Jackie Cardy has tagged me. I'm supposed to tell seven random facts about myself, link back to Jackie, and then tag 6 others.

Hmmm... what to tell?

1. I like big dogs and always have preferred them. But I had a neighbor in Colorado who had a Maltese and I fell in love. But he wasn't a typical Maltese because he'd been raised with Goldens and he thought he was a Golden. In fact, he thought he was the biggest Golden! At any rate, I fell in love with little dogs with a big dog spirit and have been harboring a desire to have a Yorkie ever since. How could I not love a three pound dog that thinks he's a Mastiff???
2. I used to like to climb trees when I was a kid. I had my own tree in every patch of woods near our house. I used to sit in my tree in the woods across from our house for hours. Sometimes I'd take a book and read and other times, I'd just nap or watch the countryside.
3. When I was a teenager, I used to think about running away to the West on my horse. I knew he was my horse and he knew it. But he actually belonged to the neighbors next door so I couldn't take him because that would be stealing. So I never ran away to the Wild West. I think I knew it didn't really exist anymore.
4. I am allergic to having poison ivy. Not just to poison ivy but to actually having the reaction.
5. I got kicked out of the Georgette Heyer list's waiting list for calling the moderator "passive aggressive with nothing better to do than count the lines in people's posts". I had been called on the carpet for not clipping enough of the original post. Get a life!
6. I have a secret desire to go live in a cottage in England. The one time I went there on business, I nearly had a nervous breakdown because I couldn't get any Mountain Dew. I wonder if that would be any better now that I've officially had my drink addiction switched to Diet Peach Snapple? Somehow I think not.
7. While there are lots and lots of places (okay, most of them in Europe, and most of those in England!) that I'd like to see one day, I really like being an American and living in the American West. But I'd love to stay in a real stately home some day and not just a country house that's been turned into a hotel.

I'll name my six victims in my next post!

Happy Halloween!

It's the Frenzy Stamper Halloween Chunky Book - hosted by Jane Eileen! I chose to use my Rubi-Coil to bind mine. It's lucky that I bought those 2" coils because this book needed them. Some of the pages are incredibly chunky.You can see here (above) that it just doesn't want to close! The chunkiest page and one of the most fun is by RosiePosie, showing the contents of a trick or treater's bag of loot.

You can also see the top of a thick page, that was done by Karin. Her page and two others, Rosie's and Jane's which was made of fabric, just wouldn't work in my binding machine. It works with fabric about half the time but this page just wouldn't push all the way in. I used a 1/16" hole punch that even punches holes in metal to put in three holes, then inserted large jump rings. Some more jump rings attached those pages to the spiral binding. I put them in the book in random places after the rest of the pages were bound.

The next page you see is Karin's page on foamcore. My Raven page was before Rosie's so of course it would not lie flat! I'm so pleased with how it turned out. The next one you see is the black page with Happy Halloween embossed in gold at the top and a dozen inchies on steroids on the page. I've included it because it's one of my favorite pages in the book. What a lot of work! Quite a lot of embossing and inchies+ with multiple layers, many layers of paint, and lots of cut-outs. It was made by Susan Peacock. I think my favorite paper on the page is the one on the upper right corner inchie+ so I was thrilled to see it on the back of my page!

What a lot of talented people are in these swaps at Frenzy Stamper! This was the eighth one, I think. I haven't been in them all. There were other good pages, but I didn't want to go on and on. I write so many long posts that I thought I'd try to keep this one shorter.

Is it Trick or Treat time yet???

Boffo Blog Bounty!

Kris Hubick, proprietess of the wonderful Retro Cafe Art, is having a giveaway on her blog. Go have a look and see what it takes to win a truckload of good stuff!

http://www.krishubick.blogspot.com/

And don't forget to have a look at the goodies in her shop. The service is good and quick but most of all, she has really cool stuff!

How I Work: The Raven

Blogger is being a brat today for some peculiar reason of its own. So bear with me.

Today, I thought I'd discuss how I usually work when I start to design a page or a project. First, I think about it for a while. Generally, I have an idea before I ever sign up for a swap what I'd eventually like to do. I work best to deadlines which is why I do many, many times more work for swaps than I do for myself. I make some sketches in one of my many sketchbooks (usually one of them is the main one of the moment so I usually know which book it is in when I'm looking for it later). As I get down to the deadline, I start looking for materials.

I nearly always design to some degree in CorelDraw. I've been using it since version 1 (which worked with Windows 1.0 back in 1990!) so I'm pretty familiar with it. And there is plenty to learn about it if I ever have the time. I've just ordered Corel X4, so I'm looking forward to even more bells and whistles. The blue photo on the left (it seems to be blue because that's how Blogger insists on showing it - Corel, File Manager, and ACDSee all show it properly!) shows the basic layout as planned for 12" x 12" scrapbook card stock. I can print this on my Epson R1800 wide format printer, which is a really cool plus to that printer. Be sure to put the paper in the printer with the long grain of the paper against the paper guide on the side of the printer, so that the folds are oriented the proper way when the page is finished.

Three different backgrounds are used, all from one Halloween ATC set from Shabby Cottage, where I purchase most of my digital collage sheets. Gail provides excellent service and you can download the sheets nearly immediately. You get them via a link in an email from a download service Gail uses. You can see the actual colors in the photo of the finished front of the page on the left.

I cut out the backgrounds I wanted to use and saved them each with a slightly different name. I made them the size I wanted to use in PhotoShop Elements and made sure that they were cropped as I wanted. The one on the right with the birds also had the house that is on the first sheet but I erased it with PSE and used the spot healing and clone stamp features to heal the spots I'd erased. Then I imported each of them to CorelDraw and placed them where I wanted them.

