Fun photos of the weekend!

Lot's of chicken

Dunk Tank!

At the parade

Niece and nephews at the picnic table--sippy cups and mac and cheese--what a picnic!

Little Halle on the deck!

Red Rooster Days!

I made this little ad for our chamber of commerce back earlier this summer--whatcha think?
(The rooster isn't mine--it was designed for our city by a guy named Andy Grams and it will be going on the town's new water tower--he did a good job, huh?)

It is Labor Day weekend once again, but around here we know it as Red Rooster Days (and it is the reason I have been so quiet lately). We've been a-printin' banners, a-hangin' art up town in the Ergot Museum, a-updatin' info. on the local cable channel and city website (that's one of my part-time jobs), and a-workin' on puttin' together all sorts of people's frames.

Oh, and I've been a-gettin' ready for comp-ny, too because my brother from ID and his family are coming for a visit this week!

In the meantime,

. . . Lil' Hankers has been growing up.

Isn't he just the sweetest . . .

I think he likes me--okay, I know he likes me and Dan. He braves coming up onto the deck past the big, scary dogs that sometimes like to see if he is a good and tasty morsel just to meow at the door to come inside.

Speaking of big, scary dogs . . .

. . . they can be so vicious sometimes. See how they have crowded up around this guy? I bet they won't let him go until he gives them a belly rub.

Ahhhhh----

Some days just get so busy that it is nice just to sit back and look at pretty pictures.
(stole the good camera again!)
Well, back to the job, grrr (or not grrr, considering the months of Jan-June were really slow!)

A logo

Hey, I am back from my trip and have yet to scan in any photos of our trip (my dad seemed to want his digital camera on his camping trip rather than sending it along on mine--crazy, huh?)

Anyway, this is just a quick post to show a logo I did in photoshop and a brief description of how I did it. (maybe of no interest to anyone, but you never know).

© 2008 elisabeth schmieg and the midwest garden company

I made this logo by combining a couple of photographs. (The cabin in one and trees in another-erasing stuff and layers and all that)



If I remember right after I had done all that:
1. I then went in and upped the contrast
2. Went into the unsharp mask (under filter and then sharpening) and way over did it until it looked neat to me
3. Then did the poster edge filter (under artistic) moving the sliders around until it looked interesting.
4. Lastly, I did the palette knife filter (also under artistic) moving stuff around until I liked it.

I've done a bunch of fun things with these filters layered upon filters actually-

I thought this looked cool, but half the time I don't recall what exactly I did to stuff--I suppose I should write down what my favorite things are to do, but golly I have a bunch of knitting, drawing, musical stuff to do (plus the garden and my 3 part-time jobs---and the dishes (I think I'll do them last--do they make paper pots and pans that I can just through away once i am done cooking?)), so I probably won't get around to it.

Going on Vacay!!!!!

Well, tomorrow morning Dan and I are going to be headed out on a nice little vacation. (Well, not overly little--10 days!!!!!!)

Sometime mid-morning-ish (because when it comes to a vacation who really wants to be up at 4 am and on the road by 5? maybe you do, but not me!) we will drive away into the wild blue yonder. I know, I know gas prices are terrible, but if we want to go out to Glacier National Park and then on to my brother's place in Idaho it is still cheaper to drive than to take the airplane or the train. (crazy, I know it)

Anyway, before I go I thought I would post a couple of pictures of a couple fun items.

First and foremost, I have made and finished my socks from the Lorna's Laces Grumperina colorway that I won this past Spring!

I put a nice little picot edge on the top because I thought it would be pretty.

Here they are in all their glory!!!!

Next, I have now gotten the yarn to make a nice Clapotis. It is Malabrigo in the Loro Barranquero colorway (purchased from the Yarn Country)

Ain't it purty . . .

and a close-up of the gorgeous yarny goodness!

