Happy Easter!

 ppoor blog - no wonder I had to give up on this. I can't get this picture in the proper orientation. What to do now?

Spring surprise photo upload test.
Topic: Life

It has been quite a while since posting to this blog. So much easier to post to my CKnotes 4 blog. I want to keep up with this one better.

... so I want to post a pic, but can't find anything suitable quickly enough! Most of the very recent pics are on the camera and I've only been transfering to the laptop what I need at the moment. I thought I had transferred a crayon drawing I did a few days ago of daffodils. Cannot find it just now, so, yikes -  I have no idea what i just put in for upload. It is from last year in April. I don't know if it is my art, student art, or a mess in my house. Could be a receipt pic. Right now I just want to test how hard it is to do a straight upload to the blog, since I never do it that way. Usually I prep the image to make it brighter and smaller. Then I upload it to my online files - my site etc host. Then I custom code it into the blogpost. I want the image to have a title, and alt tags. It gets way too complicated. But that was also harder to do when I was using the tablet. Coding is such a slippery business on a touchscreen keyboard. I reverted to using the other blog because there I could simply email a post, with pics and all. The pics would not get the customization but it was just so easy that way. Now that I have gone so long without using the tablet, I may as well compare again what it means to upload via this blogging tool with its image uploader.Having written all this, which I did not time, the image is supposedly and hopefully still uploading. The uploader is only saying "sending request to blog.tripod...", so who knows if anything is actually happening. I should have made a note of my start time. The time now is 6:42pm. And the pic is just appearing. Can't see it yet! Phew - almost deleted it. It is my demo drawing of baby animals, from last April. This is what a whiteboard drawing looks like before I prep it to post. Terrible color and contrast. Last year I still had a wonderful option available to convert murky whiteboard drawings into high-contrast black and white line art. That was a special website I sent the photos to. Before that 'app' existed, I did it manually in a program on my computer. That program though is locked up in my now dead computer. It took a long time to do conversions that way anyway. Having once been spoiled to not have to do it manually, I don't know if I am willing to return to that method. Anyway, I need to get access the program to be able to use it. Seems like our races with technology keep winding up in reverse. Either they break or they change to dropping what one had found so useful before. I see this as living on constantly shifting sands. The upheavals seem to come so quickly. Could that be the point, (intrinsically speaking)? One must develope one's own inner resources for what is essentially most important to oneself. Does one do an action for its 'importance' to one's self or because one loves to do it and one loves to learn and explore it and the ramifications of the action? I do love being able to share this kind of drawing in a way that others can have fun with them. I do love for them to be seen. I love to show them off. But the most important thing should be loving to actually DO them. I love HAVING them, and seeing them afterwards, even if only in passing. But, like the thoughts one has, the words one speaks, the food one eats, the music one makes, all such things go off into the wind. For all we know they may continue to exist somewhere, but in our current state of being humans in this form, we cannot know for sure what happens with those actions of the moment. Sorry there are no paragraph breaks here. This will certainly be hard to read. 7:03 pm 4/28/16, Thursday. - CK

Some Food Explorations - January 2016 CK 1/16/16, Cheddar Cheese English Muffin Crostini and Mini Blueberry Stovetop Cake
Topic: Recipes

Some Food Explorations - January 2016  CK 1/16/16

 

 

Cheddar Cheese English Muffin Crostini and  Mini Blueberry Stovetop Cake

 

Almost every morning I have bread and cheese for breakfast. Usually it is english muffin toasted on the stove top in my cast iron fry pan. Toast the inside, then turn over and lay cheddar cheese on top to melt while the other sides toast. I usually call this open face grill cheese. But it should be toasted, not grilled with fat in the pan. There is plenty of fat in the cheese already…good also with dollops of salsa, or sliced tomatoes, or sliced avocado.

Recently I have been cutting this into 4 wedges/quarters before  eating. Something special about wedge/pie shapes.

It took me all this time to think of cutting into lots of little pie slices. Six slices became eight, became ten (per side).

