Under the heading of "art, life,"--and other craziness! Making videos...

Folding journals ARE fun to work in, and relatively fast to make...

They can be small, with only a few pages, like this one, or you can join multiple strips for a longer journal.

I am working on some new videos and images for a new project Danny Gregory's putting together--a new approach upcoming in the future.  Sounded like fun, and relatively easy--which it IS.  Or would be...

This illustration was from a nice, easy PDF a few years ago.  LOTS easier than doing a video, let me tell you!

But oh my, today was one of those days.  (Actually the last two I got off to him a couple of weeks ago were a bit problematical, too, since after multiple tries at sharing our Dropbox folders I ended up doing unlisted videos on YouTube for him to download...it worked, but it was a little less than smooth! )

Anyway, today we finally got a good day and enough time after our doctors' appointments this morning.  Got the table, my chair, lights, tripod, journals, cover boards, glue, stamps, etc. all corralled and ready to go...

And found that NEITHER of our printers is working, so I couldn't print out my script for video with the "starting a new journal" idea, so I decided fine, I'd just do the ones that I didn't need a script for.

And discovered the camera battery was dead.  Found another battery, got the first video almost done (on making covers for the zigzag journals) when Amazon delivered and banged on the door in the middle of videoing!  (Funny, can't say filming any more...or taping...) 

Soooo, starting over on that one, all worked fine this time, and I decided to do a couple of show-and-tell journal videos too, just showing the various techniques and images.  Everybody loves to browse someone else's journal, right?? 

Got done with the first one and the light's battery died just as I started the second.   I decided we were done for the day...

No, this wasn't today...things are quite a bit more complex now.  For one thing, my indoor cats are nosy!  This was the shed, a few years ago, in the winter.  Nice bounced light, though!

I'm putting both of them on YouTube as unlisted, again, and hope they work.  Been at 68% for well over an hour...

Babble babble...

And then, oops.  Watching the videos, I realized I did say "oh, bugger" in the first one, when something went wrong, completely forgetting in the UK that is a BAD word for a lady to be using.   I figure Danny can edit out or leave it, it doesn't bother me, but it might someone!

I hope to get more done tomorrow, and perhaps more smoothly since surely we've worked the bugs out now and I don't feel quite so inept.  Knock wood.  Fingers crossed...

So for those who say it looks so easy, or who ask me why don't I do a video on this, or that, or more of them, or more often...maybe not.

Oh, yeah, I mentioned my YouTube video on making one-page folding journals and that I'd provide a link--that's here in case you'd like to see it again: https://youtu.be/CffQyRdTDUc

Observations from Nature--Being There

For some time, I've been writing my Dayspring observations and sharing them daily on Facebook...for five years now.  Joseph and I ring our small gong and then drum together to greet the new day, then I settle in with a cup of hot tea and my journal to see what unfolds.

My beloved husband says those observations too need sharing...and so here is this morning's...

A flock of noisy crows converge on the hill above the Smallwood--are they mobbing their ancient enemy the owl, or merely discussing avian politics?  I wish I could fly to them and ask what's up, the loud caw caw caw CAW goes on and on, for maybe 10 minutes!

And now I find it was not the owl, it was the red-shouldered hawk, who finally has had quite enough of that cacophanous harassment and streaks off screaming invective, escorted by a pair of corvids.  The rest fall silent, mission accomplished--they move on to the next challenge.

Mission accomplished--or is it!?  Now the hawk returns, screaming defiance--once the crows have moved on.

Farm Life, and Memories...

 

Another find I didn't know I still had--carbon copies of dozens of articles written in the 70s, our farm years, in the hope of earning part of our living from my writing. Some of it is tripe--trying for a "voice" that might appeal to the then-market of back-to-the-land hippie types, going for "down-home common folk"...what my dad would have called a "shit-kickin' country girl"--and a little of it is damn good. Not fakey, not fooling anybody either, not trying to be someone I wasn't...more like the honest farm diary I never actually kept.

But I guess I did. I had just hoped to share it with a larger audience.

 Almost none of it reached publication. A few articles in the Mother Earth News, a few accepted by but never published in Natural Lifestyles and other alternative publications. (Some published but never paid for, another source of anxiety. I remember all too well those long walks to the mailbox, hoping against hope for that promised $30 check...and the long walk back, in tears of frustration. We were more broke than I ever hope to be again...)

Reading one written during our third winter brought a different kind of tears to my eyes--we were exhausted but learning what farm life is really like. HARD. Demanding. Responsible. Beautiful. Eternal. Deeply satisfying.

And the writing is pretty good, too.

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This showed up in my Facebook memories today...and I thought I'd share.  Life.  That's what this blog is about, really...