Tag: Stuff I Make

Do you see what I see?

I’m halfway to the finish line with my newest project. These shoes are part of it and they represent something. I’m hoping it’s obvious when it’s done.  Does anyone see it yet?

Question:  When are two boys most likely to volunteer
 without being asked
 to CLEAN something without protest and procrastination?

 Answer:
When it’s precisely two years before they’ll have their license,
the object to be cleaned has a loud exhaust system,
 four wheels and an ignition 
and they get to pull it out into the driveway to do so.
Go figure.

Lucky

   When I was young and daydreamed of keeping a pony in our tiny side yard ( our house backed up to a dead-end street-no backyard), I had a horse shoe.  It was given to me by my dads good friend who had a farm upstate.  That shoe was cherished. It was a touchstone…something a real horse had worn, something tangible I could hold in my hand, even in the shadow of the city. It was a bridge to a hopeful future filled with horses. 

   Turns out there have been more than a few horses in that future, and I’ve got a great little quarter horse sidekick now to plod along  autumn trails and dusty roads. To have been able to fulfill this dream, I consider myself lucky.

  And I still love horse shoes.  I’ve got an idea for a piece of artwork… and this is just the beginning.

I could get lost

..in an antique shop for hours. I ‘m not talking about the kind you find in the wealthier sections of New England where “that bench over there is from the Ming Dynasty so don’t let your kid sit on it, M’am, or it’s yours for $25,000.”     I’m talking the mom and pop shops,  the guy who loves old stuff and just keeps collecting, the garage full of family hand-me-downs, or that funky red house with the white trim down the road owned by the woman who’s fifty-seven but trying to look twenty-seven and I’ll be damned if she isn’t actually pulling it off sort of!   Well, her sign read “Open” the other day and so I wandered in.  Oh, what treasures to behold!  And alot of crap too.    I found a few pieces for this old house.
 The plates will hang over the sink on a part of the wall that looks too plain and NEEDS something…  It needs a chicken or two also… but I haven’t figured that out yet.
I actually walked away from this silver huricane lamp the first time I visited the little red house. But I kept thinking about it, and you know how that goes…    so I’m going to have the wiring gutted because it’s a very old piece and I don’t trust that the wires won’t burn the house down when I plug it in.

I love the little details in this lamp…
 THIS little conglomerate of junk  stuff… is my next project for the kitchen… a chalkboard in an old frame with a sawed-in-half teacup glued to the board to hold chalk.  The old frame has just the right distressed vintage look. Anyone have a tile saw I could borrow? 
  I’ll let you know how it turns out.