FRIDAY FENCE POST #61

It's Friday, so time for a Friday Fence Post! Join this meme--it's EASY. Just grab the Friday Fence Post button in my left sidebar, and put it on your own blog. That's first. Then make your own Friday Fence Post on your blog, come back here, and drop the link to it in the Mr Linky. Be sure the link is the perma-link to that particular post, and not to your general blog, so that we'll be taken to your fence(s) when we click on it.

I promise to come see every Fence Post you drop and leave a comment!





This new routine of walking a couple of miles every day has had a side benefit: Lots of fences! I've got a whole collection saved up now, for use in future posts.

As I've walked and checked out the neighborhood fences, I've pondered the question: What makes a fence interesting?

Answer: The decision to photograph it!

Granted, there are some boring fences out there. Brand-new, spiffy fences are generally harder to capture, for me, anyway. They simply haven't developed any character yet. But if you look carefully, and experiment with camera angles and range, it's amazing what you'll see in a lot of fences that strike you, at first, as not worth the effort!

Here are today's fences:




And one fence I couldn't get, because my little friend refused to stop blocking it:


And that nasturtium at the top of this post? It was on top of a fence!


It pays to looks up, over the tops of the fences. You just never know who's watching:

WALKING THE CAMERA, WITH DOG

What? You want to see the dog, too? She can be hard to photograph! (Unless you want to see her little hiney trotting along in front of me, lol.) Here's what she's like when we're trying to get out the door:

And some of the sights we saw:




This was our first "spooky" sighting, but I'm sure it was unintentional on the part of the owners. This rocking horse has been outside long enough that most of the paint is gone, and the underlying plastic has faded to white. The sun shining behind and through it made it look positively spectral:

Other Halloween-ish views:





We walked rather farther than I'd realized, and the day was warmer than I realized. By the time we were a few blocks from home, we were both thoroughly ready to Be There. About a block and a half from the house, Ceili took advantage of a handy lawn, and lay down.

I told her, "We're almost home, baby. Let's go home," and she gamely got to her feet and trudged on, but the next house had another lawn, and she lay down again, panting. So I stood there, and let her rest for a few minutes, and then told her, "We're almost there. You want to go home? Let's go home." That time we made it all the way to our own back yard, where she promptly walked up onto the grass, and lay down, tummy pressed against the cool lawn.

I decided she was on the right track, chose the nearest bench, and took off my socks. Ahhh.

Ceili was So tired.


I mean, Really tired.


She was not the only tired "dog" in our yard, either!

I'd been sitting there for a few minutes, enjoying the late sunshine, when I looked down at the base of the rosebush I was near. What is my little cherub doing there?


Doesn't she look like she's resting her nose on the base of that wire table, and sighing?

WALKING THE DOG, WITH CAMERA

I'm really enjoying my walks with Ceili. She is, too, as evidenced by the fact that she wiggles and squirms with excitement so much that I have a real time getting her halter on. Once I do, though, we are out the door and on our way in a flash.

Today, we got about a quarter mile away from the house and had to turn around and come back. I'd left the camera card in the laptop! How could I go walking without my camera?!

Here are the shots I got:










There are eleven days until Halloween. What do you think? Will I be able to find something spooky every day until then?

And it's going to start raining, day after day after day, on Friday. Will I weather the wet and cold? Oh, dear. Resolution, help me now!

ON THE SHELF: ORGANIZING THIN BOOKS

When it comes to patterns, brochures, magazines, and booklets, we crafters can be a bit compulsive. I try to sort through and weed out, but even so, I have dozens and dozens of slender "volumes" to keep track of. I'm sure many, if not most, crafters are similarly blessed.

How to keep them all straight and accessible? Stacking those slim items is inefficient and untidy. Since they don't have readable spines, shelving them with your books doesn't work either.

A filing cabinet might be the first, most logical, choice, but that's not always an option. My solution is one I ran across years ago, in The Messies' Manual. The authors were talking about children's books, but I quickly saw a personal adaptation.

I use the big tins you can buy cookies in. They're available new, full of cookies (my favorite!), or you can find them at yard sales and thrift stores, and they are just exactly the width you need for the average magazine.

Stand them in the tins with the front pages facing the front, and put the tin on your book shelf. Now, when you want to find a particular leaflet or magazine, you can slide the tin out, and riffle through until you spot it.

I've got four of those tins so far, and use each for a different crafting category--sewing, beading, crochet, and miscellaneous. Since they are all basically an elongated octogonal shape, the front and back are narrower, which is handy for the smaller booklets, and also makes a good place to stash my crochet hooks.

Oh, and it's still a really great way to keep children's books organized, too!

SUNDAY RERUN: But...

It's time for another Sunday Favorite! If you want to join the party, just click on the Sunday Favorites badge in the left sidebar, and it will take you to Chari's blog and the instructions.

I seem to be on a poetry kick with these. This is a poem I wrote in August of 2001, posted on my personal diary site:

BUT...

It can surprise me sometimes.
The paint looks so good--
smooth, not checkered, not bubbled, not chipped.
But
the head of the screwdriver rips along
where siding and window trim meet,
and suddenly,
strips of color curl away
and other colors reveal themselves.
Sunshine yellow and stormy grey and robin's egg blue.
I wonder if each color suited the mood of the painter
when they were brushed on.

You surprised me, too.
Under all the endearments,
the "I love you"'s, the kisses,
just where your words and your eyes come together,
a strip of my heart peeled away and curled up on itself.
It was only a word, just one word to jolt and astonish:
But.

These boards I'm scraping were never primed,
never prepared.
I wasn't either,
but
I will be next time.

SHOW & TELL SATURDAY: The Things That We Saw

I'm trying really hard to get up and out and WALK. So far, it's easy, because the weather is so beautiful. Ceili and I walked two and a half miles today, according to my pedometer.

Here are some of the things we saw:








It sure is October!

FRIDAY FENCE POST #60

This is, ta-da!, the 60th Friday Fence Post! Yeah, I know the title says that, but I need to say it again.

I have new fences for you, and (deep breath) a new meme. Will you join me? I'll put the badge in the left sidebar, and if you run across a fence that grabs your fancy, post it on Friday, and let me know! I'll do a Mr Linky, and you can put the link to your post in, and then we can all come see your fence, too.

It would be great if you were to grab the Friday Fence Post Badge and put it in your own sidebar, and of course, link back to here. That way we'll get more people to the party, which is Always a good thing, right?

And now, without further ado, this week's fences:





One more note: If you join, do feel free to play with your fences. I Love Photoshop filters, and often alter my photographs with them. You may want to do that, too, or draw them, rather than photograph them. You might print them out and alter them in other ways. However you do it, I want to see them!