Category Archives: Uncategorized

getting out of the house

Since I illed that last large order I’ve taken a little time off of making books. i’ve been working in my garden and yard getting it ready for summer. I’m happy to report I SHOULD have mowed my lawn yesterday but didn’t. I planned on doing it today but it rained.

We then turned around and dug out a small garden lot. It needs a lot of works still but over all it looks not too bad. We’ve decided to grow a small amount of veggies and hope that they will do well, hopefully at least as well as the dandelions in my yard.

Next weekend we’re putting in herbs and tomatoes. This weekend it was potatoes, peas and beans. Good stuff.

I’ve been spending some time grilling on the weekends and loving it.

I picked up an Alisa Golden book this weekend and when I’m done with it I’ll make a post of my thoughts. I’ve also got a couple of other books I need to review. Some better than others.

It’s cool here today after a week of above average temps for the area it’s rather nice to have some chilly rain. We’ve also had a series of brush fires not too far from here. While driving down route 1 the other day I looked to the sky to see a giant plume of smoke. It wasn’t something that I found typical so I wondered what the hell it was, later while watching the news I learned of the brush fires. So the rain is really good for the area. I wish I had my rain barrels finished!

What have you been doing?

Spring is Here-Kiwi Vine


Spring is Here-Kiwi Vine
Originally uploaded by lessherger.

I’m an amateur gardener. I love to do it, but I’m not all that good at it yet, but I’m working on it slowly.

A commenter on my flickr account said that there was something “dear” about how I’m cradling the edge of this vine, and when I think about it, I love my plants. I really do. There is something so very great about that first touch of spring and those first buds. The first buds let you know that the plant made it and can tell you how much fruit the plant will produce.

I love my plants almost as much as I love my dogs. With proper care and maintenance my plants will feed me. It’s a good relationship.

Today I’m focusing on cutting a new garden bed in my back yard. We’re going small this year, just enough room for a row of lettuces, peas, carrot, beans, squash and zucchini. I’m putting tomatoes and peppers in 2 spots around the house and a small herb bed next to the house. I’m looking forward to the payoff this summer and fall.

Finished a big Order, and some errors

Yahooo. The giant 90 jotter order is done and shipped. I took a few pictures of what 90 jotters look like in a ziploc baggie all together. But it’s a giant ziploc baggie, something like a 2 or 3 gallon baggie, don’t think it’s a small baggie.

Al together it weighs in at about 3 or 4 pounds. I admit, because it’s priority mail I didn’t weight it.

However I’m pretty happy to say the order is DONE!

I had a lot of sewing machine issues with this one. I made enough blanks for about 150 books. Only 90 of the 150 made the cut. That means I’ve got about 60 books with various errors. In some cases, the machine skipped a stitch, or the tension is too loose, or the stitches were too close. It made me very angry… But I’ve got 60 jotters I need to get rid of. I’m offering 6 low cost mass packs (10 jotters each) on my etsy shop. This is the lowest cost you’ll ever see on my jotters.

Here are a few pictures for your viewing pleasure.

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If you’re interested in them, head on over to my etsy shop.

Hump Day Prompt: What band?

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The recent reunion of New Kids on the Block has been heating up the news websites. Since I live under a rock I just found out about this today. It made me think, because I could care less about NKOTB, I actually disliked them as a teen, and I was probably one of the few teen girls that didn’t like them.  But it made me wonder what band would I stay up for tickets all night ,wait in long lines and make repeated calls to Ticket master? What band did I first listen to as a teen that completely blew my mind, what album did I listen to over and over? What tapes did I splice together because I broke them?

For me there is only one band that I would go that distance, only one band that blew my mind like that. NKOTB it ain’t. But what is your band, Journal it.

(For the record for me its The Pixies. Wave of Mutilation was a formative CD for me. I played it over and over, put songs from it on all mix tapes I ever made, I listened to it when I was happy, sad and in teen angst mode. Even today, when I listen to that CD I love it.)

