-Cheri
What a Cat! French Lieutenant
Daily Squiggle
This was an exercise to make a squiggle look like the style of a famous painter. You add eyes; turn it and add paws; turn it and add the tail and so on. It was interesting to see that putting the elements of the dog in different planes really made the squiggle look similar to Picasso’s work.
This squiggle is a marker base with colored pencil shading.
-Lynne
Camping in the Dunes
Lynne: Kristin and I spent a week camping at the Indiana Dunes State Park. I will try to chronicle our trip in the most interesting way possible. I am never bored camping with Kristin or talking about camping with Kristin, so others will have to let me know when they have had enough.
The photo above is the accumulation of things that we feel we must have with us to both survive our trip and make us feel cool camping. As Kristin says: “We love our camping bling.” Give us a Coleman catalog and we both go giddy.
Much of the stuff has accumulated over time. The yellow bags are waterproof as usually we have to float the river to a campsite. The bags take easily to being packed in nooks and crannies; and your clothes and bedding stay dry no matter how hard it is raining when you set up camp. The coolers are super cool and keep ice for 5 days. We use the 5 gallon buckets for dry goods and there is the new lantern and well, I could go on, but I won’t.
Well, just a little more. We were able to add cots to the bling and my knees are very thankful. The cot puts us at seat height off of the tent floor and I no longer have to be embarrassed; as I have to roll off an air mattress to make it to my knees so I can begin to stand up.
We usually camp on the river with no amenities like water and electricity. We rely on a large number of batteries and carry our own water. There is little human distraction and you gradually adjust to living a little more wild. Time is not meaningless, but it has less significance. You eat when you are hungry and you rise and sleep with the sun. And while that has a magic all its own, we were willing, this year, to be wooed by showers and an electrical outlet. I mentioned the Dunes and Kristin made it happen.
But can she make everything fit into her Subaru? Well, of course she can. Those are special packing genes that my daughters have inherited and the photo below proves it. The Subaru is full and we are on our way.
Sunset Challenge, Indiana Dunes
Lynne: This is my first entry in the sunset challenge with photos from the Indiana Dunes. We made it most nights to the Lake at sunset. I took so many pictures that it has taken some time to sort through them. I have to remember the maxim: You can take 100 photos and have them all turn out bad.
I liked this one particularly because it shows the motion of the waves of Lake Michigan. I tried recording the sound of them but the low rumble that resounds in your body does not come through in my recordings. Perhaps you need all your senses, not just hearing, to truly know the dominion of such a body of water in motion.
What a Cat! Encyclopedias?
Daily Squiggle
With blue hair and practical shoes, this squiggle woman knows that she has found her middle age and perhaps is looking at the beginnings of her senior years.
I used markers for the base of this squiggle and then used colored pencils to add the shading.
-Lynne
What a Cat! Cat-a-tonic.
-Cheri
Daily Squiggle
All of these dogs are done with colored pencils. I was playing with complementary colors and blending for brown.
I think the dog in the green military helmet is the leader of the pack.
King Koin
I know a lot of people are just wild over King Kong. I have never been a fan, didn’t like the first one, the second, the third and I believe there is another one in the works. That being said, I was delighted when I found a King Koin bank last week at a garage sale.
From my brief research, I was able to find that it was made by Jasco around 1977. I was drawn to the plastic and colors. I don’t usually collect banks but this one was too good to pass up and on top of everything else it worked.
All you do is put a coin in front of the tent flap and King Kong comes out and snatches it. It doesn’t take batteries to work and all you do is wind it by the clever little clown on the side of the tent.
When I look at this amazingly intricate plastic toy, I am again pleased that someone decided to keep this bank from 1977 and pleased that they decided to sell it in 2011 and that I was the one who happened to run across it. This bank is not really rare and it is not particularly valuable but it is a very interesting piece of kitsch and deserves an honored place right next to my Fisher Price lunch box.
Crafty Challenge I—Wooden Spools
The Crafty Sisters are kicking off our first Crafty Challenge! I came across this box of wooden spools tucked away in the garage (going into my garage is like an archeological dig!), hundreds of them, with all the thread removed. What on earth would I do with a box of wooden spools? Better yet, what would each of us here at the Crafty Sisters do with them? The first Crafty Challenge was born!
Each of us approach crafting in a different way, and we each have our own favorite medium, so it will be fun to see what each of us does with the same material. There are no rules to this challenge, just use spools! There are no winners or losers, either. This is just creativity and play at its best!
To divide up the spools, we passed the container around and took a spool with our eyes closed. That way, it’s totally random, and we each have a variety. We’ll post the results on Sunday, October 9th. It will be very interesting to see what we each come up with!
—Loryn
