North by Southwest

Long time

2011-05-29T21:25:00.004-05:00

In writing this addition I noticed that I haven’t added anything for the past 7 months or so. All I can say is I have had lots going on, not all good.

On the good side I entered my barn owl into the 2011 Albuquerque Fiber Arts Fiesta. It’s a biennial show that has many different fiber related competitions, educational activities, guilds and vendors. Among the different areas were crocheting, beadwork, embroidery, lacemaking, quilting, sewing, weaving and spinning and dollmaking.

I sent in a few photos to the entry committee to find out where I should enter my owl. “We’re not sure it looks like ‘Mixed media dolls, original design’”. “Otherwise we’ll find the appropriate place for him”.

Long story short I won a blue ribbon! He was up against all kinds of traditional dolls and still won.

On to the next show, 2013

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark

Barn owl

2010-10-26T21:08:00.008-05:00

I would like to present my latest needle felted creation, a barn owl. I have not been naming any of my pieces lately and probably will not name him either.

Ever since I read “Wesley the owl: the remarkable love story of an owl and his girl” by Stacey O’Brien, I decided I wanted to needle felt a barn owl. The story has a sad ending but it is a good read.

This guy is 10.5” from talons to the top of his head and 12” from wing tips to his head. I had lots of things to figure out along the way. First I started out with needle felting the beak and talons. They turned out being too large and not pointed enough to look like a beak or talons. I ended up searching the web and bought some ‘Premo!’ Sculpey clay for the beak and talons. I never worked with any of the oven bake clays before. After about 10 minutes with warming it up in my hands it was quite easy forming the parts, not that making something sharp on one end with a bit of a curve is rocket science. I made lots of extras just in case if nothing else I had a good selection to get all the talons to pretty much the same size.

From there I made a wire armature for the feet and used Krazy craft glue to stick the talons on to the armature. From there I felted the feet.

The beak is a bit different. I formed it the same as the talons it is just a bit larger and not quite as long. I also poked two holes across the base of the beak and threaded Mastex upholstery thread through the holes and tied the beak off at the back of his head.

There are five wing pieces; one tail feather and two separate wings on each side. The wings are loosely felted with no wire armature; I may add some wire in the wings next time because they are just kind of limp.

Right now he’s not up for adoption, there is a fiber arts show coming up in May of 2011 and I plan to enter him into the competition, unless I make something better before then.

Don’t ask me how many hours it took to make him. I’ll just say I missed a lot of Survivor, Biggest Loser and any number of other reality shows.

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark

Schnauzer

2010-08-29T20:59:00.005-05:00

Here’s my latest addition. He’s 4” tall and almost 3” from front to back.

For some reason as he was coming alive there was absolutely no resemblance to anything until the nose was in place. Then he really came together. Most of my other creations start taking on a persona much earlier in the process. I’m glad I kept on; before the nose I was considering starting over.

Thank you for stopping by,

Mark

Don't tell my cat...

2010-08-14T22:59:00.005-05:00

that I'm making needle felted dogs instead of cats.

I've made another needle felted creation. I finally dug up the Fleece Dog needle felting book I bought at this May’s Doll and Teddy Bear Show so I could get started on some new projects. Here’s my first creation from that book. It’s supposed to be a French bulldog, I hope it’s recognizable to all you dog lovers. It resembles the photo in the book. From the heading of this post you can guess I am a cat lover so any resemblance my needle felted dogs is purely coincidental. J It’s not that I do not like dogs, I just like cats better. Actually I’ve been going to Nancy’s blog again and I am amazed at her needle felted creatures.

He’s 3” tall and 3” from nose to rump… a square dog???

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark

Back again

2010-07-06T22:18:00.007-05:00

Hello again to all you bloggers. I have been away for quite some time and hope to restart my needle felting and mohair projects again.

I attended a doll and bear show this past May and I am able to make expenses by attending a show at home. I got lots of compliments on my mohair teddy bears but not very many went to new homes. I did get a few ideas at the show for making new needle felted projects for dolls; dogs and cats in particular. I still am playing around with different animals in the mean time.

I finally found a place in the Etsy world that sells mohair and Cotswold sheep locks for needle felted projects. Go to http://www.etsy.com/shop/LaTeaDaDesigns for locks. Marti was very helpful putting together a small sampler package of the different kinds of locks she has available. I also picked up a package of her natural dark reddish brown llama roving. All the items I received are great to work with. At this time I have put together another owl using the mohair locks. The only reason I have not used the Cotswold lock is the color, grays and blacks didn’t work into my owl. An excuse for more projects...

This owl is 7” tall and 4” wide. As of yet he/she doesn’t have a name.

Thank you for stopping by,

Mark

Belated Happy New Year!

2010-01-07T23:26:00.012-06:00

I'm only a week late... I hope everybody is having a great start to the New Year. From watching the weather lately it looks like it’s kind of tough in the Eastern half of the country. We are supposed to get some of the effects of the cold here but at this point it has not arrived yet, I am thankful for that.

I took some extra time off from work to unwind knowing that the start of the new year will be hectic. Thinking that I would be able to relax and do a few things for fun didn’t always work out. I got to replace the automatic garage door opener and help a plumber dig out our water line from the street to the house since the 52 year old galvanized water line decided to rupture a couple days ago. It’s a good thing I remembered how to run a shovel. The plumber’s helpers showed up when we had about 1’ of trench left to dig. I couldn’t have planned that timing any better myself. As of this morning we have running water back in the house. The first thing I did was jump in the shower. I don’t know how those pioneers did without running water. No doubt they were a tougher, smellier group than us!

I did have time to enjoy the birds in our back yard while having the time off. We have 6 bird feeders going in the back. I saw several different birds that I have not seen in the yard before; gold finches, a mountain chickadee and either a sharp-shinned hawk or Coopers hawk. This is in addition to all the doves, robins, sparrows, finches, hairy woodpeckers, juncos, scrub jays, towhees and flickers. I did get a few good photos of some of them. I was surprised at the hawk. We live I the middle of the city and never expected to see a hawk. When I go in the back yard I usually scare the doves and hear them taking off in a frenzy. One time I heard the doves take off even faster like there was something after them, and yes I saw the hawk sitting on the power line above the bird feeders.

I was also successful in finding a nifty kitty toy for Babee. It is a refillable catnip field mouse, by Kong. She’s still playing with it! She usually quits playing with her toys even sooner than kids wear out the batteries on their own toys. Occasionally I have to hunt around the house to find the mouse because Babee seems to lose it but once it makes its appearance she starts playing with it again.

I have been busy with needle felting and have included a couple of photos of my latest bears. They are 4” and 6” tall when standing.

I wish everyone a healthy and happy 2010

Thank you for stopping by.
Mark

Show time

2009-11-15T20:10:00.004-06:00

I did the Albuquerque Doll and Bear show on Saturday. It went quite well, I adopted out two of my mohair teddy bears and two of my needle felted pieces; Hootie the owl, and my very small 2 ½” cat. I’ve included a few photos from the show.

Since this is a doll, accent on doll, and bear show most of the vendors are selling dolls and doll related items. There were only four bear artists, out of the approximate 40 spaces total. All the bear people were put together so we could sit and talk about the doll people :-)

It seems that there still is money around for those people that have such strong urges to add to their collection(s). I spoke with the promoters and they said the attendance was up over 25% over last year’s show. I don’t know if 25% more money was spent but we were busy most of the time with browsers.

We, the bear people, were kind of creeped out by some of the dolls that were there. Some of them looked exactly like newborn babies. If I didn’t seem them unpacked from the boxes and placed in baskets on the display tables I would have bet they were the real thing. We saw several customers walking through the show carrying these ‘infants’ around as though they were real.

I tend to think that bear people are a little closer to normal, unbiased opinion :-)

Since I had a successful show I get to go back and make more bears and needle felted pieces. My next showing will be at the ToonaRoona Holiday Open House on Saturday December 12, from 10AM – 3PM. Go to www.ToonaRoona.com for more information. It’s the place to go if you collect dolls and Mark’s Bears.

