Jaci Dawn

I wanted to pop in and let you all know I am still alive (assuming “you all” means more than one or two people who follow my blog). It’s November and I am (once again) participating in National Novel Writing Month. This year, I might actually make the 50,000 word requirement and I might actually like what I have written. So far, so good.

I’m on a roll and, creatively, it feels GOOD.

It means, however, that I do not have much time for blogging. I’ll just have to do that in December, after I finish my quirky little sci-fi novel.

In the meantime: have a very Happy Thanksgiving.

I started this post a couple days ago and ended up writing about my mom instead. It’s so easy to get side-tracked.

I spent a couple days backing up all my digital photos and my (few) digital remastered photos. Of course, I found a few I really liked.

This old homestead is up on Hart Mountain, over on the east side. Hart Mountain is a fault-line mountain, rising gradually from the east and dropping off suddenly to the west. It’s the exact opposite of Steens Mountain, which is also a fault-line mountain, but Steens rises gradually from the west and drops off suddenly on the eastern side. Steens is a taller mountain, but Hart Mountain is not without its charms. Most of Hart Mountain is an antelope and wildlife refuge. The old homestead was located on Refuge land. (35mm, scanned and cleaned up)

I always wonder about the homesteaders: who were they and why did they give up? Did the water in the well dry up? Did they get tired of the icy winters and lack of firewood? Did the Great Depression drive them to town?

Mostly, I liked the patterns of the shadows and the texture of the wood.

(On a side note, we hadn’t gone five miles from the homestead when we busted one of the springs under the F-25o. It was over a hundred degrees and we had to unload everything to get to the wire in the bottom of one of the camp tubs. The chocolate melted in the cooler. Don wired the spring and we limped 90 miles into Burns where we had to buy a new spring. But that’s another story.)

I was having a blue day and Don took me for a walk along the Clackamas River, between Gladstone and Oregon City. I snapped quite a few photos that I still like. (digital photo)

More textures. It’s an old culvert sitting along the side of a road somewhere, waiting to be installed. I think it was along the 46 Road up above Estacada, but I can’t rememder. (digital photo)

That’s pronounced “es-ta-CAY-duh”.

We were picking huckleberries above Indian Henry Campground one lovely September. This huge bald-faced hornet’s nest was tucked into a vine maple. I had a nice telephoto lens for my 35mm. I’d forgotten that I scanned this and cleaned it up.

Another 35mm photo. I’m guessing it was February. The beaver ponds had flooded over their banks at the bottom of the horse pasture. The mist was just rising when I walked down to see if I could get some good photos. I’ve always liked this photo for the colors.

Film fades. This was taken along Utah Byway 128 in 1984, the first time we drove through there. it was very early morning and all the hills were purple, pink, orange. (35mm)

Same drive, different view. 35mm. I still think the 35mm captured the colors better than the digital camera does. I probably used Fuji film.

Wild flowering currants. I love the contrast in colors. (digital)

Long-nosed leopard lizard on a dead cow. Mickey Hot Springs, out in the Alvord country. The cow had been dead quite awhile and was mostly mummified, but this lizard was still making a living hunting bot flies. If you don’t know that’s  dead cow, it’s an interesting photo. If you know it’s a dead cow, well… I think the photo becomes more interesting. (35mm)

This isn’t a great digital photo, but it takes me back. Don and Samuel carrying our Christmas trees down off the hill. 2008. I just like the photo.

The trees were Charlie Brown Noble Firs. Pretty sad. The memories are precious.

Last one for tonight: A row of washed and weathered stumps along the flood line of the Clackamas River, looking east toward the old railroad bridge.

And that is a snapshot into my life. Be safe everyone. I am thinking/praying for the east coast tonight.

Judging by how silent my “blog roll” is, I am not the only blogger who is either suffering from “writer’s block” or who is laying low until the election is over to say anything again. It’s pretty quiet out there (except on Facebook, where everyone has an opinion and they don’t mind interjecting their opinion onto your wall).

But I am not here to bemoan the highly charged political atmosphere. I am here to celebrate one of my favorite holidays, and that holiday isn’t Election Day.

