Lions and Tigers and Bears, Oh My!

I'm on hiatus because I have the flu. I'll be back as soon as I recover.

Dye Pots

Look at this! I hit the Mother Lode at the UCLA Thrift Shop. I found a tin-lined copper pot, a pure copper box, and a brass pot. Each metal reacts differently with the plant dyes, and creates different colors. So this is a real find! I can't wait to try them out.

Morning Glory

Morning Glories are in bloom right now. They're one of my favorites. The flowers bloom in the morning, and only last one day. By the evening their color has faded, and by the next day they're dried up and gone.

Modern Hieroglyphics

Cryptic sidewalk graffiti in my neighborhood.

Beauty

This is me (second from the right) and my friend Joanie (second from the left) at school in the fourth grade, when we were ten years old. Weren't we cute then? I'm reading Anne Lamott's book, Grace (Eventually), and she says that we always realize too late how beautiful we were, and never how beautiful we are now. So true.

The 11th Hour

If you haven't seen the movie The 11th Hour, I highly recommend it. Even if you've seen An Inconvenient Truth and you think you know all about the impending environmental crisis, you must see this movie. The 11th Hour has more information about how we got into this mess, how we can turn things around, and what we each can do to make a difference.



I get it now -- I get what I personally need to do. The most important thing for each of us is to focus on our passions -- those things that interest us the most -- and rethink them to be sustainable.

For me those two passions are art and healing. I am no longer interested in making art that doesn't respect the environment. I only want to create art using natural materials and processes, and that's a real challenge when people still want and expect bright synthetic colors and shiny surfaces.

As for healing, the best that we have is homeopathy, and I'm in the process of learning everything I can about it. It's inexpensive, natural, and provides a true cure, unlike conventional medicine, which palliates and suppresses symptoms.

Rent this movie today! Its available on DVD through Netflix and other outlets.

Possum Update

The baby possums were out early last night, and it was still light enough to get one of them on video.



They've grown quite a bit in the past few weeks. Must be all of that cat kibble!

More Cats

You know how I adore the cats, and I can't resist posting cute pictures of them! This is Luci's favorite sleeping place when the weather gets warm. I guess the sink stays cool.



This is a video of Alex pouncing her own tail, something she has just recently become aware of. She won't do it if she knows I'm watching, so I have to photograph her from a distance and through the plants. That's Nelson's scratchy meow in the background.

Huntington Library

Here's another picture taken using my fisheye lens with plastic wrap over it to obscure the image. This is one of the mythological statues on the North Vista lawn at Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens in San Marino.

Luci and Printer

Here's a short video of Luci messing with the printer while it's printing. She likes to stick her paw into the paper intake. She's going to be awfully sorry when it feeds her paw through one of these days!

Woolly Blue Curl

I was excited to find a Woolly Blue Curl at the nursery the other day. They're native California plants, and it's rare to find one in a regular nursery. The leaves have a wonderful fruity smell, and I'm hoping it will be happy here.

Possum News

Here's an update on the possum family that lives in my studio. It looks like mom and the babies are all doing well. This picture isn't great, because it was taken at night through the back door glass. But there they are -- all eating cat kibble together, and they look healthy and fine.

Sunflower Demise

A squirrel discovered one of the sunflowers, and pulled out most of the seeds, even though they were immature and not very substantial food yet.



This is all that's left.



It still looks beautiful, though.

Oyster

This is Oyster, a cat who lives down the street and comes over to visit everyday. All of the neighborhood cats eventually end up here. This is cat heaven. Fresh catnip growing on the patio, scratching boards, cat trees for climbing and sleeping, several different types of cat food, cat treats. If I were a cat I'd want to live here, too.

Eco Colour

This is a fabulous new book that I just got in the mail yesterday. It's titled Eco Colour, by India Flint. Unfortunately it's not available in the United States, and you have to order it from Australia, but it's worth it. The photographs in the book are beautiful, and the information is invaluable. India gives ecologically sound instructions for using natural dyes (with and without mordants), making eco prints with leaves and flowers, rust dyeing, mud dyeing, solar dyeing and more. She layers techniques and gets very rich colors and designs that way. It's a must-have book for anyone interested in a natural way of producing color on cloth.