Thank you for stopping by.
Mark

Groucho

2009-11-03T20:57:00.004-06:00

Meet Groucho, my latest needle felted creation. He’s 3 ½” long from nose to rump and 2” tall at the shoulder. By looking at his face you can see why I named him Groucho. He has a full wire armature so all four legs, his tail and his head can be posed. I was starting with a cat in mind but when he showed up he looked more like a dog.

I’m getting quite a family of animals together for the Doll and Bear show on the 14th. A few bears, cats, a dog an owl and a few other critters.

I also had a wisdom tooth pulled today. I won’t include a photo of the tooth. The painful part was getting the shots to numb the area. I felt the tooth came out fairly easy, at least in my estimation. I did get a bit queasy as my head was being pulled back and forth from one side to the other as he was working on it. It wasn’t the actual extraction that made me queasy, it was thinking about what he was doing. I made sure to keep my eyes closed so I didn’t see tools he was using to remove the tooth. After seeing the tooth I’m surprised it came out so easy.

Thank you for stopping by.
Mark

Owl sighting!

2009-10-23T22:12:00.005-05:00

Yes, believe it or not there was an owl sighting in my back yard. He is so tame I could go right up to him and take his photo! :-)

This is my latest needle felted creation. He’s 6 ½” tall with wires in his feet so the claws can be bent around different objects. It worked quite well in my maple tree. Now I plan on going out into the mountains to find a piece of wood to have him cling to for the show next month. I basically copied the idea from “Animal Felt” by Birgitte Krag Hansen a Danish needle felter.

On to my next project.

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark

Merry Christmas

2009-10-10T21:30:00.007-05:00

Ha, I thought I’d get it in; I’m not the first, I was up at Lowe’s last week and saw the Christmas decorations already, with people looking! Haven’t even made it to Halloween and the Christmas stuff is up.

I opened with that line because as you can see I finished another bear, this time a polar bear with his Santa hat. I swore to myself I would not go to dressing my bears although putting a hat on him isn’t really dressing him. He’s 4” tall, 5 ½” with the hat.

I felted this cat a few weeks ago, I don’t remember when though. I made sure to look through my other posts to make sure I didn’t post him already and forgot that too! That would be a real senior moment, or two. He’s 2 ½” long, 3 ½” with his tail.

I also got my confirmation package for ‘The Albuquerque Doll and Bear Show’ for Saturday November 14. Each of my newly felted animals will be making their debut at the show. They may also be coming to work for a few weeks to guard my desk from terrorists! ;-)

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark

It felt good

2009-10-03T00:50:00.005-05:00

I finally got back to needle felting after my trip planning, travelling, blog writing and slide show producing. I don’t remember working so hard after going on a trip before.

I’ve also been surfing the web way too much lately, so I decided to start with a needle felting project and as I got further along creating I really enjoyed it more and more. I had lots of bear photos from my trip so I had good models to work from. I haven’t decided on a name yet. We’ve named all my mohair bears in the past so I guess I will keep up the tradition. He’s 7” long from tail to nose and stands about 4” tall. He’s modeling with the spool of thread for scale.

I have sent a check off for exhibiting in the next doll and bear show here in Albuquerque in November so I think I will be making needle felted animals for a bit to see how they do at the show.

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark

Final day

2009-09-22T22:28:00.009-05:00

Today is my last day on Vancouver Island. I had a great time and I’m hoping to return some day to see some of these sights again as well as many others.

I had my final breakfast at Captain Hardy’s restaurant. I ordered 2 pancakes which turned out to be the size of the plate and very thick. Since I knew I would be walking a lot I made sure to finish all of my breakfast.

The flight to Vancouver was uneventful, the plane was full the flight attendant was busy again with passing out snacks, drinks and candy just like on the way up to Port Hardy.

Once I Vancouver I caught a taxi to the Buchan Hotel close to Stanley Park, Vancouver’s version of Central Park in New York. From the outside the hotel looks like an apartment building. It has old wood flooring in the hallways and the rooms are quite small but comfortable. I wasn’t there for the hotel so basic hotel run locally was just fine for me. It turned out the hotel is only a block away from the park. I followed the seawall walk around the perimeter of the park. It was quite busy because it was a Sunday; there were walkers, bikers and skaters moving constantly. All in all I walked about 8 miles to/from and around the park.

That evening I walked a half block to Denman street where I had my choice of restaurants, coffee shops, galleries and almost anything you can think of. After dinner at one of the Greek restaurants I walked several blocks to English Bay and caught the sunset. The park was packed with many people of different nationalities.

Vancouver seems to be a special place. There are over 2.2 million people that live there. I visited only a small part of the city but on the rides to and from the airport the city was very clean. People seem to take pride in their city and clean up after themselves. Even at the parks there was little to no litter.

The next day I made the trip back home to NM. I had a great time on this vacation and I’m starting to think about my next one. My only hope is that Sue will be able to get away with me.

I hope you enjoyed reading about my trip. I really enjoyed writing about it.

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark

Grizzly bear tour

2009-09-19T16:03:00.015-05:00

Today I go on my grizzly bear trip. Besides the kayaking trip this is the big day trip I have been looking forward to.

The boat leaves between 6:45 and 7:00 from Telegraph Cove, 45 – 60 minutes from Port Hardy. This means that I get up around 445 to prepare, eat and drive to Telegraph Cove. I’m told there may be bears along the road so I had better drive slowly. How ironic would it be to miss my grizzly tour because of some black bears along the road. Fortunately I had planned ahead by stopping at one of the grocery stores the day before picking up something to eat and drink; there are no shops along the way for a hot chocolate and a muffin, no coffee for me.

I arrived at 6:35 along with 3 others so we took off to pick up some others along the way and would catch up with the rest of the group at the pier where we stage into flat bottom boats to go up the estuary. Once again it was mostly cloudy, no rain but windy later in the afternoon.

We rode for two hours before we arrived at the staging area. There were about 24 of us total so we split up into 2 boats for the trip up the river. The boats have one long bench along the length with a back in the center so we all faced to the sides of the boat as we travelled. We were constantly standing and sitting trying to get a better view of the wildlife, bears in particular. In all there were three boats that rotated through the river because there really isn’t room for all three to go in at once.

There are a couple of rules for those going on this trip; No perfume, aftershave or anything strong smelling. And no food!

We made the first trip in; saw bear and wolf tracks, a half eaten salmon, (I won’t show the photo), lots of bald eagles, mergansers (a type of duck), and deer, but no bears “Not to worry” said Lindsey, “I’ve never been skunked yet”. I immediately asked him how long he had been doing this “Three years”. I felt a little better but still was not convinced.

On our second trip in we went down one of the side channels of the river. As we went further up the channel it kept closing in with lots of grasses all around. Lindsey jumped out and started pulling us through the channel and I had this vision of the African Queen going through my head. I mentioned this to one of the other passengers and she had to agree, but we weren’t laughing about it. I’m happy to report we did make it back out without losing anyone. As we were going back to the main channel we had the option of either breaking for lunch or going back up the river for another look. We all agreed we can eat anytime so let’s go look some more. Well there was nothing to be seen this time either…… But on the way out we saw something moving along the shore just below the trees. It was a bear. Not only a bear, it was a grizzly mom with her cub! A silent cheer went up from all of us. We were told not to make any noise when bears were present because the sound may cause them to go back from where they came. At first we were rather far from them, but we were able to get closer and Lindsey jumped out of the boat in waist deep water to pull us a bit closer and hold us there. I think we ended up being less than 200’ from them.

They were interested in eating; they ate the grasses along the shore and used their paws to rake the crabapples off the trees. Their paws were huge! We were all just clicking away with our still and video cameras. Once in a while I put down my camera to look through my binoculars. The view through the binoculars was tremendous; it put them up close and personal. After they ate for a while they sat down and played with the cub jumping up on to mom and batting her and mom taking it and occasionally batting back. They wandered down the shore a little more and found more to eat, looked around and walked back into the woods. I think they were out there for over 30 minutes from the time we first saw them before they disappeared back into the woods. It was really moving seeing the mom and her cub.

