Fall Colors

           I missed some road pictures last time and I’ve got more road pictures this time. Let’s start with what I omitted last time.

          I focused more on capturing the fall colors this week, for all of the snowbirds who might miss them.

          Our old internet company wanted their router back. I didn’t have to pay for anything, I didn’t even have to pack it. What we did have to do was take it to a UPS store. I thought our closest one was in South Abbington but an internet search shows one in Sayre. Can you say, “More road pictures, please?”

          As you wish.

          The Susquehanna was like glass.

           It was a week of running. After running to Sayre to return the router, I had a dental appointment in Tunkhannock the next day and the day after that was another trip back to Tunkhannock for Raini and Bondi’s vet appointment.

          Are you tired of road pictures this week, ‘cause here’s a few more.

          The twins were in the yard as I left the garage for my morning workout class.

          “Is that frost in the background?” you ask.

          Yes. Yes, it is.

          I was working on the computer Saturday afternoon when I heard the driveway beeper. Then it chimed again. Then I wasn’t sure if it was the driveway beeper or the doorbell so I got up to look. Mike came out of the bathroom and met me in the living room.

“Was that the driveway beeper or the doorbell?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I thought I heard something.” Mike’s hearing isn’t as good as it should be because he’s spent many years not protecting it against the decibels of power tools.

I looked out the door. “There’s no one at the door.”

It was a doe. She came up the driveway, setting off the alarm, then came up over the bank by the barn.

“There’s two more by the barn,” Mike said.

I hadn’t seen them until one moved. He went down over the bank. The other one stood there and looked at the doe for a minute then went running toward her. It was their mother. The other one came back up the bank and ran to his mother, too. She let them suckle for a few minutes. By the time I got my camera, she’d had enough and moved off.

          In the world of Peg’s Art, I worked on my next commission. I use molds where I can, but this guy said The Nightmare before Christmas was his wife’s favorite movie. I Googled images and found one to try. This is Jack Skellington, Sally, and the dog, Zero. I worked on them for a couple of days and showed it to my morning peeps.

          “Sally has a very small chin,” my granddaughter told me. She suggested I make it smaller or move her mouth down.

          I’m always open to constructive criticism. “Thank you,” I told Jessica. “It’s easier to fix now than after I paint it.”

          I made Zero smooth because he’s a ghost dog, but I left, or in some cases made, texture in the rest of it. If the client doesn’t like it, I’ll scrap the whole idea and do something else.

          You can paint clay while it’s wet but I set it aside to dry while I worked on the boxes. I’m doing two boxes for this guy so I cut a shipping box up and made a nice-size stack of cardboard. I hot glue two pieces of cardboard together for each of the sides. Top side, bottom side, front side, side side, spine side.

          There are two areas in box making that give me trouble. One is lining up the lid hinge so I have the same amount of reveal the whole way around. Close is good enough for handmade items and we call it character. The other area I have problems is attaching the curved spine. It wants to uncurl on me and not stay where I want it to stay even if I hold it until the glue dries. Invariably, the top pops up. Never the bottom, just the top.

          “Mike, would you cut me a piece of PVC pipe?” Mike is a good husband and didn’t hesitate to help me.

          “What for?” he asked as we headed out to the garage.

          “I’m thinking if I wet the cardboard and let it dry inside the tube, it’ll hold its shape better and not put so much pressure on the top so it doesn’t pop off on me.”

          The sides of the book box are three inches tall so we used a piece of three-inch PVC pipe. It only took Mike less than a minute to cut it for me. I took my hot glued double-thick spine and curled it by hand as best as I could.

          “I wouldn’t use too much water,” Mike advised.

          “What’s he know?” Me asks Myself and I wet it fairly heavy. Boy oh boy! Was it a lot easier to curl when it was wet. Then I slid it into the tube.

          It was still wet the next day and I really wanted to put the spine and top on the boxes.

          “Do you think I can dry it in the oven?” I asked.

          “I don’t know,” Mike replied.

          The cardboard won’t burn and the thick PVC won’t melt, right?

          Wrong! At 350, the PVC started to melt. I turned the oven off and just left it inside until everything was cooled down.

          Turns out, I should’ve listened to my handsome mountain man. The cardboard was too wet, became wavy and was separating. I tried to save it by glueing it back together and ironing out the waves.

“It won’t look so bad when you cover it with paper,” Me tried to convince Myself.

I wasn’t convinced. “But what if it doesn’t?” I asked Me. “What if after all that work it still looks awful?”

Sigh!

I scrapped them and started again. This time I only gave them a light spritz of water and they dried inside the tube overnight.

