I Hate to See October Go

© 2016 Robin Edmundson, I Hate to See October Go, watercolor, 9 x 12 inches

100 years ago, in 1984, Barry Manilow sang a song with that line as the chorus.  That line has been stuck in my head all these years.  Every fall I think of it as Warm Fall moves into Cold Fall.   I have been deep in that season as I painted this piece.  I tried to fill it full of that late fall glow, after the leaves are down but the grass is still green.  Before the snow flies here.

The painting is about 9x12.  140 lb cp paper - Arches.

This one is for sale SOLD.   $150. Signed front and back.   Framed with a white mat, conservation quality [That's the good kind]. Simple black frame, like the one I used for the painting in the museum.  Framed size: 16x20.   Email me if you're interested: robin at morenna dot com.

2016 Fiber Show and Sale!

It's that time of year again - Time to think about holiday gifts and winter projects.   Next weekend is the Bloomington Spinners and Weavers Guild Show and Sale, held at the Bloomington, Indiana downtown Convention Center in conjunction with the Local Clay pottery guild and the Bloomington Glass Guild.   Fine craft at its best!

2016 Fiber Show

Friday Nov 4,    4-9pm

Saturday, Nov 5,  9am-5pm 

Bloomington Convention Center

College Ave, Downtown, Bloomington, Indiana

Free admission and free parking

I'll be in the south room again, but in a new booth spot.  I'll have a lot of hand dyed yarns for your winter projects, including a whole lot of colors in my favorite superwash wool and tencel blend. I'll also have a selection of hand-dyed, handwoven silk scarves, a selection of dyed silks and a selection of hand dyed rayon circle scarves.    Stop by and say hello!

October Gates

© 2016 Robin Edmundson, October Gates, watercolor, 9 x 12 inches

It's fall and even though this year's color hasn't been much to write home about, the light and the seasonal transition are as beautiful as always.  

This is a view off Highway 43.   For years I passed it every single morning on the way to work and this time of year it sparkles - a blue and gold fairyland.



I hope your next few weeks are glorious.

Putting on a Good Front

Eric is currently sawing some joists off the back of the truck.   Works great!   Here's an update on what's happened in the house the last few weeks.

In the last post on the house I listed a few things we wanted to get done before it got cold.  Here's how we're doing.


1.   Tear out old floor and joists.

Done.  The decking went to the dump.   We recycled all the good 2x4s and joists that we could.   They're all on the front lawn now, nail free.  So pretty!  [Ack.  This is why Country Living has never come knocking at my door.]




2.   Dig out new crawlspace.

Done.   Not fun, but less not fun than the first time we did it in the former ell.   This time it was just me and Eric.  The dirt was nasty, hard, and difficult to get out but we didn't have to bucket it and lift it out just us girls.   Eric did a lot of picking first to break it up.  We could shovel it into a wheelbarrow and easily get it out.    In the end, like anything worth while, with patience and one shovel full at a time, we got it all dug and moved.


Notice the concrete pier cylinder in this pic, holding the lower beam between the two downstairs rooms. Working like a charm.

3.  Gravel new crawlspace.  

Done.   Dudes.  Sometimes I wonder at the sheer tonnage of gravel I have moved in this place all by myself, much less the combined tonnage that all of us have moved.   Again, Eric and I did this ourselves and I confess I wore out because we had done a lot of dirt digging first.   It ended up that I filled the wheel barrows, then Eric moved it and dumped it in the hole.   When I got too tired to fill, I went and raked and raked and raked to spread it around the hole.  Pepper and Tibby LOVED it in there.   

In this pic you are looking from the east side of the newly graveled ell through the old living room foundation and into the newly dug and graveled west crawlspace.   I can stand up on the east side and my head barely comes to the top of those joists.  On the west side I have to hunch quite a bit.   Eric assures me that this will be 'quite comfortable' once the subfloor is in and he's putting in the wiring, etc.    I will take his word for it because once the subfloor is on, I'm never going down there unless it's to save someone else's life.  

4.  Pour concrete to join new foundation with old foundation.

Eric did that on his own.  It took three pours around some tricky schedules and some rain.   Got it all done and it looks great.



5.  Build new front wall.

In progress as I write this.   You can see the east side is framed and ready to cover with plywood.  [Ed:  Got slowed down by the south facing window in the west room.   It takes time to frame it right.   Ran out of light, but we did get a few studs in place on the west side of the front wall.]

6.   New inside floor joists and subfloor.

Also in progress.  This is a pic of the joists in the east room.  The floor joists for both rooms will be in by the end of the day.  [Ed: Didn't make it.  Got all of the east room, some of the west.  Then it got dark.]   The subfloor is waiting to be picked up at Menard's and will be in place next weekend.

PROGRESS!!


Next up:

• Finish framing south [front] wall of house.
• Finish joists in west room.
• Subfloor on both floors.
• Exterior walls all closed up.
• Windows for these two rooms installed.  [They're ordered!]
• Insulation in the exterior walls
• Insulation boards to button up the spaces between the old house and the new house.

Here's a pic of the house-within-a-house that we currently have.   I assure you that as the remodel goes forward, the old house will be entirely dismantled and pitched through doors/windows until there is not one nail of the old house left.    [Though we're hoping that many of the old oak and poplar joists in the oldest part of the house will be nice enough to use as flooring in the hallway and living room.  Fingers crossed!]

Until we get there, we need to button up these spaces for the winter:

This is the east side.   Notice the temporary ductwork that shoots cool/warm air into the guestroom upstairs.   We're going to really insulate that well.