From there we went back to the staging area for lunch. We were all talking about the sighting amongst ourselves; there were a lot of smiles that afternoon! We were advised to start heading back because of the gale force winds coming our way and we were going right into them. This turned out to be an E-ticket ride. The waves were pounding the boat the entire time we were going back; our two hour trip in the morning turned out to be closer to a three hour trip on the way back. I was starting to get worried about my arrival because I had a 700 PM meeting with the kayak guides in Port Hardy. This meeting is to find out what to do, what to pack, where to pack our personal stuff and how to pack our personal stuff. We arrived at the port at 5:15 I shot a photo or two and drove like mad to Port Hardy. On my way to make the 7:00 meeting I had to; get gas for the rental car, return the rental car and find a taxi to get back to town. I arrived at the hotel at 6:45, enough time to clean up and change my clothes.

After our meeting where we all introduced ourselves and learned the packing routine several of us met at one of the bars for dinner. After dinner we returned to our rooms to pack, repack and repack again then to bed. Tomorrow we kayak.

Thank you for stopping by.
Mark

Port Hardy/San Josef Bay

2009-09-16T06:28:00.014-05:00

I didn’t have anything planned for this day. While on yesterday’s orca trip I spoke with a few people to see what they were doing. No real leads there. I had decided to walk the estuary trail in Port Hardy, it’s not very long but the possibilities abound of seeing all sorts of wildlife.

I got up early and took off on the Quatse River trail. The variety of birds is amazing, all sorts of sea birds, land birds and raptors. I saw several juvenile bald eagles just sunning themselves and watching the area for food no doubt. Once you get to the edge of town the trees show up like a wall. If you go off the trail the moss becomes a thick blanket on the ground. There’s no way you can go by the wives’ tale that moss grows on the north side of the tree, they are covered with moss all the way around.

I stopped at the local visitor’s center for an idea or two for the day and was directed to Cape Scott Provincial Park, San Josef Bay in particular. It was a 70km drive, ~45 miles, on gravel roads put in place for/by the loggers. Even though it was Saturday there were still a few full logging trucks you wanted to stay away from. It took 1 ½ hours to do the 45 miles as you only averaged 30 mph. That’s where metric is good, I was doing 50 km/hr so I didn’t feel like I was going so slowly.

All along the way was a patchwork of forest. Every few miles there were signs saying when the area was logged and reforested. Only once or twice on this drive did I see a recently logged area. I couldn’t believe the devastation! I have never been in a war zone, I’ve only seen them in news clips. This looked like a war zone; tree stumps ripped out of the ground, limbs scattered in every direction with just small shrubs and grasses still growing. It hurt to look at it. It made me think of the car wreck on the side of the road, you don’t want to look but you look anyhow. Fortunately from looking at the other areas that had been previously harvested the logging companies realize that they have to ‘reforest’ to keep forests for future harvests.

Once I got to the end of the road, which got narrower as I was going along, I had another 1.5 mile hike to San Josef Bay. It was through more of the forest. The smells of the forest and mosses are very rich. Once on the beach I smelled the sea. The beach stretched for over a mile. Since it’s a hike to get there and the beach is so huge it seems empty. I saw 3 – 4 campers on the edge of the beach tucked along the forest. There were also a couple dozen day tourists like me just taking in the scene. From here the next piece of land you could see is across the Pacific Ocean about 4,000 miles away.

There are a number of sea stacks along the beach. They are the remnants of the erosion of the beach. The sand and soft rock eroded from the pounding surf and these stacks remained. There is all kinds of life on the stacks; from grasses and shrubs to full grown trees. In the low spots on the stacks are tidal pools with anemones and other sea life. When I was there at a low point in the tide these pools were about 8’ above the surf.

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark

The start of my trip/orcas

2009-09-13T22:22:00.010-05:00

I posted this trip in an unusual order at first thinking I would only write about the kayaking. As I got into writing I decided to include all my trip. Read on...

This was the first real day of my trip. Yesterday I travelled from NM to Port Hardy, British Columbia through Denver and Vancouver. It’s been a while since I’ve travelled by air. United is down to a giving out a cup of something to drink. On the flight to Port Hardy from Vancouver they passed out snacks, juice and an after snack candy. This was on a small plane on a 1 hour flight.

After checking in at the hotel I walked along the waterfront and Main Street. Port Hardy is a town of about 5,000 mostly working class people, fishing, mining, logging and a bit of tourism. Any time one goes to a destination like this in the states it seems there are dozens of tourist shops selling all the usual tourist stuff, not here, there’s a shop or two otherwise the usual hardware, grocery, sporting goods stores and gas stations. Not even a McDonald’s, certainly not missed by me!

I quickly noticed the difference between the tourists and the locals. Since it was only about 65 outside the tourists were wearing the coats or sweaters and the locals were wearing T-shirts and shorts. I was one of the fleece jacket tourists. While walking along the shore line I started hearing bald eagles calling in the distance, the first time I’ve heard that in a long time. Berries seem to be growing everywhere; black, red and thimble, which is a very small version of a red raspberry. I tried one and quickly decided I prefer my blackberries. There is the scent of pine everywhere; if the pine scent isn’t there the smell of the ocean has taken its place.

I planned on a couple days of day tours then my kayaking trip, then an afternoon in Vancouver as the start of my trip back home, with the following day travelling the rest of the way.

I started with an orca trip with Mackay Whale Watching out of Port McNeill, about a 30 minute drive South of Port Hardy. My usual ‘don’t want to be there late’ personality showed up again, I got there 45 minutes early. I saw a lot of the town in about 30 minutes. Living in the big city spoils a person with all kinds of places to go to to waste time and money. Looking back on it now I realize that I was still wound up from my usual; getting up, going to work …. You know the routine. I did manage to slow down within the next day but it did take time.

Mackay’s has been around for a long time, they were one of the first companies to have orca tours. They have helped with guiding the legislation on how tourists are to behave around orcas. They are very knowledgeable about orcas and the local sea life in general.

The boat was full of tourists from many different places; the US, Canada, England, Holland and Germany. I was amazed at all the European tourists coming to this remote part of the world. You have to really want to come here because there is no direct way to get here.

The day started out nice and clear but it quickly turned cloudy and stayed that way for a good portion of the day. All along the way we saw and heard bald eagles. After an hour or so of travelling we had our first sighting, a pod of three to four orcas along the shore. They were quite far away but we all kept snapping photos with the hope they would get closer but you shoot anyway because this may be the only sighting. Nature does not operate on a clock!

Almost everybody in the area, especially locals, call in any orca sightings on the radio so if there are any orcas they probably have been seen and it has been passed along on the radio. It certainly increases the chances of finding some considering the size of the area they cover.

After following the first pod for 10 minutes or so Bill took off across the Johnstone Strait to find some other orcas. Within a few minutes more orcas appeared, much closer this time. Everybody jumped up and started photographing again. Bill identified one of the orcas as Springer who had somehow gotten lost on the south end of Vancouver Island. The northern orcas and southern orcas do not associate with each other so having Springer accepted back into its north pod is significant.

The orcas were swimming up and down the channel just feeding. It was a lot of fun to see them up close; you could see the different markings which are used to identify them. After seeing several pods over the next hour or two we stopped for a lunch of soup and a roll followed by a dessert. When Nicole brought up the dessert we were too busy photographing the sea lions on the shore to stop for dessert.

On our way back to drop some of the other tourists at a remote hotel we saw a black bear wandering along the shore. She looked over at us then just proceeded to walk along the shore not paying us any mind.

The trip was great, I highly recommend it. My only disappointment is that I did not get the ultimate orca photo. It is hard work aiming your camera with a long lens to get that close-up photo on a moving boat when you are not certain when and where your orca will make its next appearance. I will have to try again.

After the orca tour was over I continued on to Telegraph Cove another 20 minutes south of Port McNeill. I toured around the tourist shops and visited Tide Rip tours where I had made reservations to go on a Grizzly bear tour. They have been seeing bears consistently so our chances are good to see a bear or two. I can’t wait.

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark

Kayaking day 6 - the final day

2009-09-11T23:00:00.004-05:00

I slept remarkably well considering my 2” thermarest pad was the only thing cushioning me from the rocks. It lightly rained off and on most of the night. I woke up to the sound of a humpback whale blowing somewhere near.

