Above the GWB

Latest Song Lyic Journal Page

2012-01-26T15:33:00.000-05:00

Playing with the new Picassa

2012-01-24T22:40:00.000-05:00

The night before New Year's Eve

2012-01-01T01:11:00.000-05:00

Walking to the subway from MOMA where we saw the DeKooning show, I drifted through Columbus Circle because I wanted to shoot the elephant sculptures at night. When I looked at Columbus in the center and there was a couple dancing. She had lights on/in her tutu and toe shoes, he had a black tux. No cameras anywhere but mine and no one even watching til her tutu lit up. Then there was an audience of maybe 8 while they danced all the way around the statue.

at the end she was approached by a small fan and they both seemed to enjoy it.

I say it all the time, only in New York and this is why I ALWAYS have a camera.

Fish's Eddy buckets full of whatever...

2011-12-30T13:09:00.000-05:00

July through December 2011

2011-12-29T15:39:00.000-05:00

Some extras here, 402nd post!

January to June 2011

2011-12-29T15:28:00.000-05:00

These are my favorites from the first half of the year and this is my 401st post in this blog since it started!

Celebratory Crab

2011-12-23T13:23:00.000-05:00

Christmas is coming......

2011-12-22T17:18:00.000-05:00

There is a special birthday today

2011-12-13T13:53:00.003-05:00

Sienna is 7!

Columbus Circle moon

2011-12-13T01:36:00.000-05:00

Marathon Ads still up in the NYC subways

2011-12-10T11:15:00.001-05:00

Some days are stranger than others

2011-12-09T13:39:00.000-05:00

in my crazy neighborhood

the word for this year

2011-11-23T01:16:00.000-05:00

I think every year should have a word. After much pondering, this is the word for the year to come.

Alexander McQueen

2011-11-14T12:11:00.000-05:00

When I saw the Alexander McQueen show at the Met, I KNEW I had to have the calendar, the pictures were so big and clear and it was such a nice design. HOWEVER, it was, it turned out, too big for me to hang in my measley (sp?) available space and it fell off the refrigerator when hung up there with a magnet. Besides, my Spanish Water Dog calendar (soon to be available on Cafe Press and supporting the Spanish Water Dog Rescue) must be on the fridge, so there wasn't much room.

I pondered this a bit, and then I realized. My studio table has glass in some places, but not one big piece covering the whole table. Voila!!

The picture is under the glass and the date portion is available for writing on. Of course, I could have turned it under, but I love doing little day reportage snippets in a calendar and this has now become the best place to put the little notes. Also to doodle when the need arises.

I live in a fishbowl

2011-11-13T13:02:00.000-05:00

At least, so it appears for now. They are repointing the bricks on my building, and since I live on the ground floor, the staging area is right outside my bedroom window. Usually they just discuss who stands where and take the platform up but for the last couple of days they have been working on my windows.

It really gets weird when you consider that my bed and the window sill are just about one and the same. I have to sneak out of bed every morning or it gets too close for comfort around here.

Kitchen update

2011-11-08T13:19:00.000-05:00

I have looked in vain for an older photo of my kitchen. Nowhere to be found, so you will have to imagine that in place of the nice skinny Ikea black sideboard on the right there once was an enamel topped kitchen table. Amazing! I got back at least a foot of open space, two drawers and two shelves... and it breathes!

Can anyone help me

2011-11-07T14:36:00.000-05:00

Figure out how to explain to Sienna that Daylight Savings Time is over? She still wants the old time back and wants me to participate in the rebellion against Eastern Standard Time. She especially wants me to get out at 7 AM, or even a little earlier in the morning if possible. Reasoning with her has no effect. It is those sad ears and eyes.......

and a couple of hours later, there is more still

2011-10-29T18:07:00.000-04:00

This is the view of the courtyard and it is blowing like mad out there! January weather in October ....

Well people, it is

2011-10-29T12:19:00.000-04:00

snowing like mad in northern Manhattan on October 29th...

Process of building the Journal

2011-10-27T01:24:00.001-04:00

I started by coloring a bunch of pages, inspired by L K Ludwig in her online classes, which are great fun and full of interesting ideas. Then I bound the pages with a cover that includes an old Polaroid Image Transfer that I had lying around. Finally, I started adding images I liked to the pages. No real plan as to what images, no order, just do what happens. I had decided that since this was a theme journal there was no pressure like there seems to be for me in a daily or reportorial journal about an event or a trip or whatever.

This one takes whatever it takes. So this post is a sort of summary report as I discovered i was being inconsistent about where I posted pages. Some are over on the photos blog and some are here. These are the newest pages, and then some links to some completed pages.

The lyrics are from songs that were/are important to me, and I am a total sap for a good lyric, so here they are. I am not doing it from the viewpoint of finding a lyric I like and making a page to suit. I am allowing my stations on Pandora to play in the background, but once I have a page in process I find that the "right" lyric sometimes pops into my head.

I found some old oiled paper negatives I used when I was printing black and white photos in the darkroom. I cut up a couple because I think those days are gone .... sadly... and used some parts of them on pages.

