Photos from a very snowy day (eagles!)

Last night, my husband and I went out to visit with my friend Sam to play Plutocracy. Every time we do this, the weather gets crazy. The first time, there were bad ice conditions, the second, it was well sub-zero and just freezing (photos from that outing here). This time, it was a snow storm with low visibility.

It was a very slow drive. Every time a drive pulled ahead of us and hit the snow on the road, things went white.
But on the list of things you see more often in Alaska than you do in other places...

Dog sleds on a truck outfitted for carrying dogs.

When we got out to Eagle River, we saw an eagle flying fairly low over the road, then off to one side, we saw this. All photos after this are uploaded at full size, so click to see the detail!

Yes. That's a tree full of bald eagles. 

This one made me smile, the branches look almost like it's make up, pretending to be The Crow!

Then a half block down, there was another tree that had both eagles and ravens in it!

Juvenile bald eagle and a raven.

We had fun playing our game for a few hours, then drove back into town. 

Currently, I'm trying to figure out what I can sell on Etsy to help make a bit of extra money to get a swatch collection printed at Spoonflower. My husband quit his job at the beginning of the month, and while he's looking for a new one, we are budgeting carefully. I'm thinking maybe an e-book of knotwork designs to color, or possibly post a bunch more blank templates for sale. 

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Debra Jo Hardman's Crazy Quilts

Hi! I'd like to introduce you to Deb Hardman, she was at the hobby show at the Museum on Sunday, and she's a crazy quilter. Or is that crazy for quilting?
See, this is her name tag-

Crazy quilting is less structured than most traditional patterns, and allows a lot of embellishment and artistic detail. What Deb does is to create with fabric, thread and other bits gorgeous quilts with a nearly painted effect that can be hung on walls. A lot of them have a strongly Alaskan theme, all of them that I saw also have amazing details.

Like this raven. The fabric for the moon is glow in the dark, so is much of the stitching.

The sparkly hanging from the raven's beak? Awesome. The little stitched star details on the moon? So very wonderful.

And it's nest is well lined with sparkling bits.

This raven almost looks like by a brook. One of those pebbles has a secret.

Can you see it? All the stones except one are actually soft sculpture embellishments on the quilt. That one stone is a real rock!

Snowflakes aren't exclusively Alaskan anymore than ravens are, but you have to admit, in Alaska, we see a LOT of raven and a whole lot of snow. The white fabric and white stitching on this piece are both glow in the dark. Can you imagine having something this lovely in your room to shine softly in the dark?

Check out that detail. The soft curved lines in a shimmering thread, the scattered sparkle of beads, and those wonderful bubbles! Plus of course the glow thread snowflake.

One of Deb's resolutions for this year is to be a better blogger, including having more tutorials. Check out Cold Feet Quilter for more information, inspiration and eye candy.

Photos from this past month

Earlier this month, we stayed at the hotel my husband works at for the weekend. I took some photos that weekend. Click on the images to see more detail.

Alaska's flag. I flipped this photo to show it with the North Star in the upper right hand like it's supposed to be. Alaska's flag against all that snowy white!

This handsome raven was just perched up there yelling for attention. So I took a bunch of photos! 

Thanks to one of the people on my Facebook friends list, I know this is a a gray-crowned rosy finch. The little sweetie also seemed to love the camera.  I took a bunch of photos, and really love the contrast between the bird's coloring and warmth and the frost on the tree. It was munching those berries like a frozen treat!

If you ever come to Anchorage, on the corner of 4th and Barrow is a used book store that's been there since I was a kid. The owner, Cathy, has told me she's not going anywhere because she doesn't want to leave her books. The books! 300,000 or so books in this shop that's been there for so long. They are on shelves with narrow paths between them, in boxes next to the shelves and just stacked by the shelves. Stacks of books surround the front counter area, piled on, behind and in front of the counter. You have to reach across these piles of books to pay her, and she's always ready to talk to anyone who comes in. It's called C&M Used Books, and it is the very definition of used book store in my mind. It's the prototype. 

Other than the signs, one old, one new that say C&M Used Books,  look for ravens and magpies. She and her assistants toss out their leftovers for the birds, and there are lots of fat, happy ravens and magpies around the store waiting for treats.

These two photos weren't taken that weekend, but I wanted to share them anyway.

Sunset, at about 3:30 in the afternoon!

Trees all lit up at Anchorage Town Square.

Corvid Boxes- Magpie and Raven

A flock of magpies is called all sorts of things, but I always liked "charm". A charm of magpies!
Here's a couple boxes that use some of my photos. I hope you enjoy them. 300 dpi, click on the images for the full sized versions and print them on card stock.

If you have a favorite template that I use for boxes, a favorite size or type, I'd love comments. I tend to use this template a lot because I love the space available for designs. 

Ravens and wolves and llamas oh my!

Some recent photos that I hope you'll enjoy. I took these Saturday. The wolf and llama were both at our local zoo. The raven is one I spotted outside on a tree that stayed in place long enough for me to get some great shots. I will be putting the raven on a box soon.
Taken with my HS10. Click on the images to see them larger. I uploaded them at 50% of the original size.

