panel 5 Octupus complete

the above photo is the varnished panel.

Well it was a very fishy day yesterday and I worked on all my sea creatures and net with fun strokes of color added to Octie , I feel he needs a name...what do you think T.R. look at him and see what you can come up with...LOL.

This is panel 5, things are going to get interesting now with panel 6.

As I mentioned before the mural has turned out to be longer then we originally thought so I have had to re sketch and make fit again .

After I am done, I hope to be able to join all photos together and get an idea of how she will look complete and together. This is a fun project .

panel 5 beginning Octopus

What a wonderful!!day....the weather outside is frightful!!!no kidding...actually I seldom complain about the cold but the wind today was fierce so I pretty well locked myself in my Gallery and worked on the Octopus panel 5.
Tomorrow I will add many more strokes, loving his colors but more is needed , not sure where I will go with it. Friday also will be a fishy day.
I wanted to share with you this evening rather then write in the AM. Chuck is at a meeting and I have been sitting and looking at today's work. So decided why not now instead.
Chuck took this shot of me below this AM when I was just getting started.

My thought is that the Octopus is hauling on the net angry that fish are caught in it , as he glares down at the diver finding the treasure he has been protecting all these many years.

Well this Octopus is tired and I believe there is something in the oven with my name on it..it is fish...LOL ....

check back :-)

Panel 4, Ships Mast Done

Slow getting started this AM..not to worry..big day ahead. Weather here leaves much to be desired and I refuse to go out into it..I say not!!!had enough...so I will be in all day painting. Chuck wants biscuits made..Hmmmmmm...we will see. He has a meeting this evening so I have the evening to spend by myself painting.

Here we have the Ships mast, complete and will be set aside shortly to make room for panel 5...yes 5 of 10, coming along nicely. Things will get interesting soon, I will say again stay tuned for after this one, things will change somewhat..you will see.

off I go...not so wordy this AM..... :-)

The house for sale next door to us..

I am waiting for paint to dry, and dare not sit in the same room with the Finished ship mast mural piece in case I keep adding to it and then will never get to varnish it, it is the kind of thing which could go on forever .... so I must as I say" step away from the mural"

So..I thought I would introduce you to the house next door to us which is for sale. No money comes my way if this House sells, but we are lovely neighbors and would like to see the house to sell to like wise. It is selling for $78,500 and is a sister house to our house and the house on the other side of us. All three built by shipbuilders. Our house use to have a veranda, I would so Love to still have it but no , not the case ,it was taken off way before we moved in. But this red house has the veranda still there as you can see ,also it has two out buildings, one a single story garage and the other being the wonderful two story shed where we have a summer guest room downstairs in ours , this out building is bigger then the one on our property but the same style...which is so cute.

This place would make someone a wonderful summer home or full time with a guest cottage out back ,sailboat stored in the garage in winter. And...we would be happy to watch over the ole place in the winter for anyone who wanted to buy it for a summer get away. I know , but we so want to see it sold rather then be turned into a rental. One other plus is that you have our side with a solid 6 foot privacy fence and the back and other side of the property has a white picket fence. It really is a nice property and house for the price and only minutes from white sand beaches ,golf course ,surfing, yacht club ,you name it and a Gallery next door :-) We are here full time and I swear it is a quiet street with no rentals around us .

In the one photo you can see our green house on the right ,in the other photo you can see the red out building / guest house , we call ours the "Bunk house"on the left and the garage to your right.

The property beside the red house is a vacant corner lot . When I was a child I remember there being a very large delicious looking garden there in that vacant lot.

The property is being sold by realestate@annthompsonrealty.com Rachel Dexter 354-8227

This may seem odd for me to be writing about this home, but you can see our fondness for the place. So go on in and have a look neighbor :-)

another day in the masts...

Good morning...slept like a baby last night..yippee!!!woke bright eyed and busy tailed!!!!

ready for a good days painting. I should be able to complete panel 4 today.