We had breakfast and packed in light rain showers and cloudy skies. That was the forecast for the day. You could tell we were getting closer to Port Hardy by all the fishing boats out in the channel. Everybody was out salmon fishing because the salmon were starting to run up the rivers.

We made one brief stop on a beach to stretch our legs. The tide made its appearance again. Not more than 5 minutes after we stopped and put the kayaks on land we found ourselves up to our ankles in water! I’ve never seen such a change.

It seemed that the closer we got to town the faster we paddled. I don’t know if it’s because of the dark rain cloud coming our way or the promise of a shower once we checked back into the hotel, the latter I think.

After packing up all our stuff and another great lunch served by our guides we checked into the hotel and had a post trip coffee and visit with our guides before they went on their way to prepare for the next week’s trip.

All the guests went back to their hotels for a long hot shower, at least I did, a change of clothes, and a dinner with our fellow kayakers. We had a great time telling stories of our trip and I’m certain that I may run into them again on another kayaking trip.

Kara, on of our guides, kept records of our trip. In all we kayaked 50 miles and averaged 2 – 2.5 knots, which she said is quite good.

I had a great time on this portion of my trip. I’m certainly hoping I will be able to do it again, maybe not at this location but somewhere. I guess that’s the measure of whether you really had a good time.

Stay tuned… I will also be reporting on the other parts of my trip.

Thank you for stopping by.
Mark

Kayaking day 5

2009-09-09T20:17:00.010-05:00

Woke to light rain. Helped put of a rain fly over the kitchen in case the rain gets worse. As we were waiting for breakfast and starting to pack we could hear a humpback whale blowing in the distance. Once we heard it everybody came down to look. We could see the spouts of mist from the whale but not any more than that. A couple blows later we saw the tail flip as it was going for a deep dive. One of the guides said we may not hear from it again for another 20 minutes.

Once we were packed up we took of towards the Browning Wall. This area was viewed by Jacques Cousteau and is known for its great diving. The wall goes down 700’ before it hits the bottom of the channel. We are here at low tide, a great time to view all the sea life on the wall. We saw hundreds of starfish and sea anemones of all different types.

From there we went back across the Goletas channel to follow along the Vancouver island coast. Just as we were getting ready to cross the channel a pod of transient orcas were passing through the channel. There must have been 3 – 4 orcas in the pod. We paddled up the island a bit and stopped for lunch on a small beach next to a small waterfall.

We continued on to our campsite on Vancouver island. Now we have to be alert for black bears because VI is large enough to support bears. All the other islands we had been staying on up to this point were too small to support large animals such as bears. When we got to our campsite there was a kayaker already set up. He was more than happy to have company because he had to scare a couple black bears off the beach before he could set up camp. I’m sure we made more than enough noise to keep the bears away.

This was the first time we actually camped on the beach. One had to make certain to move all the round stones from under one’s tent/sleeping bag. Fortunately most of the stones were flat so I did have a comfortable night’s sleep.

The trip up to this point has been great, tomorrow we are heading back to the real world?!?!

Thank you for stopping by.
Mark

British Columbia - Vancouver Island geography

2009-09-06T12:52:00.007-05:00

Being a map nut from way back I don't know why I didn't include this at the start of the trip. I'm including a couple maps starting with the northwestern corner of the US and British Columbia getting more detailed with each map. Enjoy.

My thanks to Google Earth for their maps. Vancouver Island itself is over 200 miles in length.

Here you can see the overall locations of our lunch sites and camp sites. I grouped the days by color.

I've included our path for the trip. We took a water taxi to Hurst Island and started paddling from there. We circumnavigated Nigei Island going clockwise. We finished our trip at Port Hardy the launching point.

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark

Kayaking day 4

2009-09-05T20:54:00.010-05:00

The little light went on in my head today, I hadn’t included a map of the area we covered so this location is a mystery to you. Well better late than never. We actually started off in Port Hardy with a water taxi ride to Hurst island where we staged to kayaks and on to our trip.

We were told yesterday this would be our longest day on the water, somewhere around 12 nautical miles, almost 13 statute miles. Kara kept track of the details for us and it turned out it took us between 4 and 4.5 hours to cover that distance. It certainly helped having the current and wind going with us for a change!

The day started out and stayed mostly clear. During the morning there was wispy fog blowing through the trees. This was neat to see because we don’t have much fog in the desert. Once we got around to the Northeast side of the Nigei island we had the wind and current to our backs. One really needs to pay attention to what is going on when exposed to the open sea. We had 3’ swells which were going in our direction. It felt a little like the kiddie roller coaster where you are up high on the swell for a few seconds see all around you, then down to the bottom where all you can see are the swells immediately around you. Kind of like a Disney ‘C’ ticket ride. (For those of you folks that remember such things) Terry kept directing us when to stay close to shore away from the fast currents and when to go out because of the rocks just under the surface. I just kept in his tracks, or tried to since I was in command of the rudder on this day. While we are still quite far from any towns this side of Nigei island faces the Queen Charlotte Strait one of the main channels for the cruise ships going to and from Alaska and the BC ferries going from city to city.

We stopped in a little inlet to stretch our legs and lunch; fruit, Greek salad and dessert. The tide was going out by this time so we had to walk our kayaks out past shallow rocks to deeper spots in order to paddle off. At this point we stayed in the quieter water between the smaller islands for much calmer water.

We came to Bob’s Landing on Balaklava island to camp for the night. There was a very small island between the camp site and us which formed a funnel for the water, you could actually see rapids from the velocity of the water flowing through the channel! Bob’s Landing was a former logging site so we had a large area of open grass to pitch our tents. Bob’s Landing is the first site we had to share with other kayakers. Up to this point we only ran into a total of 10 or so people the entire trip. After setting up I wandered up one of the trails to an area logged sometime ago. There were lots of tree stumps still lying around but also lots of small seedling coming up. Several others got back to their hot game of Uno. I don’t know who was winning but there was a lot of Uno trash talking the next day. By the time evening came it was windy and very cool. We all put on our wind/rain gear and the heavier fleece clothing because of the wind. I managed to stay up late enough to join the Bioluminescence Club. In order to join you have to stay up late enough for it to get dark enough to see the sea animals and plankton light up when being disturbed by throwing rocks into the water or stirring the water with a stick. Sorry no photos. During the middle of the night I pulled a couple extra layers on top of my sleeping bag because of the cool and damp.

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark

Kayaking day 3

2009-09-02T21:43:00.014-05:00

We started out the day with heavy fog, just the way the previous day ended. I heard light drizzle on and off throughout the night. The first photo is at low tide. When we stopped the previous afternoon the water level was approximately the bottom of this image. We had breakfast; French toast with orange zest cut into the mix, back bacon which I have never heard of, it was all meat not the usual bacon, half meat half fat. Then we packed and started our day.

It was cloudy and foggy most of the morning until we turned the southwest corner on Nigei island when it started to clear. Once we made the turn all kinds of starfish, anemones and very large jelly fish started appearing.

We went on a bit further and stopped for lunch in what we now call eagle bay.

There were at least a dozen bald eagles in the bay. A lot of them were youngsters which had not turned white yet. This doesn’t happen until they are about 3 or 4 years old. We saw them taking flight from a tree on one side of the cove and land on a tree on the opposite side then return back again. All this under the watchful eyes of the parents.

The sun popped out as we were making the crossing to Vansittart island. Off in the distance you could see the mountains on the mainland of British Columbia.

You may wonder why I am referring to this island so much. As I mentioned in my last post it is one of the few islands with old growth forest. I was excited to hear this from one of my fellow kayakers. I read several books on the area so I would have an understanding of what happened. ‘The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed’ by John Vaillant is a good read on the history of the area talking about the 1st Nations peoples and how the Europeans moved in to start lumbering and how it took over. It still is a big part of the lives of the people in this area today.

After setting up our camp I wandered around the intertidal zone and up into a small forest. Here I came across a couple deer. They were as surprised to see me as I them. They didn’t run off, didn’t seem to be afraid. They finished munching on the grasses and wandered off looking back every few feet and taking another bite of the greenery. I’ve never been so close to wild deer!

