I probably could have drawn this imaginary woman with more intense eyeliner... better luck next time perhaps. I love the details that I saved in my blog post 15 years ago:

​Freshwater and Marine Image Bank was the source of the reference photo of the fish.

The only photo contest I can remember entering into:
Black and White Photography Contest
December 6-12, 2007 Vol. 16 Ed. 49 THE PRESS in Anchorage.
​I won 3rd place for this cockroach photo in the "Things" category. I won $20.

Some other headlines include:
Obama? Opening a campaign office? Here?
Russian word for "illegal"?
Chasing daylight
A rich, dark marriage of chocolate and stout

April is heavy with birthdays (including my own). I use a perpetual calendar and there are 15 birthdays on it. Typically it is my birthday gift to me to (almost) ignore everyone else's birthday with the assumption that they will all ignore mine. But this year I am going to try to send out a few more cards than normal and it made a great excuse to finally make a bunny stamp. 

I first started carving stamps when I was about 40 weeks pregnant with Karl in 2014. I've largely gotten away from it and the supplies have been stashed in a drawer. It was great fun to dust off the lino cutter and share a new craft with Karl. In reality I sat down at the dining room table and started to carve my bunny stamp by myself. Karl quickly noticed I have two carving tools. After telling him not to touch it 15 times because it is dangerous and sharp... I relented and found him a larger piece of carving block. Thankfully he required little instruction and he is quite pleased with his handiwork.

This evening for a little rest and relaxation, I am drinking some mint tea. The leaves are from my garden. Mint grows like a weed here, so I keep it in a pot. 

Also, to follow up on a post a little while back, we now have a working fan and light in our bedroom. The first time in about 5 years!

My post 15 years ago was really just a placeholder post because I didn't have much to say. There was some better discussion in the comments. Do all touring cyclists write? No. But then we don't get to know about them. Made me think about how different the trip would have been if I hadn't documented it. I might have gotten there faster? I might not have been held accountable and not finished the trip? Posting on this blog every day​ has been holding me accountable to creating. However, sometimes it has me creating content and not art. The content we pulled together for today's post has been on my to-do list pretty much since Valentine's Day when I was gifted the pen. While this is more on the "content" and less on the "art" side of things, I am super excited to get to talk about this pen!

In honor of Louisiana, "The Pelican State", I set out to design a pelican t-shirt. In the process I designed four others. ​

This is how far I got on the pelican...

Clearly the bike repair technician at Capitol Cycle​ry in Lake Charles, LA was top notch. More than the techs that came before him, he looked at my whole situation and found the right long term solution for me. It wasn't the cheapest or the fastest solution, but I didn't have any more trouble with my rear wheel for the rest of the trip... or since then. I designed this shirt in honor of all of the great repair outfits, but I think it also applies to the medical profession and some really good salespeople. Does this resonate with you and the work you do?

15 years ago I took the evening to relax digging into the familiar: changing a flat tire and cleaning my chain. Today I took comfort in mixing up some bread dough and tucking it into the refrigerator. I've always baked bread and been around people baking bread even from a very young age, but early pandemic I picked up a new book: Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day. He really does have a way of baking bread that I find easier. Mostly this is because many of the recipes have you mix up the dough with an electric stand mixer one day and bake it off another. However, I found reading through the paragraphs a bit challenging to follow while actively mixing and baking. So I started writing simplified versions of the recipes. Here I've written up a recipe of my own that follows a basic process Reinhart uses, but with the flavors of my family's Swedish rye bread. And when I was working out this recipe, I didn't have any rye flour in my house and it still turned out great. Lots of compliments at Lent soup supper a couple weeks ago.
​Pairs nicely with Beef Stew. 

Today gas is $3.99 a gallon at Texaco in Nome, TX. In Port Orchard, WA at this 76 it is $4.95. 
15 years ago at that Nome Texaco it was $2.41.

My perception of the world has changed in the last 15 years. I feel like it is less safe. Is it less safe? Or do I just know more? Is it possible for me to un-know the things I know? I have more questions than answers. 

One poem I memorized on my bike tour was by Wendell Berry: The Peace of Wild Things. These few lines really stuck with me:

Does feeding a squirrel count as paying it forward? Not likely.

Prior to my bike trip a friend gave me some very good advice regarding noises and sounds that my bike might start to make. He warned that if I didn't take immediate action when I heard something new, it would quickly fade into the background. Then bad things would happen because I didn't take care of it early on.

I've kept this advice in my pocket even after my bike trip. It easily applies to other home, appliance, and vehicle maintenance. But it can also apply to relationships, eating habits, and penmanship. The list really can go on.

A little story about something I've gotten used to... following the purchase of our home, we discovered that it basically needed to be rewired. We made some great progress before we moved in, but it wasn't complete. Little by little more work has been done when time and motivation have allowed. 

Our bedroom hasn't had a working outlet or light for five years. We've totally gotten used to it and it rarely frustrates me. We have a nice stash of flashlights and book lights for task lighting. My husband has a magic desk (flashlights with dead batteries magically get refueled with fresh batteries). A bedroom is primarily for sleeping; an activity that requires very little light.