This is done, I think, on the right hand page... it is THE line from a Whiter Shade of Pale...

The cover is here. Scroll down here for some pages and more finished pages here... and here.... and here.

Hispanic Society New York

2011-10-23T14:05:00.000-04:00

paper camera

2011-10-14T14:00:00.000-04:00

Another paper camera setting. I love this little app!

another page

2011-10-06T11:11:00.000-04:00

The page on the left is the inside of the front cover, I think I will leave it as is and make this a one page spread, but we shall see

Paul Simon - Cool Cool River

2011-10-02T12:36:00.001-04:00

I believe in the future I will live in my car, my radio tuned to the sound of a star.
I believe in the future we will suffer no more, maybe not in my lifetime but in yours I am sure.
Sometimes even music cannot substitute for tears.

Song lyrics Journal Page

2011-09-30T22:43:00.000-04:00

From Sister Goldenhair....
I've been one poor correspondent, I've been too, too hard to find
But it doesn't mean you ain't been on my mind

Will you meet me in the middle?
Will you greet me in the air?
Will you love me just a little?
Just enough to show you care?

Favorite jacket updated

2011-09-25T13:04:00.000-04:00

A long long time ago... sounds like the start of a song, doesn't it? I had/have a jacket from Eileen Fisher that I adored. I loved it so much that my purse wore several holes in it. Above is only one of those holes.

I patched them, I had similar linen fabric and I decided why not just patch it and make it into a Boro Fabric creation, after all, I loved the jacket. Even after it was patched, however, the wimpy peach/pink/greypink color made it a spring jacket and I don't wear jackets in the Spring. I do wear light jackets in the Fall, however.

Finally, I broke out the dye. I hoped that the patch was similar enough to the original linen to dye, and while I was at it, I dyed a hot pink T-shirt that I never word because it was ...... hot pink. What I was thinking I don't know. I also dyed some inoffensive greyish t shirts too. Remember, my daily uniform now is a t shirt and whatever jeans/cords/shorts are appropriate to the temperature. I can't recall the last time I wore anything else.... so I now have 3 t-shirts in various shades of blue/bluegreen .. and this!

I LOVE it. It really dyed well.. that dark spot on the lower right side is where I patched another hole, so it looks ok in real life. I have a lightweight fallish jacket that I can't wait to wear. ALTHOUGH it is linen. I guess that means I have to iron it first. Or iron it second after I find the iron that I haven't seen in a year or so. Always something, I guess.

Sweet Paul Magazine - Fall 2011 - Page 1

2011-09-24T12:16:00.000-04:00

Sweet Paul Magazine - Fall 2011 - Page 1:

'via Blog this'

I always find something to like in this ezine. He has a very good eye for styling but he also has substance. I never thought, for example, about oven drying pears and probably apples, though I have oven dried a zillion cherry tomatoes against the coming famine...(joke) but I do have a huge freezer container full of oven dried cherry tomatoes and I DO use them all winter, so why not pears since they are in the market right now. If I were Gill and had access to sloes I might make sloe gin, but then maybe pear gin would be interesting? Could you make pear gin? I know you could make pear vodka.....hmmmmmmm

and another page

2011-09-23T13:35:00.000-04:00

Since I have done the pages by how the images interact with the background, none of the recent posts are in any order at all. This one either. I have a vision that this particular image, another that I have been playing with for a while, is somehow part of the Persephone story that I am always threatening to illustrate..... hmmmm...

another journal page

2011-09-22T13:45:00.000-04:00

If you have been looking at this blog for a while, you have seen other versions of this photomontage. This is a new one, I loved the way the colors and shapes work. All that has been done here so far is to get the montage the right size, cut it out and glue it down. More to happen.

another journal page

2011-09-21T13:42:00.000-04:00

This page's picture is a faded old "real" photo from the Atlanta Craft Festival when I lived there. I always loved this photo, but it faded, as photoprints wil do in the sun. So now I am trying something new with it. More to come, I am sure.

It isn't done, but this is the first

2011-09-20T13:31:00.000-04:00

page that I have started in the new journal I made. This is a photo printed on heavy matte paper. I worked back into it and then expanded it. Step 2 is coming later today.

I did the cover...

2011-09-04T09:54:00.000-04:00

I had an old semi unsuccessful polaroid image transfer (there are still a lot of them hanging around here in that semi unsuccessful state) and I started playing with pens and pencils and inks etc. So I now have a cover.

playing with the focus

2011-09-03T12:57:00.000-04:00

on my lovely little point and shoot. Isn't it nice how that little 'lantern' in the back pops into focus when the front one pops out! I have a Canon Digital ELPH, the SD870 and I do love it. Once you figure out how to control the light based on where you focus and how to use the closeup it is a wonderful camera. I had to link to Amazon when I saw that price on the used or semi used ones. I should buy another as a backup! This is a great camera!

