Shallow Thoughts : : art

Wall Snake

When they installed the mini-split heat pump in the bedroom (and this year was the year to do it! it's been a lifesaver this month!) the installers drilled a hole in the wrong place. One of them noticed my crochet kingsnake in the living room and suggested that rather than filling the hole normally, I could crochet a snake to put in the hole. I loved the idea and told him not to fill the hole.

It took a few tries: I thought the hole was bigger than it actually was, and I didn't drag a ladder upstairs to the bedroom until after I was half done with the snake, at which point I discovered my snake was too big and I'd have to pull it apart and start over with a smaller snake. But I'm happy with the result.

Sewing Project: Saving my Toes

I have a platform bed, which means the bottom part is made of wood with drawers in it (I'm not clear why this style is called "platform"). Having the drawer space is handy, but it has one big drawback: it means there's a wood corner right where I'm likely to kick it accidentally in the dark on a nocturnal get-up. I've done this enough times that I'm amazed I haven't broken a toe yet, and I've long been sure it's going to happen some day (especially as I get older and my bones get more brittle).

I've been having a lot of fun at the monthly Sewing Meetup at Los Alamos Makers, and really enjoying it. I've fixed up lots of too-large clothes from thrift shops and tech conferences, and made projects like a purse, padded phone cases, and a a cushion for an aging dining table chair.

So when Jodi, the meetup leader, mentioned that she was bringing a bag of stuffing and wanted to make some sofa pillows, I thought: I don't really need any more sofa pillows ... but I can think of a place where I need some cushions!

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Fun on the White Rock Path

One of my regular routes to the grocery store and library takes me along the paved pedestrian/bike path that follows NM highway 4. I also take the southern section of the path at the end of most mountain bike rides on the DOE trails south of town.

A few days ago, a very clever art piece appeared on that southern section. Someone had noticed that some of the copious crack filling seams were shaped like a grand piano, and had added a keyboard and the words MAKE MUSIC.

But it turns out the piano was just the tip of the iceberg.

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Knitted a Camelbak Hose Insulator

This week's group hike was at the always beautiful Las Conchas trail, up in the Jemez mountains. Originally planned as a snowshoe/ski hike, we discovered there wasn't enough show to justify either one, so we all opted for Yak Trax or other forms of shoe-mounted spikes. As it turned out, there wasn't much ice so we probably didn't even need that. (One of Dave's spike sets fell off early in the hike, and he continued for miles before he noticed one foot was unspiked. Fortunately, he was ahead of the group and someone else spotted the lost spikes.)

It was beautiful, and the 27°F temperature didn't feel so bad once we were moving. But it did cause one problem: my Camelbak hose froze up, so I had to resort to eating snow when I wanted a drink of water until lunchtime when I managed to clear out the ice.

Not the first time that's happened. I've long wanted to get some sort of hose insulator that would keep the hose from freezing, but I haven't been able to find one.

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New Hobby: Crochet Earmuffs

With the cold weather upon us, I've been cranking out a lot of crochet earmuffs.

I'd made a few knitted earmuffs back when I was learning to knit a few years ago. I liked the way they felt and worked — no pressure on my head or ears like with the kind of earmuffs that have a band that goes over the head — but they're tricky to knit, requiring circular knitting with small double-pointed needles and a lot of increasing and decreasing. I'm still not that good at knitting and have a hard time with increases.

It turns out earmuffs are much easier in crochet.

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K is for Knitting

Seems like during the lockdown, everyone's taking up new crafts -- sewing, bread baking, or whatever. I was a little ahead of the game. Last winter I learned to knit. I'd crocheted a little when I was a teenager, but I'd always seen knitting as much more complicated.

It started because I couldn't find a decent headband. I'm not a big fan of hats, because migraines, but sometimes my ears get cold on hikes. I was dissatisfied with the headbands I found in outdoor apparel stores: they tend to be too narrow to cover my ears, too tight, overpriced, and don't come in many colors either. I bought one but wasn't happy with it. I decided I could probably learn to knit my own headband before I found one I liked.

Los Alamos has a great knitting community, as it turns out. (I suspect most communities do). Doris, a friend from Toastmasters, is an avid lifelong knitter (I knew that from her Toastmasters talks, of course), and she steered me to some good beginner books and gave me hints on which size starter needles to buy, including a set of circular needles since everything I was interested in making lent itself to knitting "in the round". But Doris also gave me a list of four different times the local knitters met in person, including one very convenient weekly meeting at the White Rock Library just a few miles from home.

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Los Alamos Artists Studio Tour

The Los Alamos Artists Studio Tour was last weekend. It was a fun and somewhat successful day.

I was borrowing space in the studio of the fabulous scratchboard artist Heather Ward, because we didn't have enough White Rock artists signed up for the tour.

Traffic was sporadic: we'd have long periods when nobody came by (I was glad I'd brought my laptop, and managed to get some useful development done on track management in pytopo), punctuated by bursts where three or four groups would show up all at once.

It was fun talking to the people who came by. They all had questions about both my metalwork and Heather's scratchboard, and we had a lot of good conversations. Not many of them were actually buying -- I heard the same thing afterward from most of the other artists on the tour, so it wasn't just us. But I still sold enough that I more than made back the cost of the tour. (I hadn't realized, prior to this, that artists have to pay to be in shows and tours like this, so there's a lot of incentive to sell enough at least to break even.) Of course, I'm nowhere near covering the cost of materials and equipment. Maybe some day ...

I figured snacks are always appreciated, so I set out my pelican snack bowl -- one of my first art pieces -- with brownies and cookies in it, next to the business cards.

It was funny how wrong I was in predicting what people would like. I thought everyone would want the roadrunners and dragonflies; in practice, scorpions were much more popular, along with a sea serpent that had been sitting on my garage shelf for a month while I tried to figure out how to finish it. (I do like how it eventually came out, though.)

And then after selling both my scorpions on Saturday, I rushed to make two more on Saturday night and Sunday morning, and of course no one on Sunday had the slightest interest in scorpions. Dave, who used to have a foot in the art world, tells me this is typical, and that artists should never make what they think the market will like; just go on making what you like yourself, and hope it works out.

Which, fortunately, is mostly what I do at this stage, since I'm mostly puttering around for fun and learning.

Anyway, it was a good learning experience, though I was a little stressed getting ready for it and I'm glad it's over. Next up: a big spider for the front yard, before Halloween.

Art on display at the Bandelier Visitor Center

As part of the advertising for next month's Los Alamos Artists Studio Tour (October 15 & 16), the Bandelier Visitor Center in White Rock has a display case set up, and I have two pieces in it.

The Velociraptor on the left and the hummingbird at right in front of the sweater are mine. (Sorry about the reflections in the photo -- the light in the Visitor Center is tricky.)

The turtle at front center is my mentor David Trujillo's, and I'm pretty sure the rabbit at far left is from Richard Swenson.

The lemurs just right of center are some of Heather Ward's fabulous scratchboard work. You may think of scratchboard as a kids' toy (I know I used to), but Heather turns it into an amazing medium for wildlife art. I'm lucky enough to get to share her studio for the art tour: we didn't have a critical mass of artists in White Rock, just two of us, so we're borrowing space in Los Alamos for the tour.