~~ Here's a quick wish for everyone in the U.S. - A very Happy and safe Memorial Day to you ~ !! ~

We are mostly basically and for real doing absolutely nothing today - well, 'cept some laundry, but that doesn't seem to count as "work" around the house - I had considered doing something like running the vacuum cleaner, but decided not to - what with the humidity hovering up near 70% and it not being 11 in the morning, I just couldn't justify gettin' all damp an' cranky messin' with the carpet ~ ! ~

So it's doin' some sketching with my little pencils, filling in some color with watercolor pencils on a piece on the work table, and then maybe cutting some papers for use in another project that's in the works too. The heat is lingering just a bit - near 90 something in the next few hours...with that in the back of my mind, it may just be time to kick up the air conditioner this afternoon...seems like a good idea, yes? I don't like to see the electric bill after a few days of this heat & humidity, but I also really don't like to be uncomfortable in my own house ~ !! ~

So we'll watch our pennies for the next few days, so we'll be able to pay that electric bill...an' drink some nice herbal ice tea (blueberry today!) an' watch all the weekenders zip around the neighborhood...they all drive so fast, an' on this teeny little dirt road, I'm waiting for somebody to go sliding off the side of the road into the ditch - either that, or they'll zing onto the opposite road, go flying off of that past the stop sign, and go splashing in the water at the bottom of the little hill...that's gonna be an expensive "My Bad" ~ !! ~

'course not drinkin' an' drivin' always helps too, but whatta I know??

but for now I gotta go hang up laundry..perfect weather to dry everything in a flash!!

I'm Gone...........

"Fish Where They Swim" - 2010 -


Spring Bay Studio


Here's the other piece that I mentioned yesterday - It has a little more color with it - can you see the glitter that I sprinkled around and all about it?

I had fun with this, and Tom wondered just what got into me when he saw me cutting these little fish one afternoon - I'd thot about telling him that I was cutting up fish...but then he'd probably think that I'd gone fishing, but that wasn't the case. I mean, I'd LOVE to go fishing, but since we haven't finished paying the yearly fees for our property assessments, I can't use any of the neighborhood docks to go fishing on...stinks, don't it? - I keep wanting to buy my yearly fishing license, but then I have to hike off somewhere and find a place to actually GO fishing..

But anyway ~

I just did some layering of paints on some inexpensive drawing paper that I bought for a song about a year ago - it gives me spits and fits if I try to use a brush on it, but using my fingers, sponges or whatever else may be lurking on the table, well, that paper just acts like it's havin' a good time...so it's like playing and making a mess, which my high school art teacher always ALWAYS frowned on.

HA ! ~ HA ! ~ to her !! > Now I can make all the mess I WANT - an' who's gonna care? -

I mean, I do clean it all up...
Eventually.....

Just not right today, or right away today, 'cause I spent a good chunk of the morning drivin' me & noah all over creation, so now it's finally time to sit down and get something to eat. I think I ate a breakfast...Cocoa Roo-iees or something, blast, I can't even remember...so now my stomach is letting me know it's WAY past time to have lunch (it is after 1:30...) so it's TIME...

Jus' hopin' there is something to eat...
Hmmmmm....le's see...


So with that -

I'm Gone...........


Lady of The Tulips

"Fish Right Here" - 2010 - Spring Bay Studio ~

I KNOW I've been chattering and making all kinds of noise about some of the work that has been over on the little table..so now I decided that it's time to SHOW that yes, I DO actually have something to SHOW YOU for all that noise...

I did a clever little trick..an' it makes me feel like such a dumb cluck...

I'd wanted some fabric pieces for what seems like for-EVAH..but at over $8.00 a yard, it just didn't seem like that kind of purchase was gonna happen any time soon..'specially since I need close to 10 or more yards of different shades of blue, green, prints, batiks...

You get the idea --

So, I decided to use small pieces of paper that have a similar print or color to them, and used THEM to have as background color -And save myself a WHOLE LOTTA $$$ -- An' like I said, I felt like such a dumb cluck when it dawned on me that I could do the colors this way, than buying all that fabric.

