friday photo (on saturday!)

Parade!

Friday Photo

I've joined the 40 Friday Photos group, started by Jennifer at the beautiful blog Familiar Light. I am excited to post a photo a week and to use this forum to keep learning more about taking photos. Come on over and join in! I'll post my Friday picture here every week too. This is from the raspberry patch, which is abuzz with polinating friends to sit and watch and photograph. Happy weekend friends!

blue

I shouldn't have promised to post a photo a day just before two very busy in-town days. Here's three of our latest painting adventure. I tried one of the ideas from "Young at Art" by Susan Striker-to gather up a tableful of objects of one colour, dress your child in the colour etc and then spend time with just that colour. It didn't take too much time to set up, but combined with clean up it certainly added up to more time than he spent with the paints.Even so, masterpieces were created both on the paper and in the sink while he helped to clean the brushes.

another one

This weekly photo collection seems to be about all I can manage in the blogging department these days. We are still busy over here, stomping in the snow (still lots of it,) painting pictures for papa's birthday and snacking away. And seriously considering an invite to visit Perry's parents in Mexico before our wee one hits the "full fare" age. Not that we can afford any fare at all, but it is fun to dream!

the week past

Boots, buses and little red riding hood (the cape is a recent thrifty find.) The weather is fine and springy and we are going to go play out there with our fingers crossed that the sun and warm is here to stay.

just this

a week of gnomes, books and lovin'.

curtains and crafts

I am sewing a closet curtain with this fieldguide print. I love the print a lot, but it might look a little quilt-y up on the wall, I'll have to see how I feel about it once it's up. I've never tried to sew such a big thing before and getting it square is challenging, especially since the print isn't square on the fabric. It sort of matches the wonkiness of our home with its many imperfect angles (some are Dr.Seuss-esque, but it's all part of that built-by-someone-a-long-time-ago-who-didn't-know-what-they-were-doing, charm) but I bet there are women pulling their hair out at this very moment, trying to get this fabric to look non-wonky on their lovely quilts.

I just got my first issue of "Living Crafts" in the mail, and I love it. My sister got the subscription for me for christmas, (thanks sis!) and it is full of great ideas and patterns and cute stuff.
I had to try out the knitted bunny pattern straight away since is is so simple and cute and I was in need of something to do with my hands. It is just a knitted square sewed up into this teeny little bunny shape.
Mine is a wistful sort, staring out at the snow, knowing it wouldn't last a minute out there with its dark coat. It would have been kinder to knit it in white. Best to stay in the basket in my studio till Easter, little bunny, when a little boy will snuggle you and keep you safe from predators.

I have been enjoying the collaborative photo journal Six One Way a lot, and noticed that Eren and Stefani had a invited other mama's to participate in the project- documenting the everyday moments of motherhood in 3 photos at the beginning of each week. I think I'll give it a go- it is a fun way to look at all the little moments, a simple record.

artist at work

My artist boy has been hard at work lately. He loves his block crayons (which give off the delicious smell of beeswax as he works,) and he has a favorite green pen that he will happily use for ages, scribbling intently, filling up a whole page of green. We have been keeping his supplies out on the kitchen table and he just hops up several times a day to partake in his ongoing creations. Which sometimes involve a little body art.

He is just beginning to do representational drawings, which is pretty exciting. Today it was "boats, stars, and mooooooonnnnnns!" and here is one of some babies. Clearly.

He is also moving on to ever bigger and broader canvases. Although he always enjoys his chalkboard for spontaneous drive-by artworks, he has found the primed, but unpainted surface of his bedroom door especially appealing. This one is entitled "puple." And his parents learned that washable markers are not washable on unpainted surfaces.

We are lucky, I suppose, to have an artist do his work directly on the walls. Cuts out the framing costs.

tree art

Ari has only been playing around with art supplies for a couple months, but already I have more of his artwork than I know what to do with. What exactly is a mama to do with all this paper? So far some of it has been carefully labelled with his full name (does any other mama get a kick out of writing their kids full name? I just can't quite believe there is this little person on the planet who will be forever known by this title we choose. Amazing really,) and the date of its creation. Others have been handed out to the grandparents, and, of course, there is plenty decorating the walls and refrigerator doors, but I can see there is going to be much more than a mama can possibly use.
I have a hard time letting go of any of it just yet, each painting or page full of scribbles has a little bit of him in it and I love how wholly he throws himself into his "paintin." He asks to paint almost every day, and loves to smear it around and try out every colour.
He's also got his friends hooked. This little friend happily stayed up at the painting board for the better part of an hour (long after Ari had decided to jump down and whip his wooden turtle toy around the room) painting long deliberate marks on her paper.
So with all the hoards of artwork we are collecting, I decided to cut up some of them (the ones that didn't make the "keep forever", "pack up for relatives" or "decorate all available surfaces" collections,) to make into christmas cards. I gave Ari some fancy paper to use for this, but I remembered Amanda's terrific buisness cards she made from her sons wet-on-wet artwork. I pulled some of Ari's watercolours to try chopping up and they are my favorite. Now if only I can get it together to actually write and send the cards by the holidays, that would be really something. But new years cards are nice too, right? And people need a little bit of cheer come February, so I should be set.

our week

We woke to snow the other day. Ari sat at the window in his PJ's exclaiming excitedly about this new scene, but when presented with snow suit and boots he was a little less excited.