I keep looking at the new Sony Alpha NEX C3 because it has interchangeable lenses and a better long lens but I guess I will have to look at it in real life to see how heavy it is and how well it does in low light. I have gone to BandH enough times now that I think they see me coming and hide, but I make them take the same picture in low light that I am taking and so far nothing else shoots as well in low light as my Canon.

I don't care much about video, and for the little bit I shoot it, the Canon is just fine. It fits easily in a pouch attached inside my purse, so it is always there and I don't ever shoot with flash, so low light, weight and ease of use are my hot buttons. I shoot in aperture mode all the time, and the Canon handles it all really well.

Why do I want something else? The lens is just not long enough for me. It gets grainy when I shoot the bridge, and though I use the grain I would love the option to shoot it more clearly.

I keep evaluating the new ones and nothing approaches this little bitty bit of great camera... I should have called this post a love letter to my Canon, should I not?

covered

2011-09-01T13:02:00.001-04:00

I finally just made the covers out of bookboard, cut to the same size as the pages. I painted one side red with a gold overlay and the other side blue with a gold overlay. So the front is one color and the back is another. I really wanted to get this done to see what I had learned and what it all looks like put together.

This is one side

This is the other. I am not sure which is the front, content remains to be seen.

What do I like? I LOVE the pages. They don't stick together and they are inviting. How they are going to work for me will be the next steps, but I love that scraping and stamping and doing whatever technique. I barely scraped (no pun intended) the surface of what these pages can look like. I can see making tons of these pages and making all sorts of different sizes, some journals with similar pages throughout and some, like this with all kinds of different pages.

What needs more attention? My sewing improved as I went, and I think that a second one will result in pages that are much tighter and in sewing on the outside that looks better. There are also all sorts of interesting variations possible now that I have it basically figured out.

Where is an issue? The cover doesn't really snug up to the pages tightly enough. I think maybe I should have punched the first holes closer to the edge, for starters. I am also going to look around at how others did it. BUT it will suffice for now and I have the start of a photo based journal project. I have to now print out a bunch of my millions of photos and see where we go from here! Hooray.

no cover yet

2011-08-31T14:13:00.000-04:00

This is the first time I have actually sewed a "book" from start to finish...... not that it is finished, since I have no cover. I have a Journal Maker Crush on LK Ludwig, especially her book Creative Wildfire, though her Nature Journals book is a really close second. I'm not a nature journalist, but the journals are way creative and fun.

If you look too closely at the spine you will see that I changed my mind about how to do those center stitches halfway through in an attempt to make the pages snug up against each other better than they were.

I used her method of adding color to the pages before binding them. It is detailed in the book but she uses old credit cards and scrapes acrylic paint deep into the paper, two layers, and uses a variety of things to make patterns and shapes. What is nice about her method is that the pages do NOT stick together, which has always annoyed me about journal pages or any kind of page with acrylic.

I am planning to use my huge backlog of photos in these books, not scrapbook style but more integrated into the pages. We shall see how successful I am, but I am quite happy with my imperfect binding. All I have to do is find a cover piece I want to use. The ties go onto the cover and are sewn onto it. Once Inspiration (with a capital letter, no less) strikes, I will post the next phase.

cautious

2011-08-29T00:01:00.000-04:00

I showed you a version of this before the onset of Irene. Behind these loosely connected cones lies a swath of pea gravel. A single line of yellow tape connects them all.

After DOT arrived to secure them for the storm they looked like this. They now had 2 strands of yellow tape running through them. No other change but I guess they were being doubly cautious.

Groan away, I couldn't resist.

still waiting for Irene....

2011-08-27T13:52:00.000-04:00

My favorite restaurant seems like it is going to be open. Hmmmmmm I'll bet I wouldn't have to wait for a table tonight.

Then again, this line at the local deli went all the way around the store! I have NEVER seen more than 4 or 5 people and that was when the train just arrived.

The city, on the other hand, has left all of these potential missiles in place guarding a project better left undiscussed. It is important to know that behind all these unweighted cones is an expanse of pea sized gravel! 60 or 70 mile an hour winds and peasized pellets. Sounds like an interesting corner to stand on.

I went to Target last night

2011-08-27T13:12:00.000-04:00

Anyone who knows me knows that I went just for the entertainment, and there WAS some. I loved this Target employee who was working away with the answer to the most frequently asked question on her back...

2 cats, 1 dog and me... we are all snugged up, there was an honest to goodness run on the bagel store this morning, and the normally calm Deli had a line all the way around the store. The subway etc is closed down, the bridge is still open, but there may be some great pictures. Also the rain has started as of 1 pm, not buckets but definite rain, and it is still a long way off but we have had over 11 inches of rain so far this month, so the rain is going to be hitting oversaturated ground. That is the big concern, I think, the amount of water pouring down seeking its own level. Since I am pretty close to the highest part of the island I am not too worried, but my subway station is one of the deepest, so that lends it a different level of concern. More later if the power holds up.

Pairs - revisited (Not Paris though I wish)

2011-08-19T15:32:00.000-04:00

I am often a victim of "Second Sock Syndrome". I love knitting sock --- not socks --- sock. I love a different heel, a different toe, the way a pattern wraps around the leg. People get so creative with their sock patterns and each one presents an interesting possibility for outcome.