Now the boxes are together. They received a coat of paper and glue. That makes them so much stronger as well as covering the edges. Next week I’ll give them a coat of plaster and that dries pretty fast. After a quick and light sanding, because I do like texture in these boxes, I’ll move on to the fun part. Designing and painting.

Speaking of painting, I needed something fun to do. I pulled out my sketchbook and in honor of Halloween, did a witch’s hat.

“Don’t count the spider’s legs,” I told my morning peeps. There’s nine. Or maybe he’s got five on one side, three on the other, and chin hair whisker.

Making something for our Sunday night videos at church has me searching for new things to make. Who wants chili every Sunday night? A dish my beautiful daughter-in-law made for us once a hundred years and two lifetimes ago came to mind. I’m sure she gave me the recipe at the time because I liked it. However, I never made it because Mike didn’t like it. Since I was making for my church peeps, it didn’t matter if Mike liked it or not.

“Kandyce, could you send me the recipe for that chicken and stuffing casserole you made for us once. Do you remember it?”

“I sure do,” she said. “In fact, Kevin just asked me to make it again. I’ll send you the recipe when I get home.”

While I waited for her to get back with me, I Googled recipes. I even printed one off. Kandyce is a good daughter-in-law and sent me the recipe late that afternoon. I compared it with the one I’d printed and found that Kandyce’s recipe was simpler.

“Simpler is usually better,” Myself said to Me.

Kandyce’s recipe only called for one kind of canned soup. Cream of Celery. The one I’d printed used that as well as a can of Cream of Chicken soup. At the store I picked up both kinds because another recipe I sometimes make uses Cream of Chicken and I didn’t have any on the pantry shelf. When I unpacked the groceries, I left the soups and box stuffing on the counter. I’d need them the next day.

          So! I’m putting this together and reached for the can of soup. I’d only need the one kind, I thought and opened the can. Well, don’cha know that I opened the chicken instead of the celery! Ay-yi-yi! What was I going to do with an open can of soup? I wondered.

          “You could use them both,” Myself says. “The other recipe calls for both.”
          Me agreed with Myself and decided to just use it. I mixed both soups with the sour cream and set them aside. I melted the butter and added it to the dry stuffing mix. I put half of that in the bottom of the pan and it sure didn’t look like much. I layered on the shredded chicken and I’m thinking about where I need to add the broth and without thinking, I picked up the stuffing bowl and put the last of the stuffing on the chicken layer!

          Doggonit! That’s not what goes on next! The soup goes on next.

          “Just make another box of stuffing,” Myself suggests as I’m picking stuffing off.

          I put the soup layer on, mixed another stick of butter with another box of stuffing and put it on top. Then I baked it.

          My church peeps ate every bite of it. I had a scoop of it, too, and the stuffing was crunchy. I didn’t necessarily object to that but, was I supposed to reconstitute the stuffing mix? I wondered. The downloaded recipe called for it to be made according to the box directions. I asked Kandyce.

          “Nope. You did it right.”

          Since the church peeps really liked it and since my Miss Rosie is still recuperating after her knee operation, I called and asked if I could make it for their supper one night.

          “Silly girl,” Miss Rosie said. “Of course you can.”

          “Okay. I was just checking to see if that was something you might like.”

          When I made it for the Kipps I made it with both soups.

          “It was really good,” Miss Rosie told me. “Lamar and I had a helping each, then we both went back for another helping. I’d like to have the recipe.”

          I gave her the recipe along with my variation. I had leftover chicken and stuffing for breakfast the next day and it was even better. The stuffing had softened. Now I’m thinking the next time I make it I’ll make the stuffing mix according to the box directions before I add it to the casserole instead of using it dry.

          Just for fun, and because I was tired of writing and had an hour before recliner time, I painted two more quick watercolors in my sketchbook. I hadn’t intended to paint two but the birds on the wire was really quick and I wanted to paint a little longer.  

          I’ve been seeing this kind of art on YouTube. Sometimes it’s called Zentangle Art and sometimes it’s called Neurographic Art. There is a difference between the two, but to me they look almost exactly the same. Draw random lines and patterns and fill in with whatever colors you have. Paints, pencils, markers, or crayons. But there are no rules and you don’t even have to color it if you don’t want to.

          I want to close this week by showing you another project I did.

          I talked about Joel last time. Through the course of conversation, I found out he wanted to use a pencil sketch of his late brother on the labels for his tincture business. Joel sent me the photo he wanted to use and I spent a couple of hours fooling with it in FotoSketcher, a program I have on my computer. This was as close to what he wanted as I could get it.

          Personally, I like the vintage look better. 

          Let’s call this one done.

          Done!