I did my "signature" of the name of the piece, my name, my email address, and my blog address in the 'Chiller' font that I'd used for the word for the front, chose a color for it and turned it upside down. It had to be upside down because when the flap was folded up to make the pocket, it would be flipped upside down.

Bratty Blogger refuses to show the photo of the jig I made for the fence. I laid it down on my glass work surface and put the pre-cut coffee stirrers down on it, dotted The Ultimate craft glue in place with a stainless steel dental spatula and pressed the uprights into place. A jig makes short work of making so many items the same. It might have been even faster if I had thought to make a jig that actually held the sticks in place.

I printed out a whole sheet of the word 'Nevermore' from Edgar Allan Poe's poem, "The Raven", on orange paper. I cut the sheet into three columns the right width (2") then ran each column through my 2 1/2" Xyron, cut them to size and put them onto strips of purple card stock. I used a circle punch to cut the moons out of a sparkly yellow-orange scrapbook cardstock by The Paper Company. (I love their paper!)

The raven was one I found on the internet and photoshopped until I was happy with it. Once it was sized properly, I used my regular ink jet printer to print a few sheets of it on white card stock. I cut them out while I watched TV which took a couple of hours. My Tim Holtz Tonic scissors are comfy but that was pretty tiring for my hands! I do love all of my Tonic tools. They're lots easier on my fingers and hands than other tools. This project let me use lots of my tools, which I love.

Finally, I was ready to print the main pages. I double checked my instructions and it was a good thing I did! I'd figured everything for pages that were 4" wide and 6" tall, but when I checked, it said 5" wide by 7 1/2" tall! I was able to resize everything without problem. Sometimes the resolution isn't great enough to print a good image when it is resized larger than it was intended to be printed. I was not going to be able to fit multiple pages on one piece of cardstock, but then I realized that it did solve my pocket problem. I could add a flap in the piece that would otherwise be scrap that I could fold up to make my pocket. I'd been wondering how to put the tags I'd previously made on the back. By making a fold up pocket, this problem was solved. I thought I would have to go buy more white cardstock, but I found some more in the stash that I'm still working on organizing!

The layout for the actual page was pretty simple though it wasted a little paper. You can see the basic shape of it in the first photo, above. If you try this, be sure to think through where you want the fold to be. It can be helpful to make a small mock-up from scrap paper, mark which page is which with a bright colored marker and then open it out flat to see how what goes where. It's important to use whatever tool is available to make sure that the two sides line up evenly on the top and that the front and the flap line up on the left side. In Corel, this is the align and distribute tool, found in the Arrange menu. I made sure to put the sides even with a 1" margin to make it easy to trim later. Print one to make sure it's right and then print the remainder. I had to change one of my printer cartridges, so hopefully your printer stops when a cartridge is out as mine does.

Once printed on 12" x 12" white card stock, I trimmed the four sides with my big paper cutter in three batches. The 3" x 5" white piece that was left next to the flap and under the back of the page was trimmed out individually with my small Tonic paper cutter. By removing the orange guard that holds the paper you are cutting down as you cut, you can cut papers that are larger than the cutter bed. I often cut partial lines on this cutter, which is what this project entailed. The larger Tonic cutter is too loosely hinged to do this. It's the only cutter I have that won't stay open when you leave the arm up. It will drop so you have to take care when using it.

I used my large Score-It to score the folds, first the side fold then the bottom. Line it up carefully so that you score in the center for the main fold. I made sure to line it up just to the right of the bottom edge of the back of the page when I was scoring for the flap. That way, it doesn't pinch the bottom of the page. When you fold the pages, fold the page in half and then fold the flap up. I used Tombow Mono Adhesive to hold it together.

When you're doing an assembly line process for a book page swap project, I suggest doing small batches that let you feel that you're making progress. If I need 32 pages, I'll reduce it to four batches of eight (this was 33 so one batch had an extra). When I've done two, I am halfway done! This also helps to prevent repetitive motion injury by putting a small break in between your batches. You can take this further by making it a point to rotate your neck and shoulders and to stretch or get up to walk around between batches.

When I scored each page, I also cut under the tree branch with my X-Acto knife, pre-folded, then put on the adhesive and did the final fold/assembly. Next was dividing the set of 33 pages into three batches of 11 and adding the fence, then the raven, and finally, the word. I used The Ultimate glue on the two fence rails to attach the fence, a combination of double-sided adhesive foam squares (tiny ones!) and Perfect Paper Adhesive glue to adhere the raven, and more adhesive foam squares to adhere the framed word. Check the edges to be sure that they show up black. If not, use a black Magic Marker to make them look right or trim off any hangover with some scissors.

My fingers gave up so the tags got trimmed with the small Tonic cutter but I couldn't face cutting ribbons and putting them in each tag. So I tucked two in each pocket and called it completed!

Here's a Happy Thought!

The upside of being math-challenged just occurred to me, aside from the support I give to Microsoft for publishing Excel and to the makers of calculators everywhere, which I understand isn't really an upside to me.

Even if I do manage to figure out how old I am, I wouldn't ever believe that I could be correct!

*grin*

Not to be Morbid But...

Looks like a good place to spend eternity!

I don't want to be morbid but I just read Michelle Ward's GPP Street Team Crusade #24 and it seems to me to be such a kind and sensible thing to do. Michelle is reminding us to do something based on her recent experience of losing her sister, Shannon, to Cystic Fibrosis. Before her sister died, Michelle was able to talk to her about what she wanted and how she wanted to be remembered, and what of her things she wanted people to have as remembrances of her. Michelle reminded us to make our family and friends aware of our Final Wishes.

