My birthday today! Someone sent me flowers, so I'm working on solving the mystery. I'm having a nice, quiet day, with a fire to cozy up to under all of the birthday greetings!

It's hard to get a photo when the days are so short, and I'm working outside of the house a few days during the week. But, I'm learning to stop when I'm driving, instead of trying to get to a better view, when I see a pretty sunset. So this is from the side of the road. No telling what the other motorists think, but I loved this view of the Olympic Mountains.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2012

Wet nights resulted in bejeweled webs!

And, after most of the other trees have shed their colors, the willow in my front yard glows brilliantly, even in the rain. It's my end-of-November cheer!

Sorry for the shaky pics - went out without the tripod. I have been on the email notification for the International Space Station sightings - they let you know when it will be visible in your area. Generally it is only there for 3-4 minutes! But for me, it has been cloudy every day since I signed up, so I haven't been able to see it. Until today! It looked a bit cloudy, and I could hear rain falling, but there were clear patches, so I got up (6:36am) and looked. Boy, is it fast! It makes the transit from west to east in just a few minutes, as you can tell by the trail in the photos. Above is west, where it was rising. The longest trail is the ISS, and the shorter ones are stars - their trails are due to camera shake. The exposure was several seconds, so you can see how much it moved.

This is looking east, and it appeared to be further away, and probably going a bit more horizontally, thus the shorter trail, as this photo's exposure was actually longer than the first one. I will have to get better prepared with the tripod, and zoom in a bit, too for the next viewing!

Check out the website and sign up for your area!  http://spotthestation.nasa.gov/

 Finally had a chance to get down in the woods and check out the swamp. Played with focus on these two photos of leaves floating in the water.

 This is a good year for fungi, and this log in particular was covered in a wide variety of shapes and colors.

You can see how squishy the wood and bark are! Perfect spore nursery.

Thanksgiving at the Shellenbergers! The board games are now Magic, which these guys have been playing together since 3rd grade.

 I'm thankful to be surrounded by my family and friends!

 And I'm especially thankful neither one of these are actually related to me!

Add to all of that rain, a really high tide, and there's no beach at the Freeland Park. At low tides, you wouldn't see any water from this viewpoint. In some place it was running over the road.

With all of the rain, the swamp has filled up again. Here's a couple of wet swampy shots. Above, the cedar 'leaves' turn a little bit of color in the fall, too, with mossy logs in the background.

Further on, the willows and alders are yellowing up, too.

 It has been RAINING! Today was a steady, hard downpour - we ended up getting over 2 inches. But by 4:30 or so it stopped, and there was a gorgeous sunset starting. I left work and hurried to the beach, but by the time I got there the sun was down. The windsurfers were there, though, taking advantage of the high winds. This fellow was attempting to reel in his wing, and it looked like hard work against the wind.

 Well, I got the correct replacement belt for my plotter - you can see how the old one is just disintegrating. Not surprising it didn't work! But the plotter is now working - I took it all apart and put it back together - didn't even have any leftover parts! It does make odd noises, but it is making nice prints!

This is the sweet little cedar backpack I got in the Guild's gift exchange - it came on this teddy bear. She's about 4"-5" tall. Martha H. made it. The potluck dinner was good, as always - lots of desserts!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2012

Well, here are my show entries: a cedar bark journal, and a willow bark basket. I got my own display case!

 The show is "Weaving the Unexpected", at the North Seattle Community College gallery. All of the work is from our Guild, and it turned out beautifully. The gallery is really nice, and is well lit. They have lots of great display cases and pedestals, and did a really nice job setting it up.

Sue and I came to see it before the Guild's potluck holiday dinner. It was a good afternoon!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2012

 I received the latest Photo Art Journal last week, and finally took some photos of it. It is "Inverted", and we were tasked with creating an inverse, or negative, of a photo. Above are the front (right) and back covers of the book, and Catherine created a little strip of 'film negatives' for the spine.

 Here are some of the pages - the original photos are next to the spine, and the inverted copy is on the outside of each page. We created the inverses and put both images on one photo in PhotoShop.

 I really loved how everything looks so different, and makes the photos so interesting. It was a really fun challenge!

After yesterday's sunshine, today was cold and rainy - I never even set foot outdoors. It was a good day to tackle a big project - replacing the belt on my plotter. I even managed to get all of the parts off, cleaned it up inside and out, then discovered I had ordered the wrong size belt. Dang! Well, it will just have to wait for a few days until the right belt comes in the mail. Hopefully I will remember how everything goes back together . . .

 First hard frost - not quite enough to freeze the bird bath water, but it made pretty outlines on the last of the leaves on the Japanese maple, and it turned my car white! I had to get it thawed out, as I was off early to go to Port Townsend!

 Sue is part of the studio tour, "Art in the Woods" on the Kitsap Peninsula, so Ginnie picked me up at the ferry and we visited Sue's studio, and a couple of others in the area. Above is potter Diane Cronin who was showing her things in Sue's studio.

 Sue and Ginnie with one of Sue's huge garden baskets, and some woven balls.

Sue had a lot of her amazing artwork displayed, including this button blanket she made in 1996 for her mother, who loved the oak tree in her yard. She kept this while she lived in assisted living, but sadly now had to be moved to hospital care, so Sue brought this blanket home. It has dozens of mother-of-pearl buttons sewn into the pattern.

Well, it feels good to be back on schedule with a photo a day. I have to admit, when I travel or do something fun and take a lot of photos, it is a bit time consuming to go through them and prepare them. But, I'm sure you'll agree - well worth it! I do love to go back and look through the year, and of course the more photos the better.

Today I got out for a good walk - it has been clear and sunny, but cold. First frosts, etc. And with all the rain we had in the past few weeks, the swamp is filling up. There are puddles like this in over half of the swamp, and a few more good rains will begin really filling it up. In this area it will go up to the base of the trees, so it ends up being 1 - 2 feet deep. That's a lot of area, and holds a lot of water! Of course, that's why it's so green around here!

 Another sunset - also unusual clouds. This time, it had been sunny all day, and now a bank of clouds appeared over the Olympic Mountains as the sun was going down, creating odd shadows and light play.

The worst part is that it is only 5:00! And we still have more than a month to go before solstice, so it will keep on getting dark earlier and earlier!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2012
Well, no photos today, but I have finally gotten all caught up. It seems like it took a very long time for me to get my act together to go through the pictures from my vacation! But it's all done now, so go back to Oct 19th and enjoy my pics!

 Suddenly the light went all yellow, so I looked out the window. Quite the spectacular sunset, as the sun was below the horizon, and a front was pushing the clouds to the east.

Just a few minutes later, the clouds had moved quite a bit, and the light was now pink!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2012

The pond has filled to overflowing, carrying along a lot of forest floor detritus. Here it is actually down a little, as we haven't had rain for two whole days!

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2012

Found a rather large and impressive fungus in the woods! Bigger than my outstretched fingers...

 The lace-leaf Japanese maple turned a brilliant red while I was gone, but I didn't get a photo, and today the leaves were all on the ground. I collected them in a basket, just because they're so pretty!

 The tree is now threadbare, and Apollo takes a closer look. Then he decided to try and eat it! Catzilla!

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2012

Driving down the highway, Mount Rainier popped into view. This is unusually clear - makes it look huge! The break in the clouds didn't last for very long - I was happy to have been in the right place today! If you click to see it full sized, you can see the tall buildings of Seattle on the right horizon.