Update

 New Sculptures

Well here it has been another long stretch of not blogging. The past few months have been really filled up with work. I've mostly been working on new sculptures for John Grade. Those sculptures can now be seen at Davidson Gallery through this month.

These sculptures were both made out of wood from the Wawona. It was great to work with this wood and get a change to understand it a little more before we start the larger Wawona sculpture. This wood has so many beautiful colors in it that really cant be seen until you cut into the wood. It's fun stuff to work with. Be sure to head down to the gallery this month to check them out in person.

11·11·11

11·11·11

I decided to document my whole day on 11·11·11.

 

It was a fairly typical day for me. I woke up early, drove into work, spent most of the day working on a few sculptures. Drove to have some happy hour, then headed to a bar to finish off the night. 

I decided to document my day because on 11-11-11 there were people all over the world who were also documenting the day around them you can follow along and check out other peoples works at One Day on Earth.

Halloween

Ghost Hunting

This Halloween I decided to give a tour of the Hotel I work in to a few people. For some reason everyone was really scared.

Other then being really dark and hearing lots of strange sounds it was actually fun. At least I thought it was fun. Maybe I thought it was fun because I got to watch everyone else freak out every time a something would make a sound, or every time I would make a sound. We explored a few of the floors and part of the basement, but for some reason no one wanted to go explore sub-basement. The sub-basement is the best part, that's where all the cool ghosts hang out.

Viaduct

 Last Days

This last Saturday Carmel and I went for a walk on the Viaduct. It was the very last time it was open to the public. Here are some pictures I took.

Although you were not allowed to walk on more then a small section of the structure it was still great to be up there for the last time. The weather was a rainy and windy and seemed fitting to the surroundings. There were machines chipping away at the concrete even as we were up there. It was a little bit sad. The Viaduct is one of my favorite drives in Seattle. Driving north during a sun set was always my favorite. It was so much fun to fly above the city at 60mph. It's going to be sad when it is gone, I'm going to miss it.\

Canning

Canning

I've been canning a lot lately. This is the first year I've canned before and I think I'm hooked. So far I've canned 3 jars of Italian Style Tomato Sauce, 10 jars of Honey Spiced Peaches, 6 jars of Pears in Syrup, 8 jars of Apple Pie Filling, and 6 jars of Oktoberfest Beer Mustard.

Now my cupboards are full of canned goods. I think this was a good start to canning, maybe next year I will do a little more and try out a few more things. It takes some time and effort but it is definitely worth it.

Picture Of The Day

 Tower

Well here it has been another long while since I've blogged. I'm going to make it a point to start blogging again more consistently, I swear. One thing I'm going to try and do more is a picture of the day. I take a lot of photos, I mean a lot. So I'm going to share them and give some context behind each one. I may not post every day but I will try ad do it as often as I can.

I'm going to start off by sharing a photo I took last week. I was walking back from Fremont along the ship canal after a heavy rain and one of the parking lots next to an office building there was this huge puddle. Looking down at this puddle you could see this.



I took this with my the last picture on the roll in my Canon AE-1 with a 28mm lens. I've photographed this tower many times before as I'm always walking by it. There always seems to be new ways to capture it.

Settlement Sunday #15

It's been awhile since I've done a Settlement Sunday post and really steadily blogged in general. I'm planning on starting up again posting more but i just need to get back into the swing of things. I decided for this weeks recipe to take advantage of all the blackberries growing right outside my door. I was able to get just enough by digging deep into the bushes. Last year the blackberries were terrible but it seems that this year turned out ok. I picked the first round and it looks like there will be ripening berries for the next month or so.

So with all these blackberries I looked through the cookbook and found a few recipes for jam and then there was this blackberry roll which is basically a jelly roll but with black berries.

Here's how it went together.

It says to place it in a hot oven, i took hot to be about 350 or so, but I guess hot is more like around 400-450 because it took a lot longer then 20 min to bake. It all turned out good though. The dough had a nice crisp to it on top and soaked up a lot of the berry juice below. It seemed like I added a lot of sugar but in the end it wasn't overly sweet. This would be great with some cool whip or some vanilla ice cream. It's a quick and simple recipe if you have a whole bunch of blackberries that you need something to do with.

Previous Settlement Sundays

1. Peanut Butter Cup Cakes

2. Dimpes Dampes

3. Mulligatawny Soup

4. Hot Bacon and Peanut Butter Sandwiches
5. Date Bars

6. Chop Suey

7. Eggs a la Columbus

8. Baked Sausage

 9. Beer Soup

10. Soft Molasses Cookies 

11. Chili Con Carne  

12. Chocolate Toffee Bars

13. Macaroni and Cheese 

14. Brown Sugar Macaroons 

Grandma's Photos

Pictures of Yore

My sister recently gave me a bunch of my Grandparents old slides. Most of the slides were taken on Kodachrome in the 50's. The slides from this set were mostly of trips on their boat around the San Juans. There were also some of my mom and other great photos of the ship canal. I bought an adapter for my camera to convert all the slides into digital form. Here is the set as a whole.