I will be working on this shawl on my trip (along with a cotton market bag, and a bunch of little Viking Hats for the nieces and nephews)

Last, but not least are some photos I took of the dogs a week or so ago playing in the yard. The battery was dying on the camera, so it wasn't wanting to auto focus very well and with the speed that these pups were going I couldn't keep up, but let me tell you even though a couple of these shot are blurry, they are well worth it for the sheer enjoyment that these pups show when they get to wrestle around!

Here they are being pretty sedate . . .

then . . .
they're off!

I think this might be some fancy wresting move that they use on the WWE (is that what it is called? It used to be the WWF back when I was little and I don't keep track of such things)

Now this last one is quite fuzzy, but it is quite a fun one anyway.

Look at the wild looks on those faces.

I think that not long after this dogs went to their separate corners--Dakota goes under the deck and Montana runs to the garage.

Have a good week all-see you again after the 12th (I'm not sure if you will be able to expect photos, though because I don't own my own digital camera and I don't know when we will get the film developed-we just developed a bunch of our film from last fall through the present a few weeks ago)

What can I say about today?

I can't really think of a good title at all for today's post. I don't even know what to say about today, but Nin got me think about some of the famous/semi-famous people I've met (not that I am some great friend of anyone, or have even met people that most everyone else knows-just famous people to me and my kind of ilk I guess) and who I would love to meet.

Now, let's say this first and foremost--I am a lover of blue-grass, old fashioned country, Christian, classical, and any number of other kinds of music that most people don't listen to a whole lot. I don't know most of the music other people my age listen to because Classical Public radio was played in my house from when I was tiny to even today (I don't tend to have the radio on much at my house now, but we almost always have Minnesota Public Radio playing in the gallery).

Soooo . . . I have met various people from different old jug bands from the Twin Cities and that also includes meeting Koerner, Ray, and Glover because my dad used to be in a jug band back in the 60's called Mama's Home Cooking (he played the washtub bass). They have the Battle of the Jug Bands every year down in Minneapolis and my dad always goes to see a bunch of his old friends. Of course, back when I first went to the Battle it was in a VFW (I guess it was an American Legion-according to the history on their site) Hall in Minneapolis and now it has moved to a much fancier location (I haven't been to it since I was in high school though).

Me and Sherwin Linton

I have met Sherwin Linton. He plays all over the state of MN and SD and other places. He and his wife and their band are out playing all over most of the year. He emcees our county fair's talent show every year and I have been known to go up on stage and try to make a bit of a fool of myself strumming my guitar and singing. He seemed to think that I have an alright kind of a voice (my guitar skills need a lot of work, though, I think). Anyway, he knows all sorts of people in the music business as well, including being friends with the Cash family.

Dan and I have been to a couple of Michael Martin Murphy's (caution-music starts playing when you go to this page) concerts. He always is really nice and talks to everyone after the show. (His most famous hit was Wildfire, but he has done a bunch more that people would recognize.) We have a CD of his in which Paulette Carlson sings back up on a couple of songs. Paulette grew up around here and even though I have never met her I worked for her brother and his wife at an apple orchard just a ways from here.

I have been able to shake hands with Osmo Vanska, Lori Line, and the Riders in the Sky. (I have been trying to make the links to these last two here and I am not being allowed to do it. grrr, so you'll just have to look them up if you're interested in them)

Oh, and here's a silly story. Last month, we went down to a graduation party for my cousin's son and I asked my dad to drive around and show me how to get to my grandparent's old place because I couldn't remember how to get there (since I couldn't drive back when they used to live there and couldn't remember the way). We ended up driving into the neighborhood and stopped at an old neighbor of my dad's house. He restores old, old cars (the kind that look more like a buggy than a car) and he had a bunch sitting outside, so we chatted with him for a while. Come to find out that Jay Leno had been at his house the weekend before us. He had been doing an act at one of the casinos North of the Cities and had heard about this guy, so he called him up on his way to the airport and asked to pop in to look at his cars. If only the graduation party had been a week earlier, we would have been there at the same time.

So anyway, those have been my brushes with fame and glory (sound the church bells). Not much in the whole scheme of things, I suppose, but still fun for me!

