You need a Farmageddon shirt

Lots of time on the computer this week, especially this morning....two wedding announcements to work on, a t-shirt design for a local winery, a capoeira print, lots of emails and Etsy updates and digital ducks in a row.  Am currently installed on the porch, which is kind of the living room extension during the summer months, so I can pretend to be outside while working, haHA!  Beautiful beautiful day!

Next week I have a completely different project on tap...silkscreening a second round of the legendary Farmageddon t-shirts!  The screen is being burned as I type (hopefully) and there's a giant pile of shirts in my kitchen awaiting printing.  I sometimes burn the screens myself but the chemicals are getting old, and setting up that complicated system with the 500 watt bulb and the glass and the dark room is tricky and doesn't always work.  If you want one of these shirts, let me know, there will be unisex (blue or rusty orange) and women's styles (pink or light blue) and they will be $15.  Guaranteed to get comments.

(Farmageddon was a big party that my friend Thor threw on his farm a few years ago as a benefit for the local low-income CSA program.  Lots of music and food, very fun time.  The shirts were a big hit, and went fast, so this at long last is a second chance to get one.)

Chickpea curry

If you came here from Gary's blog, here's that chickpea curry he's talking about!  (recipe courtesy of my pals Kendra and Peter):

2 cans (19oz each) chickpeas

1/4c vegetable oil

generous pinch asafetida

1t cumin seeds

1 med-small onion, peeled and chopped

3 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped

1/4c canned chopped tomatoes

2t peeled, finely grated ginger

1 1/4c prepared black tea (we like Lap Sang Su Shong)

1 to 2 hot green chilis, cut into fine rounds

1t salt

2t ground toasted cumin seeds

1t garam masala

3-4T coarsely chopped fresh cilantro

1T lemon juice

Rinse and drain chickpeas.

Heat oil over medium-high heat. Add asafetida and cook for a few seconds. Add cumin seeds and cook for 15 seconds, Add onion and cook until onion turns quite brown. Add garlic and cook until golden. Add tomatoes and cook until they turn dark and thick. Add ginger, stir well. Add chickpeas and remaining ingredients. Simmer over low heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Appetizing, indeed!

The informative directions, on my new bag of rice noodles.  I heart the Asian grocery store!

"Egret Brand Tung-Kow rice vermicelli is a traditional diet made of choice rice, white and smooth, soft but tough threads and easy cooking are favourable for pot-luck, for entertainment of guests or for use as a gift.

Suggestions for cooking: (1) Frying: after softening the vermicelli in boiling water, take out to fry along with sauteed dainty ingredients until well done, (2) Boiling: fry the aforesaid ingredients to half-done, put in boiling water at the bubble, and gether the sqftened vermicelli to simmer until fully cooked, (3) Deepfrying: after frying in boiling oil for 1-2 minutes, it is crisp and savoury and when coordinated with congee or other diet, it is appetizing, indeed!"

Flew the coop

So out here in the country we take our excitement where we can get it.  Those who follow my blog, or even those who drop in occasionally looking for stories about the life of a freelance artist and maybe some recent nice paintings, know that I have a small flock of chickens who are apparently my main source of entertainment.  I try not to talk too much about them, but there are two recent tales that beg telling, and I also promised Werner and Rob that there'd be some good reading on here tonight.

Story 1: A few days ago I drove back into my driveway, and the girls came waddling down to greet me as usual.  I think this is pretty funny, so I usually encourage this behavior with a handful of corn.  I went over to the feedbag, in an old beat-up metal trash can, and grabbed a handful of corn to scatter.  Then I reached in again, and instead of corn, much to everyone's surprise I grabbed a chipmunk.  

Story 2: The original flock of six hens has dwindled to four (Gladys disappeared, Dorothy faded away and eventually had to be dispatched by my farmer boy housemate...leaving Martha, Clara, Ruth and Ethel), so I decided to get two more to round out the number again.  A friend at the farmers' market had extra, so she offered to bring me a couple of hens in exchange for some notecards.  Hurrah for the barter system!  

