January's Postcard of the Month

Well, I think I called this one!  We have LOTS of white this January!

Looking out back after the first foot+ fell.

Duck, the Norwegian Elkhound (who normally ducks* whenever he sees a camera) is sometimes fooled by my phone camera.  He LOVES snow!

This is a photo that I just LOVE, of my sister and her daughter:

I was inspired to strap on the ol' 'shoes' and head out back.  Something I haven't done in AT LEAST 10 years, and something I supposed I'd probably never (be able to) do again!  Pretty pleased, I must say.  :)

 Little bitty paw prints heading to the great big pine tree.

And then this, which I'm a tad creeped out by:  I was caught on Mule's hidden game cam:

I knew he had this motion-triggered camera set up, SOMEWHERE down back, but I didn't know where, and wasn't at all thinking about it.    I'm grateful I wasn't free-form blowing my nose (it's an admirable outdoors winter skill) right at that moment. 

Mule's now got hundreds of shots of the 4 does:

  and 2 bucks - here's the big boy:

So, back to the postcards:  I have a small collection of some collages made by an old friend of mine, David Fulton (NOT the Obama portraitist!), in 1977, in Montpelier.   David was a walker, and walked the railroad tracks from Montpelier to Northfield and back every day to get to and from his job.  Along the way, he collected scraps, from which he constructed some of the most lovely collages I've ever seen.  This is one I have framed (thus the crappy photo) in my studio.

So you can probably see a bit of an influence, eh?!  David and I tried a collage correspondence experiment for a while, in the fall of 1977.  These are a few of the index-card-sized postcards that we sent to each other as visual responses, each to the one we received from one another.  I forget who started!  David's are on the left, mine the right.  

 I don't know where others of his went - maybe he took them back/kept them.  I still have these 5 others of mine:

Here are the elements that went into this month's cards' composition:

What I can't seem to get a good shot of (nor is it even easy to see with the naked eye!) is the little silver stag on the square of Lake Champlain Chocolates foil (that's about 25 of them in the matchbox) that was my final touch on the collage.  Here's a blurry blow-up, so maybe?? you can make it out:

Here's another faint image:

I also used two of the white papers I'd made this fall!  This one (pre- (brilliant) embroidery hoop solution):

And, this one:

Here's January's evolution - the first version has no gold along the horizon":

And I REALLY wanted to use the little rubber deer stamp that I have for this month's cards, but I opted out at the end - I preferred the impressionist feel of no specific images. It was subtle, but a little too 'cute' for me.

Then I added the gold strip along the horizon - my final version has the strip above, not below as it is here:

So, here are the steps!

Step 1

Step 2

 Step 3 (Really!  I did put something on here!)

 Step 4

 Step 5

 Step 6

 Step 7

Step 8

 Step 9

Step 10 - This dusty 'blue' , speckled paper is some of my favorite ever, and I only have a very small piece of it still left!  I salvaged enough for strips for these cards from the detritus of old 'Winter' cards.  I don't throw much away!

Step 11

Step 12

 Panel of 21 (such a breeze after 150 in December!)

One of my projects in December was to create a 'wreath'.  I thought I'd put the dried Day Lily stalks, that I'd gathered a big bundle of in the fall, to use.  So I cut 'em down to no more than @ 18":

Then CAREFULLY arranged them around a foam-core 'O' (OMG!  This took SO long!!)  Then I decided that a tangle of jute string was just what it needed:

And then I turned my back for just long enough for old Lucy dog to find this all just WAY too irresistible to not of course WALK RIGHT THROUGH!!  So, I rearranged, and Lucy-proofed for the night:

And then, I lightly sprayed the whole thing silver, and finished it off with some Bittersweet that I'd seen and coveted whilst visiting my good friend, Jen (who lives in the same Montpelier apartment where I lived, 35 years ago - during my David Fulton-collage-correspondence days!).  And then we hung it above the garage doors.  It was so wide (over 4 feet!) that it wouldn't fit next to the front door, where we have customarily hung seasonal wreaths!   

