Dave and Manon join Painted Perches

Our Centretown home has joined Painted Perches, which is "a community art project to turn LeBreton St into an open-air walking gallery of hand-painted birdhouses."

The organizer, Jesse Burcsik, delivered flyers describing the project to houses on the street and when I said we were intererested, he gave us two bird houses to paint. 

I painted one yellow and green (I actually blended the green all by myself using yellow and blue paint) and the lovely Manon painted the other house to imitate the colours of our house using colours that she found in our collection and also blended herself.

I mounted the houses this morning and I must say we are very happy with them.

We hope that two avian families will move in and they will get along peacefully with the canine patrons of the Stick Library. 

Jesse has created an excellent page describing the project that includes a map for all the bird houses with links to descriptions of each house. 

• Manon's bird house: The Mini Manonsion
• Dave's bird house: The Yellow Leaf House 

More about Painted Perches

The core Painted Perches trail is along LeBreton St N, but neighbours from all over Ottawa are invited to take part — put up a birdhouse and add it to the map.

The project was started by Ottawa resident Jesse Burcsik, and made possible by neighbours and local artists of all ages.

Painted perches has an excellent web page at paintedperches.ca and is on Instagram @paintedperches

There is an upcoming painting event at the Cambridge Street Seats on July 25 from 1pm to 4pm: all materials provided! 

 

An upgrade to the squid jars

Way back in 2008, I filled a big jar with mineral oil for the lovely Manon and put a candelabra light bulb in it with other stuff so it looked like a giant squid. A number of years later, I did a smaller version. 

They both looked pretty cool when well lit, but there was something missing.

Recently it came to me. 

I had some cheap LED lights that didn't work any more, but when I got out my soldering iron and wire strippers, I managed to get them working again with an old transformer (don't let anyone tell you to get rid of those things). 

An old tuna can worked perfectly as the base for the smaller jar and a biscuit tin from Dollarama perfectly fit the larger jar. 

The squids now go very nicely with the lava lamps on top of the piano.

Halloween Preparation

I'm happy to say that we managed to complete the Halloween display for our porch yesterday afternoon. Although it did not go so well for the garden gnomes.

The lovely Manon likes to go traditional and used a knife, but I found that my oscillating mult-crafter tool made cutting a pumpkin extremely easy! 

Is this Siberian elm tree really okay?

Back in July, a City of Ottawa Forestry inspector came at my request and checked out the Siberian elms next to our house. I was particularly concerned about this one because it had a big brown streak on the trunk and the leaves did not seem to be doing well. 

The inspector assured me that both elms looked great to him and were doing fine.

But yesterday, we got an indication that this Siberian elm is not happy. It is definitely more threatening if you ask me.

My new marble shelf

I have a new marble shelf in the window of my studio.

I've been wanting to make a lot of things in the past while and when I opened a box that had lots of old jam jars with marbles in them, I decided it was time to act on this project.

So I cut some old wood scraps to the right size, got out more jars and marbles from my jar and marble hordes, painted things, drilled holes, and stuck everything together.

Now we just have to figure out what will go on top of the new shelf.

 

Home repair with squid tentacle

Many years ago, way back when I was a solo act, I found it necessary to cut a hole in the wall in the bedroom/office area to access some coaxial cable. I cut a rectangle out of the drywall, accessed the cable and then put the rectangle of drywall back in place with green masking tape.

This wasn't particularly obvious to the other resident who came to live here because I had a dresser, a bunch of empty boxes, a clothes tree, and a sort of nightstand thing in front of this wall. But I've been downsizing a bit and moving things into my new studio space and the taped rectangle became entirely obvious.

It was gently suggested that I replace the taped-up rectangle with an access panel. I had to agree that this was a very good idea, so I got an access panel, removed the taped-up rectangle, and enlarged the hole so the access panel would properly fit.

Alas, in doing so, removal of the tape that had been on the wall for at least 20 years caused a section of paint to also come off, and I put a longer mark on the wall than I had needed.

