FLIP FLOP monkey...double click.

My friend, Marian, made this chair.
She's a star!

double click

SPRING LIME TEA COOKIES

Ingredients

• 2 teaspoons lime juice
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 3/4 cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 teaspoons lime zest
• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 tablespoons lime juice
• 1/4 cup white sugar

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Combine the 2 teaspoons of lime juice with the milk, let stand for 5 minutes.
2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and 3/4 cup sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg, then stir in the lime zest and milk mixture. Combine the flour, baking powder and baking soda, blend into the creamed mixture. Drop by rounded spoonfuls onto the ungreased cookie sheets.
3. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, until the edges are light brown. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheets for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
4. To make the glaze, stir together the remaining lime juice and sugar. Brush onto cooled cookies.

What Came to Me
by Jane Kenyon
I took the last dusty piece of china out of the barrel. It was your gravy boat, with a hard, brown drop of gravy still on the porcelain lip. I grieved for you then as I never had before.

head held high

Always act like you're wearing an invisible crown. ~Author Unknown

Late February

by Ted Kooser

The first warm day,

and by mid-afternoon

the snow is no more

than a washing

strewn over the yards,

the bedding rolled in knots

and leaking water,

the white shirts lying

under the evergreens.

Through the heaviest drifts

rise autumn’s fallen

bicycles, small carnivals

of paint and chrome,

the Octopus

and Tilt-A-Whirl

beginning to turn

in the sun. Now children,

stiffened by winter

and dressed, somehow,

like old men, mutter

and bend to the work

of building dams.

But such a spring is brief;

by five o’clock

the chill of sundown,

darkness, the blue TVs

flashing like storms

in the picture windows,

the yards gone gray,

the wet dogs barking

at nothing. Far off

across the cornfields

staked for streets and sewers,

the body of a farmer

missing since fall

will show up

in his garden tomorrow,

as unexpected

as a tulip.

I knew a clean man
but he was not for me.
Now I sew green aprons
over covered seats. He

wades the muddy water fishing,
falls in, dries his last pay-check
in the sun, smooths it out
in Leaves of Grass. He's
the one for me.

~ Lorine Niedecker

My sister Susan's
Mangos on a grill

art: s.wray, scraffito

photo:e.bouman

Water

Before I was born I was water.
I thought of this sitting on a blue
chair surrounded by pink, red, white
hollyhocks in the yard in front
of my green studio. There are conclusions
to be drawn but I can't do it anymore.
Born man, child man, singing man,
dancing man, loving man, old man,
dying man. This is a round river
and we are her fish who become water.

~ Jim Harrison

If worrying were an Olympic sport, you'd get the gold for sure. ~Stephenie Geist

In Several Colors

Every morning, cup of coffee
in hand, I look out at the mountain.
Ordinarily it's blue, but today
it's the color of an eggplant.

And the sky turns
from gray to pale apricot
as the sun rolls up
Main Street in Andover

I study the cat's face
and find a trace of white
around each eye, as if
he made himself up today
for a part in the opera.

"In Several Colors," by Jane Kenyon, from Otherwise (Graywolf Press).

Branches


The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
Albert Einstein

...more branches

Spring is near...time for a little yarn bombing!

How to Remove a Stripped Screw - GMC Trade Secrets
click on this ^

photo: e.bouman, Johnny

a movie of you running toward me

if I could I would turn my bicycle
into a movie projector

I would reel the film around the front tire
and back onto the rear tire

and pedal so fast that I would keep
the light mounted on the frame burning

I would do all I could to stay steady
over the sidewalk cracks and curbs

to keep the movie of you running toward me
splashed on buildings and sky

if I could turn my bicycle
into a movie projector

if I could pedal this moment into forever
and pedal and pedal it into forever again

~ Denver Butson

so annoyed by the "ads" on my slide show here. Anyone know of a better one without pop ups?

If you are lucky enough
to live by water
you are lucky enough.

"I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade. It's amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and scrub the floor." ~D.H. Lawrence








photos: e.bouman

Or go take pictures of Seattle skies and run a load of Tang though the dishwasher.

Sumi Jo - "I Dreamt I Dwelt In Marble Halls"

“I like all the chairs to talk to one another and to the sofas and not those parlor-car arrangements that create two Siberias.”

Mario Buatta

photo:e.bouman, Ray and Pika

Well, here we are just about the same,

Foggy little fella, drowsy little dame.

Two sleepy people by dawn's early light,

And too much in love to say goodnight

by Hoagy Carmichael, Frank Loesser

Last day of symbol design/printmaking.These kids were great! Lots of fun and learning.

photo: e.bouman

Build a snow wall . Firmly pack snowballs on top of one another to form a wall of snow. Keep track of how long it takes the wall to melt completely.

Backtrack in the snow. Make a line of shoe or boot tracks in a deep snow. Then try to step backward into each foot print without falling down or making a new print.

“In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

Orson Welles, The Third Man

photo:e.bouman, Burke Museum

Beauty is not caused. It is."

~Emily Dickinson

Good to read this again as today I lead 60 sixth graders in a printmaking project at a local elementary school.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us most. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and famous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in all of us. And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
Maryanne Williamson ~

Used by Nelson Mandela in his 1994 inaugural speech

"It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all"
Denis Diderot~1713-1784

photo: Susan Wray

December

by Luci Shaw

A forty-eight hour fall with more to come.
Our life suspended. The flakes, heavy and

discrete, rise on roof and rail to loaves of snow.
The generous sky breeds a pearly light

with no shadow. We up the heat against
the forecast's drop. Voices on the phone agree,

It's beautifully dangerous. Stay home.
Somewhere the repeated, muted sound—

a shovel shifting from a sidewalk
its soft, square load.

I see all kinds of little men
Although they're never there
I tried to push a subway train
And poured whiskey in my hair
I'm a gal who blew a fuse, I've got those blowtop blues!