Easter Family Visit

It's Easter Sunday and an atmospheric river has made the morning grey and wet.  In the distant southeast there was a morning glimmer of gold along an edge of pending rain.  Yesterday was sunnier, which is better for my mood.  

We visited my folks for a gathering of ten.  In addition to my immediate family, my vintner cousins, K & B visited.  K & B brought wine, hors d'oeuvres, and an extra boost of energy to the gathering.  My sister put in a lot of effort in to food production, and made a scrumptious chicken main entry.  We (or rather, Mark) brought carrot-cake cupcakes for dessert.  And there were Easter candies. 

The route to my folks' house follows Highway 99 and Territorial Highway.  Over February the bald eagles would gather on the tops of power line poles overlooking the fields where the lambs were being born; one time we must have seen around ten or so.  This time around, we saw five miserable-looking and soaked golden (we think) eagles sulking along the top branches of a tree overlooking the river.  We also saw joggers, who looked like they were inviting hypothermia, but I guess when one is running in 50F rains, it's not so bad.

The rain slacked off some over the day.  In the afternoon a woodpecker visited a dying oak tree next door.  Since it was level with my folk's deck, I managed to get a photograph of it.

𓆣 Easter Eggs

This year for Easter, I decided that I would attempt to use the ancient Egyptian hieroglyph, hpr, ( or 𓆣  ) on dyed eggs.  Hpr is an ideogram of a dung-beetle, and is used in words like "manifest" and "becoming."    In ancient Egyptian iconography, the dung-beetle is shown with a sun disk, and is symbolically related to the beginning of a new day and regeneration.  I used photos I'd taken of various ancient Egyptian artifacts as the basis for the design and fired up Inkscape.  Several hours later, I had a DFX file that I could import into Silhouette.  

In the past, I've used painter's tape on eggs to resist the dyes.  I purchased a one inch wide roll, the widest I could find.  I thought I might be pushing the limits of the cutter-plotter's ability to incise the tape without shredding it, but it turned out that that wasn't a problem.  Also, if the tape was too wide, there would have had difficulty applying it evenly to the curved surface of the eggs.

I shrunk down the design, placed a strip of the tape on an older Silhouette mat that had lost some of its stickiness, and set the software for washi paper.  Moments later I had a flawless cut (beginner's luck) of the hpr hieroglyph, and I laughed with a crafter's glee.

While I was at it, I had the cutter-plotter cut out some painter's tape stars.  If I had been thinking, I would have made them duat, or netherworld, stars, (𓇽 ) but they were plain, regular ones.     I also cut out two larger beetles out of 3x5 index cards with a vague notion that they might be able to roll the eggs like their live counterparts will roll dung balls.  

After that, it was a matter of setting up the dye from a kit and dunking eggs.  Neither Mark nor The Child were really into the process, although Mark was interested in natural dyes and tried out onion skins and some Earl Grey tea as dyes.  

The most difficult part was waiting for the eggs, and more importantly, the painter's tape, to dry so that there wouldn't be smudges.  There were some places where the tape had buckled a bit:  worst-case they made some smudged boundaries; best-case there was a kind of marbling effect in some of the stars.  

Next time I will re-work the wing-case design to simplify it and make it less of a T-shape and more of a Y-shape.  It might be possible to stencil a short word or phrase and have it wrapped around the widest part of the egg.  

The eggs were received well (at least on social media) and added to the decor of my folks' Easter table.  

Easter Auguary

Easter Sunday, as the assembled family was eating hors d'oeuvres out on the back deck,...

a crow flew overhead, alighted on the telephone pole serving our house,

... and began eating a red striped garter snake.

 A second crow joined it ...

and received strips of the disemboweled snake from the first crow's beak to its own.









Because the birds were eating a snake on top of a telephone pole, the whole thing reminded me of a painting by Cristóbal de Villalpando, "Moses and the Brazen Serpent and the Transfiguration of Jesus."  The Brazen Serpent is from the Book of Numbers.  (There's a better picture of it at the MET, here: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/719315 )

• https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/719315
• 
  

And now, of course, I'm wanting to write a story with a title like "Transubstantiation of the Serpent," or "Communion of Crows," or start working on a Brazen Serpent for a Halloween Front Lawn Diorama.

Easter Tins

Easter Sunday we hosted my family at our house (this required a lot of cleaning...mostly of craft supplies....okay, and the bathroom.). 

The kids had a Easter egg hunt, and we ate a lot of good food.  Mark did a lot of pre-event prep, which paid off.

For place settings, everyone got an Altoids Tin Easter Tableau (mostly featuring bunnies). 

Mark and The Child made a chocolate cloud cake, and decorated the top with chocolate eggs and a nest made out of chocolate branches (I think Mark took a picture...). 

My folks left mid-afternoon, and my sister's family stayed and visited for a few hours longer.

My niece really really wanted to take her bunny tin apart because she was convinced there was something hidden behind the purple cut-out square trellis the brown bunny sat in front of.  I don't know if she was expecting to find money, or a secret message, or candy, or something else.

The full Altoids Bunny Tins set is here:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/Jk1appfouMUMvMPJ8 

Easter Craft

Follow! But! follow only if ye be men of valor, for the entrance to this cave is guarded by a creature so foul, so cruel that no man yet has fought with it and lived! Bones of four fifty men lie strewn about its lair. So, brave knights, if you do doubt your courage or your strength, come no further, for death awaits you all with nasty big pointy teeth.

Easter Weekend 2017

Friday night was The Great Cleaning.  This made for a relaxed rest of the weekend.

We dyed eggs this year for Easter.  I think my favorite one is the one that had leaves on it.  I punched out a leaf shape from painter's tape using a craft punch.  Then I put the leaf-shaped tape onto the egg and dyed it.  I moved the egg from dye to dye, and moved some of the tape-leaves around to create a layered effect.

Mark and I hid eggs for The Child (Mark was a better hider than I was)

Sunday friends and family came by for a brunch.  We had sauteed asperigas; baked parmisan zucchini; fruit salad; and a selection of savories:  sautéed mushrooms, sliced cucumber, dill and cream cheese and Grandma's Party Saving dip.  Mark made carrot cake cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.

Mark got a pinaita (a purple elephant) and we had a few rounds of swinging at it.  

This year I think we were pretty good about not turning the day into a total chocolate orgy, so there were no 1:30 PM sugar crashes or anything.

  

One of this (Monday) morning's dreams involved nuns at Reed College extolling me not to fly around in my black purple cloak.  The Reed College setting isn't new; neither is flying around in my black cloak.  Nuns are a new motif.  Having other folks notice that I'm flying around and extolling me not to is a new motif, too.  

In writing news:  My story, "Dust to Smart Dust" is published at On The Premises, here: http://onthepremises.com/issues/issue-29/issue-29-honor1/ 

Easter Craft Tips

Here's a follow-up photo to yesterday's post showing what the eggs look like before I dye them.

I use a craft cutter to cut thin strips or squares of painter's tape.  For the stars, I used a star-punch.  I had the best results holding the tape taut with the sticky side down; this allowed me to lightly touch the punched out tape and lift it out of the punch.  I still had a bunch of tape occasionally stick in the punch, and I'm not sure I'd recommend this technique for intricate shapes.

I've been playing with star shapes long enough to know that the easiest placement starts at one end of the egg and works down toward its widest area.

Once the tape was in place, I used the back of my fingernail to insure there were no lose spots and then dyed the egg.

I air-dried the eggs for about fifteen minutes so that I wouldn't smudge the designs with wet tape.

After they dried, I peeled back the tape.