Here are a few of my favorite.

Somewhere up in the San Juans, perfectly calm, I think it's right side up.



I love the old cars and the store itself. I can't find any information on it though.



Looking down the ship canal at the Fremont and Aurora bridges. Surprisingly the Fremont bridge is green. Off to the right there is where SPU's athletic field would be today and off to the left is now filled with buildings in Fremont.



I was amazed to find out where this was. It use to be right next to the Ballard bridge but burnt down a few years after this photo was taken. Here is some more information about it. http://www.historylink.org/_content/printer_friendly/pf_output.cfm?file_id=2445



Here is an interesting shot of the Ballard bridge when it still had all four towers. Another thing I found interesting is the rail bridge that you can see just behind it that is no longer there. I can't seem to find any information on it or even find where it once was.



Looking across Lake Union towards the small skyline of Seattle pre tall skyscrapers and space needle, oh my how it has changed.



Well that's it for now, my grandma had ton of photos so I probably will get another batch here sometime and convert those as well.

Croquet

23rd Annual Durland Classic

Here are some photos from this years Durland Classic. I decided to go all out this year and dress to the nines in white. I had a little help with goodwill and the army navy surplus store. Too bad it didn't help with my game.

My croquet glory was once again thwarted by the stump wicket in the middle. Maybe next year I'll bring my chainsaw or something.

Joshua Tree Road Trip #7

Day 9, 10, & 11

Santa Clarita to Ashland

Ashland to Portland 

Portland to Seattle

We started off day 9 in Santa Clarita and after the tire blow out the day before i decided it would be best to get new tires all around. While the truck was being worked over we wandered around a little bit. We found a Goodwill which happened to be the worst Goodwill ever, everything was expensive and nothing was good. Then we made our way down to the Walmart to hang out for a bit before going to In-N-Out for lunch. After lunch the truck was ready so we started making the long haul northwards. We didn't really have any plan on where to stop for the night we just were hoping to get as far north as we could to make the trip the next day to Portland as short as we could. 

After Santa Clarita we made our way through German, or Gorman, Garman, Gmrman or something

Then through the Hungry Valley, which didn't seem all that hungry

We then made our way through iconic California which consists of power lines, oil derricks, and half burnt landscapes.

And lots of trucks

It was strange seeing my College nickname up on a sign

Then there were all the power lines stretching off into the horizon

Then all the rows and rows of farmland

Then more power lines

Then forgotten places

It was a long long drive this day but we managed to keep ourselves entertained with music and podcasts

At one point I got so hungry I ate a tree

It was somewhat good and bad to see this sign, only 628 miles to Portland, only

I started to get a little stir crazy behind the wheel

But then I got serious and said "Lets do this"

But then night came upon us 

We stopped off for gas one last time for the night and checked to see if we had hit any bugs going through all the farm land, I guess we hit a few

As it started getting darker I gave Carmel the camera set up to take some fun pictures playing with the car lights

We made it all the way to Ashland before I said enough. We found a small cheap little place to crash for the night. 

The next morning we headed out on a much shorter drive for the day

Portland here we come

We needed some coffee

This is what most of the drive looked like

We passed some cool cars

We then got into Portland a little after noon and first thing we went to go check out John's sculpture at the Portland Art Museum which looked amazing. We then ventured out around town looking for a place to grab lunch. We settled on the Descutes brewery which was amazing.

We then explored Portland a little more

We settled in for the night hoping to wake up early enough to get to voodoo doughnut before a huge line formed

We got to Voodoo around 40 minutes before they were suppose to open so we just hung out around the door for awhile taking in the sights. 

Security was pretty tight

Then we kept waiting and waiting for them to open, by now a long line had started to form behind us

Then the time they were suppose to open passed and we were just waiting not knowing when they would open.

It was sad

I got bored so I played around with Carmel's necklace for awhile

I started to get a little impatient, I wanted my doughnut!

Finally they opened!

Everything was better

Mission accomplished!

After voodoo we headed to Powells to look at some more books

I found some interesting reading material

We then said goodbye to Portland and started making our way back up home to Seattle

Finally we had made it back to Washington

and of course it started raining

Finally we had made it

It was an amazing road trip with many adventures. This trip was filled with destinations, it was a good mix of driving and staying places to explore. It definitely gave us a good idea of places we wanted to explore more. We mostly kept to our scheduled but of course a few things changed but all in all we got to go, do and see pretty much everything we wanted. This was definitely my favorite road trip so far.

Here is a recap of the trip. 

Day 1 and 2 

Seattle to Portland

Day 3

Portland to Napa Valley

Day 4

Napa Valley to Big Sur

Day 5 and 6

Big Sur to Disneyland

 Day 7

Disneyland to Joshua Tree

Day 8

Joshua Tree to Santa Clarita

Day 9, 10 and 11

Santa Clarita to Ashland to Portland to Home