Saturday, October 12, 2024

Autumn Leaves

 Hi everyone. Happy weekend.  To those of you in Canada, I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving weekend. And if you're in the US, I hope you get a long weekend for Indigenous People (Columbus) Day on Monday to enjoy. 

     Today I have  photos of autumn color to share with you. These first few are from our recent Quebec trip and are taken in Gaspe National Park. The interesting thing about the Gaspe Peninsula is that you have the ocean or St. Lawrence River and then just a few miles inland you have 4,000 foot mountains in the Northern end of the Appalachian Mountain Range. In a few spots there are mountains right at the waterline.

These first few not only have some pretty autumn colors, but also have some cool low clouds.


A few of these photos are from the road, and I included the road because I think it helps add some scale.




These next photos also have some pretty color and are also of some 4,000 foot mountains in the Appalachian chain.  These were taken  several days later at the very end of our trip, as we drove down through Franconia Notch in my home state of New Hampshire on our way home.






     I think the color was just a tad bit more in Franconia Notch, and that was probably for 2 reasons. One, it was a few days later than our being in Gaspe National Park, and two, these mountains are not as close to any large water body (the ocean or St. Lawrence River) as Gaspe National Park is. That water definitely has some  temperature tempering, although  much of the leaf color change comes from the amount of daylight not temperature. Or it could just be that there are fewer evergreens in this area also.

     Today would have been my mother's 95th birthday. Funny, my brother and I were talking, and he always feels sadder on the day each of my parents passed, and I always feel their loss on their birthdays. I'm just going to have to find something fun to do today like make and then have a slice of chocolate cake which was my mother's favorite. 😀

    Enjoy the start to your weekend. 


Friday, October 11, 2024

Friday Art

    Hi everyone. Happy Friday. The other day I was digging up a lot of my tall phlox plants out of one of my gardens and moving them to a different spot. These plants just got too big where they were. Well in the process I got a nasty kink in my back, so what I hoped to have finished by now, didn't get finished. However, after a few days of not stressing my back, it is feeling great again, so hopefully I can get out and finish moving those phlox plants today. Keep your fingers crossed  that the nasty kink in my back doesn't return. 😏

     My journal pages today are  a spread from my Harvest journal. I've shown you several pages from that project, but there's still some I haven't shared.  Today's spread has an autumn theme so I'll be linking it up to Alison's Fall Colors and Inspiration at Art Journal Journey.


     I had this photo in my stash, and I think it's a riot.  It was black and white and I added just a bit of color. I also mounted it on some black paper and then on a scrap of handmade paper someone gifted me. I don't remember who it was, but thank you if you know it was you. 

     On the left side I die cut the scale. I don't use this die and embossing folder often, and I almost purged it. I'm glad I held onto it because it works well here. I also die cut the big pumpkin. The sparkling trophy was also in my stash.

     The background was made with a numbers stencil, some ink pads, some tissue paper and also some paint. I finally finished the page with the orange ric-rac since I thought the left side needed a bit of orange to match all the orange on the right. 

    I am also linking my page up to Creative Artiste Mixed Media for their challenge number #109, and because it's Friday, I'll also be joining Gillena for her Friday Lunch Break. I'm saving the last installment of my art walk for next week when Nicole is back hosting Friday Face Off, so if you were looking for it, you'll have to wait just a little bit longer.

    And did anyone (in the Northern Hemisphere) see the northern lights last night? My friend texted at about 7:30  and mentioned they were already putting on a show. Wow! It was exciting. I love how my photos even picked up the stars that were out also. 



     And if there weren’t so many trees I bet the view would have been even more spectacular.  







Have a great start to your weekend everyone.





 

Thursday, October 10, 2024

Thursday Art

 Hi everyone. Happy Thursday to you. 

      Today I'm back with some art. I have a journal page for both Alison's Autumn  Colors and Inspiration challenge at Art Journal Journey and  for the as always Anything Goes challenge at Creative Artiste Mixed Media Challenge. This is challenge #109 at Creative Artiste's Mixed Media challenge. I also have a tag for Tag Tuesday where Valerie is hosting with a theme of Seasons.

     First here's a journal page that is in my autumn journal that I made last month. It's a bit of a junk journal, but I'm very happy with it.


     I started my page with some various papers as well as some brown watercolor paint. The papers were layered, and the watercolor paint was added at the top right to fill in some space. I then added the 2 strips of washi tape, the left one is the wider brown with polka dots and the right one is the tiny arrows on the very edge of the page. I used a paper film frame I had around the birds face, and I added a scrap lace that was sitting on my table down at the bottom. 