This is the west side.    You can see that Eric filled the top with insulation last year.  That's what's next to the temporary stairway going upstairs.   It worked fine last year.   This year we're going to button up the side space between the old wall and the new wall. We'll likely use insulation board all the way down.  Pretty easy to place and will seal it up nicely until we do that center part of the house above the basement.  

This end of the house is under the guest room and the big room upstairs; the floors have been mighty chilly this month. We're hoping that sealing it up and getting the windows in for some solar gain will warm the upstairs floors a bit.

I'll post more pics soon!

Storing the Jars

The Bloomington Watercolor Society will be hanging a show from December until February at the Monroe County Indiana Historical Society on the corner of 6th and Washington Streets.

The name of the show is BWS Paints the Bicentennial.   [It's Indiana's 200th anniversary of becoming a state this year.]   We can paint whatever subject we want, but for months I've been thinking about this painting.   I tried painting it a few different ways.   Finally I drew this one, but was too scared to paint it.  I knew in my head how I wanted it to look, but didn't know if I could do it.  So, I tucked it away and forgot about it.   Last weekend I found it and decided to take a deep breath and go for it.   I did it in 4 sittings over 3 days, which is much slower than I usually go.   But I had to get the layers right.  

I started by underpainting the gold light [aureolin] and purple shadows [pthalo blue and perm. alizarin crimson].   After that I worked on the dress, the crocks, the shelves and wall, the dress some more, then the hair, the skin, the box and finally the jars.   I tweaked a lot.

It looks better in person.  There are some things I really like about it - the glass jars, the box, the fact that she actually looks human [whew!]...

I'm trying to decide whether to hang this one in the Bicentennial show or the cornfields [below].  

Opinions?

A Quiet Place to Read

Earlier this summer I passed a barn like this with a willow throwing shadows over it.   It stuck in my head.

I tried painting it a couple of different ways.   I like this one well enough.   It needs more something but I haven't figured out what yet.

I think it's time for me to paint some autumn things.  

IMA Exhibit Opening

Last Sunday was the opening of the juried member show of the Watercolor Society of Indiana [WSI] at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.  The show continues until December 2, 2016 in the community gallery across the hall from the gift shop.

That's me standing next to my painting in the gallery.  [Here's the post about my painting.]

It's not often that museums do shows of all watercolor.   Watercolor isn't as tough as oil or bronze and museums keep the important pieces locked away in climate controlled rooms.   So -- It's a real treat to see 45 works in one gallery.

I spent a couple of hours trolling the walls admiring every single piece.   The quality of art in the show was astounding.   The juror was John Salminen, an internationally known artist and recipient of over 200 awards.   I felt very very lucky to have been included in this group.   There were portraits, cityscapes, abstracts, still lifes, etc.   The collection showed the full range of modern and traditional watercolor styles.   45 paintings were chosen from 137 submissions.

Truth be told, there was a big part of me that was sure that my painting had been included just to make the other ones look better by comparison.   I don't have a lot of confidence in the quality of my work.

Imagine how overjoyed I was to see that my painting is one of two which were placed facing the entrance to the exhibit and are first to be seen in the collection.   That's mine on the left.   [The one on the right won a huge award.]  Perhaps my work is better than I think it is.

The museum does all the hanging and arrangement themselves.  WSI sends the photos and sizes and the museum staff takes over. Things were mostly arranged by subject.   The wall to the left of my painting held the rest of the landscapes.

On the way home, we all chose the paintings we loved most.   There were so many fabulous choices. [My favorite is the one with the swan.]  The gallery is in the admission free area of the museum.  If you get a chance to go see this show, it would be well worth your time.   I'd love to hear what your favorite pieces are.

Honey Harvest!

It's the time of year when I need to do one last big inspection on the bees so I can combine hives, treat, think, evaluate, etc. before the winter.

I had 6 hives:

#1 The big Mother Hive - Russian x local queen
#2 Bedford nuc lg
#3 Bedford nuc sm - never took off.  Queen problems.
#4 1st swarm from Mother Hive
#5  split from Mother Hive to stop swarming.  [didn't work]
#6  after swarm from #5.   Stayed small [1/2 med box] but nice queen and good laying pattern.

I was delighted to find that #1 had filled me a whole super of honey.   First time for a real honey harvest.   #5 had filled a partial.  In all I had about 1 1/3 medium boxes of honey from the two hives.

We crush and strain by hand.   It took Claire and me about 1 1/2 hours to get it all done and cleaned up.   It's messy.   Seriously, seriously sticky and messy.

Even though the bees have been all over the goldenrod this year, we had plenty of rain and they were late filling the supers, I was amazed at how LIGHT the honey is.   It is sharp tasting like clover honey.   Since the bee yard has been smelling so good and like goldenrod, I expected darker, stronger goldenrod honey.   Huh.  We had a lot of asters, so maybe that was it.

At any rate, I'm very grateful.   I had wondered if I'd ever get a full super from any hive ever.   In all we got 10.75 pints of honey.  [That's 1 1/3 gallons.]

In other hive news:
#3 had gone completely queenless, no brood at all, but they had stored some honey.   I combined it with #6 by taking out the honey and putting it in #6, then putting #6 on top of #3 with newspaper between.   In a week, everyone should be up in #6 and we can pull #3 off the bottom and button them up for the winter.  

I took the extra boxes off everyone else to reduce defensible space.   The nights are chilly now and they're clustering well.  

Now I have 5 hives left.   They look good.   We'll put sugar bricks and quilt boxes over them in the next month or so and probably wrap them in tar paper, too.