Fun Day!

We had a fun day today with my family at Birdland. This morning we labeled our very own 2009 Birdland Merlot wine, in poppy red labels.

There were  a few challenges half way through when the labels started creasing, but we solved and got them all done and back in the cellar!

Then this afternoon we all tried blending wine.  We started with white wines, then some reds and finally different juices!

The whites we blended together were: Fume Blanc, Moscato Blanc, Chardonnay, and Albarino
The reds we blended together were: Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, and Zinfandel
The juices we blended together were: Blood orange, Strawberry, Pomegranate, and Watermelon

We found out that those who were good at blending white wine, weren't so good at blending reds and vice versa! 

It was fun and I'll post photos soon when I get them from Finny (my brother in law) who took the most!

Quentin and family take a stroll

Quentin has been out and about a lot today. First we saw him down by the pond, then he and his family have just been strolling along the lawn.

Their chicks have grown a lot.  When we first saw them, they were each about the size of dime! Now look at how big they are.

They started out with 11 chicks and today we saw 9, so that's pretty good going.  Always nice to see Quentin and family!

Weekly bird in the hand

Here is this week's list of things I am grateful for:

I've run out of "bird in the hand" photos so here's a "Dance of love" photo by Kjunstorm

• My Dad. It was Father's Day last Sunday so even though I'm grateful for him every day, it's nice to have one special day for him.
• The Merry go round group. You may have read yesterday's merry go round blog post. It's a lovely group of artists and it's fascinating to learn, support, be inspired, create etc with them even though I've never met any of them face to face. 
• Cashew nut butter.  You can tell I didn't grow up in the US as I absolutely detest peanut butter and popcorn.  The only reason we have peanut butter in the house is to put on mouse traps!  A couple of weeks ago however I did try homemade cashew nut butter. What a different product that is from yucky peanut butter!  Occasionally I now have a little on my toast, as my portion of nuts for the day.  Who'd have thought I'd like that! Just shows you that you have to keep trying new things!
• Seeing Quentin and Queenie (our California Quails) this morning on the driveway with a new big family. Big in number but absolutely tiny in individual size!  The little chicks looked like they were less than an inch tall!
• My new iphone! Yes, I got an iPhone 4 this week and I'm loving!
• A reliable internet connection.  I know I said a few weeks ago that I thought Comcast had sorted us out.....finally....after years of bad service...but it turned out that they hadn't and the connection only lasted a few hours.  Thursday however, fingers crossed, they seem to have made progress..... Let's hope it lasts.....

8 years at Birdland

Today is our 8th anniversary of moving to Glen Ellen, Northern California. We moved here 03/03/03. 

We love it! And we love sharing it with all the birds.  Here are a few photos of the birds at Birdland:

A bird's perspective on recycling - Friday's facts, fascinations and foklore

I saw a perfect example of recycling today - by nature itself.  (Unfortunately I was watching through glass doors so the photos aren't that clear but here is a glance at how non-humans also participate in recycling.)

The scene is outside my office.....We have a little table and on it I have a collection of last year's nests that I took from the vines, trees, birdhouses etc....

Along comes a pair of house finches.  The male lands on the table and the female is out of view of the camera but she is on the floor.  Here is how the conversation went:

Back to the birds

We arrived home last night and this morning had a new bird on our pond to welcome us home.

It's a northern pintail and I don't think he's been to Birdland before.


My photo isn't very clear I'm afraid as he was a long way away and I didn't want to go outside and disturb him. But you can clearly see his blue bill! What a handsome fellow.

Here are a couple of good photos so you can see what a pintail looks like:

I don't think Harold was impressed. Here were are, back after two weeks and spending our first breakfast looking through binoculars at a bird outside, instead of him! But no - we are happy to see Harold too - and he's been singing a lot since we got home.

Time for me to head off and sing now....

I'm leaving, on a jet plane...

Heading East today to see some friends in MA and CT and spend some time with my sister and her family who are vacationing over there.


So bye bye to Birdland for a while....