     I then cut an already decorated tag out of a sheet of paper and added that. I thought the yellow flowers and the bee looked quite like autumn. To the top of the tag I added a little metal screw and a bit of the brown watercolor paint I used on my page just to link those 2 parts together. Then I added 3 metal pins/buttons that I've had for way too long in my stash. I also added a clear fall maple leaf as well as a medal sweetheart word which came from a TH set that I found back in the summer in a mark down pile.

    I finished my page by spraying some orange paint over it.

    And here's my tag for Valerie's tag challenge.


      I found this penguin image and decided that Valerie's challenge would be a great place to use it. After all, many penguins live where it is winter-like most  or all of the year.

     I inked my tag with blue and grey ink, and then I painted some snow and ice at the bottom. I added the penguin (I love how he is so big), and then I added this little snowflake. I dressed it up with a blue craft gemstone. Finally I stamped the yippee word because of course penguins love winter, but it's also cold, so I stamped the brrrr few random times.  I thought it needed to have a bit of motion to it, maybe there's some cold wind blowing, so you can see  it isn't straight or even. 

   That's all for me today. Have a great rest of your day.










Wednesday, October 9, 2024

September Books

    Hi everyone. Happy mid-week  to you.  I'm back today with my books for September, and that includes one that I started in August and finished in September. 


     My first listen for September was actually one I started in August, but never quite finished in time for last month's book post. This is the latest (actually quite new since it came out in July) release by Kate Quinn. I really liked the Rose Code by this author, and this book, set in the 1950's with the Korean War and McCarthy's communist witch hunt going on sounded like a good next read. And it even started with a murder. 

       Briar House is a woman's boarding house in Washington D. C. The woman who runs the house, Mrs. Nelson/Nielsen, is rather a cranky old crone. You learn about her in the first chapter through the eyes of her son, Pete. Then in most succeeding chapters you get to meet the other women of the house. In between, the house itself has chapters. I liked chapters where the house is speaking. I also liked the chapters about each woman. They are not all sweet ladies like the 1950's stereotypical betrayal of women. 

     It did take me a bit to get into this book, but I'm not sure why. I guess I was expecting more outright history rather than making it the background of the story.  Or maybe it was just starting the book with the crotchety  Mrs. Nelson/Nielsen. (Heavens, she is certainly not my namesake-grin.) As I read I kept wondering if we were going to hear/read her story to explain why she is as nasty as she is.  In fact, all the characters in the book have things about them you may not like, but most of them become more likable as you read more and realize they are only human and flawed like we all are.

     However once I got into this story, especially for the last several hours when more secrets about the tenants came out, the book became almost hard to turn off. In fact, the book was quite suspenseful at that point. And although not a murder mystery per se, I wondered who the killer was and what the story of the murder was.  The thread of the murder runs loosely throughout the whole book. As do interconnections between characters. I ended up liking this book quite a bit. I also really enjoyed the author's notes at the end, where she talks about how and what inspired her to write each part of this book.



     After finishing book 9 in the Maggie Hope  series  at the  very end of August, I jumped right into book 10. Maggie Hope is a British-American woman who started off as Winston Churchill's secretary and then became a British spy. After several harrowing events in the last 9 books, she had a chance to go to Los Angeles with her good friend Sarah. Sarah is a ballet dancer who's been scooped up by Hollywood. Maggie's former fiance John Sterling is a British pilot who is now making propaganda films with Walt Disney in LA also . However, John's actress fiancée has recently been murdered, so even though Maggie is away from the war and her spy career, she still has some sleuthing to do. 

     I didn't know  how prominent the KKK was and how much Nazi propaganda was in LA during the Second World War. I wish the author had started with her "notes" about this book's inspiration because until I jumped ahead and read that part, I really wasn't "getting" that part of the story. I could follow the story, but I thought it was a bit far fetched. Wasn't all of America United once we got into the war? OK, I knew about people like Charles Lindbergh, but I didn't realize how common those radical "white America" beliefs were. General history  has a way of smoothing out the rough edges of the story I guess. It's even sadder that there are still lots of overtones from this story today.

     As always with these books, there are lots of twists. I love how the characters continue on (so you must read these in order) because that makes their stories more complex. The author also sets up the next book a bit, which as far as I can tell will be the last one for Maggie Hope. It's on my list.

      

    It's been a few years since I listened to books 1 and 2 of this British mystery series by Susan Hill. It's a very good series  so I decided it was time to listen to book 3.

