Conduit Trellis Frames

We got our trellis frames up!  I spent the longest time trying to figure out how to do these, and it turned out to be super easy.



We used electrical conduit (EMT).  It turns out that 1/2" conduit will fit inside 3/4" conduit, so we have 1/2" bars across the top with bends that fit into the 3/4" uprights, which fit into the 1" PVC pipe bolted to the sides of the boxes.  No connectors needed. 

I thought we were going to have to do some complicated measuring and calculating to get the bends the right distance apart, but then I found this video.  You just make one bend, figure out where the outside of the leg on the second bend needs to be, mark it, and line that up with the star point on the bender.  I was able to do it all myself (with a little help from Doug to hold the first leg perpendicular to the ground while I bent the second one up to match).  Snap!  It was really fun how quickly they went together.  (We did end up having to buy our own bender, so hey, if anyone needs any conduit bent, let me know!)



I got this netting, which turned out to be just barely long enough for our four boxes. It's fastened to the frames with zip ties. 



One month after transplanting. We're having a  warm summer and the plants are loving it.  If they keep growing at this rate they're going to max out those trellises before the end of the season.  (That's lettuce and basil in there too.  Yum!)

Trek Flag (and the Really Big Stamp)

Our stake is doing Trek this year (pioneer reenactment, complete with handcarts), and I was asked to help make a flag.  They had the logo ready, and wanted it blown up and transferred onto fabric.  I was pretty much given free rein in exactly how this was to be accomplished, so I decided to break out the craft foam and make a stamp.  I've done a lot of these but never one of quite this magnitude before.  It's about 18 inches high.

I traced the design onto craft foam and then spent a day cutting out all the pieces.  (Andy was a little too interested in the letters and kept putting them back in the negative cut-out.)  I got a big piece of clear plastic (Hobby Lobby has them in the stained glass section), and glued the pieces to that.  I wanted a clear background so I could place the stamp more accurately, and re-align if I needed to stamp the image more than once.



Today I cleared off the kitchen table and did the stamping.  It's on two pieces of fabric so they can be sewn together back-to-back for a double-sided flag. I applied acrylic paint to the stamp with a brayer, positioned it on the fabric, and hand-pressed it all over. 



On the second side, I mixed some Golden Open Medium with the paint, and it came out a lot darker.  So then I went back and printed the first side again.  (Good thing I had that clear background--I was able to line it up just fine.)

The verdict: it won't replace silk screening, but if you're going for that printed flour sack look, it works pretty well!

Teacher Papercuts

Kate on Optimism

"Half empty is better than half full. You know why? Because half full means you press the button on the soda machine and fill up your cup half way, and then you only have half a cup of soda to drink. But half empty means you press the button on the soda machine and fill up your cup all the way, and then you DRINK HALF OF IT!"

Garden Boxes

We have garden boxes! I've been planning these since last year. It's been quite an involved process, figuring out what we needed and collecting materials and getting everything put together.



Our first box (upside down). I got the corner posts drilled by two people in our ward who have drill presses (Brother Hill let me operate it myself, which was kind of fun.)



Dean Simmons came over one Saturday morning and spent a few hours helping us assemble boxes. HUGE help. (I was short on washers, so we didn't quite get everything together, but I was able to finish most of it on my own after this.)



Once the boxes were put together, I had to dig out the spots for them. I found an old Douglas Fir stump just below ground level. It was very rotten and soft, so I just hacked it with the shovel and got a lot of it out. (Hacking stumps is fun--it's therapeutic!)



Digging the spot for the last box.   Our best sun is along the south edge of the yard, right by the neighbor's driveway.  (We left the Red Hot Poker plant in the middle, because we like it.)



Two cubic yards of garden soil in our driveway. (On a cool and misty Garbage Day morning.) We didn't actually need the full two yards but they wouldn't deliver less than that. I got the 50/50 garden soil mix from McClain Soil Supply.  I did find a lot of foreign bits of shredded plasticky stuff in the dirt, and even a couple of pieces of broken glass, so I can't really vouch for the overall quality, but the plants do seem happy with it.



First plant in the ground!



Our four boxes all in a row, with tomato plants. Yay!  Big job.   I learned some things, and got to use power tools.  Lots of hard work, lots of two-shower days.    The white pipes on the sides are to hold trellis frames.  I haven't gotten those made yet.  (I need to find someone who can bend EMT conduit to specified dimensions.)

I was hoping to have this all done by the beginning of May, but hey, it's done, and we'll have it for next year.  And it's awesome. 



