Goose Creek

Here's an eraser carving I made a couple of years ago and it's always been one of my favorites.

The farm we are buying sits by a wonderful fast running rocky beck called Goose Creek. Could the image have been a premonition of our future home? I'm thinking of somehow incorporating it into a logo for the hand made soap and crafts I hope to have for sale.

I'm so sorry I haven't been posting much here. Moving day is rapidly approaching and I've been busy packing. This time next Sunday we should be on the road getting very close to our destination. Actually I hope we will be there before dark. The way my eyes are, driving in the dark is horrendous!

Last week we went to the vision center and got my glasses. The doctor and I both decided that instead of bifocals I would be better off with two pair. One for reading and one for distance. What a time I'm having trying to get used to them! The reading glasses aren't too bad but the ones for distance are awful. I don't think I will be able to drive in them at all. Everything looks distorted. People look short and fat! Cars all look like low riders. Almost broke my ankle stepping off a curb that appeared to be about a 2 inch drop and turned out to be 8 inches!!! Needless to say I've been in floods of tears and at my wits end with them. If I get behind the wheel with those things on I'm going to kill somebody. The optician says he doesn't know how I've been able to function without glasses but the only benefit they seem to afford me is that I can read signs from a longer distance. And then I have to sit very still and really concentrate. So, yesterday I said to h*ll with them and put them away. It's so annoying. Not like you can return them and get your money back so that was $200 down the drain. Heck I could have got a Scottish highland calf for that! I could just spit right now.

Anyone else out there had the same problem?

Trouble at Nine O'clock!

Some time ago while perusing files on our old computer I came across a GIF animator. I think it was included as part of a free Ulead Photo Impact package that came with the computer. I started messing around with it and this is what I came up with. It shows our cat Fiddlesticks up to no good as usual.

One day while cleaning out the pigeon loft my little son says "Momma, don't look now but there's trouble at nine o'clock!" Sure enough there was Fiddlesticks hiding under the bush next to the aviary.

While it isn't an eraser carving I thought it was still quite fitting for this week's Illustration Friday theme of Mischief!

Mischief!

Yes! We finally have a closing date on the house. Looks like the big day is going to be the 23rd of this month. Now I can start seriously packing.

Time has just been dragging while waiting and I haven't had much ambition to get down to any art work at all. Which reminds me "ambition" was this weeks theme at Illustration Friday. Oh well, I didn't have any.

I did get my hair cut though! It feels so good to be rid of it. I jumped on the scales as soon as I got home in the hopes of having lost a couple of pounds. No such luck. Another reason I'm looking forward to more manual labor. I'm not fat by any stretch of the imagination but if I sit around much longer I will be.

Also last week Hubby convinced me to go get my eyes checked. Yikes!

The guy said: "read the next to the last line"

After the initial shock I said: "well, why don't I tell you which line I CAN read!"

It wasn't anywhere near the last line. Could this be the reason I keep burning my forehead on my little lamp while carving erasers? Duh! I've kept saying it isn't bright enough.

So Saturday after the hair cut we stopped by the vision center to try on some specks. Bifocals to be exact! Man, they all make me look like the old village school mistress! I'm half tempted to go over the top and get some of those real old fashioned ones with the wings!

But, things could be a lot worse. The week before last we made the trip down to DC to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Our little son needed to have some new inserts made for his shoes so we had to go to the prosthetic lab. The waiting room was full of young soldiers who had lost limbs in the war. They all had artificial legs or arms. One young guy about 19 0r 20 had both his right arm and right leg missing. They were in good spirits though and getting around amazingly well. In fact if they hadn't been wearing shorts and tee shirts I doubt that we would have noticed anything wrong. But it made us realize how fortunate we are. Ken got home from his 16 months in Iraq in August of last year. His unit was bombed almost every night and RPGs have landed just yards away from him and failed to explode!

We have a lot to be thankful for!

Daring

OOh, I'm scared!

Two years ago I decided to grow my hair with the intention of donating it to Locks of Love. (www.locksoflove.org )

Well, the time has come. It's down to my waist now and beginning to get on my nerves a bit. I am a little aprehensive though so I thought this would make a suitable subject for this week's Illustration Friday theme : Daring.

Saturday will be the big day!

It's time to cut it all off! 

What a crazy two weeks this has been. My poor little blog was left flapping in the wind.

But, I have great news. The farm we went to see down in Virginia turned out to be just what we wanted! The sellers accepted our offer and the bank approved the loan! The closing will be at the end of May as the sellers needed a little more time to move.

I'm so excited! We've been searching for over two years now and I was really getting quite discouraged. A very big "Thanks!" goes out to Fred for posting about this place. It's not just a farm but a little piece of community history and we feel honored to be it's future caretakers.

Thanks Liska and Doug for the welcome. We look forward to being your neighbors. (Though Doug seems to be under the impression that we are Beltway city slickers!!!!!!) As Charlie Brown would say: Good grief!