     In this volume, Simon, who is a police detective as well as an up and coming artist, starts the story by helping another community where first one child and then a second child have gone missing. Serrailler is on the case because of a missing child in his district of Lafferton, a case not yet solved even though it was recent and was the subject of book 2 in this series. Then there is a man who has lost his second wife to CJD (after losing his first to breast cancer). This man  is very distressed and has become unhinged. One of the events he is involved in is when he takes a female priest from the local church hostage in her home.

    Both of these stories are interwoven along with Serrailler's outside of work life. In the first 2 books you get to meet his sister (he is one of a set of triplets) as well her family. You also get a glimpse into Serrailler's art life too. Plus you follow some of the characters involved in these 2 main cases. I find it a little hard to describe this book without giving too much away so you'll have to take my word  that's it's a well done suspenseful story.  There's just a lot going on. 

    This series just gets better with each book, maybe because you get to know the characters so well. It's even  rather dark in spots. Steven Pacey narrated this mystery, and he does a great job especially in some very terrifying parts of this book. I think that's because he has a great voice for dark suspense and scary moments. 

     I enjoyed this book so much that when I finished it I then went on to listen to  the next book (#4) in series.



     A year has passed in the story since the end of book 3. Simon Serrailler has taken a new job as an investigator in a special police branch. His extended family is changing, and that is causing a lot of stress not just for Simon. Plus there is a killer on the loose, shooting women about to be married or women who are new brides. 

       I enjoy the depth these stories go into as well as how characters from past books return.  The author has no issue moving life along either, whether it's good or bad. It was easy to get emotionally tied up with the characters, and one part even brought me to tears. And there is a lot of suspense.  Who is killing the brides?  The author introduces the killer, but she doesn’t give enough details so you know who it is. 

      Stephen Lacey, the narrator, really built the suspense also. He's a great reader for this type of story. And these stories are just good mysteries. I was half tempted to move into the next book in this series when I finished this one (especially since I was having a hard time getting into a few other listens I tried), but  even though I didn't do that, I don’t plan on waiting another couple of years before getting back to them. 


    This book,Around the World in 80 Trains, was a definite change of pace from the Simon Serrailer mysteries.  The author, Monisha Rajesh, had done a train journey around India solo and wrote a book about it.  Although I hadn’t read that book, her second book (this one) came up on an Audible sale earlier this year and sounded interesting. This time Monisha is doing some world wide  traveling with her fiance Jem. They are taking trains everywhere on their journey except to cross oceans where there are obviously no tracks.

     Monisha's train trip started in Europe going from London across the English Channel through the Chunnel/Channel Tunnel. However, traveling in Europe didn't make much of this book until she and Jem were finally was on their way to Moscow. From Moscow the trip continued to Mongolia, China, Thailand, Cambodia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Japan, and then onto Canada and the US.  I know I left out a few other stops, but these are the big destinations where the author had the most interesting stories.

     This book is an interesting mix of (mostly) train stories and adventures from places where  the couple stopped and stayed for a few days.  Since the author is a journalist,  there are stories of the people she met along the way too. Some of those stories are more memorable than others. I especially liked the story of the survivor of both atomic bombs whose daughter she tracked down in Japan. 

     The one thing I found listening to this book is that the stories in Asia seemed much more upbeat and exciting than the stories from Canada and the US. I don't know exactly why that was. It could be that those Canada and US stories were about more (although not completely) "comfortable" train trips taken by vacationers  rather than people who used the train as part of their regular routine.

       I had a couple of  hours left to listen to when I went away to Quebec. I must admit that I lost interest in picking this book back up when I got home, so I didn't actually finish the book (at least yet). I'm including it here because I did listen to most of the book, and if I hadn't been distracted by a trip, I would have finished it. It's not a bad book by any means, but it wasn't gripping or pulling at me after a 9 day break. I added the author's India train trip book to my to-read list, and one day I might check it out when I don't have a trip planned.

    

      If I was to make a list of my top ever read books, this one, Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, would be on it.  It was my next read, actually maybe the fourth time (or is it the 5th time?) I've read or listened to this book in all my reading years.

