Brilliance.

I stopped in at the IGA market in Marshall, something i make a point of doing whenever i get down that way, because it is the most amazing combination of goods in a cheerful collision of cultures, from rural Virginia redneck to treehugger.  You can buy Moon Pies or local artisan sausages.  Or both (i've been known to...).  They carry the quasi-local cream line milk that i like to buy whenever i can.  Great stuff: it comes in half-gallon glass bottles ($2 deposit, so when i finally round them up and return them, i feel rich), but the caps have an unfortunate tendency to leak, and the necks of the bottles don't facilitate tidy pouring, and i hate to see any of it wasted.

But!  The Marshall IGA had a solution to this problem, too - one i'd never seen in any of the other places i'd bought milk in glass bottles - for a mere 69 cents, i brought home this wonderful gizmo:

This great little spout pops on in place of the cap, stands up to shaking the bottle to mix in the cream, and pours perfectly, much to the disappointment of the feline members of the household.

Convergence

In the Goodwill shop in Martinsburg (of all places), i stumbled upon a vintage Speedball linoleum cutter set: wooden handle and five blades. I figured there was a fair-to-middling chance the blades would be dull, though they didn't appear to be nicked or otherwise damaged. They can (theoretically) be sharpened, and the whole thing was a buck, so i didn't have much to lose - as soon as i finished being astonished, it went into my basket, and i laughed at the notion of my vintage shop and my print shop converging.

It was interesting to compare it to the new blades i've used, even ones of the same brand and style - when i tried it out on a lino block, i was delighted by the smoothness of these blades in cutting. I also think the #1 blade (the tiny V-cutter i use so much) has a more acute angle, so you can get a finer line... i still have to look at new and old blades side by side to check that, but that's my initial impression. While i admit that the newfangled plastic handles that unscrew to store blades are handy, i'll definitely be hunting for a stash of the vintage blades to use!

An unexpected guest

I had hoped that once we got Zelda spayed, she'd hold the territory up here, and we wouldn't have other cats wandering in... but since the kittens are grown and (more importantly) since new neighbors - who feed their cat out on their porch - moved in, Zelda doesn't see much reason to slog all the way up the mountain to our place.  There's a more convenient meal ticket for times when the hunting isn't so good, and she never liked to admit how much she liked the belly rubs, anyway.

So now i've got a stray who's wandered in: plainly a housecat until fairly recently, neutered, declawed, very sociable, and you can still see where a collar sat on his neck. I made all the reports to the shelter, sent in pictures, the whole lot, but the weeks are stretching on with no match, and it's starting to look like maybe the poor guy was dumped.

I've got no openings for kitties at present, so i'm starting to check with friends who might be in the market, knowing that the rescue groups will still be full with the glut of spring kittens.  I've got at least one friend who wants to meet him, so i hope she'll fall in love when she does... who could resist this guy?

Theme and variations

I picked a bunch of pie cherries recently, and thus, the latest incarnation of the cheesecake bars:

I pitted the cherries and fixed them up (vaguely following a pie filling recipe), then folded that in with the cheese mixture.  It's tasty, but i'm still most partial to the blackberry version, i think.... The plate (isn't it cute?) is Harker "Cameoware" from the 1940s - my sister got me four of these sweet little squared bread plates at Christmas a few years back.

A visitor

There were two of these beauties zipping about the other day, and i managed to get a quick shot of one of them.  I should probably spend the time with some graphics software to try to restore the true color to those blues... but it's not likely to happen anytime soon.

Gearing up...

I'm really, really trying to carve out time (yeah, bad pun, i know...) to get some new designs ready for printing: i've got a little show scheduled for the fall, and in order to fill up the space and rotate things a bit during the exhibit, i'll need some new blocks.

Here's one i'm working on, from a photo that appeared here last summer:

Art music

I attended or worked at various Scout camps for i-could-not-tell-you-how-many years, and i developed a truly exhaustive repertoire of camp songs. But this gem, culled from a songbook i got from my very favorite flea market vendor (hey, he specializes in vintage books and sewing machines), was unknown to me:

"Mules"
(to the tune of "Auld Land Syne")

On mules we find two legs behind,
     and two we find before,
We stand behind before we find
     what the two behind be for.
When we're behind the two behind
     we find what these be for,
So stand before the two behind,
     behind the two before.

Word play, mules, and the music of Burns songs - what could possibly be better?