We spent the last few days down in North Carolina. Had to get the garden equipment, fence, utility trailer and the Toyota pick-up truck we had left at our old place. We also got the dog. She was being eaten up by ticks despite Topspot. We put a preventic collar on her and by the time we got to Ken's mom's house about two hours north there must have been 100 dead ticks in the bottom of the dog-crate! Man, I won't miss that place. I know there are ticks where we are going but I don't think they can be any worse than in southeastern North Carolina.

We worked from 0730 to 2100 to do all we had to do. Took the old truck to Firestone to have new tires put on it, ( the old ones were 11 years old!!) went to the farm store and loaded up 25 bales of hay and all the feed the present owners will need to feed our animals for the next month, downloaded and stacked the hay in the barn, completely broke down the utility trailer so that it would fit inside the horse trailer, and cut the cattle fence panels down into lengths that would also fit in the horse trailer. Mike the neighbor came over and we chatted with him for a while and caught up on all the news. Doesn't sound like much now but it was hot down there and we were tired by the time we got through. The next time we go will be to get the goats, rabbits and some of the pigeons.

With all this going on I haven't had a chance to sit down and do any eraser carving. I don't even know what the theme is at Illustration Friday. Think I'll go there now and maybe squeeze something out in between homeschool and packing for the move.

Shackleton, one of my white homing pigeons. 

Easter came and went and we really didn't do much of anything.

Hubby had been in the army's hand to hand combat course all week. Wrestling on the floor eight hours a day for seven days. He was black and blue. So he spent most of the weekend laying on the couch recovering!

He was pretty psyched about the course though and delighted in practicing on little me when he got home each night! -"What are you complaining about? It's not supposed to hurt until your shoulder starts to dislocate!"

Saturday was my Dad and Mum's 50th wedding anniversary. We had a nice get together on Yahoo messenger but I wish we could have been there in England with them.

I did get all the FDC's finished and ready to send off. I enjoyed making them but I'm glad to have them done. I had briefly entertained the notion of going into business as a Cachet artist. Making FDC's on a regular basis. But after you've made the same thing 10 times with more to do... it soon gets old.

Yesterday we had a call from our Lawyer in NC to say that the sale of our house down there was going to be finalized on Thursday. Great news but very short notice. We thought we would have to cancel our trip to Virginia in order to travel down there for the closing. So I was on the phone to the Kennels and the realtor to rearrange dates. Now due to a glitch with the buyer's lender looks like it isn't going to close Thursday after all. And it seems that we can take care of everything by fax and overnight mail. So our original plans are back in place and we will be going to see what I hope will be our future home in four days!!

Oh, the anticipation! I can't sleep for clearing and fencing the pasture and planning all the other little enterprises that have been simmering on the back burner for so long.

If it all works out this time next year we will once more have baby goats frolicking around the barnyard and little chicks cheeping in the brooder. My white homing pigeons will be trained and ready to start their career as wedding release birds and the garden spot will be tilled and planted.

So much to look forward to!

Easter

...Edward Thomas

This evening I got really sleepy and ended up taking a long nap on the couch. Needless to say it's now almost 11pm and I'm wide awake! May as well sit here and waffle a bit.

Actually, I haven't been sleeping good at all this past week because I'm excited that we may have finally found the farm we've been looking for! We will be heading off down to the mountains of south west Virginia next weekend to look at the place. Woo hoo! Can't wait!

It's a totally renovated one hundred year old farm house on 33 acres with a nice stream. Very secluded about a mile from the hard top. There's a small barn. It isn't in the best of shape. It's leaning a bit but will serve the purpose of sheltering the goats until we can put up something more substantial next year. All I have to do is throw up a little corral of cattle panels and build a gate.

There's also another building that has power to it that will be my art studio! A real art studio! No more clearing off the kitchen table so we can eat.

Anyway, more about this later. Just hope it doesn't sell before we can get down there to see it.

Yesterday was the birthday of Mick Mather a fellow blogger and eraser carver. We've had such a hectic week here that I was only just able to get a greeting posted in time.

Glad you had a great birthday Mick!

It's kind of funny, I don't really remember how I got into carving erasers and I certainly didn't know anyone else who did it. One day I typed "eraser carving" into the Yahoo search box and a whole new world opened up. There was the Carving Consortium website and a whole bunch of sites related to mail art and letterboxing. And this name Mick Mather kept popping up all over the place.

A couple of months ago I found Illustration Friday and set up this blog so that I could participate. What a surprise when who should leave a comment but Mick! The world really is a small place.

He's since moved on to other things than eraser carving but above you can see one fine piece of his entitled "Keep Out!"

Check the links in the side bar and go take a look at his blog. Maybe some of you up there in the north will be able to go see the exhibition he's currently working on!

Keep Out! by Mick Mather 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MICK!

"Chairs" to you!

Bloom!

Illustration Friday threw me for a loop this week by changing the theme on Friday instead of Monday. It makes more sense though. Now people will have the weekend to get a piece done.

I decided to enter this little Ex Libris eraser carving.

It's spring!