HOWEVER, (you knew this was coming, didn't you?) I hate doing it twice. The very fact that there is a term for it (SSS) says that there are a lot of other people with the same issues.

OK, I have conquered it. I did it, I can sit back and admire it, so why do I have to do it again? I have given up wearing pairs of earrings. If I like the look of it today, I wear it. Rarely do I like both the same, so unless they are just spectacular together and say different things on each ear, I wear whatever suits me and frequently they don't even look alike.

As of August 2011, I have declared myself in the same mind where socks are concerned. I divvy the yarn up into two equal balls, find a pattern or two that I like, and march on to the drummer I am hearing. Now I am not insane, these two vaguely resemble each other....

On the left, New England from Knitting on the Road by Nancy Bush.
On the right, Nain from Silk Road Socks by Hunter Hammersen.

Did I have fun knitting BOTH? You bet I did! Besides, from a height of 5 feet or better, you can't tell they are not exactly the same.

If you are closer to my ankles than that, you better be a child (and therefore not interested that the socks are not exactly the same) or have some other intent, in which case if you notice the socks don't match you are not paying attention to the important things.

These are not blocked, blocked they are the same size. The patterns are the same gauge, which is, I think, helpful.

New England close up.

Nain close up

left heel New England, right heel Nain (Nain heel fits me better, by the way)

OK, any converts out there?

Another process from the class at ICP

2011-08-08T11:35:00.001-04:00

The "tattered" edges are deliberate, as a matter of fact, I am wishing there was more "tattering"

This was shot at the Chelsea Market, and it uses the DASS Special Sauce and Stone Paper. I am not sure where Mary got hers, but I ordered some from Etsy. What this photo can't show is how translucent the image is on that paper, it looks like it is floating on it. I think the surface of the image is a bit "soft" or fragile still, and I am thinking that I may frame it but will for sure use a mat to keep the glass off it.

Overall, though, it is one of my favorites.

Purell Transfers

2011-08-05T23:58:00.000-04:00

One of the easiest transfers uses Purell as the transfer medium. The hard part is maybe finding a brand of transparency that will "give up" its ink to the paper. I was playing around with some that I already had, and found that IBM Injet Transparencies worked like a charm. Having made the transfer, however, I had to work back into them ... why? Because I COULD! I liked these two tries.

The sunflower has the following added to the Purell transfer: Peerless Watercolor, Lyra watersoluble crayons and some beeswax crayons that I found in my stash.

The Koi has the same except no beeswax crayons.

In printing terms, this was a second. There was still ink left on the Transparency sheet so I tried it again with fresh Purell to see if it would come off. Especially interesting to me was the pink where the blue had been before. I didn't add that, it was what appeared in place of the blue. I did go back into the Koi with watersoluble crayons and used the watercolors to smear stuff off the edges.

This was an insane attempt to use the "wrong" side of the transparency sheet to see if it would work. The answer was no and this is prettymuch a total re-creation of some smearey ink... but cute, so I kept it.

I am excited I got this to work.. Hooray!

So many circles in my life!

2011-08-04T11:29:00.000-04:00

I had noticed before that sometimes one part of my life looks a lot like another part of my life....

Above, some of the pins I make and sell on Etsy. Below .. mini cupcakes that students brought to class as a treat. Maybe I should take up baking?

Class project

2011-08-03T11:21:00.000-04:00

Gill has been posting about the class we took together at the International Center for Photography last week. She is SOOO much more organized than I am, but this was one of the most interesting parts for me and I had to finish it at home because I was not lugging the "substrate" AKA Deco Glass Block all the way from 181st Street to Midtown to apply the imagery. SO, here it is, a partial success, not quite what I had in mind.

The project involved creating a "skin" using acrylic medium and inkAID on a flexible polyethyene sheet AKA a kitchen chopping mat. There was where I went a bit amok. I used a pearlescent inkAID and I should have used clear. The vision was that after I printed onto the skin I would end up being able to use clear acrylic medium to attach the prints onto the block (up to here it worked fine) and you would be able to see the bridge through the trees and vice versa (that's where the pearlescent inkAID did me in).

However, that said, the block is still interesting no matter which side you look at, and I can do it again as I have another block and some clear inkAID on its way. The first set of pictures have a regular light bulb on the block and the second set have daylight.

I am showing it here so you can see how it came out and maybe have a sense of where my brain was going when I started this project. Besides, I think Gill would email me once a week til I did it, sort of like a Tickler File Memo!

ok, so I am taking a class this week

2011-07-28T00:04:00.000-04:00

However, Gill is documenting it much better than I am. As a matter of fact if you want your life to be examined carefully and artfully and to be able to understand what your life is doing day to day... call her and get her to document it FOR you. It is a wondrous experience.

I, on the other hand, do quick shots of food. Or of potential food...

I do shots of Madison Park Fountains after we ate. (Gill documented the food too, so if you want to see my life go look at her blog and envy me.)