It’s All Hallow’s Eve, the night before All Saint’s Day. Samhain. Hallowe’en.

It’s a date that is as hotly debated in some circles as the current presidential election is being debated in 2012. For many years, I never openly told anyone that I celebrated the day: the church I was attending highly discouraged the practice. So we carved pumpkins and put them on display at home, but we didn’t share photos of our prizes with our circle of friends at church. I had a hard time with the “do not dress up” rule.

I was known to show up at the Harvest Festival with my wire whip and my nose pin. It did not amuse some of the church elders, but it wasn’t really “dress up” so… Or maybe they just realized that making it into an argument was not going to win me over?

I usually removed the nose pin after the initial shock of seeing me with it in had passed. The wire whip, however – that is a prized possession. (Portland Saturday Market. The artist still sells his wares there.)

Time has brought changes and I now openly celebrate Hallowe’en. I gave up on trying to fit my round self into the square hole of conformity. This decision has brought a little freedom into my world: I openly dress up on October 31st and I have a small collection of items that go on display to entice little Trick-or-Treaters to come to our front door for candy. I add a little bit every year.

I don’t do this for my grandchildren: they never came over on Hallowe’en when they lived close by, anyway. I do this for me, because I like to.

This year’s splurge was a trail of lighted “bones” to light the dark path to our house. We live on a poorly lit street and the hundreds of little creatures that come out to swarm the park two blocks away tend to avoid our dark street. I’m hoping that the combination of porch light on and bones to light the lawn will help attract a few more than our usual ten.

This is the candy table. The Orc (to the right of the witch, holding heavy “chains” makes loud growling sounds. The cauldron will be full of candy (can’t put it out until the 31st because of the dogs).

It should have an eerie effect if we turn off the lights when we open the door… (But we won’t, because we’ll be juggling big, friendly dogs that want to lick little kids and the cauldron of candy.

Tell me the lighted spiders are cool.

From left-to-right: I picked up the hands at Goodwill last year. Awesome. A rat begs beside the Cannibal jack o’lantern. Jake & Elwood (the Alien twins) decided to come outside this year. And I got a glow-in-the-dark skeleton for the doorbell hanger. That weird little candle stick holder up above the Alien twins was a yard sale find. I think it was someone’s high school pottery project gone wrong. Oh – and there’s a red-eyed rat down on the old root. (You have to click on the photo to see everything close up).

I consider the jack o’lantern a masterpiece. HAHA. I don’t think the little pumpkin on the left is very amused, though, and the one in jack’s mouth isn’t talking…

Spooky, huh? I couldn’t do this with my grand kids around. It is a little on the bizarre side, even for me.

I just spent the better part of an hour trying to upload a video to this post. It isn’t going to happen. YouTube doesn’t like the video and WordPress truncated the video. I’ve exhausted my options. Here’s the story behind the Video That Will Not Upload Properly:

I bought this broom from Avon. It takes four AA batteries. Turn it on, and it cackles in the most hideous voice. And it “dances”. It bumps into things, reverses, turns in circles, bumps into things, reverses. After about twenty seconds of torturous laughter, it stops.

And Harvey barks at it. Which sets it off, again.

It’s hysterical.

Murphy’s reaction was even funnier than Harvey’s. Murphy is certain the thing is possessed and must be destroyed.

This is one thing I wish my grandchildren were here to see. I know they’d drive me nuts, touching it again and again and again and again, just to listen to it cackle and watch it bump into things. It’s great.

Since I am on the subject of dress up, I found this mask at Goodwill. It was chipped and faded and beat up. I stripped the ribbon off of it and cleaned it up. I used some “Golden” that is in my bag of tricks and recreated the raised filigree design. I mixed some paint and repainted it, regilded it, and then I heated up the hot glue gun and replaced the ribbon and the “jewel”.

I wear glasses, so I don’t know when I would get to wear such a cool mask (and be able to see across the room), but it’s pretty!

I forgot I had these on once and went downstairs for something. My husband looked up and said, “Did you know your horn is flopping over?”

He didn’t say, “What is that on your head?”

He didn’t say, “What are you doing with that?”