Someday, though, I would really like to meet and actually chat with Randy Travis. He has led such an interesting life. I would love to meet any number of people, though, I suppose, but I am a true Minnesota girl and try not to bother people if at all possible and figure they would rather not have some little weirdo like me bothering them.

Well, have a great day!

1930's Wife and a Little House!

Well, I'm not quite as bad a wife as I thought I was--(even though I do hate to wash the dishes)

86 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Superior Take the test!

In other news, Dan and I went to go see Little House on the Prairie (the musical) last night at the Guthrie. It was the second preview night before it opens in a couple of weeks and it is also the premier of the musical with Melissa Gilbert playing Ma.

I heard about it back in late May/early June and thought that I would love to be able to go and see it. I haven't been to a fancy play production since college (although, I did go to the Opera a few years back at the Ordway because my oldest brother was in it--Rigoletto (he didn't play Rigoletto or anything, but it was his first opera as a member of the ensemble (or was it his first? now I can't remember offhand). I went to the old Guthrie back then and saw Much Ado about Nothing (at least that's what I think I saw) with a bunch of my drama friends.

Anyway, Dan thought that he would get us a couple of tickets for my birthday. The tickets went on sale the weekend before my birthday, so we went online and got them (or actually, I went online. Dan doesn't really ever use a computer). Since then I have been excited to go see the musical. We were just a few rows back on the right side of the stage, so we got to see everything nice and close up. It was exciting for me to see Melissa Gilbert in real life (of course, I would have loved to have met her).

My Stetson Man

I also kept thinking before the play that it would have been really cool if her husband, Bruce Boxleitner (I just love the show Scarecrow and Mrs. King and he is also in a fair amount of cool Western movies), would have been there just watching the play like us and then would have come up to Dan and I (because Dan was wearing his usual belt buckle and summer straw cowboy hat along with the leather belt he made) and said something like, "Hey where did you get that leather belt? (or make mention on the beautiful leather purse I was carrying)" and then we would say, "Oh that, Dan made it. He makes all sorts of these kinds of things."



Of course, none of that happened, but gosh-golly-gee it was some good fun going down to the big city to see the world premier of a brand new musical starring Melissa Gilbert! (Okay, we might live in rural MN, but we are only about an hour and a half from the Guthrie--not soooo far)

Ruby Tuesday

Hey, this post has nothing to do with the restaurant (in fact, I never been to a Ruby Tuesday--I've been to TGI Friday's and Applebee's, but never a Ruby Tuesday) nor have I recently acquired a gem mining operation. I don't even own any kind of jewelry with rubies in it (although I do have a necklace with little red glass bead things on it), but it is Tuesday and the song came into my head.

****Warning, this is a bit of a rambling post with no real point to it, but if you want to know what's been up in my life--Read on . . . ****

This past week has been warm, it has also been kinda pretty here and there and I've done a few different things. I will get to them in just a bit, but first let me say a sad little item. If you want you can skip this little emotive piece of stuff and just start reading after the pictures.

It happened a month ago, but it made me very sad and I just didn't know how to say it. You know those precious baby kittens that I posted pictures of--(I always tell myself I shouldn't get so attached to precious babes like that, but I can't help myself)--Well, one day a month ago Dan came running up to the house to telly me that my most favorite little fluff ball was laying in the barn nearly dead, so I ran down, picked up that limp little body and got some liquid and milk replacer down her and she perked up quite nicely. I had her sleep in a little cat carrier in our room for the next couple of days and fed her every little while. She was starting to regain her energy, when all of a sudden one morning when I was feeding her she just died--I cried and cried. She was the sweetest little thing. Well, that same morning two of her siblings (who had been very active and doing well) got very weak and died. We ended up losing 4 of the 5 kittens in about a week's time and I was very sad about it. The symptoms they had were nothing like the common diseases that our kittens have normally had when they have died suddenly, so I think it must have been some congenital defect or something--I just can't figure it out. These little kittens were much smaller than other ones that were born about the same time. In fact the night before these ones died a friend brought some that were about the same age to live at our house (they were never exposed to the other kittens, so it couldn't have been anything that they brought with them) and they are way bigger than the ours. Anyway, of our first little batch of babies that I petted, cared for, and loved to the full all we have left is little Hank.