And, honestly, it was SO flimsily constructed (my enthusiasm got ahead of any really good planning, so the project was pretty much a series of decisions based on mitigating disasters.  I.E.:  LOTS of glue gun sticks were harmed (melted 'em right away) in the making of this wreath!) that I was sure that the slightest waft of wind would pretty much put paid to the whole thing.  But, LO AND BEHOLD!!!  The sucker stood up to RECORD HIGH WIND GUSTS (>73 mph) that we experienced here 'bouts, about 3 days after it went up!!  The wind did, however, finally dislodge my (also flimsily constructed) trellis that covered the back side of the garage, and that had managed to last and support 15 seasons of Morning Glories!  I guess 'flimsy' is relative...

And, speaking of extreme weather:  I'll end this with the story of Lucy, Miracle Dog.  Who is a REALLY old (@18) Border Collie, who came to us when she was @5, rescued by a friend from an unkind situation.   

She is SO old!  She just plods along, grey-muzzled, cloudy-eyed, selectively deaf.  And after dinner every night, she barks to go out, MINIMUM every 20 minutes.  Sometimes just to stand out on the deck and sniff the air, but pretty often to pee or poop.  

So.  The other night, the COLDEST night so far this winter (it got to -12F here), we had Lucy all bundled in her new Mutt Luks, and her Thunder Shirt (it actually does work - she can now handle thunder storms much more calmly) for a coat, and out she'd plod, every 20 minutes.  

But then, right around 9 o'clock, she went out, and didn't come back.  And didn't come back...  

And at first we just kept calling her, not believing she wasn't plodding her way back, and we'd see her black head come around the corner any second.  But, no!  

So, then, we rushed to get clothes on to go out looking for her.  And this took FOREVER!!  I knew I had to do it right, or I'd never be able to stay out there.  So: silk, corduroy, cashmere, wool, socks, leggings, scarfs (plural), jacket, hat and the warmest mittens (made by my great friend, Barb), boots and flashlight (I remembered to take my earrings off, and didn't dare wear my glasses >> metal freeze), and then I set off with one of the walking poles and a blanket (to wrap her in and carry her back).  

We both followed tracks down back, looked and looked, called and called, but NOTHING!!  I was so glad I HAD gone snowshoeing a few days earlier, because I could track Lucy while still mostly being able to walk in my tamped down snowshoe tracks - otherwise it was pretty deep/hard going.    It wasn't the cold that got me - other than the bits of my face that were exposed - it was plenty heat-generating just trekking around out there.  But I was getting pretty exhausted, and the bones were getting pretty angry.  We took turns taking the car up and down the road - no tracks leading that way, but maybe...  

Finally, about 2 hours in, I'd come in and didn't think I could go out again - and, I really thought Lucy had to be dead by then.   It was SO cold, and she is SO old and frail.  

But Mule put on his snowshoes and headed back out, one more time, and about a 1/2 hour later, just when I was starting to wonder if I should go back out and look for him, I saw him laboring towards the house, with Lucy in his arms - ALIVE!!!  OMG!!

Shivering and sans 2 booties, he'd finally - after calling and calling and calling, and then listening and listening and listening - found her whimpering and shivering - and too cold to walk - over in our neighbor's field.  

But, after I soaked the snow-balls off her paws, and she'd been back inside just a few minutes, she stopped shivering was walking around and wagging her tail, and seeming quite unaffected by the whole  frozen terror of the past 3 hours!!  

I dunno...  >>>  that dog should NOT be alive!!  I have NO idea how she survived those hours!  It was pretty brutally cold.  

So, Mule totally gets the Hero kudos, and I am no longer donning the pjs right after dinner...  And, we'll be debating (we've done so twice as I write this today, 2 days after the event)  the 'whys' and 'hows' of her ending up where she ended up for a long while yet, apparently.  Best bet: she got excited about something - a bunny? the deer? the smells of the neighbors' dogs? - and then got disoriented and exhausted.  BUT WHY DIDN'T SHE BARK??!!

Happy Winter!!!

*  Wanna guess how Duck got his name?!  Hint:  It was either that, or 'Flinch', or 'Cringe'.  ;)