I did take a picture of Echo....

Unfortunately for me, Gill went to her hotel and I TRIED to go home via the Columbus Circle Subway stop. Seems there was an "unattended package" in the center of Columbus Circle behind the Columbus Column. That meant that ALL of Columbus Circle was closed to everyone, and a man in a protective suit was marching across the street as I got there.

Added a bit to my trip home, and I am QUITE sure that if Gill had been there she would have interviewed the police and they would have been posing for pictures and letting her try on the protective gear. Me? they just said lady, you can't just stand there, you have to move one way or another......

One of the pitfalls to having Gill document your life is that you get used to it and expect her to be there all the time. Sigh...

I DO promise a couple of pictures of my results by the end, but if you want insight into what I am doing, see Gill.

I can't believe I never published this

2011-07-19T16:51:00.000-04:00

I can only find one 'holgaized' version of it so I wanted to put this up because of a class I am going to take next week. It is a "real" photo, printed in a darkroom on photo paper from a negative I created digitally from a photo of my mother taken in 1937, me maybe 11 or 12 years later when I was about 4 and a wall I found in Brooklyn several years ago. It is one of those photos I can't get quite right but also can't get out of my head.

this was easily predicted

2011-06-27T14:00:00.000-04:00

I don't know who these kids were, but they were on the roof at the Met a couple of weeks ago. I was shooting pics of the rooftop installation.. not my style actually, so I was mostly staring when this series took place in front of my camera. I loved it as a carefully posed picture disintegrated while Dad tried to make it look more controlled than it was. Loved it.

Last Pose til September

2011-06-17T11:34:00.001-04:00

June, July and August without a model....... sigh. But at least the last one was one I really enjoyed painting

I have little bits of inspiration

2011-06-16T11:30:00.000-04:00

hung all over the studio. My visitors all know, if I like it I hang it up to stare at it for a while. Made a couple of these around Christmas time, it has been hanging there since then.

Closeup

2011-06-15T11:10:00.001-04:00

Several people have wondered what this -- from my inspiration board -- is. My friend, printer Kathy Caraccio makes a Holiday card every year with a pinprick pattern and this one had gold foil behind it. Hard to photo, but really nice to look at...

Inspiration Board

2011-06-13T23:20:00.000-04:00

Doesn't every artist/crafter have one? what does yours look like? If you post, leave me a comment with a link, I want to be sure to see what everyone else's board looks like!

June is bride month

2011-06-08T11:30:00.000-04:00

and this was one of my favorite brides, Ann was my roommate for several happy years, many years ago. It is a blended photocollage, I love all the heads and Don and his brother hanging pictures in their wedding suits so that the house would look perfect...

Cesar Millan, we have a problem

2011-03-25T10:23:00.000-04:00

OK, so yesterday we discovered that after 6 years of going into the crate whenever I left the house without any problems, Sienna decided that she was a big girl and deserved to be released. Since she didn't seem to have success in communicating this to me, she decided to release herself.

I have class on Thursday also, so I removed all the loose pieces that she had been working on, turned the crate around so the hole she had made was flat against the wall, let her into the crate and shoved a piece of furniture over slightly so it was against the other door. The part of the crate that faced the room was the back, solid wire, no door.

I came home to this:

This is a NEW hole and shows what a 4 hour crate attack can look like. She couldn't get all the way out, because the crosspiece is still in place, but she had removed enough verticals to get her head out the hole.

Now, just so the SPCA doesn't get me, she was in NO distress and could remove her head from the hole without a problem, so I grabbed my camera because I couldn't describe this.

I am now going to go search the web for bulletproof crates.

I have a lunatic dog.....

2011-03-24T10:15:00.000-04:00

As my regular reader(s) know(s) I have a much beloved Spanish Water Dog named Sienna. Looks like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, doesn't she?

She has many good traits and a basically good disposition. She is also a lunatic escape artist. She tried to get out of my friend's apartment when she was staying there, she has twice gotten out of her crate but I attributed that to fireworks on the 4th of July and she hasn't done it since.

Until tonight, that is. First of all, she is 6 years old. NOT a baby. It must have taken her the full 6 years to figure out how to try to do this. I was gone from 6pm to 10 pm. FOUR HOURS.

In that time, she broke 2 pieces of the crate off completely. When I came in they were on the crate floor. She bent up the main bar, that includes the piece that you slide the door latch into, and reversed it 180 degrees. It is a BIG structural piece of the crate. I do not know HOW she completely chewed off the other two pieces , but she did. They were on the crate floor.

The bar that is bent upward in the last picture is the one that held the door latch part and it went all the way to the bottom of the crate once upon a time.

She is only crated when I leave, and gets cookies to eat as I walk out the door and the TV is on to give her a human voice. It's not like she was dying of boredom. I'm not sure what I am doing with her tomorrow when I have to go to class. She might chew her way out of the apartment totally!

Locks of Love

2011-03-22T19:29:00.000-04:00

This is ..... 13 inches long pieces of my hair. Today we are shipping it off to Locks of Love You have to have hair pieces at least 10 inches long. I can't quite believe I beat that, but I did!

