Let's Go Fly A Kite

This is where I was hoping to fly a kite on the Texas City dike. This sandbar off to the left of the dike road would have been great. Unfortunately the winds were gusting above 25 mph which is what the kite manufacturer said was the upper limit. My car is parked off in the distance. I collected a few shells today. Lots of laughing gulls were flying by. I got real close to four sanderlings. I wondered why they flew off so suddenly. Then I saw the wave coming at me and I understood.

I took off my sandals and put on socks and my rubber boots. I intended to walk 45 minutes up one side of the dike road and 45 minutes down the other side of the dike road. This pier has 4 boards missing.

This bird was on my way back. I could not identify it. My camping friend, Cathy, said she thinks it is a greater or lesser yellow legs. She could be right. She is an excellent birder.

I think these are shrimping boats. There are nets hanging off the back of them. I saw one man cast a net from shore. I talked to one sweet lady for 45 minutes! She told me about her life. She has caught hammer head sharks, white tipped reef sharks and one other kind that I can't remember. Someday she and her husband and brother will rent a guided boat and fish for the big fish like sailfish or tuna. She has a brother named Leslie and a crabby sister named Stormy which I thought was funny. She has a 32 year old daughter. Hold up I said. I thought you were 32. She liked to hear that. She is 52. She got a cancer in her 40's. After the first treatment she was in menopause but she is healthy now. She started painting with acrylics. I told her I think I go to the Dollar Store too much. She goes to the Dollar Store near her employment twice a day to buy more craft supplies. She wants to do mosaics. Now her 7 year old step son paints too. She was raised to be a Mormon. She was told to stay in the kitchen, cook, clean, or listen to the radio in her bedroom. She did not like that. Her father let her ride with him on the brush cutter on the ranch and she liked that. I told her I bought a kite. She asked where. I told her where. She said she shouldn't go there. She just bought a drone. She could handle the in the house. She took it outside and off the drone went down in the tall grass of the neighbor's pasture. She called the neighbor to ask permission to enter but they didn't pick up so she had to crawl over the fence to get it. She likes to watch fishing shows set in Alaska. I said I went to Alaska last year. I told her about the state trains and how luxurious they are. She likes trains too. She has never traveled outside of the state of Texas. Wow. She said she got real close to the border with Louisiana once but did not cross the line. This lady was a hoot and a half!

Then I drove down to the end of the dike hoping to see more dolphins. The guy next to me thought he had a fish but actually he was hooked on a rock. I saw pelicans of both colors, lots of gulls and terns, but zero on the dolphins. When goose bumps formed on my bare legs I climbed down off these giant pink granite boulders and got back in my car. I planned to be home by 5:30 and I arrived 15 minutes late. This was still a good day.

 

Lollipop Ride

On Saturday I wanted to enjoy the day and focus on myself. So I treated myself to a motorcycle trip. If you picture Highway 47 as a stick and Mille Lacs Lake as a round piece of hard candy, then you can imagine my lollipop ride. The stick meets the candy in Isle. Along Highway 47 I saw a bald eagle, a family of sandhill cranes dancing in an almost dry pond, and a flock of turkey vultures circling above a bog. Vultures are one of the few birds that have a sense of smell. The flock of vultures numbered about 30 so something in that bog must have been making a big stink. I nearly had the road to myself except for the stretch between Isle and Garrison. I took the south shore scenic drive where the speed limit is 40 and the new road is as smooth as a baby's butt. The scenic drive takes you right to the edge of the lake. For awhile, I kept pace with a pair of jet skiers heading counter clockwise around the lake. I decided to go counter clockwise so I could be closer to the lake as I traveled. After Garrison, I had the road to myself again. I'm not sure how long it took me to travel around the lake but I know it felt too short considering I couldn't even see all the way across the lake. Soon I was in Isle again. I stopped in town to get some tea. Next to the coffee shop was a yarn shop. I was good. I didn't buy anything. I have to stick to finishing one project before buying the goods for the next project. But they sure had nice yard there. I spoke with the owner as I admired the yarn. She had one display of yarn from her own flock of sheep. She has started out with 4 Shetland sheep and now has a flock of 40. She said the sheep give her and her husband plenty to talk about. She talked about Freckles, one of the original four sheep. She held up a cream colored skein of yarn from Freckles as she spoke about Freckle's personality - assertive and a very attentive mother. Freckles generally has one lamb per year. Then she picked up a gray skein of yarn from Speck, Freckle's daughter, also assertive but not as attentive of a mother. Speck generally had twins who would wander away from her and cry out. Speck didn't go to them when they cried. She waited for them to find her. I thought it was awesome that she had undyed yarn from each sheep on separate shelves. The yarn felt creamy like there was still lanolin embedded in the fibers. Then I looked at the price. $22 per skein?! Awesome, but not $22 worth of awesome. I might go back there someday if and when I finish the sweater I'm working on. Saturday was a great day for a ride in the country.

