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I am back home from California. My Skoshi dog is doing fine now that the blockage is gone from her intestines and I am catching up on blogging and some painting.

The bee picture was done because my youngest granddaughter has moved beyond truly loving all animals to including some of the insect world. She likes bees now even though her sister and a friend have both been stung recently. There is an avocado grove on the hill behind their house and the owner imported bees which have decided this granddaughter's swimming pool is a good water source for quenching their thirst after a hard day pollinating trees! Anyhow, I told her I'd show her a quick way to draw a bee so she and one of her sisters grabbed their composition book journals and we drew bees and daisies. They did a great job and I wish I had thought to scan in their versions but then again, this youngest granddaughter wouldn't have allowed me to share anyhow - she is beyond shy.

With nothing to do one morning while all the kids were doing schoolwork (being homeschooled), I drew one of the family dogs. This little dog is a rescue dog. She's perfect for my granddaughter and was dressed up in such a cute little dress. I had to try drawing her. Painting her was a bit more difficult but I think I got the gist of her down.

The last pic is of my Pandora kitty. She was sitting this morning, where she could see me, the dogs and the canary, Taxi. I thought she made a simple shape the way she was lying down so grabbed a Tombow pen and quickly drew her. Good thing I was being quick because no sooner than I began and she up and took off for a better spot leaving me to finish without my model! With this pen I just had to add a bit of water to have the essence of a painting. I thought it looked like a Chinese or Japanese sumi ink painting so I added a bit of origami paper and made my date look like one of their little stamps. The writing is a bit of haiku (minus the word Pandora) I made up for the page.

Now I have to catch up with some lessons I am behind on. Hope you all have a good day.

I've Been Tagged Again!

Cheryl from Scrappy Cat has tagged me. I've been tagged before and thought I'd told all my little secrets but here I go again.

The rules are as follows:
1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post.
5. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know your entry is up.

Well, I've got one and two under control. Hmm, now number 3....weeeellll, okay here goes:

1. I was a republican all my life until after President Bush started a preemptive war. That was my last straw and I am now a full-fledged Democrat.
2. I am taking drawing classes through Jessica of Cre8it! This is a beginner's course that is online. She takes you one small step at a time and I highly recommend it if you've been too afraid to give drawing a real chance.
3. I like to knit socks. Have I mentioned this before? I don't think so as I haven't done much knitting since I started the Bead Journal Project and blogging. Oh yeah, I'm real bad about spending too much time blogging and I still don't get around to all the ones I like to keep track of! Why do we need to sleep?
4. I've written a new poem which I need to illustrate in my poem journal but since I shared that I was going to learn to write poetry I haven't posted on this blog any of the three I have come up with so I'll share one at the end of this list.
5. I've discovered Marie Callendar TV dinners. Yep, I know they've been around for years but they have always been too expensive. At today's prices for stuff though and the fact they've been on sale for $2 - 2.50 I've given them a try and found them to contain real food. Really! They have real food in them. I had to give up on Banquet and all the rest because a person can only eat so much rubber and sawdust and I was at my limit!
6. I'm lazy. That's why I like TV dinners and canned soup so much. Well, maybe I'm just lazy at cooking and housecleaning as I like to do my art stuff. Is some lazy okay? Am I chasing anyone away from my blog yet? "Aaaah, that freebird is too crazy for me, I gotta get outta here, aaaahhh"? I hope not. I really like you all to visit and leave comments - getting together modern style!

Okay, that poem I was telling you about? Well it's very simple and short but I kind of liked it. It used four key words from the book I am using to learn with. They are poetry, balcony, star and moon. So here goes:

Poetry

Poetry is some pretty elusive stuff

At least to me.

It's like leaning over a balcony reaching for the moon

But getting snagged by a star.

Ha! Who can reach the moon from a balcony anyhow?

Might as well go cook dinner and leave poetry to the dreamers.

Well, that's it. I hope to draw a picture to go with it and I will keep working on trying to write some nice poetry.

I am now supposed to tag six people --- now don't rush off everyone --- but I am not going to since I've already tagged everyone I know or those who I've tagged have tagged the ones I've missed. Instead I just want to say I hope you've enjoyed your visit here today and hope you will come back again.

Handmade Book

I want to learn how to write poetry. I don't always understand a lot of poetry; I'm a pretty cut-to-the-chase kind of person. I have always liked Walt Whitman's poetry and I've just read a good book of poems by David Budbill called Moment to Moment. So, I decided I needed a book in which to practice. I didn't find what I wanted at the Office Depot here in town so I decided to make one of my own.

I have made a hard cover accordian book and a glued spine book but hadn't made one with stitched signatures (sets of folded pages stitched together). I wanted a hard cover but I wanted the book to open flat in case I wanted to work across two pages. I ended up with this. I used some white drawing paper by Dick Blick using the size of the sheets folded in half. I used some printed papers for the cover and end papers. The spine cover is some hand dyed fabric by K. Grace Howes of the blog Barnyard Chatter . I won a fat quarter of this green in a drawing on her blog. (I am using more of it in another project I'll post here when done). I ended up

varnishing the fabric spine to keep the edges from fraying. I think I need to figure out how to do a neater job if I want to use fabric again. The varnish made the colors darker on the fabric. It originally matched much more closely although I like this contrast too. The one orangy flower on the cover picks up the reddish orange color in the fabric nicely I thought.

Anyhow, I thought I would share this with all of you. Now to try some poems. Don't be looking too soon for me to be putting them out here. Maybe sometime, and maybe not. See how it goes.