I have been getting my hair cut here for a long, long time, even though I haven't darkened their door in a couple of years while I was, for reasons I can't figure out, growing my hair long. Guy did his wonders with my hair and I am REALLY pleased...

I think, however, that all the remains of any color other than grey is now gone. Alas, I didn't get offered a seat on the subway on the way home, and I usually did when I had that long grey hair.... no good deed goes unpunished :-)

i remember

2011-03-21T14:03:00.000-04:00

New York on a night with rain

2011-03-20T14:04:00.000-04:00

Sheep

2011-03-16T00:19:00.000-04:00

This is what the sheep did in times square when it rained

I have posted one like this before

2011-03-14T00:55:00.001-04:00

but this is new. I put umbrellas in the tub to dry and she goes and sits under them. Can't say why, she just likes to sit under an umbrella, it seems.

I am a fan of Tom Otterness

2011-03-08T15:16:00.002-05:00

But I had missed these folks in front of the Hilton Hotel on West 42nd Street.

That is what I looked like taking these pictures, but I didn't have the guy behind me to hold my bags, alas...
There is another Otterness picture here and a series on either side of this posting about how the 14th Street Subway stop for the A train is full of his work. The story goes that he just kept making more and more because he found it such fun to find places to put them. I believe the story.

There are some very strange things

2011-03-07T15:04:00.000-05:00

in Times Square with the sheep

Tom Otterness is there .... or one of his minions

Sheep?

2011-03-06T14:45:00.000-05:00

There is a rarely watched (except by me, I think I am the only regular viewer) cable TV station in Manhattan.

It shows views of the city traffic cameras all over the city. The rotation includes places I never go, but for some reason I find it fascinating.

You can imagine my surprise and excitement when I saw this view of Times Square.....

Those white shapes are SHEEP!!! in Times Square!

They are made out of heavy textured paper

and are called the Counting Sheep after the TV commercial

Different shapes, sizes and expressions. I am in love.

but it IS supposed to rain tomorrow, alas..

Even in the snow in the city....

2011-03-05T13:59:00.000-05:00

There are roses on Park Avenue!

and I will tell you we really needed them this year

But like in other gardens, even those on Park Avenue come with

BUGS!! of the good and the bad kinds. These metal fabrications were great fun.

NY Tugboats

2011-02-21T14:24:00.001-05:00

Seeing this Tugboat in the Harbor the other day on the way to Ikea made me remember there was supposed to be a NY Tugboat blog. Thanks to the NY times I found it!
http://tugster.wordpress.com/

is all about the tugs that frequent the Harbor and go up and down the Hudson right outside my windows every day. It is so great that this is still a working harbor and biggish ships still need tugs to get up the Hudson to ports further north. Interesting!

This is the Marie J Turecamo.

The Sketchbook Project

2011-02-20T23:03:00.000-05:00

Saturday was the opening of The Sketchbook Project in Brooklyn. I went for a while and managed to get my hands on several sketchbooks made by people I know... it was really exciting to get to actually HOLD work made by people I know only (well mostly) over the internet.

There were a LOT of sketchbooks and not a lot of sketchbook "fetchers" so it wasn't a quick process. I am planning now to go back on Friday to see some more. As you can see, there was, generally, only one Fetcher

and a lot of "lookers". If you didn't know a name to ask for you could just pick a category and they would randomly get you a couple of books. As you can tell, there were also only a few seats, but people were just standing there reading.. It was pretty amazing.

Don't they look like they are having fun???? It was exciting. I am glad I did this....

Little House on the Prairie Moment

2011-02-08T15:12:00.001-05:00

I remember reading Laura Ingalls Wilder as a child, and one of the books, I think it was the one on the prairie, spent a lot of time talking about the sound of the wind blowing all the time and how you couldn't think for hearing it.

Well, welcome to my apartment on the Hudson River!! There is a wind blowing across the Hudson at perhaps 35 or 40 mph and it has not stopped all day long. I think I have moved to The House on Plum Creek or wherever it was that the wind came sweeping down the plain but there is no waving wheat here for sure. (As an aside, I DO know the words to Oklahoma.)

I am hoping it stops soon or I am going to have to acquire earplugs.

Have you found Harmony yet?

2011-02-08T00:21:00.000-05:00

harmony is really fun, as you can see from the above. When you get there you just see a blank screen, just start drawing and watch what happens.

last pages, Sketchbook

2011-02-06T13:07:00.000-05:00

pages 23 and 24 - Sketchbook

2011-02-05T13:06:00.000-05:00

pages 21 and 22 - Sketchbook

2011-02-04T13:05:00.001-05:00

Pages 19 and 20 - Sketchbook

2011-02-03T13:04:00.000-05:00

Pages 17 and 18 - Sketchbook

2011-02-02T13:03:00.001-05:00

Your MTA strikes again

2011-02-01T17:07:00.001-05:00

This is the new "sighn" at the MTA... what this means is that the lights will work so you can see the rats which are not a priority fix. It means that you won't fall through the platform, but it may be so dirty that you hesitate to step on it. It means that you won't have to bring a book because there will be enough grafitti to entertain you on a long wait for the next train.