Susan brought two lovely Silver-Laced Wyandotts to me at market in a pet carrier, and I brought them to their new home on Saturday.  Now, Saturday was an extremely busy day at the market, the Fourth of July and nice weather and TONS and TONS of people....we looooove profitable days like that at market, but I was absolutely reeling from the crowds and from talking to too many people, completely knackered.  I wanted to shut the new girls in the coop for a few days so they knew where home was, so my plan was to pop them in the coop and then go take a big fat nap.  But I reached into the carrier to grab a chicken, and she pecked me!  A-ha, I said, I'll just take the top off the carrier and pick them up and pop them in the coop that way, and go on with the nap plan!  However, when I took the lid off, instead of sitting docilely and waiting to be installed in the coop, they flew out in a big flurry and headed for the piney woods.  I started to chase them, yelling unpleasant things about chickens, and of course they just went deeper into the bushes.  I threw out some corn (sans chipmunks) which got their attention for a minute but didn't really lure them back.  My housemate and her baby came out to join the fun.  After a little while of this, being so tired and grumpy and now covered in bits of the piney woods, I decided to just leave them be...they knew there was corn to be had, and anyway chickens always calm down when it gets dark and perhaps I could do the scoop-and-install plan when they were asleep.

Chickens are not very smart, but they ARE concerned about their self-preservation.  In the end, they both settled nervously into the coop all on their own at dusk, and one of them laid an egg.  The original flock was a little nervous too, but this morning all seemed fairly peaceful if a little extra raucous.  This afternoon they were all sticking fairly well together, checking out the compost and the birdfeeder...but still eyeing each other skeptically as you can see from the photo.  It will be interesting to see how they settle themselves out, and who will become alpha.  They are provisionally named Mildred and Agnes.

Smoke and oakum

It's been a very productive few days, on the heels of last week's sloth and indolence...and camping and friends visiting, and shopping, and la la la.  I sat down on Monday and made a very detailed plan of attack for the week, with tasks to be completed each day before sleeping, and am pleased to say I'm cracking on like smoke and oakum (as Jack Aubrey is always saying in those Patrick O'Brian novels I read so often).  I spent yesterday afternoon with my etching press, oh how I love my sweet etching press, and today pulled the prints out of the blotting paper and hung them out to finish drying on the clothesline on the porch.  Makes for interesting blog photos too, no?

Welcome to the world of Etsy

Hey, after all the talk, I'm finally on Etsy!  I just posted my first few items for sale, concentrating on some notecard sets.  But eager to add more things over this next week, as I continue to sort out how to get some good photos etc.  Here is my set of wee gift cards.

Check it out here!

Or more directly, the website is christisobel.etsy.com.  And tell your friends...and check back often because there will be lots more on there soon...

Otherwise, it seems that when the summer season really hits, my blog suffers as I become busier with such things as:

a) working frantically on keeping my farmers' market booth fully stocked 

b) continuing with the freelance projects, which just ramped up again

c) summer also equals wedding announcement work for all those happy couples!

d) having fun outside!  storing some rare Ithaca sunshine in my bones for the winter

(What is Etsy, you ask?  It's an online marketplace for artisans like me, there are tons and tons of interesting things on there, from clothing to pottery to toys to soaps to original art to vintage items, etc etc.  I just purchased a couple of catnip toys shaped like eyeballs, for example.)

Forked Lake

I just got back from a few days in the Adirondacks, for my annual June trip with my pal Jean Elizabeth...she celebrates her birthday at Forked Lake, and I join her when I can get away.  If any of you are looking for a beautiful camping place this summer, definitely check out Forked Lake, it's located between Blue Mountain Lake and Long Lake.  The caretaker, Ted, is a great guy too.  I took my lovely little solo canoe (her name is the Nutmeg of Consolation, after a Patrick O'Brian book), and we had the coveted small island site.  Not much happened, except for a windy expedition down the inlet between Forked Lake and Raquette Lake.  Here's a photo of as far as we got in the canoe, to where the river turned into a small impassible rocky stream.  Great spot for lunch, and it would be a great spot for a swim too except the water was mighty cold.

On the way home, my efforts at tying on the canoe slacked, and I had to keep stopping and securing.  It's a newish car, you see, and all of these systems need to be worked out...

On the art front, the quest to join Etsy continues, I took a lot of photos of my cards today and designed my banner.  I also sent cards to a new store in Stone Harbor, NJ.  The store is named Alice, and I'm pretty excited about being part of their collections!