I'm taking my laptop so will still be blogging...

Bathtime at Birdland

I'm in the lounge, trying to learn some music but keep getting distracted! It's bath time at Birdland. 11:45am is their time I guess. So I gave into my distraction, got my camera and watched the fountain for just 3 minutes - and here are the bathing beauties:


















Time to make a splash I guess!

Halloween Merry-go-round

It's time for another ride on the merry-go-round! Jump on and join a group of artists/crafts-women as they link around the world and tell you a little about their lives in art and craft.

This month's question that myself and 7 other women will answer is - in line with it being Halloween - "What is the scariest part of your art/craft?"
That's easy for me! The scariest part is the firing of my metal clay in the kiln.

The process of my creations is that I take metal clay and form it into the shape I want by sculpting, cutting, texturing etc. I then let it dry and refine it and add parts and sand it etc etc. By this stage, I've spent quite a lot of time on it and have figured out how it will hang... how it will move.... etc etc.

Then I need to fire it in the kiln for 2 hours at 1650 degrees Farenheit. During the firing, the binder that makes it clay-like burns away and the metal sinters together to form the fine silver or bronze. As the binder burns, the piece shrinks - from 18% to 30 % depending on which clay I am using. I normally use the 30% shrinkage clay, as it's nicer to sculpt.

As it shrinks, it can also collapse if not supported correctly, it can also patina if the patina gods are shining down on the kiln that day, it can also warp, the joints can come apart as it moves in the shrinking........

With the silver, I have done enough so that I now can predict pretty successfully what will happen and how I need to support things etc. But when I started out, this wasn't always the case and I had a couple of collapses...

With new products however - like the bronze clay and copper clay that I am experimenting with - things are much less predictable. As they are both new - especially the copper, I don't think we have done enough testing yet to be sure of the best firing schedule to produce reproducible results, so it is always a gamble.

This post is most timely, as I have just spent this week working with the bronze and copper and my fears were realized!!! I spent alot of time and energy and the firings weren't totally successful. Some pieces in the kiln came out fine, while others didn't sinter.

But one piece of bronze I did came out with the most beautiful of patinas.... And the other pieces that worked look great and I have enough of the copper and bronze and silver to make the bracelet I had planned.

There are additional issues with the bronze and copper as they have to be fired without oxygen - so buried in charcoal. The formulations are still being refined and until such time as things are consistent with each firing - the firing will be scary and I will open the cooled kiln with trepidation.....

But - with my background of experimenting as a scientist - I do have to say that I enjoy it. Scary - but a good challenge too!

Happy Halloween - hope the scary things in your life can be seen as just a challenge!

Here are the links to read the other artists' blogs and find out about their fears:

http://sarastexturecrafts.blogspot.com
http://fancypicnic.blogspot.com
http://lilypangart.blogspot.com
http://florcitasart.blogspot.com
http://easterya.blogspot.com
http://halfanacreblog.blogspot.com
http://lebarduvent.blogspot.com


And remember - we all enjoy getting comments!

Coneflowers

I first came across coneflowers when we moved to New Hampshire. We had lots of them in our garden there and they just seemed so unusual to me with their raised cone center and the petals hanging down below. Their botanical name is Echinacea - which comes from the Greek "echinos", meaning hedgehog! And they are prickly too! I have lots of hedgehog stories - but another day for those...

Anyhow, the first time I tried carving in metal clay, I was doodling and trying to decide what to carve that wasn't too difficult...had a little bit of a cut-out in it that I could patina to stand out...was easily recognisable...
Well I was still making quite a lot of silver flowers at that time and so the profile of a coneflower came to me.

The shape of the piece then just seemed to follow the flower shape and having a textured background where the cutout would show through just seemed to all come together.

I keep seeing lots of flowers lately - not just seeing them, but taking note of them, so I feel I'm up for a resurgence of flower jewelry...but maybe as the summer is ending, I'm too late??? Never too late for flowers. Maybe some new ones will appear soon...