Reflections on Cracked Ice.

Reflections in cracked ice. 

masked emotions

"Peroxide kills off the healing bugs, also,"  the doctor said.  The faces below were meant for making expressive  puppet faces. But the other day, I was trying to answer questions  at the medical clinic,  about how my 90 old father was doing.  I was sitting alongside him.   I imagine some of my facial expression -while wearing a mask- looked something like this:  

1. Normal gaze.  

2. Small centered pupils-spooky gaze!

3. Sideways glance-wary or fearful.

4. Pupils on the inside of the eyes-

   Don't ask, perplexed, or angry!

5. Pupils look like commas-alert!            Interested.

6. Up and down pupils-it's the who knows  look.

The eyes have it! 

If you check out my blog posts during the 2012 years,  I have several posts on how to embellish flat felt puppets. The above facial examples will be helpful.  

Deut. 32:2  "as the small rain upon the tender herb..."   at hollyhockjunction

hollyhockjunction.blotspot.com 

Go figure.  Puncture wound between my toes,  put there  by a knitting needle,  and I don't even knit.  Found it by accident wedged in the carpet.  That's what I get for not keeping a tidy craft room and going barefoot and not turning on the light.  Guess which "face"  I made? 

If it ever happens to you,  use soap and water and heat,  and  peroxide, but once or twice and not continually. Good bugs need to get growing again. 

Art on Dishplay

I peered in to Berta's room.  The door that faced her bed was covered with many greeting cards scotch-taped to it. Berta was propped up on a lofty cloud of pillows.
"I love all the cards,"  she said.  "Look at the cute one in the middle.  That's my favorite -  the bunny rabbit.   The cards  help me  feel better, especially the happy ones."  (Berta was a hospice patient.)

Art on Dishplay 
On a flour sack dish towel to be enjoyed every day.

Greeting Cards:  An appreciation of art in everyday life.

My sister remarked,   "I don't send greeting cards  much anymore.  They just get thrown away."    Her birthday is coming up, and in our extended family, we celebrate with cake and get togethers.   I like the old fashioned flour sack dish towels embroidered with the happy things.  Puppy critters and dancing vegetables, all thanks to Aunt Martha transfers...but,  I embroidered on this dish towel, for the sister who dances,  a  girl dancing  that was drawn by my granddaughter.

Have a Dilly Day! Greeting Card Handcrafted

I gave my brother a jar of home made dill pickles for his birthday, and tied a hand made tag around it.   (What do you give  to someone who goes out and buys what he wants?)
"This is cute,"  he said, removing the tag and hanging it on a cabinet knob.  "I like stuff that's homemade."
"Thanks!"  I said.
"I don't buy cards anymore,"  he added.   "It's a waste of money." 
"Hey, graphic artists have their place!"  I protested.

Have a dilly day!

*******************************************
Some thoughts I have on that-- 
If I make a greeting card and spend as little as  half an hour on it, at minimum wage..., not to mention the idea-the design, and the supplies,  I can't afford the time it takes to make it!
So you see,  handmade greeting cards 
are also "expensive" and to be valued!

Kewpie and Crochet

Kewpie and Crochet

I ran across this crochet pattern for a Kewpie doll.  My mother said she had two Kewpies.  Didn't have a clue where she had them stored.  But remembered as kids, they were awarded as prizes at the fair. 
Originated in the early 1900's, and first made in a town in Ohrdruf Germany.   Some were made of chalk.  Hers were composition. 
I liked the knitted patterns.   5 1/2" Kewpie (copyright l982)  pocket size--the sailer girl, boy scout,  and the baseball player,  but my favorite is the peek a boo bag.  Patterns that can be adapted to the dolls of the day?

Salt Shaker



Salty O'day vintage salt shaker.  (He had a companion,  Pepper Tate.)

"BOOT HILL:  Here lies Salty O'day 1861-1881  Hoss Thief."
A rope necktie an old oak tree
and Salty wasn't what he used to be."
 
Salty O'day vintage shaker.  The whimsical hoss was sculpted by Sarah  a junior high school student. Great horse!  But what I want to say, about Boot Hill and avoiding salt is- How do you cut back on salt and still get your daily intake of iodine?  Eat  leafy somethings?

Here's what  the  1947 BetterHomes Cookbook graph quickly has to say:  
NUTRIENTS: (IODINE )
What they do
Iodine builds and repairs:the secretion of the thyroid gland.  Regulates and protects:  Growth,  use of carbohydrates:  protects from goider. 
Who Needs Them
Everybody, every day.  More needed during growth.  Stored in thyroid gland. 
Where to Find Them
Salt water fish, shellfish, iodized salt.  Iodine content of fruits vegetables, cereals, and dairy products depends on iodine content of the soil and water.

