Reminiscing

I was just going through some old photos that I have scanned on my hard drive.  These sure do remind me of why I love photography so much.  Being able to capture images like these are priceless.  They remind me of time, love, emotions, pure joy.  I don't know if I would have remembered these moments without these images.  I know there are so many moments that I miss capturing because I haven't had my camera with me.  These photos were taken in 1998 and 1999 for photography classed that I took at the local junior college.  I took these with an old Ricoh SLR that my mother gave me for my 16th birthday.  By this time I had probably had the camera for about 15 years and still absolutely loved it.  I hand developed these photographs for the class and then scanned the 5x7's into the computer a couple of years ago.  Sadly, I no longer have the camera or the images, casualties of my last move.

This creek runs right through the campus of Chico State University.  We were enjoying a warm spring day after a long, wet winter.  I actually love the way this image picked up dust from the scanner.  I'm thinking of reworking it in photoshop to give it an even more vintage look.

Cat Portraits

I went to church today and then I got a good nap.  Not like I haven't been getting a good nap everyday for the last two weeks or anything.  Oh boy, school is going to be rough this semester.  Do you think anyone will notice if I fall asleep on the ceramics worktables every afternoon?  After the nap I unburied the picnic table from the painting supplies and realized there were cute furry things roaming around in the yard.  It's amazing how one can be minding one's own business outside and then realize that one is being watched by furry things.

Betty, keeping a close eye on tiger.  She belongs to the next door neighbor and comes into the yard in the late afternoon to watch the squirrels in the persimmon tree.  At night she comes to look in the back window and proceeds to hurl herself at the opposing cat on the other side of the window.

Tiny, cross -eyed after getting one eye punctured.  His name is Tiny because I caught him when he was feral at about six weeks.  He had a bad cold and he was super cute and tiny.  He has the absolute, softest fur I have ever felt on a cat.  It is so soft and silky, you almost can't feel it.  By day he is a sweet, submissive, scaredy cat.  By night he becomes the king of the yard and tries to chase Betty around.

Tiger, keeping a close eye on Betty.  AKA, cat with a 'tude.  She is almost as attitudinal as Betty.  I blame it on catching her when she was three weeks old and bottle feeding her.  She thinks she is boss.  Don't pet her unless she wants it or she'll bite.  We have a strange relationship.  I think I should pet her whenever I want.  I get bit a lot, but not bad.

Tie Dye Madness

Soooo, before the painting madness there was the tie dye madness.  Of course you wouldn't know any of that because I haven't posted for so long.

 

I just finished painting the second coat of paint on the bedroom.  This has taken me about a week to work on.  And I still have all the trim.  I flippantly thought I could just "paint" the bedroom.  This room and the one I am in now have been a pretty robin's egg blue for the past 13 years since my mother bought the house and who knows how many years before that.  They were both way overdue for a paint job.  I am moving into this room and I couldn't bear the thought of winter in a cool blue room.   This is what I finally came up with after four hardware stores worth of paint chips and samples and testing all over the wall.  I call it Buttercream Frosting.  It is my own custom mix.  I couldn't find quite the shade I was looking for.  I could find one darker and one lighter.  I bought one gallon of each and mix them together.  I am pretty pleased with myself.  And exhausted!

It has been a mad dash of playing around the last week.  It isn't like I have a list of about thirty things I HAVE to do before school starts again in a week.  I should give myself a break.  It's not like it has all been play.  Last week there were the three out of town doctors appointments (not for me, I'm the driver) and then all the grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning to do since my mother has been laid up.  You know, all the normal, domestic stuff.

Anyhoo, this tie dye madness began a week ago on a lazy Sunday afternoon when I remembered I had shirts that had been sitting in the tie dye box for about, ahem, four years?  I thought it would be pretty simple and easy to do those up in a jiffy.  Ha ha ha!  Ya right.  Now, drumroll please, here for your viewing pleasure are my tie dyes. Ta dah!

It took me a few days to get through the process.  I only tied up the shirts on Sunday and then it got too dark to mix up the dyes.  Then Monday I thought it would be a great idea to barbeque AND tie dye.  Oh, I kill myself!  What was I thinking?  Just when I thought I was finally done with the madness, my son and his girlfriend wanted to tie dye.  After all, there was extra dye and the mess hadn't been put away yet.  Therefore, the madness began again.

Then to top it off, and just because there was a little dye left, I made this little wall piece.  And we wont even talk about the rest of the leftover dye that is in the refrigerator.  Next week, reality.  Moving the bedroom and trying to complete the to do list.  Wish me luck.  I hear the dyes calling me...

Catching Up

I think I am finally starting to catch up.  Maybe...  Well, I have been trying to anyway.  Taking too many naps though messes up you sleep cycle so I've got to ditch that developing habit.  Besides, I wont be able to when school starts and I don't want to have to go through withdrawals. 

My mother had a minor procedure done to her foot so I got to hang around today.  Not like I really needed to go anywhere.  Uh, wait!  Overdue library books.  Yikes.  But, as I was saying.  I finally got through sorting paperwork in the  spare room and today I made another mess.  I got into the boxes of pottery I got out of the kiln the day before I left for Fresno.  Now there is pottery all over the floor and paper piled up in a corner.  The cat likes that.

I photographed almost all of it with my new canon SLR, hehe.  Here is a gorgeous little shino chawan that turned out great.  I posted it to my Etsy shop along with some other items.  I will be posting more in the next few days.

I think I threw this with B-Mix.  It is the only one.  I wish I had made more!  I love the speckling on the inside.   I think with the next photo shoot I need to move the piece either back away from the white or use some black fabric or paper to absorb some of the reflection that is happening on the bottom of the piece.

Now I am starting to accumulate a lot of work.  I am not sure if I should just keep working to sell it on Etsy or if I should sign up for a craft fair.  Hmm...  One thing is for sure.  I have so many new ideas from the clay workshop that I'm not sure what I am going to work on next.  Decisions, decisions.  Time to whip  out the sketch book and start working on some ideas.

Perfect Evening

I had a wonderful evening tonight.  I headed out to Horseshoe Lake to see what kind of pictures I could get around sunset.  It was about time to really play with my  new camera and break it in a little.  The weather was great.  I got there just as the  sun was headed down behind a hill.  It had cooled off and there was a nice breeze.  It was beautiful to listen to all the ducks, crickets and birds as they headed off to their nests for the night.  They were actually making quite a racket.  Not the ducks, however.  They were just making peaceful little noises.  While I was walking around the lake I got the awesome opportunity to see this young buck come down the hill to get a drink.

He was really pretty use to seeing people and wasn't too interested in me as long as I held pretty still and didn't make any sudden movements.  Of course the telephoto really helped.  One of the main reasons for getting a new camera, besides the other one dying, was to get a digital SLR with a telephoto lens.  I have really missed having that ability to zoom in and to play around with depth of field.

My son was wonderful enough to set up his iMac in the spare bedroom so I would have a fast computer to save and edit my photos on.  Big thanks!  I have more wonderful photos from this evening but I still trying to figure out where I saved them to on this computer.  Thankfully I have worked on Macs before but I am more used to the PC platform.