Even tho buying fabric can be so much fun...an' looking online at all that eye-candy..yuummm...some fabu prints that make me want to hop on a plane an' go off to some far-far away island..batiks that just seem to melt into the Sea..

So I went cheap instead. -- my conscience feels much better too - now I don't have to stand and stare at the dining room floor, while I TRY to explain to The Husband why I spent $56.00 on FABRIC..for cryin' out loud...

Otherwise you'd hear his VERY loud noise, I'm jus' about sure.

Man, can that guy QUACK...

But anyway - tomorrow I'll show the other piece that's all Beachy an' swimming-ly nifty...That's all the hints about THAT piece that you're gonna get from me this afternoon.

Besides I'm about flat wore out from drivin' Noah all over creation and BACK today - I've logged over 20 miles in less than 2 hours - goin' from one place to another, and back again - and no, I have nothing to show for it one little bit.

'Cept a headache tryin' to come along..an' some nerves that are just about at the twiingy stage..I feel sorry if some jerk from some corporation decides to try an' tell me some line of #% right now..he's really going to regret making that phone call, 'cause I'm hot, tired, an' altogether cranky.

Must be time to lay down, have a glass of nice ice tea (herbal fruit blend w/ honey...devine!!) an' do NOTHING ~ !! ~

So, yup - tha's exactly what I'm gonna go do!!

I'm Gone ~


Lady of The Tulips

I'm not sure if the brickwork shows up or not, but there are some right at the end of the gravel pathway that the original owners put in some years back.

What I wish I could see, across the dirt road, is whether or not the nest for the thrasher is there, or in one of the little bushes to the right of this gravel path.

I noticed the birds last week..and they were ever so busy, taking teeny branches from underneath the trees, and some of the dried grass from where Noah mowed the lawn..so busy, so busy. And it looked like they were building a nest in our yard...but wait.

Then it looked like they were starting to do something across the dirt road.

Can they have 2?

Is one in fact, their vacation home for the summer??

Anyway...........

This time of year brings the weekenders down to the Shore..some of the little cabins are starting to get new life, now that the "First" weekend of summer is nearly here. Some of the places haven't looked this good since last year..an' some of them may as well just start over...like, they've not had anything done with them in WAY longer than a year.

But still, the weekenders come, and enjoy their time away from wherever they live. I just ride my bike around the neighborhood and feel good that there are people who haven't given up on the little area. Some have sold their weekend homes, an' it looks sad, some of them all empty, an' looking neglected - seems like a waste of a perfectly good home to me.

But with the odd-ball economic times that we have right now, there's no telling what will happen to a little area like we have here. Surrounded by old, old farms, with crops growing...

And then there's the area where we live...with some shoreline homes in the millions of dollars...then way, way, down the socio-economic ladder to a little cabin like ours.

A vast difference between spots, but it all seems to work out.

But I still wonder about the little birds in the yard...and hope that the neighbors cat doesn't decide to make dinner out of either one of them. That would make me so terribly sad. Besides, I like to hear the birds with their faint, gentle singing to each other, while they search around the cabin, for worms, bugs, and whatever else they eat.

And I like having neighbors who don't cause problems!!

But now noah is in the house, and making quite a lot of racket out in the kitchen...great mercy, I better go see what all this is about...

I'm Gone ~~


Lady of The Tulips

SO - I know that I should probably be doing something else besides messin' around with my Bus, but today is the first day where we haven't had rain, rain, and more rain, and Tom fit in my Grateful Dead tapestry on my seat in the Bus..an' the flowers along the front of the cabin were calling my name...

And all kinds of other things were telling me to get out of the studio and do something else besides sit with matte medium all over my hands..an' try to ignore all the paint that seems to be lurking under my fingernails, and GET OUTSIDE ~

So who am I to say no to playing a little bit in my own yard? - Or is that driveway (in the case of the Bus, I guess it would be...) ~~ So, here's what's growing, and a pretty nice look at how tom fixed the grateful dead "deady-Bears" for me in the Bus.