He's just a precious little ball of fur and now he has five other siblings that play with him and cuddle up with him, thankfully.

At the moment I only have two really good pictures of a kitten a piece, but I will tell you all of their names--Mike, Molly, Mabel, Tom, and Jerry.

Little Miss Mabel looking out the barn door

Little Miss Molly lounging in the barn.

Okay, that sad item took way longer than it should have to talk about. I ramble and ramble sometimes, but I do love my little kitties (and all our animals really) and even though I grew up on this little farm and have had to deal with pets and farm animals dying most of my life, I have a bit of a tender heart. (Don't worry we are well acquainted with our local vet and we make sure our animals get the care that they need--I've been helping give shots to animals since I was in my teens)

Anway, I have also picked beans and peas from the garden . . .

Yellow and green beans, with a pea or two stuck in for good measure!

I call this one-On the Vine-Sugar snap peas are so pretty!

Dan and I went to his aunt and uncle's house for a birthday party. They own an old farm place near this little lake about 1/2 an hour from our place. You walk down this long driveway and come up to the lake where they have an old cabin from, oh, probably the 30's and the part they own is undeveloped whereas the rest of the lake is full of cabins, homes, beaches, and docks. (His aunt's husband's family has owned the property for generations--they even have the original farmhouse back in the woods a ways--I plan to get some good pictures of it sometime, but the mosquitoes were nasty that night and I didn't think traveling further into the woods would be a good idea!)

The sun was shining on the lake real prettily that evening!

On our walk back up to the house I stood back a little ways and took a few shots of Dan, his brother, and his two cousins.

Cord, Tim, Dan and Jason

(I have and idea this picture will be one that his aunt and uncle will especially want to have--their son Cord (he's almost 12) loves hanging out and being one of the big guys and this shows that really well!)

Sooo . . . in lieu of a recent picture

I picked strawberries this morning (my third time this year) at a local farm that has pick your own and decided it was about time I stole my dad's digital camera to take some pictures of kittens and strawberry stuff and the garden, so I did, BUT the little flash card was here at gallery and not in the camera and there are no pictures to show of the exciting goings on at my house (or even of the pile of dirty dishes awaiting me when I get home).

Sooooooo . . .

The first picture my parent's took when they bought our farm house in 1972. It is still the same basic L-shape farm house, but there have been a lot of changes and none of them are finished yet. (Because that is the way it is will old farmhouses-the projects that you are working on never seem to end (we still haven't finished re-siding our house that we started almost 6 years ago (although I don't ever really remember our house being white as it was resided with a gray siding when I was 1)

This picture was taken last Spring. the outbuilding all used to be white with red trim (and I vaguely remember that, but for a few different summers my older brothers had jobs repainting everything red with white trim---more my style as I love the color red)

Oh, there is one recent picture (and this is the reason there wasn't a card in the camera (I took it out so I could upload this picture and send it off))

An old friend from college is getting married at the end of the month and had designed a nice little logo for all of their invites and so on and so forth. He remembered that I knew something about metal stuff (did I tell you I used to work in a bronze foundry doing waxwork one year? That's where I met my husband, Dan. (it's a small foundry that does work for artists and Dan still works there)) and sent me an email wondering if I could make them a medallion for their wedding. Anyway, this is what it looks like in wax. I sent it with Dan this morning to the foundry to get it made into bronze (that's a whole other process-maybe I'll explain it sometime, but it gets a bit tedious) and it should be done by the end of the month.

Mid-June and tomorrow's a full moon?!

