No post yesterday due to hiking activity. This is not a bad thing. In typical Kathy fashion, though (and it wasn’t my fault…the book had the wrong mileage), we went further than I had planned. The plus is that my heel, which has bugging me on and off the last few weeks, did not hurt too much on the hike, and it’s fine this morning…meaning it’s probably due to one of the pairs of shoes I wear on a regular basis. Not the hiking boots though I think, or it would hurt today. Anyway. More shit to worry about, right? Foot pain sucks. I was in a boot cast for 6 months once and had multiple really long needles inserted in my heel. Don’t wanna do that EVER again.
So yeah, dragged the kids out to Santa Ysabel to hike the loop on the east end. The Coast to Cactus book claimed the larger loop was 4.8 miles. Which it is…as long as you don’t hike BACK to the car. Minor issue guys. So that was 7.6 miles or so instead. Which was fine…we’d been considering going further along the trail anyway…so we just didn’t do that.
There were a lot of cows out there; it was a gorgeous day, warmish but not hot.
There are apparently wildflowers in spring, so hopefully my other hiking companion will agree to the lower part of the hike in April or May. We’ll see.
We did see deer from afar…they saw us as well…
And a coyote up on a hillside (not this one)…
Beautiful oak and pine trees, some climbing up up and up (and then back down seemed much steeper than up, strangely)…
Lots of long vistas…
And cows. Apparently the trail headed north through these guys and we missed it. So we went off road for a bit, following something that we thought was a trail. Hallelujah for hiking apps that show you where YOU are and where the TRAIL is. Yeah.
Wait. There’s the coyote. Bonus points if you can see it.
So it made sense to traipse across this hill toward the trail…easy to do on these cow-trimmed meadows. Not so easy through forest.
And back past majestic trees that survived the fires.
Hikes are awesome, but they kick your butt for the rest of the night…although I did go to my stitching meeting.
Girlchild and I went to get our hairs cut (and hers dyed) for the new year on Wednesday. I always stitch while I’m waiting for hers…I finished this block…I just had a little to do on the sheep.
So this whole 4-square is now done…
In fact, all of this is done…although I don’t think this is how they fit together…
And there’s another batch of blocks I have stitched together that has some finished stuff on it too. I’m not even halfway though. So there’s that. I have one more block for April, I’ve already done May, and June is all stitched down…just needs embroidery. I think I’m stitching the wool down on July too. This is what I do at meetings (that aren’t at school…because apparently that’s not appropriate) and places where I know I have a long wait. So yeah, if I needed to take you to the emergency room, I’d be grabbing my stitching bag. I hate being bored. I need stuff in my hands.
So Wednesday night, I worked on drawing things for this new piece, which is a commission for a woman whose daughter had surgery to correct scoliosis.
I’m not ready for a real drawing yet, but it’s weird…I like drawing things that I know how to draw…so if I’ve never drawn it, I draw it a few times to get it under my hat, or something like that. So I need to put the metal in a scoliosis surgery into the piece, but the metal is on the back of the skeleton, on the back of the person. So I’ve never drawn the BACK of a skeleton. I do aim to be sort of accurate (I’m not totally nuts, so completely accurate is not happening)…so I started with that. Then I was looking at all these surgical pictures (oh yeah, that was interesting, but kinda terrifying), so I was drawing the metal bits, what I could see from X-rays and other pictures. Then I was trying to figure out how I was going to put a human figure into this…and I’m still debating this, because I like the organs and innards, but if it’s from the back, the face is difficult and you can’t really see organs very well, and if it’s from the front, you can’t see the metal. So I’m still struggling with ways to portray what I want.
So there will be more of these. I was gonna draw last night, but life got in the way. It does that. It’s OK. Tonight…totally. Really. Some attempt. Or maybe this afternoon on the deck…because today is my last official day of vacation (ugh!) and I refuse to do schoolwork.
Crazy dogs…
I’m still working on these…I’m not particularly fast. And now I’m going backwards…doing all the dark purple letters with a hot pink buttonhole stitch.
I still have two more blocks…gotta get going on that. Make myself do that every night instead of the stitch-a-day thing.
I had my stitching meeting last night and worked on this guy…Palestrina knots all the way around him. I’m supposed to fill in his whole body with running stitches too. He’s cute though.
However much I want to stay in my pjs all day today, I have a couple of places I need to go, plus I’m doing a dye day…I have underwear and socks that need dying. All my old dyed socks have holes in them. I dye the underwear because the stuff I like comes in these packages with some heinous underwear colors. So I just overdye them to colors I can stand. The blanks have been sitting around the house for at least a year, probably two, so this is crazy. Just DO it! Plus I have some plain white fabric I can dye for quilts…so I’m gonna do that too. It’s a great day for it. And it’s harder to do once I go back to school.
I’m gonna miss being on vacation. Even though I’ve spent most of it flailing around like an idiot. I am way more artistically efficient when I’m teaching. Sad but true.
*Fun., We Are Young
Kathy Nida 