Another month almost gone and summer is winding down for some of my friends in other parts of the country. The kids here have been back to school for a few weeks already and that always makes me think back to my childhood in Connecticut. Back to school meant only a few more days of summer’s heat and the arrival of fall temperatures and the local agricultural fair. It is such a different world here. We are still in the grip of summer with 100+ temperatures. Our Monsoon season is in full swing and humidity is hanging heavy in the air. Last night large parts of the valley had heavy rains, including our little part of it. When you live in a desert, rain is a very big deal and I simply couldn’t make a blog post without mentioning it.

My good friend, Billie, invited me to join a monthly art group that she belongs to and last night we braved the flooded streets and tree toppling winds to get to it. It was the first time I’d played with art supplies in quite a while. I’ve had my nose stuck so deep into the genealogy notes that I’ve barely made time for anything else. But last night was the time to come up for fresh air and create something. Billie was in charge of planning the activity for the group. She select a technique with alcohol inks that I hadn’t done before and found quite enjoyable. The plan is simply to place a few drops of ink on the glossy card stock and then hit it with a little canned air. It seemed to me that the more you tried to control the ink flow, the more uncontrollable it became. I had to learn to let go and just wait and see what happened. The image above was one of my favorites. As soon as the first 3 colors spread I saw the little fairy trying to come out so I added a face and then the flower in the bottom corner.

I’ve started another craft project that I expect to be slow and take a long time to finish. I’ve decided to make a purse from old chip bags. It’s a variation of the chewing gum wrapper chains that so many of the kids use to make. I never learned how to do this when I was young so I had to start from scratch for this project. I’m making my pieces just a bit larger than a gum wrapper but otherwise it is the same deal. When my chains get long enough I’ll stitch them together to form the purse. One large bag of Fritos only gave me about a 9 inch section of chain so Recliner Man better not be planning a diet any time soon. He is our main chip snacker and I’m counting on him to do his fair share on this project.

If any of my local readers are looking for a new pet, I have a facebook friend with a couple of cute kittens looking for a home.