He didn’t say, “Where did you get that?”

He just pointed out that one of the horns had leaned forward in an awkward angle.

Gotta love a man who is not surprised by his wife.

I spent most of today cleaning out and re-organizing my studio. It was a mess. It’s not a very large room, and gets rather crowded quickly. Today’s purge and cleaning was not only long over-due but the mess was not conducive to creativity.

I still have a stack of mail on my desk that needs to be looked at and a box of 2012 filing that needs to be done, but I feel like I reclaimed some of the floor space!

Of course, no matter how I do it, I have very limited wall space.

            As you can see – every available inch of vertical wall space is pretty much taken, and most of it is taken with storage.

That’s OK – I’m not complaining. You choose to live in a little house, you learn to live with the storage challenges. As it was, I purged a number of items and boldly put them into the trash (or recycle) bin or I set them aside to donate to Goodwill.

Doing this presented some challenges. I moved some furniture around. I asked myself why I keep some things. And I tried to present an interesting photo op for my blog (did you see that coming?)

For instance, I hand-picked what drawing should be on the little easel. I could just put the little easel away, but there’s an oil painting sitting on it that I really need to finish. I didn’t want to show the unfinished oil painting because it’s really, really, really in the amateur stage. I may even toss it out.

So I picked this silly pastel portrait of Lucky Dog and Teddy Bear, life-long friends. They’re actually inside a box somewhere in my attic. Lucky Dog was a promo stuffed animal for the very first release of the original Disney Movie, “101 Dalmatians”. I lost Lucky Dog for an entire year once. Then someone (I think my brother) found him in a vacant lot a couple blocks from our house, just a little worse for wear. We’ll never know what adventures he went on for that year, but I was so very happy to have him home again! And when I was 15, my mom very carefully resewed his body with new spotted faux fur. His stuffing and eyes are original.

Teddy Bear went to college with me. He also dropped out with me. He married Pinky Cat, my sister’s very favorite stuffed animal. We baked a heart-shaped cake and frosted it with pink frosting, but it turned out to be more of a pink-and-white frosting because we forgot to sift the powdered sugar. My sister, my childhood best friend, and I were in attendance as were all the stuffed animals and Breyer horses we owned. It was a big wedding.

I wonder what ever happened to Pinky Cat?

Teddy has only had one eye for several decades now. He’ll be 56 years old in a couple weeks. Lucky Dog is 51.

The little easel was hiding these terrariums. I bought them at some yard sale. I didn’t really want the terrariums, but they were a package deal with some other item at that yard sale that I really wanted, and so I had to take the whole lot. I only paid a couple dollars. The bonus to cleaning my room is that I had sudden inspirations: I have the beginnings of two glass faerie houses, complete with macramé hangers! Oh, the wheels are rolling! I’ll make the faerie houses and the resident faeries, and then I’ll sell them. They can either go as a set or individually. I’m really excited about this idea! The materials I need for the project have already been purchased and are being stored (conveniently) inside the glass terrariums.

The Dead Fly Pub was my first Faerie house. I can’t bear to part with it. Mavis is the Goblin waitress and Petrick is a regular. Baba Yaga in the background has nothing to do with the Dead Fly Pub, but she doesn’t clash.

I love shadow boxes! I have two and I don’t have any free walls to hang them both on. I collect things that I think I will eventually use in a creation (like the old glasses and sunglasses).  Some things just have sentimental value (a jar full of Arwen’s baby teeth. I don’t have a jar of Levi’s baby teeth because he swallowed them. True story). And some things are just cool, like the folding opera glasses.

Two stories here: the Japanese float belonged to my mother. She had two of them. I remember when my mom found the floats on the beach out of Seaside, Oregon. My brother has the larger one, but I liked this one which is a bluer hue.

Noah’s Ark. No, that isn’t my oil painting. That is my son’s oil painting. He painted it at a homeschool coop class nearly11 years ago.