After watching the rain for the last 5 days, it felt sooo good to go out and jus' sorta absorb the quiet in the yard, look at the daylilies along the stone path to the front porch, an' just "excape" for a teeny bit. Far better than hearing some jerk at our bank, yelling at me (He didnt want to get away from the script that he's trained to keep reading, when he didn't know the answer to my question...) an' giving me fits and spits over something that could have been answered in - what - 2 minutes?

So looking over the flowers, feeling the sun on my back, and listening to one of the tiny little woodpeckers way, way up in the pine tree..ahh...that helped much more than I thot it would. And all I can do for somebody like the Banking Fool, is jus' feel sorry for them - they have to keep their script always always perfect so they get their .20 cents per call...they can't let another person help them, 'cause that keeps them from making their commission (or whatever term the corporations use) - an' it just makes me nearly ill, because instead of being a help, I'm discovering more an' more that "Customer Service" is becoming something of a nightmare - an' it really shouldn't. So I feel bad for those people, all closed up in a giant room, smooshed into a little cubicle..being trained to yell at people, and not seeing that there is something else out there besides letting a Worldwide Corporation rule what you say and do...

Sad
Sad
Sad...

So with that, I took the time to enjoy the birds in the woods...listen to something far off out in the Sound..somebody going out fishing/crabbing/doing whatever it is they do for the day...an' breathe in the peacefulness of where I am.

An' say once again...thank you Heavenly Father for giving me this time in our little neck of the woods.

But for now........

I'm Gone.......................

No picture today, but I am considering taking some, 'cause today is just one of those wonderful Spring days, where the temperatures are beyond compare, and the color of the sky nearly takes your breath away.

Not to mention that the wrens are so darn cute out in their nest on the front porch ~ !! ~ I keep thinking that maybe they'll go away and find another place to keep house, but then I see what must be the female, darting in to and out of her nest, which is all buried under a canopy of leaves of the plant..Then I just can't help but smile, and wonder about what mysteries there are in nature. The male, naturally, has to perch himself on one of the posts of the railing surrounding the porch, and sing his little songs...I've no idea what, if anything, they "mean", tho I guess somewhere there is an ornitholigist ( rotten spelling, but close enuf...) who could tell me in DETAIL..but suffice to say that the male wren just sings away at any moment in the day.

Kind of startles me when out of the blue, here's this LOUD song, just out of nowhere. At least the entire neighborhood knows there's a wren nearby...

And then, the neighbors cat has decided that he just has to stop by on his ramblings around the neighborhood..to stop and meeeoooowwww at me..rub his skinny self along my ankles, and generally try to let me know that he's probably going to die at any minute if I don't give him something to eat RIGHT NOW!!!....although I doubt he's going to FAMISH immediately. He still has to let me know he's gonna be a gonner in just a matter of minutes, tho.........

So that's how today has been so far...an' now we have a resident reptile that has taken up a garden bed just outside our bedroom windows...as long as the thing keeps to itself, an' does its thing without any "help" from me, then we'll all get along jus' fine...tom an' noah both had to tell me "HEYYY MAAAAAA.."

As if I'm gonna do anything to it....

But for now, I gotta check on some watercolor paper on the work table..

An' also appologise (well, I can't spell today worth a lick...) for the blurry picture yesterday of my latest canvas..I even tried to hold my breath..braced my hands against my knees...took my right hand an' held it as steady as can BE..

An' the blasted picture came out blurry anyway...

NEXT TIME..I will certainly try to do much better..

But ---

I'm Gone...........


Lady of The Tulips

"Express Your Bliss" - 2010 - Spring Bay Studio


Here's the piece that I've been talkin' about the last couple dayz...it took a little longer to finish some of the pen & ink than I thot it would..mainly 'cause the original pen that I've had for for-EVAH, hauled off and ran out of ink.

That made me dig around in my antique hutch to uncover another pen I had..only to discover that it has > as in the words of The Husband.."Issues..."

The thing won't work right..as in, it runs the ink jus' as nice as can be, then jus' decides that it doesn't want to work anymore..so I have to go over areas that I've already set ink on...an' then the thing starts to work right...then stop...then...