Baby pictures!  The Chocolate Cherry had me worried for a bit (it kept going droopy), but it has rallied nicely.  All plants are happy and growing well. 

I won't be able to grow twelve tomato plants every year, because of soil rotation needs, but we're just going crazy with them this year.  We may have tomatoes before August.  Can't wait! 

Green Sea Studios

Announcing the new home of my digital designs: Green Sea Studios!

I've been working on this for quite a while, but thought today would be a nice day to officially launch. May 5th is a special day for me--it's Children's Day in Korea, and the day that I first arrived in Korea (in 1992), and the day that I found out I was pregnant with Andy (in 2007).

It's been quite a while since I've focused heavily on designing, but I do have lots of ideas for more things that I'd like to create.  (That's always the problem, isn't it--so many ideas, so little time!)  I imagine I'll be adding things as I go.  For now, I wanted to have a place to make my products available again, as I do still get people asking about them every once in a while.  Maybe I'll even do some more scrapping, myself!

Spring Squares

Quick papercut this morning.

Tomato Shelf

Doug made me this great little shelf so I can fit twice as many tomato plants in the window. I love it.

I have plants at all different stages, since I had a few varieties that had a little trouble the first time. (My first batch of Amazon Chocolate seeds didn't germinate at all!) We're working on getting some raised bed garden boxed put together for outside.

Every time I cut into a store-bought tomato I think, "Just a few more months!"

Spring Fair and Korean Barbecue

The Spring Fair is like the State Fair's smaller, cheaper, less-crowded younger sibling. (Where parking is much less of a hassle!) We went last year and enjoyed it, so thought we'd go again.

We took along Kate's slushie cup (which is a couple of years old now), and they gave us a free refill. Nice!



A lot of the things that we particularly enjoyed last time were not there this year, but we still had a good time. Doug and Andy found a belt with the Greek alphabet on it, so Andy had to read it.




Andy is tall enough to ride the ferris wheel. (Which we knew, since he did it last year, but the ticket-taker wanted to check!)



Kate on the ferris wheel.



We had a coupon deal for six rides, so we were going to just do the ferris wheel and then have the kids pick out one more ride each, but we ended up getting to ride the ferris wheel free (since the ticket-taker guy was having trouble with his scanner, and we waited nicely for a few minutes), so we got a few more rides. Andy and Kate both went on the carousel, and then Andy dragged me over to this balloon ride. 






Ice cream tastes better if you close your eyes.



We ended up watching this Dock Dogs competition for a while. I didn't even know this was a thing! It was pretty fun to watch--the dogs were obviously having a great time. They jump off the dock into a pool, going for distance. They said the record is something like 25 feet.



We met Anne Marie Corey and her daughter Kaela at Palace Korean Grill for dinner. Kaela has gotten interested in Korean dramas and K-Pop, so we wanted to go get some food.



Naeng Myun!

It occurred to me after the fact that we could have gone to a different place that does the barbecue on the not all-you-can-eat model, which would have been cheaper. (It was yummy, though... and I was very full!) Next time, kimchi jjigae!

Eraser Dragons

Kate's been making these out of kneaded eraser.

Painting Roméo et Juliette

The latest set! I've been super busy painting for Tacoma Opera's production of Charles Gounod's Roméo et Juliette.  Set design by Director Noel Koran, built and assembled by the fabulous and hard-working Tony Hall, painted by me (in various locations!)  We took some details from this building in Verona which is supposedly Juliette's house.  The curvy-pointy shapes along the top are from there.  (I'm not sure what they are.  Chimneys?)  



The pieces were too big to fit in the rehearsal space at the Armory, so I did most of the painting in a warehouse in Lakewood. (The opera has a storage trailer down there, and Mountain Moving had some space that we could use.)



It was probably a bit closer than driving downtown, which worked out well for me, but it was also pretty cold in there, and on gray rainy days it was a little harder to find the motivation to go paint. (My coat has a lot more paint on it now. I guess I have a painting coat.)  This was also my first time doing two shows back-to-back, which proved to be a little harder than I was anticipating.  There's a lot of running-on-adrenaline, especially at the end, and it's not easy to pick up immediately and start doing it all over again.



(Taken with the timer on my camera, which I hardly ever use.)



This was my first show at the Pantages theater. It's a lot nicer to work in than the Rialto. For one thing there's actually a backstage entrance, so you don't have to carry everything in through the front. And there's a nice big shop area right behind the stage. (I understand they did some remodeling recently and changed things around--I hadn't been in there before.)