One of my Final Wishes is to have my ashes sprinkled in the pine trees near the Lumberjack lift at Copper Mountain, Colorado, my personal favorite place on earth. It's in my will. The Sports Fan and my nephews know about it. I think that it's a delightful idea that people will go skiing after I die because of me. They can put me and Mr. Jaspy in plastic bags and carry us up the L lift and then stop somewhere on the side of Ten Mile run and sprinkle us under some trees where nobody is likely to ski and fall when their skis hit the ashes. We wouldn't want anyone to be hurt because of us!

I would have chosen the spot in the trees under the H lift but they'd get caught by the ski patrol there and I don't want them to have their tickets yanked and not be able to put me where I most want to be, dead or alive!

As far as I'm concerned, the whole family can go! The more the better. I want all of those little great nieces out there on skis or snowboards. I'm not a stick snob. Skinny or fat, the point is not what ride you prefer but that you go ski. Hopefully, before I go, there will be some little great nephews to go along too. (6 girls and no boys so far in that generation! But that's with only one nephew contributing. I have more in the wings!) And if knowing me or being related to me or living with me makes you go do it, so much the better!

So write a letter to your loved ones. Give it to them now and tell them what you want. Let them know in writing what of yours you want them to have later. Let them know that you love them enough to stop the fights and the arguments before they ever start. And if you get it notarized, it might carry more weight at the end. Sure, you can put a copy in with your will, or make it part of your will. But don't just put it in your safe deposit box or wherever it is that you like to hide important stuff. They might not find your hiding place until way too late. Safety deposit boxes are sealed by the bank as soon as they are notified of your death and can't be opened until your executor achieves probate. This could be months! You might have had a big funeral with the limos and casket and burial in the family plot already before they find your notes about the simple cremation and scattering your ashes in the water at your favorite beach in the Bahamas.

Yeah, I know it sounds morbid and I didn't want to go there. I'm just saying that it's better to get what you want even if you have to overcome some initial distaste of the topic to get there.

And if you go skiing because I reminded you of it, or because like me, when there's the first faint nip of winter in the air, your thoughts go mountainwards, then please leave a comment and tell me about it. I wonder how many months I'd have to exercise to get back in shape to ski? Could I do it in time to ski this coming season? Season pass lift tickets are on sale now! For $329, you can ski any time you can get there. Sounds like a bargain to me! Go ski now... or at least take your skis to get tuned. Try those boots on. Buy a new parka.

And maybe while you're out there skiing or snowboarding this winter, you'll look around for a little place of your own to spend eternity within earshot of the whirr of the bullwheels and where the nip of winter is always in the air!

The West Valley Mixed Media Arts Group Is Born!

This year, when I saw my friend, Angie, at Art Unraveled, we once again talked about how we needed to start a mixed media art group over on our side of Phoenix, the West Valley. We've talked about this now for three years. It turns out that she's been talking to her best friend, Fran, about it and Fran wants a group, too. In the meantime, a group got started in the East Valley out in Mesa, AZ. They've been having fun. And now, another AU attendee, Reva Solomon, has started a group in LA, and they're all having fun too.

I started thinking about it some more. Then I went to The Creative Quest last Saturday to pick up some needed supplies. (An Aside: Why do 'needed supplies' always cost $127.57??? It doesn't matter where I get them, that's what they cost!) While there, I talked to Kathie Shepard, one of the owners, about our need to start a group and found out that Kathie agreed. Better yet, she offered to see if it would fit into the store's schedule. We found a spot for it in the schedule and now have an announcement to make.

The West Valley Mixed Media Arts group will meet for the first time at The Creative Quest on 57th Drive in Old Downtown Glendale at 7 PM on Tuesday, October 7th, 2008!

Please RSVP by clicking here, and let me know how many people you're bringing. We need to know so that we have enough chairs and cookies! Click here for Google Maps and get directions for getting there.

The plan is to get to know each other a little, discuss what we want out of this group and some loose organization, and to talk about art!

• Bring a name tag you have on hand or make one to wear just for this.
• Bring your favorite beverage, I'll bring the cookies.
• Bring one or two pieces of your work to show if you have anything you'd like to share. Depending on the turnout, we'll each get a couple to five minutes to talk about who we are, where we are, and what we do with our art.
• Join the wvmm Yahoo Group and get all of the info we've got to share!

See you there!!!

By the Sea

TreasureArtTrends Yahoo group has a monthly swap for 4" x 4" chunky book pages. Each month has a theme. The theme for September is 'By the Sea'. Pages are due to the group owner by the end of the month.

When the theme was announced, I immediately thought of some old family photos I had scanned in on my hard drive. There were some of my parents on the beach on Lake Erie in Erie, Pennsylvania that were taken in 1938 before they were married (in 1939).

The guy on the left is my dad and the woman in front of him is my mom. His best friend, Pugie, is next to him. My mother can't recall who the middle couple are. The man who is next worked for my father's father. The couple on the right, Bud and Rose, eventually married and continued to be friends with my parents.

The photo on the back was taken the same day, I think, and shows a playfulness that I rarely saw in my parents who were always busy around the house, raising four children. We always went to Lake Erie on our summer vacations, though, and it always seemed like they were happiest and most carefree on the beach there. By the time we were old enough to help carry the stuff from the car to the beach, we all had our favorite beaches on Presque Isle in Presque Isle State Park.

The pages were laid out in CorelDraw X3 for printing on 12" x 12" scrapbook paper after I decided how to use the photo on the front. I've been admiring how scrapbook artists use layers of colored papers to frame their photos, so I chose some that I thought exemplified a sense of the beach and summer vacation for this photo from an 8" square pad of 7 Gypsies papers from their Hudson Valley collection. I loved the look of the striped paper but how to stick it on there? Photo corners? Have you looked for these lately? Maybe I need to go to another store because all they had at Michael's were tacky, shiny, cheap-looking things that aren't touching any of my artwork! Even in the Martha Stewart section, all they had was satin. Satin! Puh-lease, Martha! Satin??? So I decided to stack them up with more papers and to use brads to hold the photos in place.