Then just because it made me smile, this is what the Turnip did Sunday after Michael grilled turkey burgers for dinner.

Coffee and family

Above is a photo I took today. 

Today my family and I went out to Palmer, Alaska for a community supported agricultural open house event at the Matanuska Creamery. The Creamery of course sells milk to most of the grocery stores. The other things they make they just don't have in enough quantity to sell to the stores. Like flavored cheese curds, rich ice creams and a lovely not too sweet egg nog. Combined with the open house was a farmer's market with the last of the summer harvest, fresh eggs, and the bakery that makes the cinnamon rolls that the kids and I enjoy on market days during the summer. 

After that, we went into Palmer for their Christmas Colony celebration. Palmer is a small town, about 8-10 thousand people, and the Christmas Colony is a tradition there. There are always lots of things going on, but what I was primarily interested in was the craft fairs. We hit a couple. I had a nice conversation with Kellie of Fish Lips and Birds Teeth Studio. We also stopped and talked to Ember of Silver Bear Sundries. She was selling very pretty hand thrown cups, reasonably priced in lovely colors. We love our mismatched, locally made cups and we each got one. 

Then we hit Indian Valley Meats concession van for lunch. Reindeer stew, buffalo steak sandwiches, and reindeer sausage! Yum yum! 

At all our stops, various people were selling coffee from the Coffee Roastery but not the specific coffee I wanted. I love trying new coffees, but for every day drinking, I want one that I know and love. The Coffee Roastery makes one of my favorites. The Arctic Wolf blend. It's a dark roast and a very unlikely blend of beans but it's a bright, flavorful dark coffee that's very smooth and very good.

So on the way home, we stopped by the Roastery.

If you're EVER in Palmer, or even in Anchorage and have a rental car, I think it's worth the trip.

We got there, and it looked all closed for the day. There was a man putting garbage into his truck. I stopped and told him the truth "I'm desperate to buy a couple lbs of Arctic Wolf." and he said "Come on in."

So we pulled up next to the main building, and I got out of the car and went in. In there, freezers lined the room, and the smell of coffee hit and covered me. I could taste it, breathe it, it was heaven.

While he put my coffee together, he told me the story of how that particular blend had come to be. I could tell you here, but I think it's more fun to hear it from Ron himself.

Then Ron said "Would you like to see the Roastery?" Oh.. would I? I love my coffee. Learning more about it? So after getting the rest of the family out of the car, we went into the Roastery.

His roastery is built out of railroad generator car with an addition built to it. He has 3 roasters, including a small one for a custom roasting experience. That's something I'd love to try, to make up a special roast for my friends.  

As we were leaving, he told us we could take some of the burlap bags. So you will see coffee bag crafts soonish in here since we have a surplus of bags now! Yay!

I'm home, enjoying a cup of my favorite coffee. It was simply a wonderful way to spend a day with my family.

Halloween boxes- 300 ppi

I keep forgetting to buy more ink for my printer and my test prints are getting some kooky colors now. So the printable mini witch hat I made will have to wait until I get more ink!

So today's printables are a tried and true template, I used the 300 ppi version because these have photos in them. They are both photos taken by me that I thought looked a bit Halloweenish. I hope you enjoy them!
The first one is raven. The second a full moon. Appropriate for the werewolf in your life!
Click on the images for the full sized versions.

Blank version to use at a place setting or something else.

The photos I used. These are at 50%, and the raven is grey scaled. Personal use only.

Shiny new camera

Recently I got a shiny new camera. I've been wanting one for ages (well, last summer?) that I could take pictures of eagles with because my little camera with it's 5x zoom couldn't get more than vaguely eagle colored blobs. I'll admit though, I know very little about the art of photography, aperture settings, ISOs and all that. But I wanted those eagle pictures.
It looked like an DSLR was the only way to go, but then hybrid cameras started coming out. The one I have is the Fujifilm FinePix HS10.
It's a reasonable price, the lens is all inclusive with 30x zoom so no lens changing to get a nice close up shot. The question becomes, will it work for taking pictures of eagles for someone is keeps mixing up what all those photographer commands do.


All of the following pictures were taken using the factory settings and auto-focus.







Well, we went out to where we saw the eagles nesting last summer. There were birds to be heard but none to see there but I took a couple pictures of the trees where the eagles were last year.

See the arrow? That's the tree the eagles nested in. This picture and the next were resized to 25 percent, but otherwise, I didn't muck with them at all.

And this is zoomed all the way. If an eagle were there, I think it would have shown up as an eagle. Not an eagle colored blob.

So, I'm impressed. Next question is how will it do for the pictures I need to take for my sites? Well, the current project on my beadwork site is a simple wire cage pendant.

This is using the flash from a few inches away.

This is simply the best camera I've ever had, and people who really know how to use all the functions are getting simply amazing shots, so it's a good camera for me to learn a lot more about photography with, but still usable while I learn more.

This loses a lot of detail in resizing. If you want to see the full sized picture that I took last night, click here.

Loving my new camera so much! I'm looking forward to lots of pictures this summer!