I didn't know what I should title this post, so I thought I would make up a rhyme. Maybe it's a little lame, but sometimes I can be a little lame too ;o)

The view from the back yard by our garden

I am totally finished with my Rocky Mountain Jaywalkers. I've also started another pair of socks with my Lorna's Laces Grumperina sock yarn, finished one and am turning the heal on the other. (No pictures of those yet because I am a bad person that doesn't always take pictures when she should).

I like them a lot, but sadly when I put them through the wash their color faded a bit. Admittedly, I had thought the colors were a little too bright when I first started them way back before I really had figured out how to knit socks, but as I was working on them I really grew to like the play of the colors and their crisp color. I should take an after picture to show you the difference I suppose, but I don't ever get around to such things.

We have been having a lot of fun playing with baby kittens lately. I got them a bunch of milk replacer to boost the amount of food they are getting from their mother though. She is a wild cat (well, she is also a wilde cat, but that is just a special breed of kitty that comes from our farm), so she doesn't like spend as much time with her kittens because we might come around and want to pet them. Usually, our mother cats have been the friendly sort and like to get petted and payed attention to just as much as their babies, so they are always hanging around and the kittens get well fed.

Sadly, on Sunday night a raccoon came into the barn and reeked havoc in our cat's food area and killed one of our little babies. We occasionally have visitors in the barn that enjoy eating the dog and cat food and if they cause real problems we end up having to deal with them, but normally we let things be as long as real problems aren't caused. (like the time we had about 4 or 5 skunks coming into the barn every night to eat the dog food--yucky) I have to tell you though when I found out about the creature that came into the barn on Sunday night and killed one of our precious little kittens, there was not a smidge of regret when we got out the 410. We weren't able to catch it yesterday morning, so I spent the day with the kittens in the house feeding them milk replacer every couple of hours and wiping their little milky mouths and feet. (let's just say, the kitchen floor needs a good washing after those little milky paws went wondering around until I could get a washcloth on them) Last night we went into the barn to set our live trap, but noticed that things were knocked over in the cat food area once again. Dan went up into the haymow and saw it scurrying down into the wall and we were able to get rid of it right them and there. I am not a fan of killing creatures just because they come onto the property (some people around here will do that), but once an animal figures out that it can get a meal at the expense of a little defenseless baby, it will continue to do so and that is when we have to defend those little lives.

Montana's is right in front and Dakota's in the background

Thankfully we have a couple of dogs around our house that scare off most of the critters and really when we do have a raccoon, skunk, or possom coming around it causes me to worry that they aren't in their right mind and may have rabies-otherwise they would have stayed away.

Ummm . . . we also are in the process of putting a new pump in our well and getting it piped into the house. We used to just use an electric motor that pumped water into a cistern that then was pumped into the house, but because cisterns aren't allowed anymore really for people's drinking water, we had to replace it with a new system (not a new well (its been going strong for many, many years-our area has a lot of water underground), but a new pumping system) It is actually sad to see our old pump go. We would plug it in and it would use the old fashioned pumping stuff that could be attached to our windmill. We had actually been hoping to someday fix the shaft that had been broken many years ago, so that we could just use the windmill for our pumping our water again--but we still would have had to have used the cistern and that can't be ;o(

And that is most of what we've been up to lately-oh, and this coming Friday I am going to be singing and playing guitar/piano in the evening at the Mushroom building in my town (if you aren't from here you might not understand, but we have this building that was built here in the 30's that is shaped like a mushroom and used to be a gas station way back when they just had a little building that the service people would wait in during the day. It was donated to the city a few years back and they made the it into a little spot where we have live music on Friday nights in the summer and the historical society sells ice cream cones, popcorn, and lemonade for fundraising). Wish me luck!

A couple weeks ago an old friend of mine played her harp!

What have I been doin' lately?

Hey there all. I thought I would let you know what I have been doing lately. We have had a busy couple of weeks (umm . . . not like too busy to go on the computer or anything, but busy enough that we have done some interesting and different things) and I even have pictures to prove it!