I imported the photo of just my folks that I'd already cut out and masked it in CorelPhotoPaint X3 so that I could place the text properly for printing. Then when it was time to print, I just deleted the photo. So this one was a combination of digital and manual work.

Usually, when I print pages to be folded, I put the fold on the outside edge. But I wanted to put the twill tape of the trim between the pages because the beads were sewn on loosely and I didn't want the thread to show. I decided to use a layer of Forever tape on each side to hold the heavy beaded trim securely. It worked great, I think and while they aren't as arty as they could be, I like them. I hope the others do too.

As a side note, Bud and Rose had four children who died when I (and they) were little. One night when the family was asleep, there was a car accident right outside their house. Bud and Rose ran outside to see what they could do. The car had hit a gas line outside the house and cracked it, causing a gas leak. I don't know the absolute details, but somehow the car's engine set the leaking gas on fire. Their house exploded and their children were killed. I remember how sad everyone was and how horrible it seemed. But I don't remember their children. When I see their names now on photos, I always think of their children and how sad it all was. They eventually had another child, but I don't think we ever met.

Memory is strange, isn't it?

I Still Think It's Wednesday

123 Silly Mountain Road
It's late on Wednesday night, so until I go to bed and get up again, it's Wednesday. Really!

Here's why I've been so quiet for the last few days. I've been working feverishly on my houses for the In This House Yahoo group's Skylines & Skyscrapers 2 swap. I had intended when I signed up to make much smaller houses all different and much more urban. I was thinking businesses, offices, and apartment buildings, maybe even a hotel. But when I sat down to design, what popped out of my pencil was this house.

On Labor Day, we were out for a run with the Rat Pack and went past a road called Silly Mountain Road. That name just stuck in my head. It was so charming. And I thought it would be fun to design a house to live on that road.

I can see that it is definitely inspired by my former home in Bailey, Colorado. The honey colored cedar siding and front door are directly from it. My friend, neighbor, and the best house painter in the world, Dan-O, and I spent two hours mixing samples and bickering in a friendly way over that color before we came up with one that satified both of us artistically. I think I was the first client he ever had who actually knew how to mix paint! My house was number 19 and it had a deck that spanned half of the front of the house, but this one still resembles it.

I'd intended to eventually add on in the back, which would have been a two storey addition because of the slope. I'd contemplated painting the trim a really dark forest green with red touches (and maybe some cream touches in small places). It has to be my house. That's Mr. Jaspy there looking out the living room window at us!

After I finished drawing this house, I drew another right next to it on the watercolor paper. Then I realized that they were just going downhill if I was going to draw them all by hand. So I inked the first one and erased all the pencil marks (or so I thought!) and scanned it in black and white but at a high density of dots. When I imported it to CorelDraw, I could see how much of the pencil remained and had to go to PhotoShop Elements to clean it up a little more.

After a lot of fiddling, I managed to coax my Epson R1800 printer to not just pull the 10.8" x 13.6" pages of 140# CP Fabriano Artistico studio paper through and spit it out again but to actually print 6 houses on each sheet. It's a miracle my hair is still long after that trial! I hadn't used the printer in a year so just getting to it and getting the dust off of it was a challenge. I printed 15 images for the 13 I needed in case there were any problems in production and because I'll send 13 off and not get one of my own back, I think. So I made 15. At 3 1/4" x 6 3/8", they are pushing the limits of the rules but I love how they turned out.

The houses are all watercolored by hand, then I cut out the front window and replaced it with some mica glued on with my trusty, indispensable adhesive, the Ultimate Glue. Next, I found a suitable photo of my late, great, dearly departed Jasper because who else would be looking out that window? I cut them out and ran them through the 1 1/2" Xyron and adhered them in the proper place to a 2" x 2 1/2" piece of old encyclopedia page and stuck that on with Tombow adhesive. I couldn't find my copper colored metal tape so I used silver metal tape on the roof and chimney top and colored them with Chili Red Adirondack Alcohol Ink. (I always wanted a metal roof on my house but couldn't decide between red and green.) I added some red heart-shaped brads on the flower box and a small silver brad for a doorknob.

Don't ask me where those blue plantation shutters came from! Maybe nights laying in bed listening to the wind howl before I fell asleep? Having real shutters to close would have felt so much more secure. Living alone in bear country on top of a mountain listening to a lynx purr outside can be eerie, especially at night.

Finally, I used a mixture of Tombow permanent adhesive and my other favorite, Perfect Paper Adhesive to glue the pages onto more sheets torn from my old set of encyclopedias. (I bought the 5 volume set because I loved the navy blue leather covers and so far have only used tons of the paper though it doesn't look it.) Then I cut them out being careful to undercut by angling the top of the scissors away from the center of the house, so no text paper would show through. I thought that PPA stuck to everything but it didn't like the silvered copper tape which is why I used the Tombow adhesive on the metal parts and PPA on the paper parts to save some $$.

And because I love smearing it around with my fingers. I admit it. Gooey can be fun! These lovelies are going in the mail to Susie tomorrow.

Which is Thursday!

Cool Giveaway

Kris Hubick is having a giveaway on her blog, Retro Cafe Art Gallery. The prize is one of her cool digital collage sheets from her way cool shop, Retro Cafe Art. I have just recently discovered this shop and bought some digital collage sheets but also so really neat stuff that I can't wait to use in my art. The shipping was really quick and I'm so happy with what I bought. Some of my friends have shopped there too and are also happy with the experience.

