Abstract Night Rain

The motorhome is now parked at Thousand Trails Thunderbird RV Resort along the bank of the Skykomish River in Monroe, Washington. I’ve been here a number of times over the past years and always enjoy it here. My scheduled departure date is September 23rd.

I’m just hanging out taking maximum advantage of my Thousand Trails membership and very agreeable weather.

Mary’s personal to-do list plate, which can only be handled by herself, continues to over-flow. I’ll next likely see her when I arrive at her home in mid-October. A friend recently expressed a concern about the status of our relationship. Not to worry…it continues to function per our original agreement when we met in October, 2008. That is…I remain on the road and she will join me when her other life allows. We talk every day on the phone…sometimes more than once. It’s just the way life is!

Three night ago there was a substantial rain for a good part of the night. The below photos taken about 3:30 AM through the motorhome windshield and a light-bulb in the background about 200 feet away, created some rather neat abstract-like results…

As always you may left click upon an image to see an enlarged view and then click once again to see an even larger view…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hope you enjoyed the photos.

Yesterday was a cloudy/sunny and 71 degrees. Forecast for today is cloudy/sunny and 75 degrees.

Enjoying nice weather is another joy in the life of a full-time RVer!

The red dot on the below map shows my approximate location in the State of Washington. You may double left-click the map to make it larger…

 

 

 

Enjoying 65-75 degree temperatures with low humidity most of the year is a primary joy in the RVing lifestyle!

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving”…Albert Einstein

 

 

 

On October 27, 2012, I created a two-minute video titled America The Beautiful. The music America The Beautiful is by Christopher W. French. The photos, which I randomly selected, are from the states of Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Tennessee, Washington and West Virginia (not shown in that order)…are mine. Yup, That’s me standing in front of the Post Office in Luckenbach, Texas…Y’all!

Click this link to start the video. Make sure you have your speakers turned on and go to full screen asap.
http://youtu.be/FfZUzEB4rM8

If you would like to see my YouTube videos, click this link… http://www.youtube.com/user/JimJ1579/videos

There are more than 600 photo albums in my Picasa Web Albums File. To gain access, you simply have to click this link… https://picasaweb.google.com/jimjrver

If you have not checked out my Ramblin Man’s Photos Blog, you can do so by clicking this link…http://ramblinmanphotos.wordpress.com/

For more information about my books, click this link:
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/panamaorbust

All original works copyrighted – Jim Jaillet -2015

THROUGH THE LENS

Yesterday, I had appointments and shopping to do. As a blogger I’ve become more observant of everything I do and thus  enjoy using my camera for slice-of-life shots or curiosities like  this hand decorated car parked next to mine at the eye doctor. Not sure what Stay down wit da clown means?At the grocery store, I was attracted by the bright red hair and the affectionate pose.

I visited a friend who was recently hospitalized.

His life has been shortened by an insect bite that led to multiple problems from flesh-eating bacteria;  a weakened heart and other maladies.  I enjoy visiting him every time I return home because he always has a smile,  a quip and a twinkle in his eyes.

When I returned to the house, I saw something…

I zoomed out to this…

And zoomed out again…

…to here.  My upstairs neighbor was bringing this picture to the thrift store.  I was trying for the affect my grandson described in the book, Zoom. Not exactly an impressive set of photos. I quickly realized what  a difficult method reverse zoom can be. One must find the perfect situation to make it work. Maybe next time.

But, if you notice the rusted gold pan in the above photo leaning against the garage wall?

Would you have recognized it from this close-up?

 

QUILTING, ITS OWN REWARD

 

Yesterday, I talked about one very special quilt that hangs each year at the Independence Hall Quilt Faire, the original Bi-centennial quilt.  With more than 100 quilts never before displayed here, I had much to choose from for today’s blog.  Themes change from year to year. Themes develop from popular pattern makers, or new methods, or fabrics that follow pop culture. Quilters present it all. Some quilts use one huge central design with a border to great effect, like the bird above and the star, bear paws and flowers below.