And now we have here a Sun. I think these are also called crostini - not sure tho. So, what are Tostini?

I wanted something else to round out this story. So here also is a mini blueberry cake experiment/invention. It was going to be more of a shortbread cookie with a fresh blueberry topping. But the butter/sugar/flour ratio did not look like it would make a cookie. Quick, add some baking powder, (before putting liquid to the dry mixture), and turn it into a cake.

You can see the approximate recipe written out on the card. I rarely use real measurements, but cook by eyeball and feel. If it turns out pretty well, I try to write up notes on the approximate recipe, to the best of my memory.

 

September 2015 adult art class lessons and student drawings displays - buildings of St. George, Maine
Topic: Art Class


Maine farmhouse - student drawings and practices, adult art class, 9/21/15. Click links to see the art displays. We practiced parallelograms by
a)coloring into an imaginary outline
b) coloring in an outline.
Then we did the same drawing methods for shapes with converging edges.
Look for this idea in the roof of this reference photo. We drew that roof big on a fresh piece of paper. We tried to color in the shape as a whole, without outlining before. Then came the front wall of the house. Assess where the back corner of the back roof is and mark with a dot. We tend to make our short side of the house too wide. It usually appears much narrower than you think. Draw the line for the back of the roof. Judge the angles of the ground line. Remember you also judge where it is in relation to the edge of the photo, assuming the photo is not awry!
Windows - hang a very taught 'clothesline' for the windows to hang off, (second story). Use simple straight strokes hanging off that clothesline. Do same for first floor windows.
Oops! Find the centerline of the front wall, (street front), to make the center window and front door. Centerline? Where diagonals from corner to corner drawn on the front wall cross.
REMEMBER - verticals need to be VERTICAL. Stand up straight.
We are seeing leaps here in how many of these buildings are standing up straight.
Add the L of the building if you can.

Maine farmhouse, student drawings, adult art class, Sept. 2015

Harjula's barn - a kind of perspective practice to start. We drew those colored in boxes in both the wrong way and a somewhat right way. No real why is it right or wrong. Just draw and try to figure out what differences you observe. These colored in boxes are drawn without outlines. They are to be colored into imaginary outlines.
Then a bit of forced perspective just to get a taste of the concept. Get verticals vertical and not slanting. That is a top priority - or your barn will lean or start to float off its foundation.
Then we worked from the reference photo of Harjula's barn, located on Rt. 131, here in Maine. Any barn can do though.

Harjula's barn, student drawings, adult art class, Sept. 2015

St. George Grange, student drawings, adult art class, Sept. 2015

MacNCheese - one bowl, stovetop 'oven' invention
Topic: Recipes
MacNCheese - one bowl, stovetop 'oven' invention



My delicious cooking experiment for dinner tonight, 4/16/15. Have never truly made mac n cheese. This was a test to see if I could make it in my stove-top 'oven' invention - the 'oven' made of two aluminum pie plates, some tin foil, set to cook/bake in the cast iron fry pan on my stove-top burner.

How to make? Loose recipe - measurements approximate as I eyeball everything. and use cutlery spoons instead of measuring spoons:
4 cupped palms (maybe 8 T. ?) macaroni
c. 3/4 - 1 t. oriental ramen soup flavor/seasoning
c. 1/2 t. cider vinegar
c. 4 T (c. 1 handful/cupped palm) frozen petit peas
two 1/8" slices sharp cheddar cheese - enough to cover the top.
 
Macaroni first in the bowl, (seems to be a one cup bowl).
seasoning & vinegar sprinkled over mac.
Peas next.
Cheese on top
Water even with the cheese.
Cover with a tinfoil tent, shiny side down.
Set in foil pie plate. Cover with inverted foil pie plate.
Set in fry pan. Cover fry pan.
Cook til done with heat set to low/mediium - #3 on my burner gauge. I cooked an hour. Was probably done earlier. At some point I could hear things steaming and sizzling over. Turns out something was getting over the edge and burning, but not the food in the bowl. It was excellent. I have saved half for tomorrow.