As my Dear friend Lynn asked ,do I have a dead line on this project, well lets say the elevator should be there and being installed as I type, the good news is that the mural will be able to be mounted after the elevator is installed,which will take a few weeks. We were not sure about this in the beginning...but the pressure is off now. But the way I work ,I never leave things until the last minute anyway, just me , you never know what will come up so I like to be prepared and ready. I don't rush, but I focus and put in a normal workday everyday,even with interruptions, I get a lot done daily. I am lucky to have help with the everyday house falling down around you stuff, that would be my Chuck as well he has all the panels ready for me to sketch on by the time the finished one is complete and put aside. I have always worked like this, never leaving things until the last minute. I think I would rather relax on the finished end instead of sitting and doing something else and thinking about what needs to be done.

I am and always have been a work bee,ask my body,she will tell you .

Today My fish need detail and I want to do a lot more on the masts etc. I love old wood and I love to paint on it or paint it to look like such. Detail...detail...detail...

You know the old saying? "how do you eat an Elephant?" one bite at a time...and that is just what I am doing here.

Now if I had to work on this on site it would be a different matter, way slower indeed with travel, setting up ,cleaning up etc. right now my Gallery is "Mural room" all I have to do is clean brushes ,close paint and turn off the light. As soon as I hit the bottom step in the AM, I turn the lights on ,sit here at the computer with a cup of "Joe" and then off I go. Which is what I am about to do right now.

I hope all who are watching this grow with me are enjoying what they are seeing and I hope you will stay with me throughout the progression. If you get a chance ,let me know what you think. I would Love to hear from you . And remember if you would like to see the finished mural complete and mounted it will be in the Mariner King Inn Cranberry addition ,11 King Street Lunenburg, N.S.

So off I go for today.

Ships mast panel 4 begun

Another day and still in paint. Yesterday was a great day with the beginning of the ships mast.

It is blocked in and ready for detail today.

Not much to say about this panel ,you can see where all the work will be, right now it really looks like a Ghost Ship....that will change, keep posted.

Yesterday while painting, I had a feeling I was being watched,when I looked around there were all my needle felt dogs looking at me...I put them all up in the window, since I took over the Gallery for painting and kind of forgot about them. I like them there, talk about well behaved pets. Check out the above picture.

For Christmas I gave my friend a felted dog, her dog "Laura" who we puppy sit on a regular basis, Laura is like our adopted daughter, she is always here while her Mom flies all over the World on business. I call my felt pets "pocket pets" because you can simply put them in your pocket or suitcase and take them with you where ever you go ,not to worry about pee breaks or feeding but they are with you always. Well she does take her felted Laura with her when she flies. So sweet indeed. I do commissions of people's special pets , and yes I do cats as well as all animals.

panel 3 complete "shipwreak"

Good Morning, first thing I want to say, I noticed in my blogs the blog clock shows the time to be something like 4:45 AM or something like that !!!it is wrong, for instance the time right now is 7:10 AM. I will see to fixing that. I know I work hard and at my age if you get my drift ladies out there reading this, I at times toss and turn as I did last night, but I never rise at that hour , I make sure I stay in bed driving poor Chuck crazy, how you men sleep or go back to sleep after putting up with someone like me in the room ,let alone in the same bed....shoes for a "King size Bed" oh yes....

Bless him is all I can say. Tonight, I am promising myself to stay up until at least 9 PM so I will have a chance of sleeping, yes that late!!! of course my mind is busy these days as you can see. I am writing to tell you about the finished Panel 3 not to complain about tossing and turning.,so here goes she is done , the shipwreck finished .Remember I had 10 panels to do, 7 more to go. Yesterday ,Sunday was a very relaxed day for me, no company , no cooking, either of us. We have a little Sunday out of the home job we have been doing for a local company for almost 20 years now and we still hobble our tired old bodies there every Sunday morning ,yesterday bringing me home from there excited to bring my ship wreak to rest you might say. There was really only close up detail work and fish, then varnishing the piece. So late afternoon was mine to share with Chuck and do nothing, I hoped for a bit of mindless TV...BUT!!! sorry to all you sports fans out there..... Olympics!!!!! please I am a proud red blooded Canadian female who use to Curl ,Kayak, and cross Country ski..even snow shoes...no wonder I can't walk today.... ...there is nothing else on TV these past days..and when an ole girl like me needs to relax and not fall asleep I need an easy mindless movie. Well we managed to make it till 8:15, way too early for me, as proof from what I mentioned above, so I may end up painting more in the evenings as well. I try not to, We worry I will burn myself out, but I don't think so, for painting is what I love to do, so ...Nah!!!!