So why am I sitting here posting in my blog instead of using it to make art? because if you go to Kris' blog and leave a comment, she'll put your name in a drawing to win. but if you blog about her giveaway and you win, you get THREE TIMES THE LOVE! Yep, three digital collage sheets.

Holy immediate gratification, batgirl!

Here's... Jackie Cardy!

These are wonderful machine embroidered brooches I purchased on Etsy earlier this year and thus began my acquaintance with Jackie Cardy, a marvelously talented embroiderer from Lancashire, England, UK. Her blog, DogDaisyChains, is a charming combination of things textile, gardening, pets, life in the country, and the things that only happen to Jackie (or so she thinks!). She writes articles on machine embroidery for the likes of Workshop on the Web (aka WOW) and Fibre & Stitch, so you know she is good at what she does. Also, she has done City & Guilds in embroidery, achieving a Highly Commended in the Awards for Excellence, and exhibits all over Britain. If you haven't come across her before, I suggest that you visit her blog, her Flickr, and her Etsy. Click on the photo above to see a much nicer photo on Jackie's Flickr of the brooch on the right.

Jackie finds it flattering and creepy at the same time to be spotlighted in someone's blog, so I'll send her an email and let her know before I publish this. I just wanted to make sure that anyone who reads my blog has a chance to become acquainted with her work. Buying those two lovely brooches from her inspired me to finally try my wings at some machine embroidery of my own.

I signed up for a fabric ATC swap on one of my groups, TreasureArtTrends. Here's an in-progress photo. I had to make 6 ATCs and send in 5 to get 5 back. The theme was summer. So I grabbed a piece of white cotton fabric from my stash and decided to try several new things at once. I watered down some acrylic paints to paint my motifs. These are Adirondack Daubers with colors watered-down but otherwise straight from the bottle.

I smooshed the lemonade yellow and citrus green onto the fabric to make the flowers and used a darker green (lettuce, I think) to make the leaves, then filled in the rest with a purply pink on a brush to make the background.

Here's a not very good photo of the result. As you can see, I used a purple (#40 weight) thread on top and in the bobbin to do some free-motion embroidery on it to define petals for the flowers and then centered each of them by spiraling out from where they met in the middle to make a center. I changed to a dark pink on top and fuchsia in the bobbin to free-motion in between the flowers. Not very expertly, I'm afraid, as I think that the height of my machine is not right for me to do this comfortably, which seems to be the key to doing free-motion quilting and embroidery properly.

I used a thin layer of quilt batting and a piece of tear away stabilizer on the back. I wanted the piece to be puffy and define the flowers better so I dug until I found a piece of thin batting that had been used as padding for a book that had been sent to me. (I couldn't find it when it was time to send the altered book on to the next person, but it turned up later, as you can see. Anyway, that's why I can't say what batting it is.) I cut a piece of stabilizer and put it through my inkjet printer to add the word 'Summer' to the front and stitched it on with a wheelbarrow charm. I printed out my contact info on another piece of stabilizer and stitched it to the back, then stitched between them and cut them apart to send along.

This was a way fun project and Jackie is the one who gave me the confidence to try it! Thanks, Jackie!

Completing the Trip

We wanted to try out another place on the list from Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives but were too tired and a little wary of driving to Compton to try the other dinner place on our list on Friday night. TSF found this place not too far away and we went because we're always up for a good steak.

One thing I really liked about the Cask & Cleaver (not the Cork & Cleaver nationwide chain) was that the retro agricultural advertising art that decorated it reminded me of a Calendar Journal (CJ) I worked in earlier this year. I liked our waiter too. She was a tiny blonde who loves handbags as I do, so we had a nice chat about Coaches and Dooneys while TSF laughted. I'm sorry that the photos are so bad but it was pretty dimly lit except for right over the tables and my little point and shoot just couldn't handle it. Or maybe I couldn't take a decent photo there because I didn't know how!


Our waiter was kind enough to take this photo of me and The Sports Fan at our table. This is the second table we sat at. Someone accidentally knocked a glass of Heferweissen over on the other table! We were tired. Me from a long day of relaxing and TSF from a long day at his conference. This place is in the historic Santa Fe train station in Orange, 4 miles from our hotel in Garden Grove, CA. It had plenty of atmosphere and great steaks.

The next morning, after sleeping in as everyone should do on Saturday, we drove to Long Beach to have lunch at Schooner or Later, but there was a line a mile long by the time we got there. So instead, we drove up to Malibu and had lunch at Coogie's. It's a bright, sunny restaurant on the beach and the PCH named after famed Latin bandleader Xavier Cugat. He was a musician, bandleader, actor, well known womanizer, and is now probably best known for being the husband of Charo, the entertainer. (Yes, the coochie-coochie gal.) I had the chili which was good. TSF had the fish and chips with a cole slaw that was out of this world! I'll have that the next time we go there. Sorry no pics. I forgot.

Afterward, we went next door to get a frap at Starbucks and sit outside to people and dog watch. There was a Malamute that was certain that everyone's food was for him in that oh-so-very-Malamute way. We watched a pair of bulldogs licking every kid that went by and a Yorkie peeing in the flowers around a tree in a raised bed. Then it was time to hit the road for the drive back to Phoenix.

Another terrific trip logged!

Nostalgia Attack #99

This one is for Ellen, whom I met in 6th grade. She was one of my two very best friends and while we don't live near each other, we're still friends and still in touch thanks to the internet and email.