After that we took an organized hike into the woods to hear about the forest. Some of these trees are 500 – 1000 years old; Sitka spruce, red cedar and hemlock. The trunks of some of these trees were 10’ in diameter. You can’t appreciate the size of them until someone is standing next to them. Most of them had the tops snapped off due to the fierce winds that hit the area in winter.
The night went between foggy and clear. We sat up for a while to watch the shooting stars, I also saw a few of the constellations I have not seen in a while because of living in the city. After all that I was off to bed. Fortunately I was told earlier that the deer are inquisitive and may visit during the night. I woke up during the night to light footfalls around my tent then I could hear sniffing just outside for a few seconds before the deer walked off. All in all a great day!

Thanks for stopping by.
Mark

Kayaking day 2

2009-08-31T21:44:00.018-05:00

The day started out clear in our little inlet but there was heavy fog in the Goletas channel where we did most of our paddling for the day. Looking at these two images you can see how far we had to move the kayaks because of the difference in the tide. (I don't remember reading that in the travel brochure) :-) You can also see the challenge of fitting all our gear back into the kaykas, we knew it had to fit since it fit the first day!

Even though Vancouver Island is only a mile or so across the channel we did not see it all day. We felt we were on a great adventure not seeing any land other than the island (Nigei Island) on which we were camping. We paddled against a stiff current and breeze most of the day. I took my turn at paddling from the back of the boat. I had to quickly learn how to turn with the rudder. This is fairly easy once I got the hang of it. It was harder getting my feet into the stirrups used to control the rudder than actually controlling the rudder.

We made it to our next camping spot in the early afternoon allowing us to set up camp then go down the island a half mile or so to explore the beach. You can see a few of the finds along the beach. On Kara's pinkie finger you can see the shell of a sea urchin.

It had turned nice by that time although the low fog remained. We saw many tide pools with crabs and sea anemones. Bald eagles seem to be all over the place. What started out as ‘LOOK THERE’S A BALD EAGLE!!!” turned into ‘There’s another bald eagle’ by the end of the trip, still a sight to behold.

By the time we were finished touring the beach we returned to our campsite just in time to watch the fog roll in. It was a heavy mist for the rest of the night with occasional drizzle. I don’t think we could see much more than 1/10 of a mile for most of the night. Kara and Sara with some help form Terry made our meal that evening. We just had to make do with our teriyaki chicken, cashew rice, broccoli, fruit salad and carrot cake. Once we finished eating Kara, our lead guide, laid out the trip for the next day. On to Vansittart island, one of the very few islands with remaining old growth forest.

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark

Kayaking day 1 continued

2009-08-29T00:37:00.007-05:00

As I looked through my photos I thought the first ones I posted would not do the trip justice. I am still considering the Flicker thing I’ve just been too busy to do it.

We camped at Port Alexander. There is a short trail over to another small port which goes through a dense forest. This area of Vancouver Island is considered a rain forest so the smells in this forest are a wonderful earthy smell. You just don’t get that smell in New Mexico. One of our guides took us on the trail, she pointed out more plants, mosses and mushrooms than I knew existed. What would be a normal 20 minute walk oblivious to all the life in the forest turned into a 1 hour educational trip. Here you can see Chicken of the Woods mushrooms. This was one of many of our finds.

We had to move our camp site off the beach and into the forest because of the 15’ difference in elevation between low and high tide. We also moved our kayaks on to the driftwood so they would not float away during the high tide. We set up our tents on the forest floor. The mosses are so soft you almost don’t need a mattress to sleep on. I did use one to protect me from the occasional stick snuck under my tent during the night :-)

I thought I'd include a photo of what a not-so-well dresses kayaker wears these days. It did keep me warm and dry though!

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark

Vacation is good!

2009-08-26T22:15:00.011-05:00

Hi all,

I’m made it back from my kayaking vacation. I can’t wait to go again! Had a great time. There were a total of 15 people including 3 guides. We were gone a total of 6 days and 5 nights changing locations each night. We were on the north end of Vancouver Island paddling the ‘Wilderness Islands Tour’ with Sea Kayak Adventures through God’s Pocket Marine Provincial Park in British Columbia. I plan to include links for each of the tour operators as the photos appear.

I have included some of my images from the 1st day of the kayaking trip. I have many more images to include but will send them out as I edit them. Along with the kayaking trip I did an Orca day trip and a Grizzly bear day trip. The day between I drove to San Josef Bay in the Cape Scott Provincial Park. In addition I stayed one night in Vancouver walking around Stanley Park. Each of these different trips will be a separate posting. (I have to make this last as long as possible.)

Enjoy the images

Here we are stacking all the stuff; food, water, kitchen utensils, personal stuff and wine to put into the kayaks.

Here's our transportation for the next 6 days. We used double kayaks so we had more room for packing than single kayaks.

The beach for our first lunch,

One of the areas we paddled through,

The evening view from our first campsite,

and the same view the next morning!

Overall the weather was great. We had fog a few days, a little light rain mainly at night and a few partly cloudy to sunny days. Temperatures were quite comfortable; mid 60's during the day and 50's at night.

Thank you for stopping by

Mark

Anticipation

2009-07-19T21:05:00.001-05:00

Hi all. It’s been a while since I’ve updated this blog. I’ve been busy working for Sue, my wife, she’s a big Michael Jackson fan so I have been hanging around Ebay trying to find a couple of his books at a reasonable price. I can find the books, the reasonable price part is harder to come by. I did manage to pick up ‘Dancing the Dream’ and I’m now looking for ‘Moon Walk’, his biography. There seems to be hundreds out there but there must be thousands of people bidding. You certainly wouldn’t think the economy was bad by the amount of $$ going out for these books!

I’ve also been getting ready for my trip. For those people new to this blog I’m going on a kayaking trip in British Columbia in a few weeks. When I made the original reservations in early April it was so far off in the future I was excited about the trip but now I’M EXCITED ABOUT THE TRIP!!!

Believe it or not I actually got out the manual for my camera and I am studying it! Hard to believe a guy would do such a thing isn’t it. I knew most of the stuff already but a friendly reminder cannot hurt. I also picked up a 100% waterproof camera case for my expensive point and shoot camera. A $60 investment to save a camera sounds like a good way to spend money. It’s supposed to go down to a 30’ depth. I don’t plan on testing out those specifications; the water is cold up there, about 50 or so! My hope it to keep the camera close so when I see something it is ready to go. I loaded up on memory cards and batteries for my camera so I should be ready. I picked up the case from Amazon but you can go to the manufacturer’s website by going to http://www.dicapac.com I hope to have a lot of photos for you to see.

I’ve also received an email from the woman that owns the shop that’s adopting out my bears. You can see some of them at ToonaRoona This may become a good news/bad news thing. It’s good that I adopt out some bears but now I get to make some bears to replace them. I’m hoping to get some great photos of other animals on my trip to use as models for needle felting.

Thanks for stopping by.

Mark

Happy July

2009-07-06T21:49:00.004-05:00

Happy 6th of July! We made it through the holiday without any mishaps. The local paper had an article about people shooting their guns in the air and other people dying when the bullet came back down fatally hitting them. So we decided to stay in the house.

I’ve included a few early July photos of the front yard. A lot of the yarrow is blooming. They start out as red then move on to light pinks and whites.

The Echinacea is blooming.

The scutellaria is also coming in.

Over the next few weeks I will have to go out and deadhead the catmint so they start coming in again. It’s a fair amount of work but it still beats mowing the lawn!

My blackberries did well. I picked about 12 quarts of berries. I could have had a lot more but I would have had to stand guard 24 hours a day to keep the robins away. I think they got more berries than I did.

I did an inventory of all the stuff I need for my Canada trip. Just a few more items to pick up and I should be ready. I’m sure I’ll be running around on the eve of my trip picking up the last item. I do have my passport though.

Thank you for stopping by.
Mark

First picking

2009-06-13T17:51:00.003-05:00

I just completed my first picking of blackberries yesterday. Needless to say I had a handful of berries on my Cheerios and will for some time.

There are many left to pick as you can see from the plants. I have two 18’ rows of plants.

Thank you for stopping by.
Mark

On display

2009-06-08T20:24:00.004-05:00

I’ve been busy the past few weeks running in all kinds of directions.