So you get the idea..something that should have gone in a flash, took like, 3 days longer than I planned. So goes "Planning" - But I got thru, an' here the new little girl is..she is jus' a tad different than my earlier "girls", but she's kinda fun.

I've got some other work over on the table that I'm jus' itchin' to get finished, so I gotta make this quick. Plus Noah is lurking in the kitchen, an' I've got this feeling that he wants me to go somewhere an' do errands for him. I can't even think of the miles I've driven in the last week...no wonder this piece seemed to take so long to get done...I worked on it inbetween driving all OVAH..an' out here in the country, where the closest "store" is 5 miles...well, you can imagine how nerve racking it is, when The Husband leaves me his car, saying..."Oh!, it's got plenty of gas for you to drive around in..." - YEAH..if I was going down the street an' comin' right back ~ ! ~ toad....so it's been one of those weird weeks...plus some guy screaming at me about a bill...an' come to find out I was directed to the wrong department...

An' I STILL don't drink...wha's up with THAT?? ~~ after 3 days of odd-ball companies screaming at me (again, wrong departments...) an' Tom sayin' that he's not sure if there will be overtime for the rest of this month (so much for payin' extra on bills..) I'm not sure if my brain will stand this STUFF...

Did I mention we have a wren nest in the plant out on the front porch?? ~ well, more on that later..I gotta get over to the work table 'fore Noah comes in an' starts quackin' about goin' somewhere...


I'm Gone.............


Lady of The Tulips

So, if you don't look at the tears in the headliner, the interior of the Bus isn't lookin' too shabby these days. I keep sayin' I'm finished with fixin' up inside of there, but then I discover something else that would coordinate with the curtains, pillow an' other beads...

So then it's back to messin' around some more.

But not this week, 'cause I have this project that is ready to get extree paint on it..I've got I think 3 shades of Blue ready for it, so it should be breezy feelin' once I get it all slammed together.


I
am very happy to say that Mothers Day was not only a nice sunny, tho a bit chilly, day. I'd thot that danny would have been working some baseball games, but I guess with their new director, the decision was to have the day off this year. Which gave Danny the time to come down and visit. AND he also grilled some burgers for us ~ !! ~ How 'bout That?? ~ I had been home from church 'bout 35 minutes when he called to say he was comin' down. Gabriel couldn't make it, 'cause he had practice w/ his band, and they were also starting to do some recording, so that tied up his afternoon. Plus, he's got a job ( ~ !!! ~ ) now, an' he had to get to that after all the other things he was doin' in the afternoon.


Makes me tired jus' thinkin' 'bout all that runnin' around.

An' I've been runnin' around this morning too - noah had - had to get to the store to get some coke's and other stuff..plus some gas for the chainsaw..plus a stop to the car parts store..by the time I was all done with THAT, I felt wore out! But I got home to work on one of the last pieces for the canvas on the table..an' wouldn't ya know it..a different pen did just what I feared it would do...the ink ran the minute I hit it with a teeny-tiny bit of water from some watercolor paint I was using...so that piece had to be redone..

So here we are, 45 minutes later, an' I'm suddenly realizing that my stomach is growling, an' it's already time to have LUNCH ~ !! ~ man!, how'd it get so late already?

So I guess I better get the 1st coat of paint on the canvas..then probably see if there are some kind of left-overs in the 'fridge...

Yee Gadzzz, wonder what the rest of the afternoon's gonna be like??
Tee Hee>>>>>


I'm Gone.........


Lady of The Tulips

Jus' a fast - quick - jump - up an' run kinda post, as The Husband is due back here in a dash..so I gotta dash this message like Snap!! - an' then get goin'

There is a batch of new work over on the table, but tha's all I'm gonna say for now!! ~ Several different things have come out of the paintbrush and pen and inks, and I'm really suprised with how they've turned out!! ~ I think you'll see the difference in the work when I get all of it laid out on the canvases. I'm hope-hoping that I've got enuf matte medium to get all of the paper down the way I want. Other wise I may have to make a trip up to the city next weekend, an' I just do NOT want to do that. it wears me out thinkin' 'bout it as it IS...