I sat down at a table at the swimming pool yesterday with the object of sketching and then watercoloring the scene before me. One of my commandments to myself about sketching and watercolor is to just paint whatever I can see. Pick something and draw it! It certainly keeps you from being bored as you can always find something to draw, even if it's your own foot!

I sat down to work, wondering how this was going to go down on the page. They had really subtle music playing through hidden speakers. (It's a good thing too because the music started out country which was annoying! The Sports Fan would have told them that their radio was broken.) So I'm sitting there, looking at the blank page and wondering where to start.

Then this song, 'Sunny' by Bobby Hebb (I just found out that his name is Hebb and not Head), came on and instantly I was transported back to the summer of 1965 or 66 and Ellen and I were sneaking into the county park's swimming pool through the pump room where her sister's friend worked. It saved us each 35 cents that we could then add to our concession stand money. (UK readers, in the US, concessions are the food you buy at sporting events and other places where you walk up to a fixed place to buy them, not discounts on the ticket price for students, seniors, and groups!) We'd just nonchalantly walk in from the pump area that was hidden behind some bushes and trees and choose a spot to lay our our towels. I'd do it today because it meant walking about 50 feet from the street to the poolside area rather than the 3 or 4 blocks from the normal entrance through the locker room, across the huge patio, and down an immense, wide stone staircase to the pools.

I knew just what to do! I love those times when you put your pen down and the writing just spills out. Then you start to sketch and that spills out too. The painting required thought, of course, because watercolor still seems like painting inside out to me, who grew up in art painting in oils and eventually got into acrylics.

I may have been drawing the pool at a Hampton Inn in Garden Grove, California, but my head was totally back in 1965 or 66 with Ellen in North Park, which is practically the cradle of my childhood. When I was Googling for photos of the pool to share and help convey what a special place this is, I came across blog entries of people who say they've "been there a hundred times and I've never seen this..."

A hundred? I laugh. I know I've been there thousands of times. I grew up right next to it. We swam there, picnicked there, walked there, played there, ice skated there, I rode and showed my horse there, and I even was recognized by a cop who caught my boyfriend and I 'parking' there as the girl who rides the bay horse there! I went there to watch North Allegheny High School track meets at the Golf Course right across the road from the Show Rink where I showed my horse and practised, and the Ranch House where my 4-H Horse and Pony club met. In winter, we went sled riding on the golf course and ice skating at the Ice Rink, always hoping that the lake would be frozen enough for them to let us skate on it.

You get the drift. This was my home, my playground. It's near and dear to my heart and every time I go 'home', every time I drive away from my mom's house, I have to drive through the park on the way somewhere or on the way home.

A glimpse of autumn colors in 2007 on N. Ridge Drive in North Park.

The building there at North Park was built during the 20s to provide recreational opportunities to those who had no other way to experience them. The rich belonged to clubs that provided an opportunity to bathe, ride, picnic, or otherwise enjoy the outdoors. The buildings and parks that culminated from the efforts of the early Allegheny County Park Commissioners were fabulous though. You can read the history of their development here. I've been looking for a photo but can't find one oddly enough. The lodge at the pool is a huge log, wood, and stone mock-Tudor, Adirondack style structure with a big terracotta tile patio and a pair of flagstone steps leading down the hill to the pools. A local photographer, Amy Strycula, has some great shots of the pool and people enjoying it on her Flickr. (Gee, I wonder if she's related to Carl Strycula, who was the evil vice-principal of my junior high and high school days. I swear that that man picked on me!)

I'd been wanting to try to discipline myself to draw a building because getting all of the angles correct when you have to include perspective is challenging in a quick sketch that you want to keep loose. I did one last week based on a sketch seen on my friend, &rew's, blog. When I compared his detailed pencil sketch to my not-quite-so-detailed pen and ink sketch that had been colored with watercolors, I was bummed. I like it better this week because it has charm and still conveys the feeling of the building.

So this time, I tired to convey the feeling of the building without getting bogged down in detail too much. The two main things that are challenging me with watercolor as a media right now are that it dries lighter than it looks wet and that I know I need to have patience and let the color dry before adding more if I don't want to make a mess. I either forget that it is wet or am not patient enough to wait. So I wish that I'd thought to add another wash of color to the left side of the building and another to the water in the pool. More in the trees, too.

One thing that jumps out at me when I look at it is that I certainly need to spend some time figuring out how to portray palm trees more effectively. I also really like the .01 Micron pen for drawing because the lines are so delicate. I'm pleased with the way the other trees look though the trunks and branches could use work. There's one I really like and wouldn't change, so that's something.

Then, of course, it would be nice if I could take a decent photo! You can bet that the next time I go there, I'll be parked across the road from the pool building, sketching and painting it! In fact, it sounds like a good excuse to take my mom back to her home for one last autumn visit there. I'll be sure to share what I do here or on my Flickr.

Soul Food from the Heart... in Venice, CA!

We watch Food Network a lot because cable is where it's at, baby! I swear, if the networks come up with one more of those staged 'reality' shows, I'm gonna barf. So we watch HGTV and Food Network. I even watch the Green channel to get tips on little things I can do to help. And naturally, The Sports Fan channel changes through multiple sporting events along with DIY, HGTV, and Food Network. He has to in order to maintain his The Sports Fan moniker! But I digress.

One of the shows we love to watch is Guy Fieri's 'Diners, Drive-Ins & Dives' not because I'm in love with Guy's classic 60's Camaro convertible (though I am!), but because it features just unpretentious plain old good food! And Guy is just a regular, well, guy. I admit to finding his tattoos icky and fascinating all at the same time. His ability to wear his sunglasses in various places they were not originally meant to be worn is kind of interesting. (I keep waiting for them to fall off into a pot of something.) We love the show.

