Mar 21
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I was trying to catch the steam, because I feel it is under-represented in this month’s water theme. I mean, I’ve got ice and snow and melt water and puddles, but only one steam. The reason there is only one steam postcard? Photographing steam is hard, especially when you haven’t read the manual for the camera and have no clue what 1/2  the settings are or what they are doing.

So we have this morning’s breakfast, warholerated. And I did it all myself!

Have I mentioned that all these pictures are mine? I got so worried about copyrights a couple years ago that I started making all my own stuff, wherever possible. Patterns for dolls and their clothes, stamps for anything, basically anything anyone might contest ownership, I have made my own version. Between the digital camera (which I heart, big time) and Photoshop Elements (which is pissing me off less with experience) I have all of my world at my fingertips for photos, and now I that can print them on fabric it makes me very very pleased with myself. Smug, even.

Mar 20
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

The dripping melt water cascades off the roof at the Cotton Mill, where the circus school is waay up on the third floor. I tried to catch the way the sun sparks off the drips as they fly away sideways. Bright sunny day, and warm.  Alice stayed home again, so we went together to Jr High to help the 7th graders make paper mache masks. We were so successful demonstrating that the teacher let us take home our demonstrator. He is a scale model of the BFG (Roald Dahl’s Big Friendly Giant) and we will finish him with thrift store clothes and dowels, and donate him to third grade.

Both Al and Red Kate came to circus this afternoon. Red Kate kicked up into a handstand, 2 weeks ahead of schedule,

and Al cleared a lot of stupid stuff out of his head just by hanging upside down. Ariana came up with us too. A friend of Aerin’s from gymnastics many years ago, she is in the touring company of Circus Smirkus in the summers, and one of Aerin and Alice’s heros these days. She is bendy and strong – she was showing Alice what kinds of things she might do with some additional strength. Like pat herself on the head with her feet in a handstand.

Next to that display, my posings on the trapeze are just silly. Fun, but silly.

All three grownups were giggling all the way down the stairs. My hands still hurt.

Mar 19
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

I am still loving the snow storms. This one is this afternoon, looking across the back yard at the swingset and the toppled jungle gym my dad made and the spring horse. The red of the horse makes me think of the William Carlos Williams poem about the Red Wheelbarrow:

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

I think it is the red seen through the glaze of snow.

Alice was home sick today. Not terribly sick, but sick enough. I got some socks started, and she watched a couple hours of Avatar. The rule is all the TV you want when you are sick, until your brain turns to guacamole. I ask them, at regular intervals, "Is your brain guacamole yet?" and unbelievably sometimes they answer yes and turn it off.

I managed to accomplish a draft of the March journal page, all about Aerin. It is starting to look like this:

And, I made these:

My kids have had the greatest third grade teacher ever, or at least since my third grade teacher. Mrs. Battey teaches the kids  early American history, and she is a great believer in learning by doing, so they will clean and spin (and ply) wool and then weave (on card board looms) a coaster or bag. These are drop spindles I made for the spinning part. I get to start them spinning tomorrow, and over the next week I have to make a small cardboard loom, warp it and start weaving on it.

The kids do other fun Colonial Times stuff. They’ll do a big session of games kids played, and another on chores they did. The girls in class are always, Always, outraged at the number of things they were not allowed to do, and the boredom of the things they were. I keep telling the girls that NOW is the best time there is for women. They still don’t quite get it. I’ll keep pounding. It is my job.

Mar 18
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

A couple days late, but I managed to snap this as I was going (very slowly, thank you for helping me worry) over the bridge headed home on Friday. The snow was blowing about like crazy and someone had slid into the curb and a cop was keeping people from hitting him and incidentally taking up an entire lane. When the light turned red, we all stopped for a long time. I wanted to catch the way the snow obscured the view, something that would be ripe for more wispy fabrics except I ran out.

I love this bridge. I love the other bridge too – the bike path bridge. When we first moved out here, the bike path was coming “in about two years”. It took a decade, but they finally pushed it through. Even before the path, Al and I climbed out onto the bridge, hopping from tie to tie until we were half way across the river, looking down at the island in the middle. I still stop in the middle and admire the view, upriver and down river, every time I ride across. And I make a point of noting the river as I drive over. I taught the kids which river this is when they were tiny. Alice really got into it – lisping “the mighty Connecticut” from the back seat every time we crossed any river. We have a couple good ones. The mighty Deerfield. The mighty Millers (we dumped in a snowstorm in March one year, one develops a profound respect for the river admiring it from eye level in the snow.) The mighty Quabog (substantially smaller) and the mighty Quinnebaug (really a very nice small stream, just wide enough for a canoe to make it around the bends. It’s an old joke by now.)