We put the shipwreck aside with the other finished pieces before we went to bed and now panel 4 is on the pew/easel and I got a chance to do a light sketch ready for today. As well I had to redo the original last sketch on paper. I had to work out some things which had to be changed a bit because of the extra length. All worked out well and when it comes time to sketch it on the panel I then will know for sure.

So sleepy head Chuck just woke, all bright eyed and bushy tailed so I guess I didn't bother him too badly with my tossing all night...he just said"No you didn't" :-) "men" lucky devil's!!!!

I will leave you for today and will hopefully have a great day of painting.

Come on back and see whats next.

Shipwreak and one more day on the easal

Yesterday was full of entertaining ,cooking with a morning of painting. The shipwreak today hopefully if all goes well and as planned will have her last details ,then varnished and tomorrow the next panel will be up and get sketched ready for her first feel of paint.

Things have had to be changed to some degree as it progresses along because of another extra 10 feet of mural. So I have had to get back to the drawing board ,so to speak and do a bit of thinking...my that can hurt...LOL

Here is how she looks this morning. Come on back, in the days to come, there will be a surprise, the mural takes on a different look. You will see. Stay tuned!!!

closer still and where she is headed!!!

Well I did get some detail in yesterday on my ship, coming along indeed. I will get a few strokes in today but I am forced to be domestic at times and guess what? today is one of those days. Our boy is headed home for a Birthday Mug up celebration.
I suggested ordering in Pizza, but no that won't do, so I am forced, even though I Love him so much, I am still forced to set down my paint brush and pickup a spoon.

Time now to share with you exactly where this Mural will be headed when completed.

It will be put on the wall in the shaft where a glass elevator will be installed in the Cranberry Addition to the Mariner King Inn at 11 King Street in Lunenburg N.S. A little something useful and interesting to help service their Clientele.

Very exciting indeed, I believe I can say it is a first for Lunenburg and should be another attraction for an already interesting Town, as is all our Maritime Towns, Liverpool right up there with the rest, so when in the neighborhood, do drop by .

Last night we had a couple friends drop over and we all drummed up a storm, great way to get your "Willies" out and clean the air for another week as I see it. So cute because they brought their dogs and even our "Eddie" had Birthday company for Feb 16th was his Birthday.

So off I go , a late start this morning.

shipwreak continues

OK, I had a great Birthday yesterday doing what I Love and that is to paint, had a few friend's drop by, Bless you and Thanks.

In these pictures you can see the ship is coming along and here we have Chuck working on the standing rigging, me not knowing too much about such things, I am really good or use to be in a Kayak and I can paddle quite well but when it comes to sailing ships, I believe I am in the dark.

Today I hope to sketch in more detail and I would never be happy without a wet paint brush in my hands so we know I will be working some today in between a bit of running around.

We may drum a bit later today, very inspiring indeed I find.

Today is our son's 25th birthday. I remember 25 years ago ,me as big as a house and my friend Betty stuffing me into her little Mini Miner and driving to New Germany up and down back dirt roads looking for a second hand clothing store, well after being bounced around all day in that little tin can, I went into labor shortly after , Thanks Betty...LOL

my Birthday and panel 3

Good morning, it is a great day, another year older and panel 3 is on the easel ...last night I sketched and blocked in the ship.Today I will paint all day, no snow to shovel this AM...yippee!!!!

Chuck will prepare panel 4 today while I work on 3. Things are starting to move along.

Not much to say about this ,you can see pretty well where we are going ,the masts will continue into panel 4.

So check back again, maybe I will upload pictures later today instead of tomorrow .

So off I go to start my day :-)

Panel 2 done

Here we go. The 2nd panel is done, well it needs to be varnished...today was the plan for that, but we forgot to get the said varnish yesterday when the weather was so warm ,today you need warm hip waders because of all this darn !!!!! snow, oh well it is winter still and we do have a shovel :-( although I would prefer not to use it.
So hopefully today I will get to do what I planned on , starting panel 3, I may have to make some adjustments and change of plans.
I am trying not to move the panels too much and have worked it out in my Gallery so that each panel would be put up painted and last thing done varnished before being set aside and not be touched again until the day it leaves for it's new home but plans do change and in this case I may have to rethink today's work.
So for now I will leave you ,check back later today there will be some kind of update.