First I’ve been finalizing my vacation plans for later this year. I signed up for a 6 day kayaking trip on the Northern end of Vancouver Island in British Columbia. I was looking at kayak trips since it interested me, yes there is kayaking in NM. In my search Vancouver Island came up. I searched through at least 10 outfitters/tour operators and decided this one is the one I want to do. Sea Kayak Vancouver Island - Kayaking Queen Charlotte Strait - British Columbia The link should take you to the Wilderness Islands trip.

The tour most of the other operators do is in the Johnston Strait between Vancouver Island and the British Columbia mainland. This is the main thoroughfare for orcas to pass through. While I want to see orcas, I don’t want to see just orcas, and five days no less. The Wilderness Islands trip goes out of the main channel into God’s Pocket Provincial Park. There should be lots of other wildlife to see, and hopefully photograph. The owners said this is the trip the guides like to take since it is always different and very few people go off in this direction.

I’ve had to buy a fair amount of clothing to be ready. The pieces which should last me forever are the raingear, top and bottoms. If you’re not familiar with Albuquerque we average about 9” of moisture a year so I don’t expect to wear rain gear very often! I’m buying a fair amount of warm weather fleece. I expect to be a bit cool there as the normal temperatures in BC are in the 70’s during the day and 50’s at night. This is actually quite nice until you factor in the average temperatures in Albq. in August are still in the low 90’s with mid 60’s at night.

I’m arriving a few days early so I’m doing a couple day trips. Whale watching Mackay Whale Watching in BC Vancouver Island Canada and a grizzly bear tour Grizzly Bears - Tide Rip Nature Tours - Grizzly Bear Pictures I will also have a day to wander around and see the local activities.

Just to get in shape for the paddling and other activities I’ve increased my routine of swimming to at least twice a week and walking/hiking 5 – 8 miles twice a week. I don’t want to be the old guy holding up the rest of the tourists.

I’m hoping to get lots of photos of the local wildlife to use as models for future needle felting projects.

Sue is not going on the trip, she is still healing from her foot surgery. While she would like to see the water, she would rather be on a beach catching some rays.

In addition to the trip planning I have been working on bears. In my last post I mentioned I did a doll and bear show. One of the customers that came by asked if I would consider displaying my bears in her shop. I said let’s get together and talk. I’ve heard this other times never to be contacted again so I didn’t think too much about it. She contacted me a week or so ago and asked if I was still interested. After stopping by and talking with her I now have a number of my bears and needle felted animals at ToonaRoona. At this point she only has dolls on the website but promises to add my bears. I’ve included a few images of the shop.

She had an Open House this past weekend. I saw a few people come in then walk out with dolls. It seems that like any passion there is money around to feed the passion.

I’m also getting ready to pick blackberries. Most of them are still green but a few are going from the red to black stage. As long as the temperatures don’t go into the mid 90’s I should have lots of berries to pick, and the scratched up forearms to prove it.

I think I’ll take a break for just a few minutes before I go on to my next project…

Thanks for stopping by.
Mark

Show time

2009-05-17T20:53:00.009-05:00

I just finished my first bear show for 2009. I am pretty happy with the results. A total of 2 mohair bears and one of my needle felted cats went on to new homes.

I hate to say it but I have gone to the dark side; I like doing artist bear shows but they are getting fewer and farther between. So I had to do a Doll and Bear show. Bear makers were definitely in the minority. I think there were approximately 25 doll vendors which includes artist made porcelain dolls, Barbie dolls in all sorts of ‘original’ boxes, doll clothes, miniatures and all sorts of dolls in various costumes. There were three bear makers. I’ve included photos of my table from the show.

Lots of people were going through the show with quite a few walking out the doors with packages in their hands.

It’s fun doing a show like this. You see lots of different people. Some just speed on by to get to the next doll table, a few stop by for a quick look and comment on the bears and others really look at each bear. Usually they have to come by for a second and possibly a third time before making their selection.

I really like watching the husbands of the couples that come by. Some are as involved as the wife in looking and selecting bears, some stand by with casual interest ready to pull out the wallet/checkbook and the last ones don’t want to have anything to do with a ‘Doll and Bear’ show and “I can’t wait to get back home so I can watch some basketball/baseball/football/NASCAR (fill in the sport)”. It’s better people watching than at the airport.

Now that a few bears and cat have moved on to other homes I will start making some new guys and girls. The next Albuquerque show is scheduled for November. I should be able to finish a few more by then....

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark

A visit from the other side

2009-05-12T20:27:00.003-05:00

This evening while Sue and I were enjoying dinner we got a knock at the door from a pest control guy.

“Hi I’m Joe from Joe Blow Pest Control.” “DO YOU KNOW YOU HAVE BEES!!!???!?!?”

“I have what?”

“YOU HAVE BEES!!”

“Sure I know I have bees, you should see the catmint down by the main sidewalk they are just buzzing all the time with bees”

“AND YOU’RE OKAY WITH THAT??”

“Yes I am, I want lots of bees; they'll pollinate my blackberry flowers which will give me lots of blackberries later this year!”

He looked at me rather strange at that point “Okay, …… Do you have any other pest problems?”

“No I don’t, thank you.”

Why do we have to kill everything that doesn’t fit the mold of a mass produced ‘American Dream’?

I have fallen into it a bit in the back yard, since I bought some Scotts fertilizer. I figured Sue likes lawn and she gave into my going natural in the front yard, I had better have some good green grass for her in the back. I only bought the fertilizer, not weed killer. Both of us like the little yellow flowers (dandelions) early in spring. Thinking back to when we lived in Milwaukee I don’t believe I would have fit in very well since I would not be out there killing anything that was not green, or did not look like grass.

Long live the bees!

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark

Happy Mother's Day

2009-05-10T19:32:00.008-05:00

I hope everyone had a fine Mother’s Day! Babee, our cat, even remembered to get Sue a card! I usually have a hard time remembering all these holidays, I’m glad someone’s on top of it :-)

Since the last photo of the yard lots of flowers are coming on strong. Every time I look at the front yard I’m amazed at how it looks. I was hoping the front yard would pop with lots of color and it’s certainly starting out that way. I suspect a lot of it’s due to the 90˚ temperatures we experienced last week. That’s for those of you that were complaining of the cold weather you were experiencing earlier this year. (You know who you are) Now you will hear me talk of the constant heat we usually get all summer. We are never satisfied are we???

Some of these you have seen the last time. The catmint is literally buzzing from all the bees going from flower to flower.

Some of the new ones are the Rock Rose – Cistus.

And the Ice Plant – Delosperma Cooperi. These stay evergreen all year but just started flowering this past week.

In the back yard another bunch of Bearded Irises is blooming, pink, Sue's favorite color.

And it looks like I may have a large crop of blackberries this June if all these flowers bear fruit, and the heat goes away for a month or so.

Under consideration for my next big gardening project is a patch of blueberries. The soil here is very alkaline which is exactly the opposite of what blueberries need. One of my friends at work has a small patch of producing blueberry plants and has offered his expertise to help get me started. I have been wondering what I was going to put in one of the remaining blank spots in my back yard, I may have my answer…

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark

New members

2009-05-08T14:05:00.001-05:00

My new bears are making their debut.

Meet Zoey, Miles, Chester, Mackenzie and Oliver. Mackenzie is 15”, Zoey 13”. Miles, Oliver and Chester are about 11”.

They will be on tour starting next Sunday, May 17 at the MCM Elegante’ Hotel in Albuquerque, NM at the Albuquerque Doll and Bear Show. Show hours are from 10 AM – 4 PM. I’m not sure what the admission fee is.

In addition to these guys and girl I will have another 10 or so bears and a few of my needle felted creations.

Thank you for stopping by.
Mark

Spring is here

2009-04-29T20:45:00.010-05:00

Hello all. For those of you that have been patiently waiting for a posting, your wait is over.

I have been busy with bears for the past several weeks and they are now finished and waiting to be named. Which will be another posting… And I have been planning my vacation, yet another posting…

I have been working in the yard; I got to take the lawn mower out for a spin this weekend :-( Not one of my favorite things to do, it ranks up there with going to the dentist, working on plumbing and working on the car. Lawn mowing is not quite as bad as last year since I no longer have a front yard to mow. I have included several photos of the front yard spring progress. I’m adding names to the photos so if you see something you like maybe you can find it at you local nursery.