One day while watching a marathon of DDI&D one Saturday, we started looking up the places Guy was talking about on the internet while we watched. TSF said we should make a list of them so that we could visit some on our travels. We were watching an episode about BBQ and just knew that we'd by-passed one of these places in favor of a chain restaurant on our way from the airport in Charlotte, NC to visit my brother in Charleston, SC. So I started a list in my Pocket PC. We love finding special restaurants in the places we visit.

While in Anaheim for a couple of days, we decided to take a drive to one of the places we'd seen on the show. There is no shortage of great places to eat in LA. The only question was how to choose one in the five or ten minutes we had to decide and get ourselves on the road before they were all closed for the night. TSF suggested looking up one of Guy's places and I pulled up my handy list and chose the only one I had down for LA. We got on the way and spent more time looking for a gas station in the land of Mickey and Minney and Donald and Pluto than we did in deciding to eat dinner at Baby Blues BBQ!

Their website said they were open til 10 and it was just after 8 PM when we got on the way. The GPS said that it would take us an hour to get from Anaheim to Venice and it did. We were driving down Lincoln Boulevard in Venice taking in the varied businesses and some of them frankly had us wondering what we were getting into. But as soon as we got there, we knew that Baby Blues BBQ was going to be worth it.

And it was! The gals who seated us were soooo genuinely nice. Suzanne assured us that their hostess was a miracle worker at squeezing in more and more people into this tiny bistro.

And tiny is the word! The tables are the sort they serve drinks on at nightclubs and bars. With a small bucket of sweetener packets, salt and pepper, a roll of paper towels that was about to come in very handy, and squeeze bottles of hot sauce, the regular BBQ sauce, and their special XXX sauce, there was barely room for our place settings, TSF's sweetened tea, and my regular iced tea. (In case you don't know, iced tea is THE drink of the South after Coca-Cola (pronounced Co-Co La with the accent on the second 'Co').) Baby Blues brews their tea sweet. You can smell the sweetness as you lift the glass to your mouth. It goes down like it is the nectar that humans were meant to drink. I had unsweetened tea, diabetic philistine that I am. It was strong, certainly able to stand up to the flavors it was meant to accompany.

The kitchen is behind the wall to the right of the window you see in these photos (this one taken by the lovely Suzanne, thank you!). So I was able to get some glimpses of the food being prepared. That kitchen is TI-NY. I don't think I'd fit through the doorway! Through the window, you can see the counter and beyond that another food prep area. While we waited for our food, we saw several people come in and sit there after shaking hands with a guy behind the counter wearing a Yankees cap, obviously regulars. The man's food is incredibly good. (He wishes his baseball team was. Their in last place this season. We're D-backs fans.)

I had the Bones and No Bones: a half slab of Memphis ribs with a half pound of pulled pork, cornbread, and two sides. I chose stewed tomatoes and collard greens, which I ended up not liking as they were the bitter variety. Our sweet waitress (I'm telling you that every single person there was really nice and welcoming!) brought me an order of mac-n-cheese to go to make up for that. The stewed tomatoes were nothing like what I expected, having been roasted, just slightly charred, with a beautiful, delicate smokey flavor set off with some garlic and I have to tell you that they were fairly salty. I couldn't get over how terrific they are! The meats. Ummm... to die for! The ribs were a little dry on the top (but hey! that's what the sauce is for, isn't it?) but nice and moist underneath the topmost layer. The bones just pulled right out. YUMMM! My favorite was the pulled pork. I happen to love pulled pork and Baby Blues' pulled pork is worth a three hour drive.

The hot sauce was just that. Hot sauce. The BBQ sauce is of the vinegary variety but still has a bit of sweetness to it. I loved it and I usually opt for the brown sugar kind. The XXX sauce was stellar. It had the vinegary taste and lots of heat but with so much smokey flavor that it took your tongue on a little ride on the way to the heat. Very yummy.

The Sports Fan opted for the Memphis Queen: a half slab of Baby Backs and half a slab of Memphis style ribs, again with cornbread and two sides. We both enjoyed a taste of the cornbread but what we really came for was the meat, so he concentrated on that. He'd ordered the mac-n-cheese and the mashed sweet potatoes as sides. The mashed sweet taters were dee-lish but I didn't think they were particularly special. But how can you not like them? We gobbled most of them down between the two of us.

On the other hand, the mac-n-cheese was the very best I have ever had, anywhere. Including any that I've made myself! We adore macaroni and cheese (see the photos of me, above, for verification!), so we think we are qualified to say that these are fabulous. We inhaled them!

Now, if you come here, remember that this place is tiny. The tables are tiny and you might end up sitting on the sidewalk outside as we did on a beautiful night (where it was actually quieter than inside), or at the counter inside. The service is good and attentive but casual. Everyone was as nice and as welcoming as they could possibly be. But this is a dive after all. It's damned good eats but it's no elegant restaurant. You'll get a napkin but you'll use the paper towels! For me, what really tells you that a restaurant has good food is how many cop cars are parked outside. We counted 4 cars outside with 7 cops from nearby Culver City parked inside when we left. It was after their closing hour of 10 PM but they didn't turn anyone away and the place was still going strong when we left at 10:30.

Baby Blues, please do not change a thing. You're a funky, friendly place with fabulous food. If you must expand, open another place just like this one in another neighborhood. Preferably our neighborhood!

If you are coming to LA, you have to go to Baby Blues and taste the BBQ and the mac-n-cheese! No matter where you are in LA, it's worth the drive. We're thinking about going back again on Friday night!

Happy Birthday!

Wow! Can you say fabulous!????

This is the birthday cake that The Sports Fan's step-mother made for my mom's 95th birthday party last night! She is a pastry chef and she makes Outrageous Cakes for all sorts of occassions.

