Home, Sweet Home

I know I haven't posted in ages. Lots of things have happened, and a lot of those things are not entirely happy. Some of them were really crappy. More on that later, maybe.

Right now, just a quick note to say I'm no longer in the woods of Nova Scotia. Instead, I'm halfway up a small mountain on British Columbia's Vancouver Island. I've come home. I'm resting, healing, figuring out what to do next.

What I do know is that there will be a lot of art. A lot of exploring nature. A lot of writing.

More soon.

Busy, Busy

(This is the second time I've written this post, and I'm stuffed up and groggy, so it's going to be even shorter than the first time (damn you, Blogger for iOS, for dumping my post when I switched to Safari to look up a URL) (yes, I should have saved a draft first, but I really shouldn't have to) (also typing while annoyed) (and too many parentheticals) (I need more cold medication).)

What was I saying? Oh yeah. Busy with craft fair stuff, teaching, and sick, so not posting much until a few weeks hence. There was more detail and better sentence structure, but my ears are starting to ring, which means I need to rest, so I'll leave it at that. Here's a picture of some of what's keeping me busy:

Oh, and this is for the Halifax Crafters spring market, the first weekend of April, at the Olympic Centre. If you're in Halifax, stop by. There's no admission fee, but there is food and chocolate and cool crafts.

Crow Snow Angel and Ice Eagle

I start teaching my Introduction to Letterpress class today, so all I have for you this week is a couple more photos of bird-realted things. Maybe I'll remember to take some pictures of my class this time around, and share them here.

Here's a thing I call a "crow angel," which is a snow angel made by a crow landing. Other birds make them too, of course, but the crow ones are the easiest to photograph (not that this is the best photo). This was in my front yard, near where I put seeds out every morning.

And here's a very very blurry image shot out the window of a moving 18-wheeler on the Pictou causeway. In case you can't tell, it's a bald eagle on the ice. It was really far away, so I couldn't tell what it was doing. Eating, probably.

Birds

We get plenty of visitors to our house, year round, because I put out seeds every morning, and I try to keep a suet feeder filled in the winter (once the squirrels discover it, it empties fast). Here are a few of the most recent birds, from the past week.

A female Downy Woodpecker. These little birds are not shy about telling me when the feeder is empty or someone else is eating from it. They're quite talkative.

A couple of shots of Dark-Eyed Juncos. There are juncos where I lived in BC, too, but they had brown bodies and black heads, instead of the solid slate grey that NS birds have. Either way, they're terribly cute. These guys won't eat from a feeder, but are happy to take seeds from the ground, and really like it when the jays get into the suet, because they drop a lot on the ground.

For a few minutes, a male Hairy Woodpecker condescended to share the suet with a Blue Jay. It didn't last long, though, before the woodpecker chased the jay away. They're pretty close in size, but our jays tend to be a bit skittish, and even the Mourning Doves can chase them off.

More Snow

I remembered to photograph the snow this morning. It doesn't look that much worse than the photos from yesterday, but the snow is actually considerably deeper. It was up to the top of my snow boots when I fed the birds earlier.

Snow Day

We've had quite a bit of snow here in a Colchester Co, NS. A few days ago, I woke to find the yard looked like this:

Quite a lot of that snow fell off the trees and roofs and car, and it was just warm enough that some of it even melted. But it's blizzarding here today, so there will be more snow yet.

Here's how it looked early this afternoon, after some light snow overnight and somewhat less light snow this morning:

There's a lot more out there now, but it's too dark to photograph. If I think of it, I'll take a picture in the morning and post it.

Snowy Owl

Some folks have expressed interest in the processes I use for various things that I make, so I thought this week I'd go through how I made my latest die-cut card, step by step. If you follow me on Twitter (@anagramforink), or have friended me on Facebook, you may have already seen some of what's in this post.

Everything starts with an idea, naturally, and the snowy owl popped into my head as a result of the stories I keep seeing about how this winter snowy owls have been migrating farther south than usual, showing up even as far down as New Jersey. We have snowy owls here in Nova Scotia, but I've never seen one (nor even heard one, as they are not very vocal, unlike our other local owls).