Luckily he likes the mitts. He likes them an awful lot. He wore them most of the morning, and was rather upset that I wouldn't let him eat his scrambles eggs with them. He even calls them by their name- "mitt- eeens."

And today we had our first wet-on-wet watercolour experience. Both Ari and our little homeschool friend thought it was pretty neat, though I have to figure out how to keep the paper from bunching up. I do think finger paint might be more Ari's speed right now though, there was a lot of that sort of action going on anyway.

The snow is mostly gone thankfully. I am really not ready for winter and neither is our house. This trend towards milder, snowier winters has its advantages, but I just can't get excited about winter in October. Once Ari gets used to the bundling, he'll probably enjoy the snow, but if not, we'll have another long winter cozied by the woodstove. With very warm hands.

pen and ink

This is Ari's first pen and ink series. His artistic brilliance shines through with his fine sense of line and freedom of form. His interpretive abstract gestures of the world around him exibit such movement and spontaneity and his joie de vivre is clear in every piece.
Sheer genius, no?


And here the artist readies himself in his studio for another masterpiece. What can we expect next from this brilliant up-and-comer?

(had to get my artist husband to help with the art speak, pretty good huh?)

graffiti baby

This weekend we had a potluck at the farm and a friend brought Ari a chalkboard/easel as a belated birthday gift. Ari didn't really get what the chalkboard was about (he's since figured it out,) but he thought the chalk was pretty cool and went about making works of art upon the deck and all feasible outdoor spaces. It rained later that night and all signs of artistic brilliance have been washed away. Which means means, of course, that there is room for another round of graffiti. Good thing, because we have a extreme shortage of sidewalks and concrete driveways around here that can be chalked up.

tree baby

A few more black and whites of my favorite subject. Watching Ari engage with the world has been so incredible this past month. Learning to walk seemed to trigger something in his little brain and he has just been learning and growing and changing so fast. He loves birds and tree leaves in the wind and the ceiling fan and swimming in the lake. He loves to be outside and to explore in the woods, tromping up hills with those sturdy little legs, falling and getting back up over and over again. He is a joy to spend my days with, a sweet, earnest, joyful, busy little guy.

We hope to spend the rest of the weekend playing with friends and tromping in the woods. A happy weekend to you all.

goatbarn

As promised, shots of barns. This is one of my favorite buildings on the property. We don't have goats, but it was built to house them, and clearly did for many years, its insides are stocked with teeny tiny milking stools and nipple ointment and sliding wooden railings. There is little attic above that has been claimed as kid-space, and I sometimes see the girls secretly clambering up the fence and pulling themselves up inside at dusk, headlamps glinting. I never notice this of course.
It is grey grey grey here, so the grey tones seem appropriate, and although the garden is happy for the rain, the local folks who live near the rivers, are not so pleased. There are lots of roads washed out and the rivers are rising. We live on a hill (in the mountains, really) and so there is no risk of us floating away, but we may head down to help the sandbagging effort. Bring some sandwiches at the least.

art 'n such

We are back home and settling in. Ari is still a little out of sync (Perry is currently attempting to dance him to sleep at 9:30 at night- his usual bedtime being 7:30,) but we can blame that on teething. It is a handy scapegoat around here.

We had fun on our little adventure although we decided that we really should have one stationary day for every day of travel with a babe. He was pretty tired of the car seat by the time we rolled back up our driveway. But the fact that we stayed in a hotel with pools and a faux tropical theme (very tacky but fun none-the-less) made the trip worthwhile for Ari. We spent our evenings in the pools and hot tubs and the mornings walking up and down (and up and down and up and down) the little bridges over the "river" in the "courtyard." Ari was in heaven.

And one of the initial reasons for heading out was this group show Perry was part of. His piece was called "Pass the Plate" and was a series of Styrofoam plate prints on panels. The concept was sort of like a visual version of the game "telephone" with the first image being sent to another artist who made a sketch of what the piece brought to mind and this image getting sent to another artist and so on with Perry inserting himself every few images. Each of these pieces Perry then reproduced onto plates and made prints of them. And, given my close association with the artist and my magnetic personality and all, I was given the opportunity to be one of the artists. No such thing as conflict of interest in the art world. I was given the sketch of the boy posing in the llama shirt.
Mine was drawn from a vintage kid shirt pattern. From there came the hairy chest man. What fun it was to see them up in the gallery space and know I had a little part in it. I see why Perry likes exhibiting - it is a bit of a high!

There were other trip highlights- the thrift shop and yarn store and yummy food that cannot be had in our little town. And a good visit with some friends. And coming home to the garden melting.