Mar 17
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

Or at least, there were 13 candles before they got blown out and a horde of hungry 13 year old girls descended on it. Plus the dad, and the little sister and Red Kate. Yeah, I had a little piece too.

Red Kate helped me wind off the Socks That Rock Sock of the Month yarn. We agreed it looked like one of those huge hay bales – all it needed was a green towel to look like fields, and some tiny model cows and horses….

We had lots of snow last night. No circus this morning. Lots of digging out. Tomorrow’s postcard is a picture from yesterday. How confusing is that?

Oh, and a happy St Patrick’s day to you as well.

But really, Happy Aerin’s Birthday. No we’re not Irish. She’s named after a character in a book.  This one, and this one. I recommend them both. highly.

Mar 16
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

The same picture of the same puddle in Brattleboro, with a radically different palette.

I had forgotten that one of my favorite things to do, back when I was a geographer and could do such things, was experiment with satellite images. Using different bands (reflections in different wavelengths) it was possible to make psychedelic images of recognizable places, and highlight different kinds of information too. Landsat – the one I used most – had information in 2 infrared bands, a green band, a red band, a blue band and one close to ultraviolet. Plus one more that I’ve forgotten. One trio of bands (infrared, red, green, if I remember correctly) is particularly good at locating vegetation, others highlight man-made objects, or water. There is a set of default false color sets, assigning different bands to blue, red and green for display, that get used a lot and many people familiar with imagery can read them like books. There are other sets, or reassigning the bands to different colors that are just astonishing and gorgeous.

Mar 15
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

The giant snow pile from clearing the parking lot was melting and making amazing patterns. Red Kate noticed it when we were at Nimble on Tuesday. One of our teachers was deeply amused at having to swerve around us as we bent over and stared into the puddles looking for good swirly bits. The color was a little muddier, but the swirls are all real.

Aerin’s band concert was tonight. They sounded remarkable, especially considering the middle-school-ness of the band. The last piece was selections from the Blues Brothers. They all ceremonially donned sungalsses, and ripped into it. It was great.

Mar 14
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

That’s the thing about sugaring weather – the nights freeze the melted snow and moisture laden air into fantastic shapes that vanish with the morning light. I nearly wiped out in the YMCA parking lot on a streak of meltwater that had frozen in an intensely corrugated black ice cascade. I didn’t get a picture of it, I was late to yoga…

This is the same image as a couple days ago, but I started to poke it and couldn’t stop. There are two layers. The underneath is grayer but shows more topography, printed on cotton. The top took three tries to get the color saturated enough, printed on organza. I fused the two layers together onto a layer of batting, to give the stitching depth, and then stitched away. I think I posted it upside down, but I like the sunrise effect in that corner, so it stays.

My shoulders and arms are tired! I climbed the fabric to the ceiling twice, one on each leg, yesterday at circus. Then we practiced hanging upside down in a straddle-up. I am finally starting to feel how my center of gravity changes with small changes in core strength and pelvis positioning. While hanging, if I point my tail at the sky, I hang straighter and more solidly, and feel less like I am about to tip out at any moment. When in a handstand, if I point my tail at the sky, and I can feel the square solidness of my hands under my shoulders. For about 2 seconds.

Someone asked about noggy boots, so I looked up the words over at Mudcat Cafe, and found nobby boots instead. I have a lingering affection for my version, so I’m sticking with noggy.

You should go look at Mudcat if you have ever tried to remember the words to anything. They currently house the Digital Tradition, which is all the words to all the songs that are even remotely folky, plus the mangled versions, the filked versions and some commentary. Did you ever wonder about the meaning of the words to some of the more mysterious ones (three three the rivals? WHAT is that all about?) Some of those are explained as well. One of my favorite places.

Mar 13
Originally uploaded by Dancing Crow.

“and it’s all for me boots,
me noggy noggy boots,
all gone for beer and tobacco”

is how the shanty goes. These were given to me by my mother, and I cannot begin to say how much they improve my barn life. Warm, waterproof, flexible, not too heavy, did I say waterproof? I can go out of my way to stand in puddles, and they remain blissfully waterproof.

Late day, circus day. Red Kate came too and hung upside down and we all had fun. Even Alice. Then a baking spree tonight for the band rehearsal tomorrow. I have to get the stuff to school in the morning.