Among the themes I’ve noticed over the years come teddy bears, cats, shoes, trees, and multiple explosions of color and  abstract placement of blocks. Some so complicated they have to be engineered on a computer or placed on a giant, room sized quilt board to make sense of the pattern. It can involve cutting one or two fabrics up, and sewing them back together again. I didn’t see much of that this year, maybe the economy has affected quilting. After all, quilting evolved from hard scrabble times, when people threw nothing out. Every little scrap of fabric was saved and sewed together to make a usable blanket.

I call them rescue quilts. Here this woman lovingly quilts an old quilt top that someone had tossed. Small blocks of every color, pattern and hue. Simple and direct. Scrap quilts are still very popular at the faires I’ve attended, including this one.

Home and family are always subjects for quilts. I didn’t see many baby quilts at this year’s faire, but a new take on homes was this habitat quilt with housing from many countries. A thatched roof…

Houseboats…

City dwellers apartments. Different.

Bird houses have been all the rage in the last few years.

Families love to celebrate their loved ones in a quilt as in this 50th anniversary quilt.

Applique is considered a difficult quilt, small pieces, laboriously hand folded narrow edges. Old time appliques were subtle, and beautiful. New methods make applique easier, and new appliques are much more brightly colored with fabrics of great diversity as well.

Below is the whole affect, though not every block shows in the photo.

Pinwheels are an old time pattern. They make a beautiful quilt. The triangles were common scraps when making clothing and women learned to make quilts using pointed scraps.

The faire has many categories, such as wearable quilted pieces, wall hangings, dolls and other needlework. Women who sew, love it all.

This woman’s pants weren’t on display but it is common to find quilters at the faire wearing their own handwork.

This quilter provided a unique way to display buttons she liked.

The category for dolls brought this American Gothic entry.

This little wall hanging reminds me of Amish country, with quilts on the line. Fun!

And this abstract wall hanging is a different form of needlework. Beautiful.
For a look at my quilt photos click on the following link:
http://picasaweb.google.com/1579penn/102410Quilts#

Cape Cod – Day 8

Jim says:

Yesterday I took Mary on the most scenic bike trail in the United States…that I am aware of.

The Cape Cod Bike Trail (south side) is 6.5 miles long, mostly flat and runs along side of the Cape Cod Canal. It was a beautiful sunny morning in the low 70’s, with relatively low humidity and a great breeze to keep us cool despite the pedaling. We went the entire distance and then doubled back for a total of 13 miles. With several stops to enjoy the beautiful scenery, we took about 2.5 hours to complete the very enjoyable ride.

The beginning of the 6.5 mile Cape Cod Bike Trail.

The Bourne Bridge frames the Cape Cod Railroad Bridge in the distance.

A tug boat passes under the raised railroad bridge.

Here’s an informational website link…
http://www.capecodbikeguide.com/canal.asp

After the bike ride we went to the nearby Sandwich (name of the town in which it is located) Glass Museum. I wasn’t initially excited about going there (I mean, how exciting can glass be?)…but Mary really wanted to go…so I went with her.

I was pleasantly surprised as to the several thousands of pieces of exhibits. it hard to describe the scope and craftsmanship that went into these pieces.

The most pleasant surprise was doing abstract-style photography that I have not done in many years. Years ago I had an expensive camera and several lenses and was quite serious about my photography…which…by the way…is a lot of hard work. But once I retired in 1995, I no longer wanted to work that hard at photography…so I sold all my expensive equipment. For the most part all my photography since then has been of scenery and people…all a lot of fun…but not terribly skill-challenging.

With my limited digital camera set as always to the lowest pixel setting and an uncontrolled setting, I actually did some abstract-style photography in the glass museum.
I was pleasantly surprised how nice the 43 photos turned out. So much so, that I’ve decided they deserve to be show-cased on their own. So if you want to see them, you have to tune into tomorrow’s blog entry. To entice you to do so, here’s just one of the 43 photos you’ll see tomorrow…

A sample of tomorrow’s 43 photos from the Sandwich Glass Museum.

All original material Copyright – Jim Jaillet 2009
For more information about my three books, click this link:
http://www.panamaorbust.com