#2 panel,

I will be short on words this AM...I want to get back to work. This #2 will be on the easel for the morning for sure before I will get a chance to start #3. I have two switch plates to put in and paint, I decided this AM to turn the switch plates into fish. I will take a photo later. Check back.

#2 ,another days work. The larger lobster trap was added last thing yesterday Feb.14th.Replacing a smaller one. The bottom panel is very small compared to all the rest and some of them get very interesting as you will see if you follow along with me on this adventure. Today is painting day with no running around with other life endeavors. Chuck will again be preparing the next piece for me while I work on

this piece above. Where you see the large black spot ,that is the very bottom panel ,I have it resting beside the larger one so I can finish the Lobster trap,then once the trap is done ,then we will get into our sea creatures and work on some detail on this panel. I decided I will take photos at the end of each day and share with you in the AM's before resuming painting for the day.

So off I go for now...drop by again when you can.

first day with paint

These photos are not in order...please use your imagine..you can figure it out... :-) first photo is panel one..the smallest of ten, next one two,ready for tomorrow.

well it is 6:15 Sat. 13 Feb., i am clean ,washed all the paint off myself for the day, have I ever mentioned? I am a messy painter? Check out my painting cloths sometime. I do believe I clean up rather well when need be. First day with paint to board and we had to move a lot of product from my Gallery into to the rest of the very small house we live in, always something to make life interesting .

So, back to the task at hand, "The Mural"

In the photos above is the first piece , bottom of the ocean,the narrow bottom piece finished today...next , primed and ready for another day ,Then Chuck priming the pieces, aren't I kind with the camera? sorry ole boy....LOL... You will notice all the photos are backwards in sequence, I will get better at this as I go along, hopefully...stay tuned , for better days ahead .Next is the bottom piece before completion,. You also see the blued board is resting on what is my easel for this project , our old Church Pew from the Anglican Church in Mill Village,covered carefully of course...special easel indeed. A Church that since has been sold, taken apart and rebuilt piece by piece somewhere else. We, I am sure sat on this actual Pew many times in the past after moving to Charleston in 1985. We were the youngest people every Sunday in the congregation in the Church and Clay our toddler son literally had the run of the place and you might say learned how to walk in this Church, yes another story for another day. So the Pew is my easel on this project . We are putting in a couple hard Long days in the beginning, until we figure out all the lumps and bumps and then we will take time and breath easier in the days to come once we get a routine down. Those who may have seen us out trying to walk and exercise in these past few Months, see you later Gaiter....LOL

Now I will end this evening and maybe in days to come I may not be so wordy but do check back and see it as it progresses, I will do my best to communicate daily with photos if not words.

Happy Valentines Day everyone!!!!! Chuck and I decided we will take today Valentines Day off, we have a little janitor job and after that we will visit our Dear friend's in the Village and their new puppy!!! now that will inspire us.

mounting excitment!!!!! Mural news

Well, she soon will begin to get sketched and on her way to completion...the excitement is mounting and I am on pins and needles and you will see in one of the first photos, my glass of "Wine" Bless the grape Gods for their calming juice for every evening after a days painting of this large art project I will be sitting in my Gallery/ now studio taking in my days work and making plans for the following early morning with my "Juice of the God's" in hand.

When the board was delivered by the contractor we found out the Mural will be another 10 feet longer so today as well as getting ready to begin we need to rescale the sketch, should be no problem, I don't think I could do this large a piece with out the help of my Chuck..what is this retirement he speaks of..... I will put him to work in the next how many days...Thank God we work very well together. Otherwise ,if one day you see the one without the other, don't ask too many questions...one of us could possibly be tied up out back :-)

Oh I must add that Chuck had his bad knee injected this AM, so he will also be sitting with a bag of frozen peas on his knee at times today.