EarthMonth

It’s been awhile since I last posted. I’m elbow deep in a bunch of household activities and orders. I’m still plugging away at the 90 jotter order. I’m at book #70 and I’m going to stitch up some books this evening.

It’s Earth month, which fits with my usual recycled books. I challenge everyone out there to come up with a recycled book idea and to make it. My 2nd challenge is to use something recycled in your art! Collage is recycling!

In addition to all this fun stuff I’ve been working on a gray water recycling and filtration system for my washing machine. I’ve got the plans laid out now I just need to pick up the pieces. We’ll be using this for watering my pear tree as well as the lawn. My plan is to use both a particle filter as well as a carbon based filter to get rid of more of the "stuff" in the water. There isn’t much, but I don’t want to put nasty water out. 

I have a rare week day off this week, so I may get some of the parts for this today, expect an instructable to come from this.

Earth month and Earth day are big things where I work and I get pumped up for it, additionally my town has a major EcoFestival this year, showing screenings of a vast assortment of Ecologically minded movies. Additionally to that there is a walking tour of the local solar energy farm near the high school.  I"m not sure how many of these Earth Month Events I’m going to get to see or be involved in but I’m excited about them anyway.

As one of my coworkers put it, it’s a fantastic way to meet like minded people. I suspect that there will be a good showing of my coworkers and people from the regional offices.

Hump Day #13 Sharpie and Gesso

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The prompt is open ended and deals only with the material, subject and content are up to you, but the material is dictated.

The next material that I want to write about is actually a combination of materials but it’s a very cool combination that will give you a ghosting effect. The 2 materials are plain old Sharpie brand markers and plain old white gesso. I use Liquitex brand gesso but I think this would work with any brand.

Start out by writing up a journal entry in sharpie. You can use any color, I’ve done this techniques successfully with black and red but I’d love to see results that use other colors. After giving the sharpie some time to dry fully, go over your lines of text with gesso. A nice even thiin layer. There should be no need to thin it with water but if you aren’t getting an even layer you can loosen it with some water. You should barely be able to see the writing under the gesso while it ‘s wet. The key to this technique is a thin even layer.

Now wait for it to dry. If you are impatient like me you can hit it with some heat and dry it out, but you don’t have to.

When you come back to it you should see a faint purplish bleed through of your writing. I find that mine is barely legible but it can clearly be read. From here you can decide if you want to write on top of the gessoed words or draw or collage. As you layer over the gessoed writing you’ll find it becomes more faint and more ghostly. It makes a great background for more writing, drawing or collage.

Prompt # 13 Combine 2 materials: Sharpie and Gesso.

A BIG Order

I’ve been working on a big order. 90 of my jotter notebooks for a wedding*. Luckily for me I managed to snag a massive stack of posters to recycle shortly before receiving the order. I got some good posters too, with interesting graphics.

I’ve been holding off on stitching up the second half of the books though because our dog, Ruby, HATES the sewing machine and I’ve been thinking that it might just be too traumatic for her to have the new dog and me sewing…

But I’ve been cutting and trimming like crazy the last few nights. I had stitched enough for 100 books. Thus far after trimming and cutting about 2/3rds of the stack I’ve only got 50 books. I’ve got a stack of 20 rejects- loose or bad stitching or bad cutting. I’ll be listing reject value packs on etsy when I’m all done with the order.

*I used to work in the flower business and no matter what I did I always ended up with wedding business. In flowers brides are often difficult and I always hated doing wedding flowers. The issue, I was really good at it and word got out around town that my prices were fair and that I did a great job. In the entire time of doing wedding flowers I had only 1 bride freak out, and it was determined by everyone involved that she and her crazy sister were looking for free flowers. That one instance sticks out in my mind and still bothers me. I’m so glad that I don’t work with flowers anymore. Not to mention that when you work with flowers you really ruin the romantic gestures of flowers for yourself. Getting flowers never seems to have that feeling it once did.