Fall....mice... and just breathe!

The colors have been great this year despite what the predictions were.   I drove around today as leaves blew off the trees into the path of my car, not minding that a few hit my windshield.   Never tire of seeing fall leaves next to rock walls, old and new.   The tall plume grasses seem to change color daily.   The ferns that went from green to yellow are now browning out with the leaves crumbling to the ground.

I was surprised that I stood my ground at a farm stand today when I saw what must have been a rat crawling around the shelves.   Some people may have screamed.   I was amazed how big it was and by its long thick furry tale.    Later I thought how mice-romanticized rats-are portrayed in art and movies as they rummage through pumpkin patches or stands.  Or transformed into horses to pull an imaginary pumpkin coach.  As long as the rat did not hitch a ride home with me, I was more than happy to leave him to his adventures.

Though I am enjoying the fall and took it easy the last couple of days-as I surely needed to-I still know that I need to catch up on all my custom house ornament orders and finish the ornaments for the CAC.  No, of course I did not finish the CAC ornaments last weekend.  Such wishful thinking.   :)   I've been told by CAC that they will wait for my ornaments, but I risk not getting a good spot in the display area.   I can just do the best I can.   I am, as I finished another 3 of one design yesterday.    Well, I have to fix one of them.   Sometimes things happen.    :)

Looks like a good week for enjoying the colors, again....creating when I can.....and just breathe.......    :)

Holiday Ornament Update :)

I'm steadily making progress on the ornaments for the Cambridge Artist's Cooperative.  Tried as I might, sleeping late today was not an option.   Once I woke up all I could think about was how one of the designs was not totally working for me.  This would be for the ever popular "sleeping in a bed" series.   The bear is out....the young reindeer is in.   One would think that the reindeer would have all ready appeared in this series, but not wanting the ornament to be appear too "Christmasy" -not a real word, but you get the gist-I refrained from including it.
Now, I think with my own twist on the design it will be fine.

In any case, today will be a marathon Holiday ornament day.   It may be very doable to get it all done.   Tagging and signing maybe tomorrow.....Ho, ho, ho!

 

Fall Update

I have been working at a short-term day job for the past 2 months or so.  Not creative, but the people are nice.   I think of creative things I could be doing while working!  Who doesn't, right?!

Art jobs are done when I am not there.  Custom orders(house ornaments) for my Etsy clients-which have been steadily coming in as of late-and sculpting holiday ornaments for the Cambridge Artist's Cooperative.  It's hard to believe that I have been selling ornaments through the Coop for 17 years!   The Halloween ornaments most likely arrived at the store today.  A lot of glow in the dark features.   Yup, more scary cute designs.  And I have started on the Christmas designs and hope to have them finished in two weeks.   I am doing something new this year in terms of a couple of designs: sea inspired. 

I've been working from the sketches that I made and sometimes change the ornament design as I go.  

I wanted to do some other design work, but due to time constraints it will have to wait.  In the mean time, I can think about it.

One season is ending and am in the midst of another

In the past week I have been readying the gardens for the winter months.   Fitting in an hour here and there as I work through my orders of Custom Home ornaments through my Etsy site.   Today, I dug up all the gladiolas bulbs except for one and planted 3 hydrangeas in their place.  There is still one gladiolas blooming, but will be cut soon.   3 hostas were also transplanted.  And old tomato vines pulled.  I would rather take out the plants before they get withered by the impending hard frost that is coming in a few days.  

Over the next couple of days, I will cut the remaining dahlia flowers and dig up the plants and bring them inside.   I hope to bring some plants inside and then decide what to do with them within one week.

My experiment with growing ginger and tumeric did not work.  Oh well.  I think I had too many things going on this year to give them my full attention.  Mishaps and whatnot slowed me down.

The Christmas season in my Etsy shop is well under way.  I have several orders to create.  At the moment, it all custom house ornaments.

I hope to fit in some time to create small drawings and other artwork to submit to a small works holiday show.  I do need time away from the sculpting table.

A day in the gardens

Today was an excellent day to work on the gardens.  I made sure I got outside since it will be raining for the next 3 days.  And outside I was for 5 hours!  There is always weeding to do and i did that first.   I worked in the new soil for the raised garden plots and planted shallots and lettuce.   I briefly thought about transplanting some black-eyed Susan's until I saw all the red ants.  Maybe some other time.....Then i turned my attention to digging up a few hostas and hydrangeas.  Each year, I pot several of these plants for the back deck.  Once I got to the back deck, I decided to sit down and enjoy the nice breeze while I sat in the shade.  Eventually, I potted all the perennials I dug up. 

I've learned to keep my explanation of what I am growing to a minimum.  I can see how the long list of plants can be quite overwhelming to others.   The raised garden beds are filled with companion plants and that in itself helps up the number of different kinds of plants I grow!

Anyway, it was a very constructive day in the gardens.   :)

Drawing for an auction

I finished the colored pencil drawing for an auction that my friends' work place is having in June.  It will be available for bidding on the site Bidding for Good, June 8th, 2015.   This drawing is called "Cascading Apples"  and is created entirely with colored pencils.    It can also be found on this site in the section titled "Colored Pencil."

Nature drawings

One week ago I started on a close up of an apple tree in colored pencil.  It may be finished this week or next and I intend to continue with another drawing in a similar fashion, perhaps blueberries.   My hope is to make this a series and offer the prints for sale.  Most of my time in the past few months has been taken up with completing orders for my custom house ornaments, so it is quite nice to be able to go back to the drawing table.   I generally work with a few different kinds of colored pencils, though this particular drawing is being done with mostly theKoh-i-noor brand of woodless pencils with a little Prismacolor pencils.  My other choice would be the Derwent line of colored pencils.