Travel sketchbook

Yup, it's a computer-y day for me, two blog entries and research into the brave new world of Etsy...plus getting my car packed up for market this weekend.  I should be working on that label project, which I will do next, before heading over to Gary's studio to learn how to make mug handles.  Then off to dinner at my favorite Ithaca restaurant (Just a Taste, yummy...those garlic braised greens are to die for!) with a birthday friend, and there's big talk of catching some African music at the State later!

Since I'm scanning things today, here's a page from the larger of my traveling watercolor sketchbooks, with a recent quick painting from my time in Michigan a few weeks ago.  This is one of my favorite spots on the Au Sable land.  I love these brush tip markers and quick watercolor washes.

So yeah, I'm on the verge of being on Etsy...will keep you posted...

Bookends

Scenes like this are not uncommon around my house when I'm trying to get work done.  I have several small graphic design jobs to work on, and I don't mind computer work so much when it's raining outside.

So much thyme on my hands

I just got the garden weeded yesterday, so here it is.  Please note the gigantic thyme plant in the foreground, it was so tiny last year and now I'm trying to sort out how to divide and conquer it.  Other than thyme, my garden contains: salad mix, swiss chard, various basils, assorted tomatoes (including sungolds and brandywines), a couple kinds of yummy summer squash, sweet bell peppers, nasturtiums, a few kale varieties, and marigolds.  I have some sunflowers started and will plant them soon, once they are too big to be tempting to chipmunks.

All this yard and garden work, no wonder I haven't been inside blogging.  Summer is really coming to Ithaca now.  In my opinion, June is about as beautiful as it gets, warm but not too hot, cool nights, those first swims of the year, early season bike rides.  This makes up for the dismal grey of November just a little.  Strawberries are in season too...

And while I'm on the bucolic theme, here's my chickens in the compost pile too.  They're better than TV, really.

It sits in the center and knows

What's up with the spiral imagery in my paintings, anyway?  I get asked this all the time at the Farmers' Market.  It's kind of complicated and organic, so here's a cliff-note style summary of how the spiral fits in my personal iconography.

The first time I really became aware of spiral imagery was during a family vacation to the west coast, where we stopped at some petroglyphs in New Mexico.  There was one image of a line of people dancing under a huge spiral.  This resonated with my worldview and faith, and stuck with me.  Next, a few years later I was painting a chair for a friend of mine in Oregon, and had some extra paint, so I signed the piece with my handprint on the underside, and noticed that a spiral would tuck nicely into the space in the palm.  Hmmm...a logo is born...my hand and my creativity in one image.  Then I started seeing this hand-and-spiral design everywhere, in many native traditions around the world.  THEN I started putting it into my paintings, usually under trees...at some point I realized that in these paintings the spiral meant the life coming from the earth and growing into the trees.  On a more shallow level, spirals simply make a really nice design element, sometimes art just looks cool and doesn't necessarily have a deep meaning.

I make one of these stone spirals on the lake beach outside my cabin in Michigan every year.

In other news, I've been back from vacation since Friday night, after a long drive, a tiring evening of packing for market, a busy weekend of selling cards, and now a few days of generally getting my house, garden, business, and life back in order (shedding cats!).  Took down my show at Korova on Monday too.  Summer is here!  I jumped in a creek yesterday.

Au Sable again

OK ok, this is just a funny photo, working in the kitchen is actually very fun.  Not to mention sanitary, well-lit, and non-violent.  

I spent much of the morning today working on another letter to the Au Sable board of directors.  They are meeting this weekend, and will be again discussing the future of this place.  In a nutshell, they are in dire financial straights, and almost decided to shut down, since the endowment has been decimated without anyone really knowing it.  There's been a fierce reaction from former students and staff and academic partners, saying how Au Sable can't close.  New plans are in place, and some fundraising efforts, all of which have managed to keep it limping along.  Obviously, since I drive 10-13 hours each way and spent my vacation time here not being paid to work in a kitchen every year, I care about this place and love being here.  There are trees here who I consider to be friends.  If I were rich, I'd give them more money, but I'm not so instead I make dinner.  If you'd like to read more, or wish to learn about donating, please check here.  

I've been having lots of deep thoughts lately about paradigm shifts.  But I need to go work the dinner shift, so that will have to wait until next time.  ha ha ha!  That's a cliffhanger if I ever heard one!