       This is the story of Pip, and similar to all Dickens novels, it is full of wonderful and eccentric characters. These include Pip's sister (who brought him up by hand) and is only known as Mrs. Joe. You don't learn her actual name until almost the end of the novel. Her husband is Joe Gargery a blacksmith who truly cars for Pip but isn't a force next to his wife's character. There's also  the beautiful Estella (who Pip falls for) and of course, the woman still in her decades old wedding dress, now yellowed and practically rotting away, Miss Havisham. Estella is Miss Havisham's adopted daughter, and Miss Havisham is definitely anti-men, seeing she was left at the alter by a non-good person.  This no-good person even shows up later in the novel.  There are also escaped convicts including one named Magwitch who becomes a main character in Pip's life, and there's also  one of Pip's friends  who lives in a mini-castle and who shoots a cannon off at 9 each evening. Plus there’s graveyards, foggy marshes and also a prison ship that sits offshore in Pips’s hometown as well as many other interesting scenes too.

      Pip has expectations for his life, and he wants to be more than what life has dealt him so he’s off to London after coming into a chance to become more than Joe's blacksmith apprentice. Pip’s expectations are that he wants to be gentleman. But Pip learns a lot about people and life along the way.

    There are  boating scenes, scenes out in the marsh, London scenes and scenes in Miss Havisham's home. (And of course many others too.) I really liked the scary parts too, like the footsteps coming up the darkened stairway one night, or when Pip is taken prisoner out of the marsh paths. But this novel is not just frightening moments; it is a cleverly designed story where the characters you meet early on all come together in the end. 

      There's definitely a reason Dicken's books are still around. The man could write, even if his style is a bit wordy compared to what we mostly see today. And his stories, although set in Victorian England, are still so relatable.  But if you've read any Dickens you know all this. 😏



     If you've ever read any Erik Larson books you know he has  an easy to read style that takes you into the history of a time. His non-fiction stories usually highlight one or two people or events, but in the process, you learn a lot about the time period.  I find I always come out knowing many new things because he definitely makes the time of his story so alive.

     This book, Thunderstruck, took me back to the 1890's and into the  1910's just before the First World War. This time the main characters are Guglielmo Marconi, the man who discovered how to send information across distances without wire that led us to having radios, and Dr. Hadley Harley Crippen, who was involved in a notorious murder of his wife in England. He’s connected to Marconi as he was the first person to be captured using the wireless telegraph  waves that Marco I discovered.     

       Yet I also learned some things about spiritualism, King Edward VII, a scientist named Oliver Lodge who was a competitor of Marconi, the rise in popularity of over the counter medicines, medical practices,  and many other things that have a connection to this story but are not the main story.

       Guglielmo Marconi was a driven man, and the story of his wireless telegraph was interesting. The story was Dr. Crippen, the murder of his wife and his travel to Quebec with the woman he loved was even more interesting to me, but of course, I am a fan of murder mysteries. 

  My reading this book couldn't be timed any better as we came across the first lighthouse in Canada that was a Marconi station where Marconi tested out his wireless telegraph. 

 

  Along with the lighthouse, we visited the small city of Rimouski, where Dr. Crippen was captured.   Those were fascinating  unplanned connections.

     I finished this book early this month after I came home from my trip. I haven't read every book by this author, but the several I have read were all interesting. Although this wasn't my favorite Erik Larson book, it was definitely still a  very good read.


      That's it for me for this month's book post. As always, I love recommendations, but my to-read list is quite long now. And as always, thanks if you made it through this whole post. 



     





     




 

Monday, October 7, 2024

T Stands for My Trip North-Part 1-Maine

     Hi everyone. Happy new week to you. Today I'm linking up to Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog for T day. I've missed the last 2 week's of T Day as I was away. For those of you who haven't read about my travels, my husband, the dogs and I went on a giant road trip to the Gaspe Peninsula in Quebec, Canada.  It was a great trip, and my T day post today is about our first leg, which was all about a day and a half in Maine.

     In case you aren't familiar with any of the names I've used, here's a map.


The black dot with the black circle around it is home in New Hampshire (NH), and we traveled counter-clockwise around this red loop  over the 8 days we were gone.  (See the arrows  I added)

     Our first stop was Orono, Maine, which is where the University of Maine is located. This is where my husband and I met way back in our undergraduate college days. My first T day reference is here, because we went and had dinner at the only pizza place that was in town when we were students.

     If it still looks vintage, that is because it hasn't really changed in all those years since college. I bet it even looked like this before I went to college.😏


     There's something nostalgic about it being the same that takes you right back to being in your early 20's again. In some ways I hope it never modernizes, but I bet it will have to. Barring a big snowstorm we'll be back in February for a hockey game and hopefully then the downstairs tap room will be open, which it wasn't on the Sunday night we were here on our vacation.

     With our pizza we each had a micro brew. This beer wasn't around when we were students, but I really love the can.



And the beer wasn't bad either.


