Trip East -Spring 2009

I've not had much time to update the blog since I arrived back in New Hampshire. I'll fill you in on why in my next post. Meanwhile, here is a quick synopsis, with highlights, of my last trip home.


White Sands, New Mexico was awesome. From the distance you start seeing these small white hills and then you're in the midst of large white gypsum sand dunes.


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Driving the Park roads made me think I was driving New Hampshire snowy roads...... So much so that I kept expecting the car to slip and slide on ice.
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They even plow the roads to keep the sand off of the pavement. The dirty sand even looked like dirty winter snow.
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For 30 years (in another life) I was involved with British cars and at one time we owned 7 of them. It was a delight to meet this couple at the Monument gift center. They had actually driven their MG TC on my dream trip..... The entire Pan American Highway from South America to Alaska. Here are some of their notes from the trip when they were in Arizona.




We were passing Mullinville KS when we saw a strange fence line and couldn't figure out just what it was. So we took a detour and enjoyed ourselves with several fields of "found object art".





Seems the artist had a problem with town politics!





We stopped in the middle of nowhere for lunch one day and this beautiful wall caught my eye. The weathered and faded paint just made a beautiful design.





It was a quick trip, a month earlier than usual, but I had bought a NH house in January and wanted to get renovations started as soon as possible.

Spring colors in the Desert

The Nopal, prickly pear cactus are blooming in colors that seem so bright amidst all of the dusty Arizona landscape. I was playing with a Color Schemer to extract some colors from my photo for possible beading projects.

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I clipped small portions of the photo and uploaded them to Color Hunter. By selecting different areas of a photo you will get slightly different color choices, but they all seem to be of the whole cloth.

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You can also toggle between muted and vibrant as I did in the first two examples.

Those of you who know me will see some of my favorite colors in this last example. It's a fun way to see some color combinations that might not occur to me otherwise. How do you pick colors for a project?

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Time to Hit the Road East

Most of the beads are sorted out and packed in the trailer. I'm getting the house cleaned up, last of the laundry done and tomorrow the car will get packed ..... then we will be on the road for New Hampshire for the Summer. It'll be a quick trip, but I'm sure there will be at least one side trip (or two). I'll try and post a photo now and again if I see something interesting.

My Sister Owns a JAIL!

The grand kids think that's the neatest thing ever
....... I live in what was reputedly a boardinghouse/brothel and my Illinois High School room mate owns an old adobe stage stop across the street .... We don't aim to be boring during our winters in Tombstone, Arizona ....


(Tina, center, showing family some jail history)



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In 2006 the jail was in danger of folding back into the landscape, vandalized and graffiti defaced. Last year my sister, Tina had an opportunity to purchase the property. Since it was close to the edge of her land, she bought it and decided to restore it.

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The Gleeson Jail was built in 1910 when the town was a booming Arizona mining town.

Now it is a ghost town.

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Today the Jail looks much like it did in it's heyday, both inside and out.

...The Sheriff just stepped out....

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She even managed to track down and find the strap iron door from the second Gleeson Jail, just previous to this one.

Gleeson didn't have a newspaper, but neighboring Courtland did and it carried Gleeson news and happenings. You can read all the news from the area between 1910 and 1918 in the Arizonan. One of my ancestral relatives, Steve Bertoglio, was reported to have bought a brand new Reo in the pages of the paper.

There Comes a Time ....

...to take a sabbatical. I need to put the beads away for 6 to 8 months and concentrate on organizing the underpinnings of my life. I've just spent 3 months on a building project in Arizona and have an even larger building project waiting for me in New Hampshire. I like change and will like having my own house in NH again. However, I find that I'm just not as flexible at 65 as I was at 30 and have to admit that I can't do it all at once anymore. When I leave Arizona later this month I'll put my beads in storage until I have a finished studio in the new house. I do know that ideas will be percolating and show up here now and again, but I'll probably be writing about construction more than beading for a while.

International Easter:

We went to my sister's place for Easter dinner with 20 assorted friends and family. Afterwards I realized that the deserts I made sort of crossed a few international borders.


I found this great tin of large German circle cutters at the flea market and had to try them out.



I made a Chilean sweet that was a favorite childhood treat whenever we went to the beach. Dulces de La Liegua are sweet cracker rounds stuck together with cooked sweetened condensed milk and covered with meringue.



About half way through putting them together I was sure I had made way to many. What a production chore with meringue smeared all over me as well as the dulces.


They were just as good as I remembered them to be.


To round out my contribution I made Nanimo bars, a sinful Canadian Christmas sweet and Hot Cross Buns, a traditional British Easter food.


Wasn't too many leftovers, so I guess my choices for the desert were well chosen.