PenScratches

It looks like I need to make a (minimum) scheduled day for posting to this blog. I’ve been so busy lately that I haven’t been able to get to it. Of course, things I want to write about come up all the time when I’m not sitting here at the computer. Once I am here, I seem to have forgotten them all!

Have mostly been busy with art. This coming Monday I’m starting a nightscape in my acrylics class. Really looking forward to that. I’ve been scouring the internet for images to paint but most of them are cityscapes and I’d prefer something more rural and/or a smaller tableau. I think I’ve looked at every night photograph on the internet! And it seems that the one I really wanted to do, I didn’t save. AARRGGHH! Well, maybe it’s for the best. Who knows, maybe it would have turned out wonderful and I never would have been able to show it as I couldn’t find any way to contact the photographer.

Speaking of…, I have had great fortune with contacting people who own the photographs and asking for their permission to paint their images. Everyone of them has been kind and obliging. Now one rule I have is that I don’t make requests to people who are high end professional photographers. Of course, even if I did paint one of their photos, at my current skill level it probably wouldn’t be recognizable! LOL

I’m thinking of adding an ‘events’ page to my art blog. There are so many art things that go on here in Sonoma County.

Lately have been working on ATCs (Artist Trading Cards). Yesterday I finally printed out some pages with my email and blog URLs on them. I have a few cards that I’ve finished so I glued them on and they look fine. I just used one of the program borders in Paint Shop Pro, though I did change the colors. My one beef is that the printing, even at it’s smallest setting, is rather bold and fat so it’s a bit hard to read. Will have to fiddle with that part a bit more. Most of the cards are covered in torn bits from books, though some have an abstract on one side. Night before last I started an actual painting on one of them.

No new photos to post. I seem to spend all my non art time running errands! Which I’ll be starting soon today, so I’d better get on with it.

ART

Sunday an art buddy came over and we spent most of the day working on ATCs (Artist Trading Cards). It was a blast. Now I just have to figure out how I want the personal info to read, get it printed out and paste it on.

Tomorrow we are getting together to work on fabric dying for a project I have in mind. I picked up some more silk dye today and am really looking forward to this learning experience. Working with dying silk was something I was very interested in several years ago but was so not in touch with the art community here that I had no idea how to find someone to teach me the methods and techniques.

I also have some cotton fabric swatches that I want to work with. Hmmm…guess I’d better get them in the wash first! Last Sunday she showed me some great techniques using oil sticks that I’m anxious to test on my project.

LIFE

Last week my landlord fell off the roof of one of the houses here. He’s about 84 years old! He survived. We think the cement birdbath he bounced off probably cushioned his fall. Needless to say he’s going to be laid up for a while as he had bruised or cracked ribs (at last info they couldn’t tell yet) and fractures in his back/spine. That is mostly lower back and though he can’t move around or walk by himself, there doesn’t seem to be any spinal damage. He’s either tough or lucky but we’re not sure which! He’s being moved to a convalescent hospital and will probably be there for a couple of months. I’ve no idea how long those fractures will take to heal.

THE GYM

Back to the gym routine this week and it feel good. Though I have to admit that taking a couple of weeks off seems to have actually helped. I think the schedule had worn me down a bit so I think planning for a week off maybe every six weeks would be a good idea. This morning I was really tired as I’d hardly slept the night before. But once I got up to feed the cats (there is NO sleeping in past their breakfast time!) I was surprised to realize that I was fine for going to the gym. And after the weights I did a full 40 minutes on the bike (but thank goodness for Cash Cab which I can watch while pedaling!).

My new gym schedule is to go Sun & Mon and then Wed thru Fri. That will give me five days of cardio and only three days in a row at most before a day of rest. I think this will work pretty good as I do upper and lower body strength training on different days. Also, I have no classes on either Tue or Sat so they are completely free days - which is sweet. It makes for a busy Monday with gym, drawing class and acrylics class, but then I get the next day off so I think it’ll work fine.

PHOTOGRAPHY

I am still enjoying the digital camera. And still learning how to use it. A few days ago I was trying to take pics of the sunset. There were actually clouds in the sky (here it’s usually either completely cloudless or completely fogged in) and it was nice to see an “eventful” sunset for a change. My camera, however, kept thinking it was too dark and making the pics lighter. So I did some more reading and tried again a couple of days later when we got some more clouds. I can’t see that I did anything different (most of the pics were taken on the “natural” light setting) but this time they came out looking like the sky actually looked.

A neighbor has a tripod that I’m going to borrow and try to get some night shots over the next week or so. I’ve discovered that I want to do some nocturne paintings but there’s not much on the net in the way of free and royalty free photos. So I’m hoping this camera will take them and not make the lighter and looking weird. It has a “night” setting but the instructions say to use a tripod as some shots can take up to three seconds!!!

Ok, hopefully I can get these pics to display. It seems like every time I do this it has to be done a different way! The first one was taken out at Goat Rock Beach and the other two are from the sunset photos.

The work on the blogs, all the major setting up of things, is almost done. I’ve got the subscription options working and the affiliate links.