Our first tulip bloomed this morning (Last year they were blooming in April and usually they bloom more around the first of May). It's leaves got a little frostbitten a couple of weeks ago when we had snow, so it has some brown edges.

We also had some little babies born about a week and a half ago at our place.

They are located in a little nest in the wall of our barn. Their mother is not the friendly sort, so we have to wait until she leaves in order to go over and pick them out of their nest to pet them. There are two totally gray kittens, one gray tabby, one totally black kitten, and one black tabby. They are very precious little babies and we hope they will be friendly little babes and that their mother won't hide them away somewhere else. Last year their mother (or Scared Little Kitty, as we call her) had three kittens, but by the time we knew they were born they were at least a month old, hissed, spat, and scratched. They did not want to be caught, so we were vigilant this year in making sure we found kittens right away!

Last week Dan took the week off and he hauled scrap metal off to the scrap yard. We ended up bringing in about 17,000 lbs of metal. I went with him several times to watch the metal get unloaded and the last time we went down, I got the idea that this would be something cool to get pictures of, so here are a couple of neat ones.

Here are a bunch of old tractor parts that we were parked next to as we waited in line to drop off our trailer of metal. Note the bird in the little tree on the right.

Now, when it was time for our trailer to get unloaded the big grappler came down and picked the metal off the trailer.

Here it is taking off some old chicken nesting boxes that had seen better days. (Did I ever tell you that when I was little we had laying hens? My mom used to supply one of the local restaurants with eggs as well as bring them in to sell at a couple of the small factories here in town. I only vaguely remember her doing this, so I think she stopped selling eggs when I was 2 or 3)

Lastly, knitting has been taking place.
These jaywalkers are almost done. I called them my Rocky Mountain Jaywalkers because I started to make them a couple of years ago (long before my pink knee highs) when Dan and I went camping in Rocky Mountain National Park and the way they were turning out looking a lot the mountains in Summer.

Well, have a great day all!

May Day!

Happy May Day everyone!

This is always one of my favorite days because it usually means the wild flowers are blooming and beautiful, but not so much this year. Last year I had already gone out and taken some pictures of the local flowers and the tulips were in full bloom in my yard. This year the tulip greens are up and I am just starting to see the fist buds coming up out of the ground.

Still, they will be here soon, so even though 30's and 40's are on tap for this weekend, Spring is here and it is time to be out and enjoying the weather (possibilities of snow and all). Since I don't have any pretty spring flowers to show the pictures you are seeing are of the maple sugar I made last weekend from my last batch of maple syrup.


You make maple sugar by getting maple syrup up to 240 degrees and then you whisk it until it starts to cool a bit and you can kind of see that there are granules forming. (it should still be liquid-ish and not too stiff) Then you pour it into forms and after it all cools down you pop it out of the forms. It took me a bit to figure what way to get the sugar out of the forms. I used some old cast iron heart forms and even though they were well seasoned the first sugar I made didn't want to come out of those pans. I ended up heating up the pans in the oven to soften the sugar so I could redo the whole process and sprayed Pam into each of the little forms. It still took a fair amount of cajoling to get them out, so I think I will get a whole bunch of little cookie cutters of the same shape and use them next year. (if you want to make candy or stuff like that you should really think of getting a candy thermometer--although, because I am a lazy person I ran into my parents' apartment and took their thermometer from the kitchen drawer--their apartment is right next to the gallery and it is soooo much closer than the grocery store (a block away)). ****Make sure to keep a steady eye on the syrup and that you put it into a pan that looks like it is too big for the amount of syrup you are putting in there because the syrup can boil up and over the sides pretty quick even if you do keep a good eye on it.****


Maple sugar is kind of a hard packed sugar sort of like brown sugar. To granulate it you could take a piece of the packed sugar and break it up. It is kind of hard to explain exactly what it is like if you have never seen anything like it before. I would suggest reading about sugaring and stuff like that in Little House is the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder and you might understand the whole process a little better. It seems whenever I think back on how to make old fashioned things, I think of what Laura Ingalls did as a little girl and it all makes sense to me.