So, with images of owls popping up in my social media feeds, I started to get ideas about how I could make an owl card. First, I looked at lots of pictures, trying to figure out pose and angle. Then, once I'd decided I wanted a flying bird, I found some more specific reference images, and started to draw. Since I knew I wanted the card to be more or less symmetrical, I concentrated on one half of the owl, because I could use Photoshop to create the other half. 

When I had a sketch I was happy with, I firmed up the lines with a black pen, and then erased most of the pencil lines.

Next, I scanned the image, copied, pasted and reversed the half I'd drawn to make a complete owl, and cleaned up the lines. I used the fill tool to fill in the outline, creating a solid black shape. This makes it easier for my cutter software to create a file to cut from.

I saved the image as a tiff, and imported it into the cutter software, traced, resized, and started test cuts. Sometimes I get a usable design on the first go -- usually if it's something simple. More complex designs require more tests, especially if there are lots of small pieces to cut out, as there are on this owl. Once something gets too small, the cutting blade can't pivot quickly enough. In the case of the owl, I had to make the bars on the feathers larger.

I also wanted to try a simple silhouette version.

None of the initial designs was quite right, so I tried again. I'd already decided on the black background, though I used the blue and green again in my tests, since I had already folded the card. The moon was a whim, added as a way to bring out the eyes by having something else yellow in the image.

A few more tweaks, and I have the final design. I could play with it some more, but I know myself well enough to know that sometimes I have to say "good enough" or I'll just keep fiddling forever.

In a day or so, I'll cut out a whole bunch of these, and then start assembly. They're sized to fit a standard (#10) business sized envelope, and I'm out of plastic sleeves that size, so I'll have to order more before I can sell these. I'll have to get more envelopes, too.

(Apologies for the terrible photos. The first and last were shot just now, with my iPad, and the Blogger app doesn't work very well with the iPad's camera. Some really weird things happening with framing. The other two images I took earlier, still using the iPad camera, but from within the native camera app, so at least they're framed better.)

Natural History Sketches: Skunk

One night after teaching letterpress in Halifax I was driving home on our rural highway and had to stop and let a skunk (Mephitis mephitis -- striped skunk) cross the road. It's not uncommon for skunks to be out in the dark hours (porcupines and raccoons are also very common, so I tend to drive slower than most people do in the dark on that road).

What was interesting, though, it that this particular skunk has such wide stripes that it was more white than black. It was so pale I even wondered if my "knowledge" that skunks don't change colour in the winter might be wrong.

Well, skunks don't change colour (like hares do), but it turns out it's actually not that unusual for striped skunks to be nearly white. A quite look through Google images showed that while the usual black and white pattern was the most common, a lot of skunks have stripes either thicker or narrower than the norm, so they vary from nearly all white to nearly all black. There's also a fairly rare paler colour phase in which the usually black parts of the animal are a pale brown.

Anyway, the next day I attempted to remember what I saw well enough to sketch it.

Image © Niko Silvester. Please do not use without permission. Thanks!

Natural History Sketches: Shrew and Mouse

I live in a rural area in a somewhat unfinished house that hasn't been maintained as well as it might have been. Consequently, we have mice in the walls. They're actually quite lovely little creatures: deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus). They're also native to Nova Scotia, so I feel a bit bad setting traps for them, even when they get cheeky enough to watch me from the top of a bookcase.

Every now and then my cat, who never goes outside, will catch one. Usually somewhere in the still-dark hours of the early morning. Then she lets them go in the bedroom, which has a sill on the door, so they run around and around the room while she chases them. Eventually she gets bored and they escape, or they go into shock so I have to scoop them up in the morning and release them into the woods. Every now and then she actually kills one.

(I know, I am a monster for not intervening. But at three a.m. I am pretty much a zombie and capable only of groaning and burying my head under the pillow.)