Blog Rush is still a problem. Their site says they will notify you within 48 hours as to whether or not you are deemed worthy. It has certainly been more than 48 hours since I applied. I also sent them an email which they have not had the courtesy to answer or respond to in any way. They say they are for everyone, but the impression I am getting is that they only want to deal with high rollers. I can understand them wanting to advertise on blogs that get a lot of traffic. I have no problem with that. What bothers me is that they say one thing and do another. If they say they will respond withing 48 hours, that is what they should do.

So, beginning Monday my early morning will be back at the gym instead of parked in front of a computer screen. It’s been a mostly fun and only sometimes frustrating hiatus but it’s time to get back to the workout. And I think my cats will be grateful for the return of the routine. I have been keeping very erratic hours of late. Since I get up at 5:00am, I usually get pretty sleepy about 9:00 in the evening. But since I’ve not been to the gym I tend to get up do some things and then take a nap for a bit. Nice, eh? The disruptive part, as far as the cats are concerned, is that I have been staying up much later these last couple of weeks. But, it’s gotten all the web stuff done so it’s not dragging itself out forever. Besides, I’m having so much fun every day that I hate to go to bed.

I have finally gone ahead and put up the spiritual blog. I’ve named it The Dawn of Awakening. I like the title and how it fits with the visual theme of the blog, but had hesitated using it because of the initials: DOA. Rather a negative connotation. But then I thought it could just refer to the ego and that would be ok. I’m not posting a link yet because for now I only have a brief test post up. But I have some notes I’ve made lately and will try to get the first post up tomorrow.

This evening I watched the movie Under a Tuscan Sun. At least I think that is the name. When the book came out I did not even consider reading it as I thought it was a romance novel. Later, when the movie was made someone told me that it wasn’t like that and was actually a good story about a woman who puts her life back together after her divorce. Well, my description dosen’t make it sound all that great, but my friend said it was very positive and the main character wasn’t written as a victim but a woman who learns to find/create her own happiness. Anyway, it was on this evening so I watched, and my friend was right. It was actually pretty inspiring. There was one character that I found particularly interesting. It was a woman who lived in the nearby town. She came and went in the protagonist’s life, popping up serendipitously when Frances, the main character, needed guidance. She was sort of an archetype, a combination muse and fairy god mother. And she was utterly delightful. She wasn’t a paragon, but she was close enough. I kept worrying throughout the film, however, that she would fall from grace, that she would turn out to be unhappy and that her elan and wisdom would be just a facade. But no, her philosophy kept her in good stead. She was a woman of “a certain age” whom one could see being just as happy and successful at living when she was eighty as she is now. I would love to know a woman like that. I would love to BE a woman like that!

THE BAD

Well, I’ve spent the entire afternoon trying to get Amazon Associate links to work. What a nightmare. Of course, part of the problem is with Wordpress. Well, let’s be honest, ALL of the problem is with Wordpress. For some reason they have designed it (and not changed it) to not allow the iframes coding. It reads it as a security threat and deletes it. That leaves the code you post in shambles and non functional. It seems to me that the decision of whether or not to allow iframes - and whatever risk they may or may not pose - on to my blog, then I should be able to do so.

Still I guess I should be glad that the particular link I want to use for books is a text link and doesn’t require iframes. But it bugs me that I might want a different look for some things and the PTB at WP have decided that I’m not allowed.

OK, enough of that soap box. I’ve spent all these hours trying to get it to work so I don’t want to spend any more time complaining.

Anyway, I think I have it figured out now. I’ve put up an Amazon book store portal on Scratch of the Day and will do the same on Lightfast at some point.

I do believe in shopping at local independent book sellers and do so myself. But sometimes I also shop online. So my view is that if someone is going to go to Amazon anyway, maybe they will go through my site.

THE GOOD

Yesterday a friend and I went to San Francisco to see the Women Impressionist exhibit at the Legion of Honor. It was wonderful. Tomorrow, when my brain has recovered, I’ll put in a longer post about it on my art blog, Lightfast. For now I will just say that if you love art, don’t miss this show.

The other good part about the day was getting to hang out and visit with a couple of friends that I don’t get to see that often. That part didn’t last long enough, but isn’t that the way it is with good friends?

Well, I’m too worn out to post more today. G’night.

INITIAL INFO

Last summer I wrestled with trying get a website going. I never could manage it and then lots of other things got in the way. At last I have decided to just have a blog for my homepage. It’s just too easy.

So my homepage will be a personal blog. It may or may not get added to regularly as I am putting up other blogs as well.

Scratch of the Day is my blog about what I’m reading and my writing.

Lightfast is my art blog.

A spiritual blog is also in the works but I need to come up with a name for it and then, the hard part, pick a theme for how it will look. And, of course, the look of these blogs may change too. That’s a great thing about using WordPress, when you get tired of a theme it’s easy to change the entire look of one’s blog.

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Well, it’s been a long day of wrestling with themes and ftp-ing (and there’s still more to do) and an art class thrown in so this initial post will remain brief. I hope you will check back in or hit the rss button if you want to subscribe.

Peace.