And, from personal experience ... It means that the "sighns " that say "Press HERE in Case of Eemergency" and display a BIG RED BUTTON will be posted but that if you DO press them, as I did last Sunday, NOTHING WILL HAPPEN!!!

It also means that if you email a complaint you will get a bunch of boilerplate back with references to yet MORE boilerplate that has no relevance to the complaint. And finally, if you call, you will get someone who cannot access the number that THEY assigned to your email complaint, who has not a clue what line your station is on even after you tell him 3 times, and that the poor guy has literally not a clue but will promise you -- pinky swear -- that a supervisor (with whom he cannot connect you now) will call you back today if you leave your number.

Needless to say, that never happened either. I am SO glad the it was not a bloodletting emergency that made me push the non-functional emergency button in the first place. Of course, there is no phone service in the station either. The MTA ...... if it's broke we fix it...... BUT FIRST YOU NEED TO PROVE IN A COURT OF LAW THAT IT IS BROKE!!!!1

page 15 and 16 Sketchbook

2011-02-01T11:35:00.000-05:00

Page 13 and 14 - Sketchbook

2011-01-31T13:01:00.000-05:00

Now, this is fun. I had the RedStripe Beer caps sitting around because I have always thought they were pretty. I flattened them out mostly and glued enough pages together to accommodate the weight of them and suddenly they became round-abouts in the map. The color match was really close, and one thing just led to another...

Pages 11 - 12 Sketchbook

2011-01-30T14:00:00.000-05:00

this has gold candy paper in it and started life as a photo from maybe the cloisters... or maybe somewhere else.

Pages 9 and 10 - Sketchbook

2011-01-29T13:59:00.000-05:00

Pages 7 and 8 - Sketchbook

2011-01-28T13:58:00.000-05:00

It Snowed AGAIN!!

2011-01-27T13:44:00.000-05:00

Pages 5 and 6 Sketchbook

2011-01-26T13:57:00.000-05:00

This is shiny, with the trees being dark behind the cutout.

pages 3 and 4 of the Sketchbook

2011-01-25T13:56:00.000-05:00

This was the format I used for all the pages, info on the left, work on the right.

I'm Knitting Bling

2011-01-24T14:29:00.000-05:00

The color is a little off, and I only have one ball of Artyarns Beaded Cashmere and Sequins which I just decided I NEEDED and of course I did not NEED but I am enjoying playing with it. There is not much of it in a skein so I am making a little cowl and just doing the pattern from the Yarn Harlot although I don't have enough to finish it I will do a couple of rows that will roll inward and call it a day before I completely run out. Bling is hard to see, but it is pretty and I have never knit with it before so when done and I can find a model I will show you the finished project. I bought it at the marketplace at the Vogue Knitting Live show that was at the NY Hilton this weekend. I just did the marketplace on Sat afternoon but it was great fun and I got to fondle a lot of yarn that I might have otherwise missed.

Sketchbook Pages 1 and 2

2011-01-21T15:54:00.002-05:00

These were the rules I set for myself.....more pages to follow. I only did 20, because I had to glue a lot of pages together to make it possible to do all the glue things I did, so this won't go on forever...

The Sketchbook Project Book

2011-01-20T15:52:00.000-05:00

I know everyone thought that I hadn't completed this sketchbook/journal because I was so quiet about it, but I DID finish it. I did a lot of glueing together of pages and set myself some rules because I wasn't sure I could do it. I am delighted that I got it in the mail before I went to Las Vegas for the wedding of the century and I am delighted to be able to show you the cover, since I scanned it all before I sent it.

I did rules for myself... no new material in the sketchbook at all. Everything had to already be in the house already. I had to just FINISH it somehow and send it to the ArtHouse Coop and then I could take a deep breath. No evaluating it beforehand. So every now and then I am going to show you a page or two and you can join me in my big sigh of relief.

For those who know all the stories

2011-01-19T13:56:00.001-05:00

Leslie, Danny and me. We are joined forever, especially on days like January 13, 2011 ..........
and aren't we all lucky!!

after lots of snow and other excitement

2011-01-18T13:50:00.000-05:00

I went to Las Vegas for this! They really look happy, don't they? They had just managed to light that center candle without setting the dress on fire. This was, in her eyes, a MAJOR accomplishment.

It's obvious she is going somewhere...

2011-01-16T22:51:00.000-05:00

Him: "You going too?"
Her: " At least I fit in here Fat Boy!"
Him: "But are YOU going too?????"
Her: "I don't think so, but if I squinch down a little more I think I can"

Me: "Dream on, both of you"

Rosa Mexicano near Lincoln Center

2011-01-10T14:23:00.000-05:00

Has this wonderful blue wall of cliff divers. There is water running down the wall most of the time and I love the effect.

Did you?

2011-01-10T10:16:00.003-05:00

"Did you ever stop to think, and forget to start again?"