     We spent a night in Orono before driving north. When I had mapped out a route, because we were heading further east than New Hampshire is, the shortest route was to head over the border through northern Maine. I was actually excited about that route because back in my college days I knew a lot of people from northern Maine, but I had never  yet been that  far north in the state.


Into the Maine woods we go.


One of the newest US National Monuments is Katahdin Woods and Water. We decided to stop and check it out. 


     Of course the visitor's center was closed on the day we would be going by. However, when we stopped at a little "shed" where I was told we could pick up a map, we ran into a couple of Forest Service workers. After talking with them for a while, they told us the road was closed not too far down from where we were. They were starting to do some work to make the park more accessible to the public. 

     The workers recommended we turn around and take a side side road  north back to the highway, so that's what we did. 


I think this was the shortest visit to a National Park  area I've ever had. 😏 But the views along the side road were beautiful.


That's Mount Katahdin in the background. The American Appalachian trail starts or ends there.



      Here's the little house we rented in northern Maine for the night. We were maybe 10 minutes from the border crossing which we would do the next morning.  The inside was very nicely done, and it was a comfortable place to stay.




Maddie and Pete liked it too.

      My other drink for T day was this cup of tea I made. The kitchen of this little house had a nice supply of teas, which was great since I forgot to pack a few for myself.


And I love how I captured the steam coming off the mug.

That's all for me today. I hope everyone has a great T day and week ahead. 

 








    

    


































Sunday, October 6, 2024

Weekend Art-Autumn is the Theme

    Hi everyone. I hope you're having a wonderful weekend. I've been busy with some end of summer chores like starting my garden clean up. The biggest issue is we have yet to have a frost so some parts of the gardens are not yet ready to put to bed yet, but it's suppose to cool down quite a bit this upcoming week, so I'm sure in a few days there will be a lot more to do. But as always with  a garden, I can still find plenty to do. 😏

       I'm here today to share a bit of art, starting with a journal page for Alison's Autumn Colors and Inspiration challenge at Art Journal Journey. This page is from the new autumn journal that I made last month.


     I  used some scraps of paper and also a piece of printed tissue paper. I then used watercolor paints to color in the berries and their stem on the tissue paper. I added the house image, die cut and embossed the oak leaf, and also glued down some bronze colored metallic trim at the bottom of the page. The 6 words starting and ending with the word Pioneer were ones that I stamped. 

      And this next photo is the cover page to that journal.  It started as a very brightly colored cover that I painted and collaged over. It's hard to believe it had a lot of pink, yellow and blue on it before I painted it. I added the wooden leaf, which I painted and inked, as well as the chipboard letters which were inked.


     I also have a tag today for Valerie's Seasons challenge over at Tag Tuesday.  Since my autumn supplies are still out, I started with a tag for this beautiful time of year.


     I inked the background as well as adding  a scrap of paper. I stamped and colored the oak leaves and acorns. I also stamped the  phrases and autumn word. To finish off my tag, I added a couple of felt leaves. 

      I am also linking up to Gillena's Sunday Smiles .  Enjoy the rest of your weekend and start to the new week everyone. 



Friday, October 4, 2024

Art Walk Part 3

   Hi everyone. Happy Friday. I hope everyone had a great week or I should say a couple of weeks since I didn't join any Friday posts last week including Friday Lunch Break at Gillena's bog. My husband took a vacation from work and, if you haven't read any of my posts for a while, he and I drove up to the province of Quebec, Canada.

    You might remember in my last couple of Friday posts I shared some statues  from an art walk I'd taken at a local sculpture garden called Alnoba. You can link up to those 2 posts Art Walk Part 1  and Art Walk Part 2 if you're interested.

     Today I'm back at Alnoba with some more sculptures.  Today's sculptures are by Native American/ Apache artist Allan Houser. He was a favorite artist of the owner of Aloba. These first few  sculptures are very classic and lovely pieces.



I love the boots.






This next statue is a little more abstract, but it is by the same artist. It sits in a little stream, but unfortunately the stream was dry when I visited.




     The artist that led our tour asked if any of us saw a fish. I didn't at first, but now that he mentioned it it is all I can see.


This final sculpture (above) by Allan Houser sadly had some bird poop on it, and  it was even more abstract than the others. On the Alnoba website you can see what it would look like  once the grass dies back.

(https://alnoba.org/art-collection/)

      I'm linking this post to this week's Friday Face Off  at Nicole's blog  and also to Friday Lunch Break     at Gillena's blog.
I still have  one more post's worth of sculptures from my early September art walk. I'll finish them off next Friday. But until then, have a wonderful weekend and week ahead.