Here’s a general view of the front yard. I hope you can see improvements from the Feb 21 posting from an image from last fall.

So far all I have done in the front is pull a couple dozen small weeds which stand out quite well in the tan crusher fines. It also helps that I am drip irrigating only in the immediate vicinity of my plants so unless we get rain the rest of the area stays very dry. To date we have received about 0.6” of rain this calendar year.

Walker’s Low - Catmint/Nepeta

Wine cups/Callirhoe and a closeup

All the little mounds in the foreground are Cerise Queen - Yarrow/Achillea millefolium

And in the back yard.

Jupiter’s beard/Centranthus rubber – These guys started out as 1 – 2 plants and after 5 years they have spread to 8 – 10 plants and Karl Forester – Feather Reed Grass/Calamagrostis x acutiflora – these put on flowers that last though the winter.

Bearded Iris – We inherited these so I can’t be more specific than that

Since I took these photos even more is blooming!

I hope this gets those green thumbs going!

Thank you for stopping by.
Mark

Mulder sighting

2009-03-31T19:33:00.007-05:00

I received the photos from Mulder’s new family. I’m happy to report it looks like he is very happy. As you can see he seems to have the run of the house, he even gets outside!

Thanks for stopping by.
Mark

New projects

2009-03-29T18:59:00.003-05:00

Hi everyone. For those of you that have been wondering where I have been, I am still here. I have not fallen off the face of the earth. I’ve been a bit busy at work; travel and lots of extra hours.

I have all kinds of news. The family for which I made the needle felted cat just loves him. I was very happy and relieved that she loved him so much. This was my first commissioned piece so I wanted to do my best. She did say that the real Mulder was an 18 lb. kitty so this one is about ¼ scale. So for those of you that expressed an interest in him if he was not wanted, you will have to wait until next time. I did receive some photos so once I get them scanned I will post photos of Mulder.

I’ve been working on mohair bears; 5 in this batch. I’ve included the head of the first one. I’ve started crossover my hobbies as this guy/girl has a needle felted nose. I won’t know what sex this bear will be until it is finished, then I turn it over to Sue, my wife, since her job is to name them.

Another promoter has picked up the May bear show in Albuquerque. She does Doll and Teddy Bear Show in several cities in the West and decided to pick up this one with the other promoter deciding to stop. I did her Doll and Bear Show this past November and was happy with the attendance as well as adopting out some bears.

Once I get these bears completed I will jump back into needle felting more animals.

Thank you for stopping by, I’ll try and be a bit more prompt next time.

Mark

Daffodils

2009-02-28T17:38:00.006-06:00

This last week we have been enjoying 70 degree temperatures and the daffodils seem to enjoy it. These are a few images from the front yard.

All wrapped up

Out for a peak

Enjoying the sun
I enjoy photography in addition to all my other hobbies. I got back into photography when digital cameras got to the point of having enough pixels to do fairly large prints. I have an Olympus C7070, a high end point and shoot. It has lots of manual capability so I can do lots of different types of images. I like to do macro photography of things going on in my yard. Stay tuned for my yard this year.

Thank you for stopping by.
Mark

head coverings by my talented bro!

2009-02-24T18:08:00.003-06:00

As promised here are the pics of the head coverings Mark sent to me... aren't they cool? The brown one is made of, I'm not sure, almost a velour? but thinner and is very soft and almost shines different colors in different light. The purple one is definitely velour, right Mark? (shows how much I know my fabrics) and is really really soft and very very cool. While I wasn't feeling particularly glamorous at the moment, i at least have eyeliner and mascara on...

Thanks Mark!

New projects

2009-02-21T21:06:00.007-06:00

Well I’ve been busy starting my new projects. I know someone who may be lurking out there that will be happy to see me back on my teddy bears. I have four cut out and in the preliminary assembly stage. These guys and girls take me about 13 – 15 hours each. Each one is slightly different, you can see from my photo from Jan 23, 2009 post that they are all from the same family but each is slightly different.

On a bad note I found out that the woman that promoted the Albuquerque Teddy Bear show each May is giving up promoting entirely, this includes the one she did in Austin, TX. I still plan on doing the November Doll and Teddy Bear show but nothing is planned between now and then. With the economy as it is I may be better off to lay low for a while. I’m thinking of opening an Etsy shop. If any of you have any thing to say about that endeavor please let me know.

I have been working on head coverings for my sister, Pam. If they look good on her I hope she will show them off on this blog, no pressure Pam. :-)

I have also started working on the yard. Spring is not here yet officially, but the temperatures here in Albuquerque have been in the 50’s to near 60 and some of the plants and trees are starting to put on buds. After 20+ years of cutting grass I decided to go with a Xericscape which is gardening in ways to reduce or eliminate the need for suppelmental irrigation. Here you can see my front yard looked like before Xeriscaping.

Below you can see my front yard as it ended up last year the first month after taking out the lawn.

Since we live in a high-desert environment Xeriscape is the way to go. As of today we have only received a trace of precipitation since the start of the new year, with continued dry conditions forecast for the next week. My Xeriscape is different than most of the landscaping here in that I put in a small portion of very Xeric plants and a larger portion of low water plants. Most people like to do rocks, rocks and more rocks. I am a plant lover so the area includes 40+ plants and shrubs in the front yard. I hope to include photos of this year’s progress. Stay tuned.

Thank you for stopping by.
Mark

The unveiling

2009-02-06T22:46:00.008-06:00

The time has come for the unveiling of my latest creation. I promised that I would have him finished by this Sunday. He gets formally introduced to his new owner on Valentines Day. First you can see a photo of the real cat.

I got overall impressions so I had an idea of what he looks like. But I had to email my friend to find out what color eyes he has so I would at least get the eyes close. You saw those in my last post. And here he is.

I would have named him but I think his new family can have that job. He’s 14” long from his rump to his nose and has a 7” long tail, not quite full-size, but close. I put floral wire in each of his legs and tail so he is posable. You may have noticed slight differences in his position between the photos.
The really neat thing is he doesn’t eat so there’s no need for a litter box, he doesn’t bring in mouse presents, doesn’t get you up in the middle of the night to go outside, and he doesn’t claw the furniture :-) On the bad side you won’t hear him purr or wrap himself around your legs.

As you can see here there is already a potential discussion between our Babee and this new kid on the block .

Thank you for following along. I hope to get some photos of the happy family.

Mark

Cat continuation

2009-01-31T21:39:00.004-06:00

Hello everyone. I have been working on the black cat seen in my last post. He’s coming together and is now all black. I joined his back legs and tail to his body.

Today I got his glass eyes in the mail. They started out clear and I’m painting them yellow as requested. I stopped at Michael’s Craft store to buy some pebeo – porcelaine 150 paint. You can see how the eyes started and what they look like now. In addition to the yellow on the outer portion of the iris the center of the iris next to the pupil has a few gold spots. Now I have to wait 24 hours for the paint to cure then put it in an oven for 35 minutes to finish the paint.

Since I have to wait for the paint to dry I will go back to my mohair bears. I have 4 in waiting.

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark

some headgear

2009-01-31T05:43:00.008-06:00

Hi everyone. just including some pics of different headgear... I will take some better shots and close ups of the actual bead work too, kinda hard to see on some of these.

The green one is with 3 small posy pins from that same Bead & Button mag mentioned in a previous blog. I just used different beads and made them smaller. Already lots of compliments on this!

The pink hat was a Christmas gift from my bestest friend, Julie. She and Sam beaded the flowers, which Julie actually got the flowers from Knot Just Beads in Milwaukee, and then they embellished them with seed beads...

These 2 headbands were made by Julie too...

Sam thinks they make me look like a hippie, but I think they are cute. One is braided fibers with beads on the ends that I can just tie in a knot behind my head or wherever, (not tightly around my neck!)

and the green/gray one is beaded on leather

with fibers and is more of a headband as it has elastic in the back that can stretch to fit around my head/scarf/hat....

It has beads (of course) of all sorts embellishing the tassels...

And here are my absolute favorites:

The flower barette I posted before, but shown here attached to a scarf on my head...

