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Friday, September 2, 2011

What I've Been Up to...

How did everyone fare during Hurricane Irene? I have to admit, I sort of assumed the media was hyping up the storm and we didn't do as much preparation as we should have. We have electric everything here so when we lose power, we can't flush, run water, cook - nothing! I did have some drinking water stored in the garage and managed to freeze a few containers of water for extra ice, which sustained us through the first 36 hours without power. We also made good use of our propane camping stove, backyard grill, and hand-powered radio and flashlights (we weren't totally unprepared!). Mark had just come back from the store with 3 large bags of ice, extra batteries, and more water, when the power came back on about 2 hours later. All in all, we were extremely fortunate to have very minimal damage - just a few branches and many leaves down, as seen above. Others in town are still waiting for their power to be restored and I heard about one home near the Ramapo River in NJ that was practically washed away. We were very lucky that the extent of our discomfort was only a couple of days without a shower and some melted ice cream!

In addition to hurricane survival and recovery, I've continued to make components for more charm bracelets. Here are some of the charms I've created out of polymer clay, bits of quilted collage, shrink film, and paper beads. As you might guess, I'm going with a leafy forest theme as well as a sea theme with the charms. I've completed one more bracelet and hope to have a couple more done soon. (An ETSY shop was in my goals for the year, and it's September already!)
One thing that kept me occupied during those long hours without power were the Game of Thrones book series by George R. R. Martin. Mark and I started watching the HBO series by that title which aired this past spring and left viewers hanging (this author has a habit of doing that). I've been getting the series of 5 books from the library one at a time and just finished the fourth one titled A Feast for Crows. The HBO series seemed excessively graphic in both violence and sexual content and I thought it was just played up to promote the series, but it's all there in the books too. They take place in a medieval-type fantasy world where the king who united seven kingdoms has died and now several kings of smaller kingdoms are vying for the Iron Throne. There are several interesting characters in the series, many of them female, and the plot takes many twists and turns that make you want to keep reading. I'm currently on the library waiting list for the book pictured below which was just released in July. Hope it comes soon!
And the final thing I've been preparing for is our FANE group show, which is currently hanging at the Mahopac Public Library! This one is titled "A Colorful Show" because we each kept our piece largely monochromatic. Group members hung the show on Wednesday, but we have yet to put up the labels for each piece, or displayed the book containing artist statements. I volunteered to collect and print those, and I have almost everyone's completed statemtents... The show should be entirely complete by next Tuesday, so I'll post some photos and the postcard. Our opening reception will be on Saturday September 17th, so if you're in the area, I hope you'll come see it!

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