In the photos you will see the panels for the Mural, I am using my old Church Pew as an easel, and against the back wall are the panels which are numbered ,The contractor fit them all in place on location before bringing them here with pre drilled . So this is somewhat a giant zig saw puzzle . As I go along you will see the panels that have the port holes cut in them, this Mural is going to be on the outside wall of a glass windowed Elevator looking out to where the steps come up along beside the Elevator with a couple of my boat piece paintings on the wall coming up the stairs.

Well I think that will be it for today, still so much work to do before any paint gets on a brush.

...can fill you in now....

the "big project" will start tomorrow...
I am doing a mural to be seen from inside a glass walled elevator, working on it here to be mounted there when done in an Inn in Lunenburg, more details and pictures as it develops.
Right now I will leave you with that and will return as I can with updates.
So excited ...indeed!!!!! and very busy days ahead...... :-)

I would like for you to meet..."Fred and Ginger"

OK, when I lived in the country I had a problem with Mice, yes, right Michele? but I Love Mice ..they can be so cute in little cages... so because I think they are so cute , I introduce you now to who I have named Fred and Ginger, (you all over 30 get it.)

Remember that nervous energy I mentioned in a previous blog installment, well I was waiting for that "big project" I mentioned about ? So,Fred and Ginger might be the last of my bigger felted pieces for the next little while . I have been poking up a storm lately killing time ,in wait.

Any day now if all goes as planned , "the big project"will start ,then I promise to share with you as it progresses, stay tuned I expect to be on the edge of my seat and I hope if I have the time to try and keep you there as well.

This has been on my mind and in the works ,to say...for a while now, and I , being the "chatter box" called by those of you who say you Love me...kept it to myself mostly.

I with age have learned.... to keep my mouth shut till as they say... "The fat Lady sings." Well the stage looks like it is soon to be lite and I am excited with anticipation .This is a go and it is special ,not only for me, but something new and different for one of our Historical Maritime Towns. And I am thrilled to be included. The beauty and uniquenesss we have here in the Maritime's brings folk's back year after year and in many cases these people fall deeply in Love with our Maritime beauty and history and come back to stay with us and add their talents to an ever growing wonderful Maritime experience. This will end up being another one of those things which will bring people back.I will tease you and say right now, it is to do with art ...so come on back, follow me, let me know what you think and I will fill you in on more details in the near future.

sitting around on a wintery day

Taking a moment today to sign in and write something and show you a few of my new creations , you might say i have nervous ,busy hands and mind, still waiting on a fingers crossed big lets just refer to it right now as "big project". My studio ,gallery are ready in prep and my mind and heart are excited to begin...so I have been poking up a storm needle felting and am very happy with My finished pieces, here are just a few right now. The weather is still Winter out there and we have not been walking daily lately because of the cold,yes we could bundle up and yes, we should, shame on us but I can honestly say I, as well as I am sure you all are as well ,tired of Winter.

Liverpool is getting a new Tourist Bureau and my goodness it is beautiful, a great description for a good looking building and big, Wow!!!a change from the little cabin like one we had. A half boat piece of mine which I have a picture of in a previous blog hung in the old bureau and will hang again in the new one if still here when opening time arrives. My plan is to do some more strokes on her before she returns. These unique pieces of boat are harder and harder to find ,now that our fishing industry and just ordinary folk no longer line our shores and harbors with fishing from large Trawlers and little dories and boats seen daily back when. The romance of it I remember, those days are gone. I have been in and thinking of Lunenburg a lot these days and I remember moving there in 1974 and getting a job first working in the old "Dolphin Tavern" well I have stories I could tell about those days and will some day in another form, for this one is too public....laugh!!!!out loud!!! but, now back to what I was talking about, the fact these rare pieces of boats are harder to find because they simply are gone from our every day life.