I have to revise the knot-tying of the scarf a bit...

And here is an EYEBALL barrette and it is the most awesome barette I have ever seen. I love the unusual and have been eyeing (LOL!) up these eyeball cabachons for AGES.... Julie finally purchased one from her bead-maker friend Robert Jennick (who makes gorgeous glass beads and has most of his beads at Knot Just Beads in Milwaukee) and laborously created this barette for me.

Is it spectacular or just creepy? Sam finds it a wee bit creepy but all I can imagine is people seeing me from behind and feeling like they are being watched!!! LOL... what fun I'm gonna have with this one! Here's a closeup...

Pam adding in here...

2009-01-27T05:54:00.004-06:00

Just wanted to add some pics of 2 pins I made. I got the original pattern from an old Bead and Button mag - so not quite originals because of a few changes, but they are fun to make.

The purple/blue one is for

a friend of my mom, she has

made me several hats for when

I lose my hair to chemo....

She's made me several out of fleece and they are nice and soft and large enough to cover my entire head.... (okay, but not like a paper bag over my head!)

this pink one is for a friend of ours who loves to can.

Every year she and her 90-year-old-something mom

can everything under the sun:

pickles, jalapenos, horseradish,

banana peppers, beets, tomatoes

that they make into awesome salsas

and relishes.... anyway...

this is a small token of my

appreciation to her....

Needle felting update

2009-01-25T20:30:00.010-06:00

This weekend I had the opportunity to shoot my latest creations, as promised in my earlier writing. It was nice and sunny, about 60 so I took advantage of the weather.

Here’s Theo, my second cat. Theo’s whiskers are actual horse hair. I found small packages of horse hair at http://www.crazycrow.com/ they have all kinds of Native American stuff. Good for beaders!
My third cat is still a work in progress. I have included many photos during the construction of my third cat. I included small, 22 gauge, floral wire in each of the legs and tail allowing me to pose my cats. Please ignore the mess, this is my work area.

I want to warn you the next set of photos is not for the faint of heart! There are cat parts all over the place. :-)

Note: No animals were hurt in the filming of this blog!

It is not your imagination, he does not have eyes at this time.

I make the general parts out of white batting as this is much less expensive than making the entire part out of each color. To apply the color I take thin layers of wool and wrap it around the base part then needle it in place, I add additional layers to fill in the color as needed.

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark

2009-01-23T22:40:00.008-06:00

Okay okay, Pam has shamed me into making my additions. One of my problems is, and I have many, that I do not type nearly as fast as Pam so it takes me many minutes to get down on ‘paper’ what I want to say. I have been around her when she had her own business and couldn’t believe how fast she could type. I’m the get it down on paper and edit like mad type of person.

My other problem is this four letter word called work. I will never make enough money at my bear making or my newly found needle felting hobby so I have to work. I am very happy to say that these two hobbies are the first hobbies of all that I have gone through that are almost paying for themselves. (Sue, my wife is not convinced yet)

I’m the Southwest part of the North by Southwest blog. I will fill you in on the good and bad of the Southwest some other time.

I have been making collectable mohair teddy bears for 5 years now, the last four years are my own designs. I’m up to around 60 of my own creations with over 40 of them adopted and living somewhere other than my bedroom dresser. My dresser been crowded for the past few years with anywhere from 17 – 25 bears competing for a seat. The good thing is I don’t have to dust my dresser :-) You can go to my website www.marksbears.com to get a closer look at these guys and girls.

My needle felting hobby is only about 9 months old. I’m not even certain how I got started with this new endeavor. Probably surfing the net and thought ‘This is cool’. I took Kay Petal’s class; part book and part online, it’s a great class, I recommend it to budding needle felters. She does human caricatures and imaginary creatures. I also found Birgitte Krag Hansen’s site and like her animals. I decided I like doing the animals better so you will see animals pop up here from time to time.

I made several small, 3 – 6” teddy bear Christmas ornaments. Like anything else small is harder to make than large. You have to pay a lot more attention to what you are doing; if you are off by ¼” it’s pretty noticeable on a 3” ornament. I’ve since moved on to larger animals. Henry, my first mouse, was passed on to a dear friend who happens to be a mouse lover, figurines, not the real things :-) He is now living among her teapots, I go to visit him every once in a while.

I’ve since moved on to cats, another friend wants me to make a cat for his wife so I’m on cat #3 which I hope to finish before Valentines Day. I’ve included photos of my first cat; she’s about 8.5” tall. I’ll try and shoot my latest work in progress so you can see how my cats are created.

I don’t have any of my needle felted projects on my website at this time. Visit it every once in a while and they will show up someday, I’ll probably have a big announcement here.

Thank you for stopping by.

Mark

more samples of quilts and a "bear" by Mark

2009-01-23T11:59:00.005-06:00

I am just going to be adding willy-nilly here to our blog.... because I am very proud of all the things that my bro has made over the years.

First we have Sam's quilt, which he gave to her when she was 10, it's called "Samantha's Kaleidoscope" and was inscribed "may you have many wonderful dreams". Aren't the colors gorgeous?

Then our quilt, which I am sorry I don't remember what year he finished it, but it's a wonderful display of foliage and birds to grace our bed here in the Northwoods...

Here's a baby quilt he made for Sam eons ago... I wasn't one for the traditional pinks/blues/yellows for babies... I had stenciled her room with jungle animals.

Here's an iris wall hanging he did for me - iris is one of my favorite flowers.

and here is "Bear," a mohair cat that looks like our cat Magic (when she was thinner and younger, and not so crabby!)

I'm still waiting for Mark to get going on here

and start posting.......... ;)

Starting to add some pics of Mark's creations

2009-01-22T11:32:00.004-06:00

Here is a pic of a quilted wall hanging that Mark made for me when I owned a tanning salon. It is called "Sunburst" and he made it back in 1997. It graced the wall of my business, "Northwoods Sun" until I closed up the salon, and now graces a wall here at home.

OKay, excuse the crookedness of the photo - helps if one stands directly in front of something when one takes a pic. duh.

I believe that Mark had dyed or painted all the fabric used in it himself.

First post

2009-01-21T03:08:00.005-06:00

This blog is created by me and hoping that it will spur Mark on to start uploading his art.

Mark is my brother. We grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and then Mark married, got a great job and relocated to a warmer part of the U.S. - New Mexico. I could go on more about his history, but if he wants to share, he will have to tell his story.

Mark is an incredibly talented guy and over the years I have watched him quilt, take sewing lessons, tat, do flower printing/painting, and now bears and other critters.

At first he started making these mohair bears, like Buddy, in the pic. I was lucky enough to receive Buddy as a cancer "buddy" while I am undergoing treatments for breast cancer. Mark doesn't care for Buddy's pink bow, but I plan on making something more manly to adorn his neck.

Anyway, now Mark is into needle felting and from what I have seen, he's pretty incredible at that too. We plan to get more pics on this blog (right Mark?) and some pics of how he does his incredibly cute bears and crafts.

I'm pam. I'm five years younger than Mark :) and live in a little tourist town in Three Lakes, Wisconsin, way up north. I'm a medical transcriptionist for over 23 years, I'm married to my adored and loving husband for 21 years (tomorrow!) and we have one daughter, who is 15, and she is turning out to be an incredibly talented girl too, and loves drawing.

As for me, I am not quite so dedicated to one thing at a time, unfortunately and don't much follow through on becoming really good at something before I lose interest and go onto the next! LOL! I like beading and jewelry, and here's one of my creations that is for sale at the moment at Rainy Day Cottage in 3 Lakes, Wisconsin.

I like to experiment with paper, beads, fibers, thread, sewing (though not expert whatsoever!!!), paint, pens, pencils.... I would love to learn to paint but someone said that needs practice. LOL.

Right now, my friend and I are experimenting with headbands and

barrettes that are embellished and can be worn over scarves and/or turbans to cover one's head while one is bald from cancer treatments. I plan on putting lots of pics on here for that.

Here's an example of one of the barrettes, it can be clipped on to the knotted part of a scarf. And, actually, if you have a really thick head of glorious hair, could be used as a nice embellishment for tying it back.

so that's who we are and what we do. Watch here for updates!