Three Ironwoods



Leaves turning, falling.  Maple. Oak, acorns. And spotted frogs on the ground. Black Ash, Alder, Basswood. Ironwood--strong. Wasp nests, and tall white Birch trees sporting lichens. I take pause, and take up my camera. Get a second wind. Beautiful firewood uphill, down hill, and tossed into the back of the truck.
Ironwoods,  I'm told, don't let  other trees grow within twelve feet of them.  But I'm all for it.

Two Flowers

Two Flowers
Spikey daffodil plucked from my mother's showy garden where picking is forbidden.
Partnered with a red tulip scrounged from beside a  basement wall,  no longer hidden.

Curls on the Beach 1968



Curls on the beach l968


Shampoo and Set

Large plastic curlers,
pink or blue
Gel pink mousse 
called  Dippity Do.

Bouffant hair net and
Sun to dry. 
Then comb and rat
For Saturday night. 

Happy Easter

On the road to Emmaus the Risen Jesus opened the 

 scriptures to two of his disciples.

Walking Onion

It's not the time of year to be housebound with  a head cold. The winter was long and now, the ten foot snowbanks have finally melted down and disappeared. It's April.  Just a  patch of snow at the edge of the woods.  The robins and blue birds are back, and the garden needs to be examined:  the rhubarb and the walking onions, long time inhabitants.
We sit in front of the picture window looking at the bare brown field across the road, and my husband muses, "If I were to win the fifty million dollar lottery, I'd buy a big honk'n four wheel drive pick up and..."

I am thinking..." buy a pull behind house--a big honk'n thirty foot camper and take it on vacation."
But he completes his own sentence with, "....and buy a snowplow attachment."
I protest.  "You could pay somebody to blow out the driveway!" 
"Gotta do something outside during the winter." he says.

We have moved several times over the years, looking for the perfect work in the perfect place, and I have gotten used to exposed roots.  Sometimes I like to say good bye to places. Today is one of them.   To be like the walking onion -- to grow and bloom and bend a little outside of my circumference.

Repurposed

R e  "p u r r"  p o s e d

I love the colors and textures of things made old. Primitive and Re"purr"posed.  

Back to Work



Mother's hands.

 Crippling arthritis so bad
the fingers make sharp left and right turns on the palms of her hands. 
But it's not that--it's the aches and pains down her back, and
winter gone on too long.  March 7th.  Still a foot of snow on the ground.  She calls.  My mother.  Life in her voice.
"I went back to work at the green house,"  she says.  "Bev and I planted six hundred hanging baskets today by ourselves.  I'm tired, but I feel great."
"Good for you,"  I say with a laugh of relief, knowing she's got all this crackling pent up energy, and no place to go with it.   
"Only how do I explain to anybody else, that my eighty year old mother went back to work for the summer, and it's good for her..."



Hairspray the MUSICAL: graphic design by Flint Communications

 ... Over one hundred exuberant teenagers singing and dancing and characterizing  the early sixties on a highschool stage!  (Girls with bee hive hair do's)  Behind the scenes,  teenage orchestra.  Violins included.
      Inside the cover of the Hairspray program: 
     "From the day you are born, the world tries to pound the creativity out of you.  But if you protect it, use it and develop it, incredible things happen.  We know this first-hand.  Be glad for creativity.  Be glad for different thinking.  And be glad we have THE ARTS."  Flintcommunications

Trying To Stay Warm



Photo by Alex, Jeremey, and Jennifer



HOMESCHOOL BLOG: Pirate Crow hand puppet

   ARRR Matey!  Happy Valentines Day!

See how to make a basic hand puppet at hollyhockjunction.blogspot.com on Oct 30 post.  There are many other puppet characters to make on other posts.   

Groundhog's Day 2011



"Six more weeks of napping?"

Today is Barbara's Birthday and Ground hog's Day :

   Barbara's  hands are in braces (arthritis) with only her thumbs sticking out.
  "Barbara,"  I say,   "Thumbs up to the groundhog
not seeing his shadow today." 
   The groundhog will be climbing out of ten feet of snow  to check out its shadow.

A blog site for my grandaughter.

Valentines on candy vines

  A Blog site for my grandaughter.

My grandaughter lives several  hundred miles away.  We are  poet souls.  We speak best to each other through our drawings and little notes.  Sometimes we send letters,  but I can reach  

 across the miles much faster on a blog.  

Consider blogging to your young grandchild.  This is my site:  Validations.blogspot.com  

Perhaps you will find in it inspiration to tell your own story,  your thoughts,  photos, quips, and drawings.