MiT book, a flash of inspiration!

Remember that I had planned to make a pop-up book of my senior #1's watercolors? Well, when I went up to San Juan Island to visit E, we talked a little bit about my experience with my senior #1. And E thought that my senior might consider a pop-up book a childish thing.

I've been thinking about that ever since, and I think E might be right. So I've been going back and forth on different formats. The issue is, I think her kids & grandkids will want something they can display AND they're probably not terribly interested in what I'll bring to the project (despite my invitations, they've never come to participate, nor to meet/talk to me, unlike all the other families). (And I know they'll want to display her watercolors because they've already asked for copies.) The nice thing about the pop-up is that it can be displayed easily, and I can add my parts to the back side, and they never have to see my parts if they don't want to.

So it was back to the drawing board. I printed out some copies of her watercolors on the b&w printer, just to play with, and BAM! Wow, they remind me of the old ink brush Chinese paintings.

So while I put together a simple portfolio style mock-up (easy to display, but where do I put my stuff?):



...my mind was going in different directions. I was thinking about the scrolls of ink brush paintings, their long and narrow formats (vertical or horizontal), and I suddenly figured out that I don't have to give it all away, all at once. I can dole out the two watercolors bit by bit, along with my text, and only give them the full watercolors at the very end. That also gives me something that her family can display, they just open the book up to the last spread, and voila!



I will probably play with the saturation a bit too, so that I do start with almost b&w versions and then gradually go to the full color versions.

I'm greatly relieved that I'm finally making some progress on this book!

So, onto the garden

Two, or maybe three, or possibly four years ago, I scored 4 giant metal posts off freecycle (complete with concrete balls at the bottom, they were a pain to bring home). I planted two in the front yard, planning to have a sculptor friend make an arch for me. We agreed on a trade — she would make me something 1001 nights-ish, and I would...erh, not sure what yet.

So, I was supposed to design this 1001 nights-ish arch to get the project started, and I never could come up with something I was happy with. Last week, on the 3-hour drive to Bend (I wasn't driving), I finally figured out why I was having so much trouble coming up with something — my garden is a pretty quiet, non-showoff-y type of a garden, a dramatic structure like that just wouldn't fit in.

Instead, I bought a chain and two old trowels, and strung a necklace between the posts:



The trowels were stuck down the tops of the posts to act as finials (and to hold the chain). Of the assortment of bells, four were from Andrew (brought back from Thailand), one I got (just yesterday) at an estate sale, and one I bought at Anacortes a couple of years ago. Now I'll want my sculptor friend to make me some nice finials...

Looking at it now, it looks kind of like a belly dancer's belt.