Here's Nana with the cake and The Sports Fan at our table at our favorite Outback on Bell Road in Glendale, AZ. Yes, that is a lipstick and compact made of fondant in front of the gorgeous handbag that made my newest Dooney look sad. She even put Nana's initials on the little fondant powderpuff that is inside the compact!

And I do want to mention that this cake was absolutely delicious on the inside as well as on the outside! The cake was a rich chocolate and the frosting between the layers of cake was a white chocolate cream cheese frosting. This is one extremely talented woman!

Of course, you can't see our wonderful cake maker in the photo. Fat old me takes up a lot of room in this one. My pal the Chicster is next to me and I'm disgusted to see that I take up a good 20% of this photo's area!

Doesn't my mom look great? She turned 95 yesterday!!!


Here she is in her room at the care center with the incredible roses and alstromeria sent by my sister and her husband to mark the occassion.

Here is a favorite photo of Nana in her younger days, when she was the spitting image of Loretta Young, one of the most beautiful movie stars ever to grace a Hollywood sound stage.

The best part was that Nana had a blast at her party and so did we all.

To Share or Not To Share...

That is the ethical question that was recently raised on the Art Unraveled Yahoo Group. What to do when you return from taking classes at an art event and your friends want to know what you learned... in detail.

Do you tell them in enough detail that they can go off and do it themselves? Or do you tell them that you paid the money to take the class and maybe even traveled to take it, incurring more expense, and that they should go take the class themselves if they want that much detail?

The middle ground here, I feel, is to generally show them what you learned but not to give them all the details.

I've really enjoyed reading all of the points of view that have been expressed on the group about this. And thanks to those who posted for reminding me about the people who don't take the workshop but want all of the details of each one anyway plus copies of the handouts! (And at least for the handouts, it is clearly an infringement of copyright to make copies of those for anyone.)

I've come across teachers who prefer you to purchase their published books to use in lieu of a handout in class. This could be a way to boost sales, a way of keeping you from copying the handouts to give to friends (because aren't people less likely to copy a whole book than just a few pages?) or just plain laziness. Or maybe even because they feel that they have already written it once, why do it again? Some teachers don't give handouts with any details on them. Could the fear of being copied be part of the reason for this?

The only instance I can think of where it might be okay to teach something exactly as you've learned it is when the teacher has announced that they won't be teaching it in the future. And even then, I'd still ask the teacher's permission. Maybe they just feel that demand for that class has been satisfied so they're not offering it for a while.

I've long felt that it is really hard to find a place on the earth to put your foot down where nobody else has trod before. And even if I do find such a place, it still might overlap or touch on someone else's footprint. An idea I have might touch on someone else's idea. It's also possible and probable that given the materials and a creative stimulus, two people in different times and places could come up with the same or a very similar idea.

If you want to keep a technique to yourself, then you need to hole up in your studio with it and not even show it to anyone else. How many times have any of us looked at a project in a magazine or book and figured it out without taking the class? Why does anyone publish their work? Recognition, compensation, and satisfaction, are just a few reasons. The whole point of magazines like Cloth Paper Scissors and the Somerset titles are to inspire you to do what is shown and then go beyond that to make the techniques your own in some ways.

Some members of the AU Yahoo Group are currently working on a technique fat book based on what we learned at Art Unraveled this year. The point is not to have 40 absolutely unique techniques in this book, it is to show off what we learned and that we have learned! We look forward to a fat little book full of individual takes on workshops, some of which will be shown more than once. It's happened in past AU technique books and you can barely tell that people took the same classes.

There's nothing wrong with showing people what you've learned. There's nothing wrong with telling them how it is done in a conversational way. But if you are going to teach them how to do it, then you need to put in the time and effort to develop the class yourself and not just to mimic the teacher who taught you. It is our nature as artists to be creative and to add our own bits and embellishments. But not all of us are teachers or course developers.

When faced with this situation, you could always just tell these people that you don't want to teach because you aren't comfortable sharing someone else's ideas in more than a general way. If learning it was really that important to them, they'd find a way to take the class somewhere, some how. I've been through this in the past and just had to say no to someone who wanted all the information that I paid to learn. It's hard at the time but doing it is made easier by giving them the benefit of the doubt in that perhaps they just didn't realize what they were asking. If you tell them that you don't feel it is ethical to share someone else's information, they might back off because they didn't think of it that way. You can always suggest alternate ways for them to learn it. And if they only learn in a classroom or teacher/student situation, then they need to go take the class.

If they are still insistent, there's always the good old-fashioned "NO!"

Ever since I took ethics classes in college, I've felt that discussions of ethics generally end up asking more questions than they answer. In this case, the next logical question is whether I actually want to be friends with these people!

The End of Summer

In the USA, Labor Day is the holiday that celebrates the working man, but really, what it means to everyone is the end of summer. Usually everyone goes to some sort of picnic or party or other gathering.


We in the Desert Rat Pack chapter of the Dynamic Mini Collective usually celebrate by meeting up at a Starbucks in Mesa, going on a run to the top of the hill past Tortilla Flats in the Tonto National Forest, and then coming back to a picnic at the Boldt's house. Today was the day.



Dave and Michelle showed up to take all the food
that needed to be kept cold to their house while the rest of us went on the run. LDL RED managed to handle carrying all the food. There was a lot of interest in the chocolate cake, so Michelle held it in her hands but they were tempted to eat it on the way home! Some MINIs started out dirtier than others. After going through the remnants of flooding in a couple of washes, they were all dirty!

Here we are at the top of the hill where the pavement ends. The road goes on another 42 miles to Roosevelt Lake. It's called the Apache Trail.