It will be amazing when we do energize our bedroom though. Getting that ceiling fan to work before the next heat wave would be especially awesome. 
​

Good News: We got the house vacuumed.
Bad News: I can't find the blender cup we are missing in the house.
Good News: I tried out my bluetooth remote shutter control for my iPhone camera. It allows me to start and stop video recording on a tripod outside my office window while I am inside.
Bad News: Said recordings are going to be very slow going. Meaning that I set the tripod up where I think the birds are going to visit. Then I wait for the birds to show up in my shot and I also have to press record. The iPhone has to stay "on" the whole time and one battery charge I might get one or two clips. Charge the phone. Rinse and repeat.
Good News: The weather was beautiful and warm today. 

​I remember spending a lot of time taking pictures of this Cecropia Moth. I must have been transfixed... or bored. It is a giant silk moth and the largest native moth in North America. In its adult moth form it only lives for a couple weeks because it lacks the ability to eat and digest food. The adults emerge from their cocoons after a bit of warm weather and this only happens once a year. So it is a pretty narrow window when you can actually see these beauties. They also tend to live in the eastern half of the continent... not so much in western Washington. 

I've learned the hard way (repeatedly) that it is better to say things the nice way. Am I a polite person? Some would say yes... others would say no. I get feedback sometimes. Part of the problem is that I used to think honest meant telling the truth all the time. But when should you just not say anything? I've always had a much harder time with that. These nuances... these social customs often escape me.

In elementary school I told my Sunday school teacher that I didn't like his class and that I didn't want to go anymore. I have never really forgiven my mom for forcing me to apologize to my teacher for (in my opinion) telling the truth. I really ought to let her off the hook though. If this is my main grievance with her, then she did pretty good. 

More recently, a friend of a friend was giving us a couch. While I was picking it up I noted something about the way she dressed. I meant it as a more of a nostalgic nod to a style of attire I used to adhere to... but it turns out her husband felt that it was a bit rude. I was oblivious.

I absolutely bothers me still that someone out there had a negative experience with me. Did you know that there are loads of people out there that just move on? They don't actually care if there are people that don't like them. I'm not trying to say that I want everyone to like me... but I'd really like things to be neutral at a minimum. 

So I will not be going into politics and it is a miracle that I can even perform my day job (emotionally speaking). The only way I get away with that is by often going to excruciating lengths to manage expectations of customers. I give people more information than they are asking for. I try really hard to listen for when I might be taken a way I hadn't meant. It helps that I often have the same conversations over and over. Practice, practice, practice!

It is just a little hard to believe that some people don't have to work so hard to achieve the same results.

It is really impressive to have a collection of something so massive that you have to warn people about it before they come into your home. Nancy had a lot of stuffed bears. I described them as an arsenal lined up on her couch. This made me consider what kind of a war the teddy bears are fighting in. Teddy bears, stuffed animals, and the like fight to bring many comfort. It doesn't make any sense and it makes all the sense in the world. There are so many things and rituals I have in place that I draw comfort from... a favorite mug... a crocheted bunny my mom made me... a sunny spot to write...
I think my 21 year old self thought this Nancy to be a bit crazy... but I think she'd just figured out what she needed to make it through the day... and that's a good thing. 

I love making these themed tic tac toe pieces! The kids get really excited about it too and I try to keep the shapes relatively simple. Just an easy space saving way to enjoy the holidays! This time I used a couple Noodler's Inks: Green Marine and Rome Burning.

So... my art has taken a bit of a fast and loose vibe lately. Probably not a good thing... but I like my more "careful" work less. Now my friend Megan Biffert who heads up our Bremerton Urban Sketching group, does fantastic detailed drawings. She has a passion for sketching/drawing the Pacific Northwest and for helping others to bring their interest in art to life. Every time I see her she compliments my loose (non precise) style. "I could never do that," she says. I can say the same about hers... so fun how different styles develop and evolve over time. 

I think we've all learned a lot about taking selfies in the last 15 years...

I was chatting with an unnamed friend yesterday about Texas. I already knew he doesn't like Texas. But I have some fond memories of Texas and I thought I would engage him on the topic. The complaints ranged the humid, hot, or humid and hot climate to country music. He's concerned by the way Texans have more pride in their Texas Pride than they have directly in Texas. He also noted that the vegetation is completely unfriendly because it is covered in thorns. This friend who-shalt-not-be-named was able to rattle all this off and more with great confidence and authority...I don't have the same way with words in discourse and thus he was unmoved by my notes about how Alpine, TX was a "cool town". 

"Would I taste like chicken?" I mused 15 years ago in a hypothetical scenario where I'm struck by lightning and cooked to a crisp.

Here's an easy chicken recipe that we keep in our rotation. We have some picky eaters. Thing One prefers to just eat rice with ketchup. Thing Two will additionally eat the meat. My husband won't eat any of the broccoli, but I will eat all of it and limit the rice. In the end we are all fed and that is good.