Once, I discovered the tiny body in the morning and instead of a mouse, it was a shrew (probably a masked shrew, Sorex cinereus). I still don't know how it ended up inside, because as far as I can tell, shrews are not usually house-dwellers. I can only guess that perhaps it got lost in the tunnels under the snow (there was a lot of snow on the ground at the time) and followed a mouse hole, or the dryer vent, into the house. Only to be captured by a housecat.

Shrews, if you're not up on your mammalian classification, are not rodents (which, of course, mice are). Though they do resemble mice somewhat, they're actually more closely related to moles. Masked shrews are very, very tiny. Even smaller than deer mice. Sadly, this dead little beast is the only shrew I've actually seen (though I did spy a living vole -- a mouse-like rodent -- a couple of times in one of our rock walls).

Image © Niko Silvester. Please do not use without permission. Thanks!

Natural History Sketches: Squirrels

You can tell what I think of these drawings in the comment I wrote next to them. Oh well. One of the points of keeping this journal is to get more drawing practice, which will -- I certainly hope -- help me improve.

North American Red Squirrel (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus)

These little guys are almost unbearably cute, but they're also accomplished thieves. Unless you buy special (rather pricey) bird feeders, they'll steal all the seeds. Fortunately, they're not too bad most of the year, and most of our birds aren't bothered by them (and we only have two regulars). I once saw a crow chase a red squirrel away when it got too close.They do get very gluttonous in the winter when they're stockpiling, and they'll leave the seed pile with their cheeks stuffed so full their heads look two or three times normal size.

In some parts of Canada, red squirrels have been driven out by invasive grey squirrels, but that hasn't happened here in NS (at least, not yet).

All images © Niko Silvester. Please don't use them without permission. Thanks!

Corvus corax Sketch

Yesterday's entry in my new, giant natural history journal was the usual weather report and list of beasties in the yard. We had a new visitor, though: a raven.

Although we have a lot of ravens in the area, the closest they usually get to the yard is flying high overhead. For a few weeks in the fall they would gather in the evening in the woods just beyond out property line -- I could hear them gossiping and saw them fly over, but that was it.

But yesterday one stopped by to check out the seeds I put out and stayed long enough to pick some of them out of the snow with her enormous beak. She didn't stay long, though, because our resident crows, which are much, much more skittish than city crows, saw me watching from the window and flew off in a flurry of wings. That made the raven nervous enough to fly away, though she hadn't seemed concerned herself that I was watching.

This sketch isn't from life. I ran to get my camera, but when I came back was when the crows decided to cause a fuss, so I didn't manage a photo. Instead, I found a picture online that matched more or less the raven I saw. It's a pretty rough, quick sketch, but I think I succeeded in capturing, at least a little bit, the range of textures in the bird's feathers.

And, as promised, here's what the book looked like in its original  installation. Not very good photographs, I'm afraid, but I hope you get the idea.

Looking Back, Peering Ahead

One of last year's beginning-of-the-year goals was to blog more regularly. I did okay with that, up until mid-year, when everything fell apart. In fact, that's about when my fiction-writing goals evaporated, too. I'm not even sure why. Possibly I was just trying to do too much at once, as usual, and got overwhelmed.

But even though I didn't really meet many of my 2012 goals, I can't really call the year a failure, either. Here are some of the things I accomplished in 2012:

• I wrote three novels, a short story, and a novella. I was aiming for four novels and ten or twelve short pieces, so I didn't meet the goal. But still, three novels! Two of them still need editing and transcribing, but the bulk is done.
• I printed some new letterpress and linocut pieces, finished up a few bookbinding projects, and came up with a new notebook product (at the last minute for the holiday craft fair!) that I'm really pleased with. Again, I didn't meet my goal of finishing up all in-progress projects before starting new ones, but I did get a few things off my worktable.
• I spent more time walking in the woods. Though I didn't get in as much exercise-oriented walking as I wanted to, I renewed my love of simply wandering and seeing what there is to see. As a consequence, I felt renewed and refreshed creatively, even though my writing production crashed halfway through the year.
• I changed jobs. Sort of. Though I really loved my job writing about videogames for About.com, I've been wanting to get back into something more writing or fiction or book oriented for a few years. I've applied for a few other About sites, and even made it to the evaluation stage once (the process of getting hired at About is fairly long and involves writing a lot of samples, but it's worth it). Finally, this fall, I made the switch to writing about books, and I'm now the "Guide" to Young Adult Books. I'm still editing the videogames super-newsletter, though, so I get to keep up on that stuff, too.