Some people would probably have addressed these unsightly blemishes with some sort of paint solution. But I do not know much about house paint and am not good at using it.

However, I can draw a squid tentacle with a Rotring Tikky Graphic C.7 and a set of coloured pencils on a piece of fine tooth surface sketch paper and then use an exacto knife to cut out that tentacle so it perfectly covers unsightly blemishes on a wall.

And that is what I did.

If the other resident of your home has an affection for cephalopods, this is a home repair solution that I can recommend.

 

Halloween is over

It's November 2, but before I can make my devilled eggs, the monsters had to come down.

I set the time lapse to go a little faster, so this one will only take you 12 seconds to watch.

Time lapsing the monster mounting

It's late October, so time to put the monsters up on the windows.

To encourage myself, I used my new lifehack of setting up the time lapse camera.

Here I go. You might notice that after I put up a set in a narrow window, I took the monsters down and put them in the other window. This is because I used a picture taken from outside as my reference and got my left and right mixed up. This won't happen again because I've given myself a graphic guide for next year.

And here's the well-drawn, professional reminder I've attached so that in future years I'll know which monsters go on which side of the big window.

 

Video from 1995

Until very recently, I had a box with twelve 3/4" U-matic videotapes that dated from the 1980s and 1990s from my university days in the early 80s and volunteering at the Rogers 22 community TV station in the mid-90s.

The tapes were in a box collecting dust. Every few years, I'd look into getting them downloaded but it was always difficult to find someone with the right equipment, at an affordable price, and where it wasn't too complicated.

Until now. Someone on Reddit asked about downloading VHS tapes in Ottawa, and someone else replied with several options. I sent emails to a couple of the choices and it turns out that Ottawa Video Transfer has a U-matic machine, and they were willing to do it at a reasonable price. They sent a courier for the pickup and return and put the resulting mp4s on a thumb drive.

The box of tapes is now gone and I have started the process of trimming the clips, adding in things like titles, name captions and close captions and uploading them to Youtube.

The first is from September 1995 with Corinne Baumgarten reporting on the Ottawa Small Press Book Fair. Camera work by David Taylor. Interviews with John Barton, Chris Edwards, Roberta Huebner, rob mclennan, Lorraine Montgomery and Theresa Morrow.

GIFs from my Pixel 5

I got a Pixel 5 smartphone a few years ago and even though it is past its support date from Google, I am still learning how to do things with it. For example, when looking at photos, some of them showed movement on the phone. When I uploaded them to my desktop, they were still photos with no movement. 

Then, a few weeks ago, I learned how to export them as GIFs and preserve the movement.

In honour of the current heatwave, here is my first GIF - Manon at Rideau Falls on February 14. That frozen mist in the air was cold, let me tell you:

From last week, a very large wasp or hornet that wanted to get into my house:.

From this morning, Manon picking service berries in an effort to thwart the squirrels and maybe get a enough for a pie:

Just in case there is someone out there who would like to do this and they have a Pixel 5, or maybe some other phone that works the same way, here is how I saved these photos as GIFs:

1 - In the Pixel 5 photo app, tapped the 3-dot menu icon on a moving-photo

2 - Swiped over to the word "Export" and tapped it

3 - Selected "GIF" and tapped "Export"

I have to say, making GIFs this way is an awful lot easier than how I did it before - importing a video into Gimp and doing all sorts of stuff. 

The only thing is, I haven't learned why the Pixel 5 sometimes takes a moving picture and other times takes a single still picture.

Our Hallowe'en

We have no jack-o-lantern this year, but the sea monsters are back on the window, so we may get a few trick-or-treaters tonight. If there are any leftover mini-chocolate bars, I will just have to buckle down and deal with them.

Watch Lynn Miles from your couch!

One of the great things about living in Ottawa is how often you can go see a Lynn Miles show. 

With the pandemic, these options are more limited, but now Lynn is doing shows from her living room that you can see in your home anywhere in the world.