Table Part 1

I just finished a project today that I started the day after Thanksgiving. I have truly enjoyed this task. I spent many happy hours absorbed on this little table. I was so absorbed I would loose all sense of time. The table belonged to my son - a gift from his Grandmother. Originally it was a blond wood coffee table, about 2 feet square and a foot high. I can picture it being a popular item back in the 1950's. Although uglynow, the table was in good shape. Someone tried to stain it darker but the stain didn't take over the varnish. I decided to add a glass mosaic design. This fall I took a community education glass on glass mosaic. I sanded down the table and painted the legs and rim with a glossy black paint. I chose a design I found on the Internet. To fill the space on the table top, I had to enlarge the design. I drew a grid on my design and another grid on a large piece of blank newsprint I had laying around. I copied the design, grid by grid, onto the larger piece of paper.

Table Part 2

Once the design was enlarged on the paper, I had to transfer it to the table top. The outer circle was the easy part and I traced the circle with a blue shapie pen. I cut each shape, piece by piece, and traced each individual shape, working from the outside of the pattern into the inside. As I worked the pattern on the paper got smaller and smaller. I had small shapes of paper all over the floor. After the design was put on the table, I could begin the glass cutting and fitting. Cutting glass got easier with practice. I had a scoring tool to scrape a line into the glass. With a running pliers, I could squeeze the pliers over the scored line and "plink!" the glass would split right down the line I made. That "plink" didn't happen a lot at first because I didn't score it correctly. With practice I got better at scoring. I cut many, many pieces of glass and fit them into the design. I cut the glass on a towel and tried to keep the glass in one place. Yeah, that didn't work so well. Pieces of glass flew around the kitchen. I'd sweep up the pieces of glass and use the larger pieces and throw away the slivers. I cut my hands many times. In fact, my towel is spotted with blood stains. Glass is sharp but it doesn't really hurt much. On some of the larger sections of the design I chose to use a single piece of glass. On the rest I fit them in as best I could staying within the lines. I would cut a pile of glass pieces, put them on a paper plate, and glue them down with silicon glue. Eventually I found that I could do this part the best in natural daylight. I spent hours finding just the right shapes. Sometimes I needed long and straight pieces. Other spots required a curve to the right or a 35 degree angle. Toward the end of my mosaic placing, I started thinking of the shapes as states. "An Idaho would be perfect right here. I need a Tennessee shape or a small California. " Placing and gluing was one of my favorite parts of the project. I was disappointed in the outer ring which is a beautiful purple band of glass. Once the purple glass was glued down on the table, the purple is barely distinguishable from the black, unless the sun is shining right on it. After the inner design was done, I struggled with the background. Should I make it black or red or purple or a mixture of several colors? After placing pieces of all my colors of glass, I chose to go with the olive green background. I wanted to distinguish the background from the pattern my using random shapes of broken glass instead of small squares and triangles. This was a fun part. I wrapped the spare green pane of glass in a towel, put a pliers under it, and struck the glass with a hammer, shattering it. Wow, was that fun. I fit the largest pieces in first and then the smaller shapes. I didn't have quite enough of that color. My supplier was out of the color. They could order more but there is no telling if it would match the glass I had. I chose to leave larger spaces between the pieces, further distinguishing it from the center pattern where the glass pieces are close together. Once the background was glued down, it was time to grout. I used black sand grout and I followed the directions on the package. If I was to do this again, I would plan to do it in the summer because mixing and adding grout makes a huge mess. I rubbed the grout into all the spaces, let it dry for 20 minutes, and wiped off the excess with rags.