It turned out my stucco effect was a bit too subtle, so I got to add a bunch of splattery shading to everything. And some of the seams were too visible, so we gaff taped those and then I had to blend them in, too.



We had work call every day at 2:00, but I was able to go in early and work on my own stuff (as long as it didn't involve ladders) by myself. (Which made for some very long days. Doug got to pick up all the slack at home.)



Wolfgang (Pantages dog). The stage crew there is just awesome. They have a great relationship with the opera people.



During rehearsal.



Director Noel staples up some greenery. The balcony is the same one that we used for The Barber of Seville. Tony made that front panel out of pink insulation foam.  (The tall brown columns were already painted from a previous show--I didn't do those.)



I painted the bricks while everything was down at the warehouse, but it turned out that the panel was upside-down, so once they got it set up the shading on the bricks was wrong. (Aargh!) They were pretty near the bottom of the priority list, but I did manage  to get them touched up before the performance. (Also added  more contrast and color, as they were rather muted. In this picture I had done the bottom set of bricks but not the top one yet.)

The doors were a fun touch.  They're just regular panel doors, and we faced them with luan that I painted to look like wood, and we added the big black strap hinges.  I drew a pattern for those and Tony cut them out of luan.



The painting paraphernalia.  

My comp tickets were originally for the dress rehearsal on Wednesday. (Anne Marie was going to go with me, but got sick.) I ended up not going, as I was there painting till 5:45, rushed home to eat dinner and change, and decided it just wasn't going to happen. I stayed home and crashed. Friday I went back in for a few hours and finished up some of the shading on the upper walls, and that other patch of bricks.  I got everything cleaned up and hauled back over to the Armory, and had a few hours before the evening's performance.



(Photo by Peter Serko, from dress rehearsal).

I went to opening night with Erin Guinup.  It was lovely.  (And sad--we all know how it ends!)  The costumes were amazing and the whole performance was just really well done.  It's cool to see how to look of the set changes with the different lighting.  

This was a definitely a challenge (and not just because my kids kept getting sick!) but very rewarding.  I hope I get to keep working with Tacoma Opera in the future.  It's really is a fabulous experience. 

Time out for Easter

Easter Sunday fell on General Conference weekend. We're used to that happening every so often. This year it also happened to coincide with theater load-in weekend for the opera, which meant things were pretty crazy. So we didn't really do anything for Easter aside from the neighborhood egg hunt.



Andy was intrigued to discover that the eggs had candy in them, but he wasn't interested in running around and trying to pick up as many as possible. (Unlike his sister, who was!)



While we were waiting at the park for the hunt to start, Kate excitedly announced, "I like pretty much any holiday that involves traditional activities!"  That about covers it!

If you know the Gounod

I'm currently working on set painting for Tacoma Opera's production of Roméo et Juliette. Progress has been a bit choppy--largely because people keep getting sick--but it's coming along! Theater load-in is next weekend.

There's a Tchaikovsky Romeo and Juliet that's pretty well known, but that's a ballet. Anne Marie asked me who the composer of this one was, and I said, "I don't remember--not someone I'm familiar with. I think it starts with a G. Or maybe a C." She looked it up on her phone and said, "Oh, Charles Gounod! I know him."

Later I was checking out the Wikipedia article and realized that I know him too.  Or at least one of his works.   He wrote the Ave Maria that's superimposed over Bach's Prelude No. 1.  The Barra MacNeils have an especially lovely version on their second Christmas album.  It's the first song on Kate's bedtime playlist, and we've been hearing it every night for years. 

Years ago I ran across this video of Bobby McFerrin and was absolutely enchanted.  I had to go look it up again after I made the connection.



I can't help but think what a transcendent experience it must have been to be in that audience. I've always loved the bit at a concert where the performer will stop singing and let the audience carry the song for a while. It creates a brief feeling of connection that always gets me a bit emotional. (I remember being at a concert in Bannerman Park in St. John's Newfoundland, sitting on the grass in the twilight, softly singing "Sonny's Dream" along with all the other concert-goers, and getting positively teary-eyed. And I don't even like that song.)

Bobby McFerrin does some amazing stuff.  This video is fabulous as well. Both entertaining and astonishing.



My mind is blown.

Training Chopsticks

I got these for Kate a while back, and I've been wanting to get a picture. (They're cute! And pink!) At this point I'm not sure if they'll really help her learn how to use regular chopsticks, but we shall see.



She wanted to get some pho. That's my girl!