(Those are dried hydrangea flowers hanging from the ceiling)

Did I mention I like shadow boxes? I have a collection of old Pepsi crates that I have used as shadow boxes. Now they do duty as storage for the many jars of beads and buttons that I use. The Man-in-the-Moon is a fragment of fiberglass that I found up in the woods where some contractor just dumped his trash. I hate the contractor for his dump, but I salvaged that little fragment because of the shape. I etched the Man-in-the-Moon into it. The canes came from my great-grandfather’s estate.

The horse was Chrystal’s but she left it here. I haven’t decided what to do with it. Yet. But rest assured, when I am done with it, it won’t look much like that.

(Don’t you love the vintage suitcase?)

The Locker! Isn’t that a classic? We went to a yard sale put on by the local high school and came home with several treasures, one of which was this locker. It was Levi’s until he moved completely out. Not it is mine.

It is great storage space!

We used to have a stero system. We bought it “on time” through Fingerhut. Remember them? The thing died after about 15 years, but we kept the cabinet. I recently converted it into a sort of curio cabinet. My mother’s glass shoes, a vase from my mother’s china hutch; a collection of salt-and-pepper shakers that my Very Best Friend, Rosie, wanted me to have from her huge collection; and my “Painted Ponies” collection fill the interior of it.

The horse on the top of it was a gift from a neighbor girl many, many years ago. She was younger than both of my children. We all lived in a little trailer park and I had a horse in the pasture next to us. When the little girl’s parents bought a house in town and they moved away, she brought me this prized possession of hers as a “thank-you” for the few times that I gave her a ride on my horse. I truly treasure that horse.

Chrystal painted the bunny with the sun dial.

Levi painted the flower pot that holds the tiny glass float. I no longer remember where I picked up the tiny float, but it’s a genuine Japanese float.

This is an unfinished oil painting that I am actively working on. I need to finish the foreground and the highlights on the bushes. Early sunrise at Pike Creek Trail Head on Steens Mountain. It’s been a stretch for me: I did a lot of palette knife work on this. I’ve never worked with the palette knife before.

This corner is a bit of a mess. I have frames and canvases stored in the boxes that Banker’s Boxes come in. I can’t think of a neat way to store the over-sized stuff. But I did think to prop an old oil painting up on them, to sort of take away from the ugliness of the cardboard, and the crowd of tool boxes. The painting is of Don’s last dog (before Murphy): Rejoys Hannah’s Promise, better known as Sadie. She was the brown-and-white English Pointer in the center of the litter. Dumbest Dog that ever lived and I miss her so! We had her for 10 years before cancer claimed her.

I have to share this. It’s just so cool! I’ve had it for 3 decades. The little boxes are the size of matchboxes and they hold such office “essentials” as: gummed labels, paper clips, rubber bands, mending tape, gummed patches, and key tags. Tell me that isn’t the coolest (and most useless) thing! I can’t bear to part with it because it is just so fun.

This is my other shadow box. My friend, Audrey gave it to me. I still have empty slots to fill. My dad’s flag and my mom’s glass boot, a “good luck” cat (also from Audrey), some miniatures in polymer clay that I made and painted, a broken piece from an old cast iron wood stove, and the list goes on.

Something I would never buy myself: my boss gave it to me one Christmas. I appreciate that she chose unicorns (as close to horses as she could get at the Dollar Store). I keep it because the thought was so sweet.

My assistant. I put his bed out in the loft while I worked and he still came and laid down in the middle of the floor while I worked. He was quite happy when I finally moved his bed back into the studio.

And for the heck of it: my current project. I picked up this mask for $0.25 at Goodwill. The gilding had been knocked off as had some of the raised design. I used some “golden” and reapplied the design, and then I painted it. I still have to glue on the rick-rack and ribbon. I’m very pleased with how it is turning out.

Thank you for stopping by and reading. This post was a bit introspective and I’ll be thrilled to think someone actually bothered to read it all. Maybe it gives you an insight into how I think. Or how cluttered I am.

I really did throw things away.

OH! I found this when I was rearranging the locker:

That had to be circa 2002. It’s from Levi’s college Swing Dance course. Made me smile.

We won’t talk about the decapitated and mutilated plastic Army men I found in the same drawer.

I emailed my son and asked him if there was anything about his childhood that we needed to discuss…