My Elusive Hawk Friend

The other day my friend , a beautiful Red Tail Hawk, was sitting in his preening tree when I went outside. I went back in the house and grabbed my camera with the nice long lens on it (70-300) with the VR feature, a must for long distance shots being hand held,and started to take a few shots as I walked towards the tree in the distance.

Slowly I walked, taking shots along the way, so as not to frighten the Hawk as I approached His territory. He used to allow me to walk right up under his tree and I would talk to him as he would listen intently to my every word, however , a couple of years ago...someone or something has scared his and he is now very skittish at the approach of a human and allows no one to get much closer than One Thousand yards before he flys away.

I am putting in a few photographs of him..first of the long distance view and then two of close up zoom photographs from around One Thousand Yards.

Thoughts of Spring/Summer

Today I was sitting here thinking of this past Spring and Summer and the beautiful flowers we had here in our flower beds around the log cabin.

It started out today as a rather brisk 24 degrees and only supposed to get up to about 49 today for a high but sunny.

Instantly my thoughts turned to beautiful flowers, after viewing Judith Heartsong's blog and the progression of her painting of a beautiful White Flower.

I am listing a few photographs of some of our flowers this past Spring and Summer, which consist of Tulips and Lobelia photographs and some close up shots of them.

Kachina Dancer Gourd

Today I am putting in some pictures of a Kachina Dancer Gourd that I made. You can click on each picture to enlarge for better viewing and details.

A photograph of the Kachina Gourd with real Turquoise inlay. There are two panels of Kachina Dancers, each one is different.

All the Turquoise is Diamond shaped pieces of real Turquoise that I cut and inlayed, then ground down flush with the gourds surface,then polished.

All Kachina Dancer pitctures are drawn on with pencil then wood burned into the gourd and for color I used leather dyes. I also inlayed Turquoise diamond shaped pieces into the removable top and also used Sterling Silver wire inlayed into the gourd top and Sterling Silver Feathers.

For the top, I made a handle, using a piece of a miniature gourd top which you can see in the photograph with the top off.

Foggy Sunrise

Today dawned as a rather dreary cloudy day and Grandfather (The Sun) was struggling to get up the mountain through all the clouds and fog, but he did arrive and started to paint the sky.

I opened the curtains and started out the door to my work shop to do some more beading and I looked across the road to the mountain about 5 miles away and saw that Grandfather indeed had started to paint the sky in beautiful colors. The ground fog was just starting to rise after a night of light rain, giving the landscape quite a different but beautiful vision.

I went back inside and got out my camera and headed back out the door to capture this unusual sight, the rising fog and the development of a sunrise, a seldom seen picture to be had.

I will share two of the photographs with you today, one being the long shot of the 5 mile distant mountain and surrounding area, and another as a close up zoom photograph of the same mountain.

Cedar Flute

This is a Cedar Flute I have been working on (off and on) for some time now. I finally got the "Bird" carved and wood burned after several years of off and on work on the flute and bird,now all I have to do is Tune the flute.

I am including a close up picture of the "Bird" which is an Eagle.

Workshop Tour

Come with me on a tour of my Workshop. Here is where I do my Art and get my inspiration for creating in an undisturbed atmosphere.

I built this shop from scratch, as a former builder, this was a relative easy task for me and I covered the outside with Log Siding to match the Log Cabin we live in because it sits right next to the Cabin.

The Shop is well insulated and sheetrocked and has it's own 100 Amp service and plenty of outlets and is heated in winter and air conditioned in summer.

I will show you the layout of this somewhat crowded shop, as I would have loved to have a larger space but the 12x14 building was all I could afford to build at the time, so this amout of space had to do till I built a 8x10 storage building next to it to hold some of the equipment and tools that were in the Shop, thus freeing up more space to work in.

Following are some photographs of the inside of the shop;

Some of my stash of rough Opals from Australia that I cut and polish.

Scrimshaw on Plexiglas

This is a Scrimshaw Picture that I did a few years ago on Plexiglas.

Scrimshaw is an old Art that the Whalers used to do when they had down time and nothing else to do. They would use Bone, Ivory or Whales Teeth and after sanding it smooth,sometimes with shark skin as sandpaper wasn't readily available then, they would then draw on the Bone or Ivory and begin to carve in lines with a sharpened piece of metal or a knife and then fill in the carved lines with soot,lampblack, or India Ink if they had any. After it was dry they would then rub off the excess,leaving only the coloring in the carved lines.

To do Scrimshaw it takes Hundreds even thousands of carved in lines to make a picture, so this would consume a lot of time, as it does to this day.


This picture that I did is 12x14 on Plexiglas and is framed in wood. It took me over a week to do.

This looks like a pen and ink drawing but it is Scrimshaw and doing it on Plexiglas is much harder to do that on Bone,Teeth, or Ivory because Plexiglas is much harder and therefore takes a lot more pressure to carve in lines. On this one I used a sharpened piece of Carbon steel to do the carving of the lines.