-- A.A. Milne, author

The gift of a Tutorial

2011-01-09T13:51:00.000-05:00

No, not MY tutorial!! my friend Gill over on An Elegant Sufficiency has a tutorial on making these wonderfully useful bags. How do I know how useful they are? Well, I was one of the lucky recipients of a gift bag from Gill this Christmas and you can see from the picture above how I have put it into action. It is a great size for all those odd items that ... since I am an avid subscriber to the "pile" system of organization ... make my organization slide around on the desk and degenerate into messiness immediately.

I can assure you that they are easy to make, I found myself thinking "I can do that!" and I should do that because the organization method I most prefer would benefit from one of these bags in every room and just looking at mine makes me smile.

This was a while ago, but I love them..

2011-01-08T14:20:00.000-05:00

These statues were in the plaza around Columbus at Columbus Circle I think in October, I know, but it was during the time I was among the missing here and I just found them. Sort of Velasquez meets chessboard...

and then there was this....

2011-01-05T17:44:00.001-05:00

This was for Wendy and Aldo's new baby. I barely finished it in time for the shower, so this is the only picture I have of it. All sock yarn, the pattern from Mason Dixon knitting that I keep coming back to and lots and lots of Garter stitch. It was fun to see how sock yarn that I would NEVER have used together became part of a good looking whole. Kaffe Fassett is SO right. When it starts to look wonky, don't rip out, add MORE color.

Work

2011-01-04T16:05:00.001-05:00

This is what I have been working on for a while. It finally made it to the wires. There are beads on the points, which you can't really see in this shot, but they give it a little weight at the bottom and they sparkle a little too..

we're gonna play ball...right?

2011-01-03T17:39:00.000-05:00

For the past 6 months this ball (or its predecessor) has joined us on every walk we have taken. Sienna always carries it on the same side of her mouth and has learned to bark around it when she wants to. It originally functioned as a mute. Now, not so much.

In case you didn't know....

2010-12-27T10:49:00.001-05:00

it is snowing in New York City..... some of us are happier about it than others.

The booties are for the salt, since it burns her feet,
The sweater makes ME feel better, though I doubt she really needs it...
The leash is required so I can pull her up from a snowdrift when she gets in over her head.
The expression on her face? Priceless ...
She is giving me the "Whose IDEA was THIS getup?" Look.
Frosty.

ok, I am among the missing at the moment

2010-12-18T23:50:00.001-05:00

I am wanting to revamp the blog, I am waiting for snow...... fat chance just cold .... but I will be back. I am thinking that the first of the year is a good day to start again, so look for me then. See you soon..

OK, so I have done the Cloisters

2010-09-28T21:58:00.000-04:00

But somehow I always have missed seeing her. Didn't shoot the identifier info, but isn't she wonderful.

She looks like she belongs in a book by Jane Austen, doesn't she?

I have VISITORS

2010-09-20T11:24:00.000-04:00

And I have been doing this:

and many versions of this:

Till I felt like doing THIS:

But I didn't. Folks, we are walking our legs off and sometimes we just have to sit and stare at the views. A long list of where we have been and where we have EATEN!!! is coming, and different versions of what you can see here. Because some of us are better about blogging daily than others.

The BridgeHenge Sunset Night

2010-09-15T13:25:00.000-04:00

New York Voted today -- Sort of

2010-09-14T18:03:00.000-04:00

I went to vote today and I was absolutely embarrassed about the state of voting in New York City.. Going to the polls I had to wade through about 10 people who were trying to shove campaign literature into my hands. If I had not made up my mind, what was I doing there was the big question, but not to them. so I found the "table" for my precinct and was told to sit down to have the ballot explained to me. Ballot was awful, rows of names grouped vaguely into groups but you really had to look to see who went with which office.

That, however was the least of the problems, I was sent to a table with wings so that in theory no one could see what I was doing. I was instructed to mark the circles very darkly with a pen. I did that. The ballot was about 8 inches by 16 inches, not a tiny thing, and once the marks were made they were visible as I looked around for what to DO with the ballot. I finally walked back to the table and saw the same woman who sent me to someone else, all the while I was trailing a totally visible ballot.

The next woman had a file folder into which she inserted my ballot after perusing it to be sure I had filled the dots in dark enough... so much for private ballots. Then we went on a walk to another part of the building where there was a scanning station. Only one for at least 4 voting precincts! I got to flap my ballot around again but at 1 pm I was the 202nd voter, so not much was going on. If there had been a lot of people voting this process would have taken at least an hour. Then I get to feed the ballot into a scanner and stand there to wait to see if it had been accepted.

This was, without question, the DUMBEST thing I have ever participated in. Something has to be done -- if this is the wave of the future we are doomed. No voting of consequence could take place with this process. OK, rant over, we shall see if this is going to continue to the "real" election since this was a primary. Anyone want to place a bet? I think we are stuck til after the November election no matter how stupid this is.

Normal Sunset behind the GWB

2010-09-14T13:28:00.002-04:00