Those are the biggest accomplishments, I think. So on to my goals for 2013.

• I'm going to attempt, again, to blog more regularly. I've just installed Blogger for iOS on my iPad, which I hope will help with that, since I've been doing more and more work on my tablet since I got it. My two pen-name author blogs will probably only get infrequent updates still, but this blog, and my bone blog should start seeing some more posts.
• Again, I'm going to aim to finish more in-progress projects. I have plans to do a lot more linocut prints this year -- there's the Vanishing Bestiary to work on, and a triptych of fossil-inspired prints, and I just had a request to make my winter raven card design into a larger art print. I have some bookbinding things to finish up, too. First off, though, is to get those dragon pop-ups done and sent off to my IndieGoGo backers.
• I'm going to focus on getting my fiction writing and publishing activities back on track. This means transcribing and editing Familiar (book 3 in the Others series by alter-ego Nic Silver), and adding needed scenes and editing Dark Stranger (sequel to Milk Sister). Also, I'm going to get the full Aeryn Daring and the Scientific Detective novel formatted and available as an ebook and POD paperback (by alter ego Calliope Strange). As far as writing, I'll be finishing Reindeer Girl, and tackling the next Nic Silver novel. After that, I'm not sure, but I have a list of ideas to choose from.

Of course, I can't start a new year without a few brand new projects. This year, I have two big ones in mind.

• First, a non-fiction project. I won't say too much yet, because I'm still mulling it over, and it's the sort of thing I have a specific publisher in mind for, and if they don't want it, I probably won't make it a priority. It'll tie together my folklore background and my current writing-about-YA-books in a scholarly sort of book. This month, I'll be working on a proposal and sample chapter.
• Second, an artistic and natural history project. This is one I've been thinking about for a while, but always put off because it seemed most logical to begin it at the beginning of the year. So starting a little later today, I'm going to use a great big notebook I made for an unrelated art project and start keeping a natural history journal. So as not to be overwhelmed, I'm not going to try to force myself to write every day, though it would be cool if I managed it. I'll just write down observations and make little sketches of the world outside my door as the year goes by.

And now I think I've probably blathered on enough for one day.

Calligrapha multipunctata

Calligrapha multipunctata. If that's not one of the coolest Latin binomials there is, then I'm no judge of cool. (Okay, probably I'm not much of a judge of cool, anyway, but never mind.)

Anyway. I came across this little fellow (or lass) on the way back from the mailbox. I might never have spotted him if he hand't been on his back, flashing his quite reddish wings in order to right himself. Against the beige and grey of the gravel road, he stood out quite a lot. He's just under a centimetre long--maybe 7 or 8mm.

I'm not absolutely certain of the species identification, since I didn't find him on his host plant. It could also be C. philadelphica, which is very similar. Most of this genera is very closely associated with a plant species--willow in the case of C. multipunctata, dogwood for C. philadelphica. Of course, I could go back down the road and do a survey of trees. I'm pretty sure there are willows nearby, and not so sure about dogwood.

At first I thought I was looking at a non-red species of ladybird, but the fabulous online Bug Guide set me straight. Still, identifying insects is hard, even when it seems to be something pretty different, though I guess you get better once you know what to look for.

House Frogs

I haven't got much exciting or new to report on the making-of-things front, but life on the edge of the woods continues to be interesting. Late last night I happened to step outside and looked, as I always do, to see what moths had landed near the light over the door. There aren't many moths out yet, but I saw an odd dark shape that I thought might be something new. When I looked closer, it turned out to be two small frogs, clinging to the loose paint of the siding. By the time I got my camera, naturally, one of them was gone, but the other one sat still while I photographed her from several angles, and didn't seem too bothered by the flash.