We were telling a friend about a very special rock we found when we use to sleep outside on this rock in a crack in the rock with a small fire at the end of the crack, jutting into the ocean looking into Lunenburg Harbor with boats of all sizes going by 24 hours a day. We are going to take her to see what we found on this rock, carvings of tall ships and names scratched into the rock from back in the 1800's, where we believe and can see for ourselves from the scratchings that lovers would spend time on this rock, watching the ships roll in and spending time with their lovers dreaming of days and lives yet to come, the Iron Men with their soft hearts. When the wonderful red buildings along the wharf road in Lunenburg were stocked with rubber boots , sou westers , wool mitts and socks ,hand knit by every one's Granny. Where you could smell the many rolls of jute rope and still buy a good old fashioned corn broom. One particular shop I use to frequent for my needed supplies of such things had ,picture it,a little wood stove in the middle of the floor with chairs and barrels and fishermen sitting all around her ,telling their tales and joking with everyone who entered. They enjoyed seeing and teasing me when they saw me and then when I got the job at the local tavern in town being the first female to ever work there, they had fun with that too. When I met Chuck and we began our lives together we as I mentioned again in a previous blog writing tried our hands at inshore fishing. That was one of the best experiences I believe I can speak for both of us...the best experience in our lives and we have the stories and memories for our enjoyment,and love to share these stories with friend's, always good for a belly chuckle indeed.

Again back to the boat pieces, I do ramble on..sometimes not so funny..as my dear friend's may read this and shake their heads ,"yes!" Behind our fence here in town, Thank God for the fence ,for if not for the fence the town might ask us to move ,if they could see what some may call junk ,I call painting surfaces behind our fence. I still have some wonderful special pieces here which scream to me everytime I see them out back waiting for me...did I ever mention how small our new home is here? We dearly Love our charming little house but I can only get a couple of these pieces in at a time to work on.

I have some thoughts and ideas for the summer, last year I got a vendors permit to sell my,lets call everything I/we make, our wears downtown where I was hoping to have somewhat of a social life as well as of course sell, I love to meet people ,and the fact we no longer do all the shows we once did over the years , because we are getting older and doing these long shows is very hard on the old tiring bodies. Last Summer the weather would not cooperate so I stayed put here at my Gallery instead of town vending and was found here in my Gallery by some great folks over the summer. This coming Summer ,now that Chuck is retired ,I am going to look into maybe doing the downtown thing again with a spin on my idea if I can do it, I would like to find or work something out with a place to work on one of my very large boat pieces ,someplace to keep it there without lugging it too far at night, I am thinking that would be fun, and I could still direct folk's to the gallery here where Chuck can be working and greeting those who want to drop by.

I keep telling myself not to worry my little head with too many things at one time these days, thinking about summer when there is still snow on the ground..but yes you are thinking and I too, we will wake up one of these mornings with birds singing and making their nests. Speaking of birds and nests, I have made a couple birdhouses from old recycled cowboy boots , I kept one for myself here ,there is a picture of the other one in an earlier blog writing. Well I put mine up last Autumn and I had a couple Chickadees looking in and around it and I am so excited at the thought they may return and move in this Spring. I will tell you all about it when hopefully that day comes. I will admit, one thing we dearly miss from our 23 years on 20 acres on the Medway River is our wildlife, we could feed the Crows there without bothering anyone, we had our own Crow family for years which now our real estate agent/friend who sold our farm for us, believes she now has this family of Crows being taken care of by her now, how wonderful!!that is. As well as every other little bird you can imagine,Bob cats, Coyote's you name it... they were all our family along with all our critters over the years on our little hobby farm, those were the days my friend's ,those were the days. But today is a day too , in our charming Town house with one tree and many welcome signs for our new little feathered friends to yet find us in droves. We don't bother to feed the in town Crows,which i honestly wish people would not as well, the in town Crows don't need a hand out, there is plenty for them to eat . I believe feeding them by throwing out garbage draws rats in fact ,I have seen this for myself. Another story for another day, today we will only talk of nice things.

So speaking of nice things I wonder how many of you who live with Winter snow took the time to build a Snowman this year? Come on next snow Storm, do it and think of me, for I believe there can be nothing more fun then to do just that, even if a little one, come on Kid's go for it.

So off I go back to work, I have enjoyed my time with you today . Lets see what I can up up with on this, another great day in Nova Scotia as I poke away today. I will be back to painting again one of these days soon . Getting ready for Summer on the South shore .Comments from you are always welcome.

Stay warm!!!! back soon...

cold winter days and dragons

Good morning, my it is cold this past few and will be for a few more days in this area.

I have been waiting on news of a large project commission and am staying close to my email and furnace.

Always thinking what to needle felt ,I came up with my Dragon. I will be painting full time again very soon so thought while the weather is like this I would get a few felts done before I start to paint for the next little while.