The bus just keept cruisin' along...the reactions from people run the whole spectrum..some people really like to see it puttin' down the street, other people are just so rude and nasty it just about scares me to pieces. I mean, there have literally been people that have tried to sideswipe me, an' run me off the road..other people have come racing up behind me, and almost rear-ended me. The irony of some of those drivers, is that the people who come up behind me, are usually driving those extremely high-end vehicles, and I'm thinkin'..Are you DAFT??? ~ You're driving a $50,000 Mercedes Benz, an' your drivin' that thing like your a complete IDIOT ~ !!! ~ AND you wanna try an' make this Bus run FASTER???

It's either that thot, or maybe, "Well, you probably should NOT have had that second gin and tonic over at the clubhouse, 'cause now look how bad your drivin'..."

Either way, I just keep goin' on down the little country roads, listenin' to my Bluegrass an jus' doin' my thing. And lookin' at all the lush green growth of all the fields, woods and streams must have had a good effect on me, 'cause my work is definetly showin' it...

There..I gave you another tease on my work...but trust me, it is different for sure.

But with that, I gotta go - The Husband is due in like 2 minutes, n' he gets pretty cranky if I'm payin' attention to him. PLUS - he SAID he'd buy some steaks to grill out tonight for Mothers Day...so I wanna MAKE SURE he bought them suckers...

Or else you'll be able to hear me from where you are ONCE I LAY INTO HIM!!!

'k..

I'm Gone..............


Lady of The Tulips

A little shot of the interior of the Bus - even after all the camping and mess we made the other week, it's suprising that all the beads and ribbons survived the drive ~ ! ~

I took this before the weather turned cloudy the other afternoon. I thot we for sure were getting some rain, but it only clouded up and irritated me to no end. And to make matters even more agrivating, the temperatures dropped like winter was snubbing it's nose at us, saying Nah-Nah-Nah-Nah-Nah~!!~

Nothing that get's under the skin than when it's all Warm and Springlike..then you literally get up the next day and it's 20 degrees COOLER..makes my last good nerve just twinge that much more.

I'll post some other interior shots either tomorrow or wednesday - right now I'm battling with some watercolor pencils..one shade of blue ended up having more grey undertones than I thought it did. So when I went to add some light blue for shading, it looked like it'd been sunk in the Sound for the last 14 years..not exactly what I had in mind. More of a floaty look, not something hit-rammed-and-sunk during some off the wall war 120 years ago.

So, with some white acrylic, a bit of adding of "Ultramarine Blue", the shading that I'm trying to get is slowly working out.

At least I think it is. Once the watercolor paper is dry, then I'll doublecheck, then add the other paints - fun - but there's always those weird little things that crop up to juuust bring you up short.

That's why it's better to say that it'll all work out, than to get flustered more than necessary. Expect the unexpected. Tha's the ticket ~ !! ~

We're waiting to see what kind of storms are rolling in - I know that Tenn. got hammered over the weekend, an' I'm really hoping everybody is doin' ok now - cleaning up after storms is not one of my favorite things, but Things can get replaced. People can't, so Everybody needs to listen to the Weather people when they say to avoid certain areas, don't get near streams and creeks if they look swollen, an' don't get near power lines that are down. Now we just keep an eye on the sky for the next couple hours, an' it'll be ok. Tom said that the wind is blowing really hard up where he called from in Virginia...70% humidity and climbing. yikes - and the temp. is over 84 - I think he's gonna be glad he left a rain jacket in the cab of his truck~ !! ~

Ack ~ ! ~ Speaking of which, I jus' remembered that I left the windows down in the Bus - I made a trip to the grocery store to get items that ran out over the weekend, then went to the Fishing Center to get Noah a root beer, an' never did roll up the windows.

That'll guarentee a good soaking rain ~ !! ~

Most definetly gotta run ~ !!! ~

I'm Gone........


Lady of The Tulips