She did a wonderful show this past Saturday. It had the same intimate feeling as her shows used to have at Rasputin's.

She'll be doing three more, on Saturday nights at 8:00 pm, EST.

$10 tickets are availabe through Sidedoor.

If you are so deprived that you're unfamiliar with Lynn's music, this video will help. 

You can find more videos of Lynn performing on the internet, but they won't give you any appreciation for what she says between songs. 

On the technical side: The shows are broadcast on Zoom. So they'll show up on any internet connected computer. We like to watch on the big TV screen, but to do that, we had to connect a computer to the TV with an HDMI cable. Using our Chromecast was not an option.

Update: Great article about Lynn from CTV

My new way to display marbles

 When you and your spouse both have enormous hoards of marbles, you are always looking for new ways to display them.

This morning I hit on something that had never occurred to me before: hanging them with a spring. I'm sure others have thought of this before, so I'm not the inventor of the technique, but still I'm inordinately pleased with this.

As an added bonus, my habit of hanging on to bits of junk because they might come in handy some day has been rewarded! I have a nice collection of old springs to go through now.

Other marble display methods:

• Window display 1
• Window display 2
• Dinosaur shelf 1
• Dinosaur shelf 2
• Staircase marbles
• Marble run
• Light shade

My new collaboration - Garden Sign

I am very happy with my latest artistic collaboration. It is with my next door neighbour, five-year-old Elly.

Elly and Manon have a joint garden. It is really nice. But it suffers from the many dogs who relieve themselves on it. Elly and Manon decided to put in a sign asking the dogs to behave differently and use the water bowl they installed.

They decided what words they wanted on two signs. I cut two pieces of pressed board and inked on the words with a Sharpie. Then Elly applied her design skills to colour the letters and add attractive images. I sprayed on polyurethane to add water protection and affixed the signs to an old broom handle.

This morning we planted the sign. Manon put out the water bowl and a refill can and Manon and Elly did a formal ribbon cutting to launch the sign.

The ribbon cutting ceremony

[By the way, if you have any comments for Elly, I will pass them on.]

Using the new sidewalk chalk

We finally had an excellent day to try out the new sidewalk chalk and went with a modified Easter theme.

Previously: Giant sidewalk chalk for Manon

Valentine Dinosaurs

 We had another cold spell and went with a Valentine's Day theme for the dinosaurs. The red in the hearts came from a red-coloured herbal tea. 

Ice dinosaurs

 

Manon and I are experimenting with an artform that is new to us.

Apparently many people make hanging ice ornaments with heart or circle shaped cake pans. 

Oddly, the easiest cake pans for us to find were of a brontosaurus and t-rex.

If we get a sunny day this week, they will probably look really neat.

Giant sidewalk chalk for Manon

 Manon is not the easiest person to shop for, so I like when I can find something to make that cannot be found in the stores.

In this case, it is giant sidewalk chalk that is pretty easy to make.

I bought a bag of plaster of Paris at Preston Hardware and we've actually had about eight bottles of tempera paint in the craft cupboard for more than a decade.

The Instructables calls for using old Pringles containers, but we had a bunch of poster tubes that we were going to discard.

Apparently, the chalk will get used soon if it dries up before we get snow. But I suspect they won't be used up by Canada Day.

Now I am being watched

I might have thought I was safe from being surprised by things looking at me because all the googly eyes are in my pockets.

But on Monday, I noticed the melon was missing his eyes. I wondered where they were gone.

The next morning, when I went to get my coffee, I found out.

This fellow was ready to give me my morning cup of coffee.

Then on Wednesday, this is who greeted me in the bathroom.

More fun with googly eyes - Fruit Friends

Today I was inspired by the gifted Miranda Hart to use the googly eyes to make fruit friends.

Here is a taste of her show that features Fruit Friends:

And it is possible to watch all the episodes on Dailymotion in your browser without paying any extra money. It seems to good to be true, and it may not last long, but it looks like all 20 episodes are currently available at https://www.dailymotion.com/playlist/x6t6c7