She (or he) is a Spring Peeper, a common species in Nova Scotia. We're treated to choruses of hundreds of them every spring. These two were rather large, though, to the point I thought maybe they were some other species. I'm not a frog expert, but I'd guess they must be about at the upper size limit for Spring Peepers.

Sleepy Dragonfly

Because I am too sleepy from all the food I cooked and ate today to post a papermaking update, here is a picture of a dragonfly taking a break on one of the felts I use in papermaking:

Experiments In Papermaking 2: Plant Materials

So it looks like I'll be doing a papermaking demo and providing letterpress-printed-on-handmade-paper menus for an event in late October. While the client would be perfectly happy with made-from-recycled-paper paper, I'd like to make something rather more special. Plus, if it turns out, I can add a new product to my shop(s).

So a few minutes ago I came back in from cutting this from my back field:

That's a whole lot of super-tall grass (and there's an even bigger whole lot still uncut if I need more), and (I think) two different plants which are both locally called goldenrod. Although, they're similar enough that it's possible one could be a later-flowering variety of the other. My knowledge of local plants really isn't what it should be, so while these are drying, I'll be researching to find out exactly what they are, so I can include that information with whatever I end up making.

So now I have to let the plants dry (for now they're out in the sun, but if it threatens to rain, I'll move the bins into the shed). Later, they'll be cut up and boiled for a very long time to break the fibres apart. Then comes the blender. Oh, for a proper paper mill! Maybe someday, after I build my printshop (I am very good at dreaming).

And for anyone wondering what the place looks like these days, here's the hill leading up to the back field:

And here's the house with some lovely blue sky and the tree that rattles on the roof in the wind and drops fat water drops on the roof after it rains:

A Leisurely Sunday Bike Ride And A Snack of Feral Apples

I was going to write a nice long blog post about the bike ride B and I took along the Cobequid Trail bike/hiking path between Old Barns and Truro today, with some of the many photos I took, but I just made and ate a tasty supper and now I'm too sleepy to concentrate. But there was much pedaling, and red Nova Scotia mud, and birds and cows and sea grasses and blue sky. Also feral apples, shaken from a tree and eaten in the sun (and a whole bag of them now in the fridge). And it'll be Fall Cleanup time soon, when people haul out all sorts of big heavy things for the garbage trucks, and we scored a battered old globe on the way home. It still has the USSR on it and the stand kind of flops over, but hey, it's a free globe! So instead of that long post and many photos, here is one photo, of a handsome fellow I met on the path:

(Click to make him big and see his weary, tattered wings.)

Foggy Porcupine

For those of you curious about what's going on at the homestead, here are a couple of fairly recent photographs.

First, around mid-April, our resident porcupine decided to take a wander through our yard to nibble on some of the new plants.

You can see that even just a couple of weeks ago, the grass was quite brown (though the coltsfoot was busy popping up its yellow dandelion-like flowers). A more recent photograph, from last week, shows how things are greening up around here.

They're even more green now. Pretty soon, the maples will have dropped their flowers and come out in full leaf. The buds are just about ready to burst now.

Letterpress: Hand-Coloured Cards in Progress

Here's what I'll be spending my long weekend on:

All of these cards--just under 30 of each--need hand-colouring before I can crop, fold and package them.

 Don't worry, though, I'm not going to be spending hours on each one. Just a couple quick washes of watercolour, or else I'd have to charge so much no one would buy them.

I letterpress printed them on good-quality watercolour paper and left the paper a bit big so I'd have room to paint.

You may recognize the images from this year's calendar Tentacle & Carapace. I figured I aleady had the plates, so I might as well use them.

And living in a coastal city, sea things are popular year-round.

Back at the Ranch

A couple of days ago it finally snowed and as soon as my load of laundry was done, I went for a walk. It looked like this out the front window when I left:

When I got back, the light was waning and my house was all glowy: