Happy Halloween!

Have a safe and happy Halloween! Don't eat all your candy in one sitting.

I have my usual festivities tonight, that being absolutely nothing. Just work...

Game Fowl #1

Game Fowl #1 is now available on a multitude of items in the CafePress store (see link on right side of this page).


Yeah baby! Who wouldn't want this bad boy on a thong?? ;-) (Or a shirt, mug, post card, etc.)

uninvited

Unfortunately my picture came out blurry, but check out what was in the house today!! Came in the same way the frogs do I suppose!

I am so stupid

If I would just stop for half a second and pay attention I would have seen that today is not the first or third Sunday of the month, and therefore there was no auction. Unfortunately I didn't realize that until I drove ALL the way out there... about 45 minutes each way. I got up to 5:30am for nothing!!! Grrr. I'm going back to bed.

Pictures Today

Horses are so optimistic. They always think it might be dinner time.

Dusty says hi. He got a bunch of time off during art show/England insanity, but I swear it's like someone came over and worked with him while I was gone because he's suddenly much better! Maybe Shylah talked to him, or maybe it just took that long for everything to sink in! :-)

This turned out pretty!

It's very dry here. The horses gets major static electricity issues, though Dusty seems more prone to frizz-butt than the girls. Maybe he swishes his tail more. Then again Shylah is generally in dreadlocks (all natural) so hers doesn't do this as much.

And now some chicken pics. Really nice head on this BBRed pullet!

Birchen pullet from the Silver OE X Black RC cross. The ONE bird that came out the color I expected!

Purebred black! Really! He's a Brassy Back sport. As a Brassy he's not very well colored but I'll try him as breeding stock to bring in a new bloodline.

Ugly combs on the Blue Silver girls (Silver OE X Black RC) but they are cute anyway.

I hate painting but it does make things look better. We painted this coop today. I didn't realize how pink that light brown colors is. Hmm.

Cuckoo pullet. Not a very Rosecomby head just yet.

This is the one I showed just for kicks in Paso Robles last weekend.

The 1/2 Dominique pullet.

I still like this guy! I'm going to try breeding him to the Cuckoo pullets.

The one rose combed cuckoo male I kept. I don't like all the solid feathers but believe it or not he was the best one.

The Golden (?) Duckwing cockerel (Silver OE X Black RC).

I have mutt birds too! Got this one and her sister from JJ, they are Dominique/OE/Silkie/??? Right?

Purty pullets.

missing a show

I hate that I am missing a poultry show this weekend. I'm such a show junkie, I know!!! It's down in Ventura. I went in the spring. Looong drive, but really not that bad. I sorta like long trips alone anyway. I had actually planned to go to this one, but at the time I stated that, I hadn't anticipated going to Indiana. But I decided for the sake of the art business it's really important that I attend the big show in Indy, and unfortunately that means my participation in the fall shows here in CA definitely suffers. *sigh* Looking at it realistically though, my birds aren't any more show-worthy than they were last weekend, taking another weekend off would have been tough, and with this stupid cold I wouldn't have or be much fun this weekend anyway.

But I still hate missing it. And I'll hate missing the one in Bakersfield next month too. The next time I show my birds will be in the middle of January. January!! That seems like ages away. But you know what. I'll be done with the Standard by then. :-)

Then what?

If I only knew.

the blahs

The weather is beautiful. I have a little more time than I did. I ought to be out working the horses, a job I have been neglecting. And I'm sick. AAAAARRRRRG!!!! Stupid @#$% cold! Maybe *next* week I will feel good enough to be out there! Grumble grumble gripe gripe.

I might take more birds to auction on Sunday, I haven't quite decided yet. There aren't a lot. Last year was a really good year, I had a lot of really good birds. I don't know what's up this year but I'm just over all not that impressed. I think I'll be lucky to get one or two "keepers" out of the Black cockerels. Maybe the same from the BBReds. I have to wait and see how they all feather out before I decided what to keep, since sickle length is an important factor in that decision. The BBRed pullets are better this year, at least a few of them. Now I have to cross my fingers and hope they don't turn white in the face. That's the downside to the new bloodline I brought in to part of the flock a couple of years ago. While it vastly improved the feather color, it also produces white-faced birds. You know, if it ain't one thing it's another.

The Brassies and Blue Brassies need work next season. I've sorta let them go and it shows, they are too inbred, and WAY too small. Compared to my black ones they are just teeny tiny, and that's not so good. I think I will use one of the Brassy Back sport males (from the Blacks) to put some new vigor into that line. Might mess up the color, but I'll deal with it.

The big Indiana show is right around the corner now. In a way I wish I was showing birds there, but at the same time it's nice not to have to worry about it, and none of them would be ready anyway. I do sort of wish I was going to have an art booth there, since I would probably do pretty well, but again it's a relief not to have to mess with it, and it would also be very expensive. It's funny to think about all the stuff I hauled back to Ohio on the airplane 4 years ago, I think with all the restrictions these days I'd probably have to drive in order to bring everything I would need! I'm planning to get a jacket or something embroidered with my name and logo on it, I want to be easy to find, and I definitely want to do some marketing while I'm there! Darn it I wish could be done with the Standard by then!

Well, back to it. I'm moving at the speed of cold molasses today, so my drawing may go even slower than normal.

Oct 12: Goodbye London

Up at the crap of dawn on Oct 12, our flight left around 10am. It was a good trip, exhausting yes, but good. I'm glad I had the opportunity to go. I must say though, when that airplane touched down in Sacramento, surrounded by the dead brown dusty flat fields, although it wasn't green and pretty, I was SO glad to be back. I wouldn't mind seeing more of the country there, but I feel like I had enough city. I was ready to go.

So now my blogs will return to normal life, which won't be as exciting. :-)

Anyway, I have to get back to work now. The Buff Silkies have to be done by the time I go to bed tonight, and that'll take a miracle. I have to finish though...

I think I'm getting sick. Great, just what I need.

Oct 11: London

The weather on the 11th alternated between showers, clear, and pouring rain. DP says the forecast changes about every three seconds over there. I believe it!

First up that day was a trip to the London Tower, which dates from the 17th century and is the oldest surviving Medieval castle. Pretty darn old! We went on the guided tour, led by a funny Yeoman Warder (these are the guys who were called Beefeaters) and then wandered a bit on our own, amidst occasional pouring rain. There were a lot of places were photography was forbidden though, like the display of the crown jewels. Talk about bling! Wowza.



Ooh, purty with the Tower Bridge in the back!

Ummmm, okay. A totally random chicken costume at a shop near the entrance to the Tower.

Inside the Tower walls...


Let's see if I can remember the story of the ravens. There used to be (back in the 17th century) many many many of them, to the point where they became a nuisance, but legend had it that if the ravens left the tower some sort of terrible thing would happen, so a few were kept and the rest were driven away, and there have been ravens there ever since. Not that they can leave, their wings are clipped. One Yeoman Warder has the job of taking care of the ravens. They have some pretty nice coops, I wouldn't mind having those.

They seem to be having a conference of some sort.

A suit of armor for a horse. What you can't see in this pic is the armor is fully engraved, wow!

The armor of Henry VIII. Do I even need to comment on that??... Whoa.

More horse armor...

17th century bit.

That's a lot of guns and sharp things!

17th century saddle I think!

When I rounded the corner and saw this room I think my eyes just about popped out of my head. It was a display of armor and these magnificent wooden horses from the 17th century! OMG!!! They were awesome. I don't know what they were originally for, or if they were meant to represent particular horses, but they were absolutely amazing. Such different looks to them, some looked calm and some looked downright diabolical. Soooooooo cool!

For any photo buffs, just fyi only the last horse pic was taken with a flash. Natural light is so much more interesting, but in a fairy dark room is means using the timer and propping the camera up on something solid since it's a long exposure.




And that concluded our trip to the London Tower.

Here's a view of the Tower Bridge that I took while we were walking back to the tube station.

We went back to D&D's and vegetated for a while. Here's the view from their place.

Dinner that night was a somewhat fancier event, and it became painfully aware that my fancy black shoes no longer fit me. UgH!!!! We went to a place called Sarastro, which was sort of Turkish in theme, with Mediterranean food. The decor was quite spectacular, lots of velvet and gold trim, totally over-the-top-theatrical! There were numerous opera-boxes along the walls where people could eat in these little balcony things, those were so neat! I had pasta with ham and chicken, and a lemon tart for dessert. It was all soo good.

Taken without flash...

Oct 10: London

Wow, my previous posting was my 300th!

I am determined to get the rest of the England pics on line today.

So.... after we finished on the London Eye we moseyed onward to the British Museum, which is enormous. We were there for about three hours, and did not see everything. There is sure a lot of amazing stuff there, but honestly after a while I was all museumed out...


Looks like an Egyptian Goose to me!

Holy moley... the Rosetta Stone!

Why the long face, Falcon?

As usual, I can be found hanging out with old guys... ;-) If we were all holding chickens this would be perfect.

Yay chickens!!! Always warms my heart to see chickens in a museum.



After the museum, we went to Camden Market, a huge outdoor bazaar with all sorts of interesting clothes and crafts and pretty much anything you could think of. I'd never seen entire stores devoted to goth clothing... I didn't buy anything (at any of the shops!) though I was tempted a few times. There were some really pretty things, but I don't get dressed up enough to justify spending money on pretty things! :-)

We moseyed onward, and visited D&D's friend Paul Antonio at his studio. He's a calligrapher, and I was blown away by the work that he does!

The final excursion for the evening was a visit to a pub, Ye Old Cheshire Cheese. It was deemed necessary to visit a pub and have traditional pub food. The oldest parts of this pub date from the mid 17th century. The ceilings were so low that people have to hunch over to walk down the staircase! It was small and smokey, but quite entertaining.

I had the breaded shrimp and fries (err, chips!). They called it Scampi but it's not like American scampi. And a sweet cider.. still tastes too much like beer to me, though it was definitely better, and I did manage to finish the whole thing. Not going to become a habit of mine though. I was too full for dessert but I did steal a bite of DP's "treacle sponge." Now does that sound like a horrible food or what? I was a little scared of it, but it turns out to be a sponge-cake sort of thing in a bowl of sweet sugary syrup. It did look a bit odd but it was REALLY good. Now for really bad food names, there was also one called a "Spotted Dick." I asked DJ what that is and he said it's a lot like a Treacle Sponge except it has raisins or currants or something in it. Hmm! Learn something new every day.

After we finished dinner and watched a very drunk man flirt with his imaginary friend for a while before staggering back up the stairs and nearly smacking his head on the low ceiling (hee hee!) we walked over to St Paul's Cathedral again and admired the view at night before catching the tube and catching some much-needed sleep.

Oct 10: London Eye

Tuesday the 10th started out on the soggy side, with morning showers, but ended up warm and partly sunny by the afternoon. First up on the agenda was a ride on the London Eye. Think that Ferris Wheel at State Fair is big? Well, this thing is enormous. It's the world's largest observation wheel, at 135 meters tall (I looked up on the website). I don't know the geography well enough to point out landmarks and buildings, so I'm just going to give you a bunch of pics without captions. Some things you will recognize, like Big Ben, that's hard to miss. The ride around takes maybe a half hour or so. It's an amazing view. I suppose someone who doesn't like heights might not go for it. I'm not crazy about being up high but it feels very safe in the capsule!

















Next stop: the British Museum (I need to go through the pics first).

Oct 9: London: Bus Tour

Okay, now back to London before I forget everything!

So.... after we finished looking at dead things at the Natural History Museum, we got on the tube again and went to Piccadilly Circus. In this case circus is not a clowns and elephants type of thing, but refers to a circle. This is the intersection of five streets and a definite tourist landmark.



Anyway, it was right around there somewhere that we boarded one of the infamous bus tours, where you ride around in an open-top double decker bus and see the hot spots. We were going to do this the first day but it was raining that day so that would have been unpleasant. Did you know the spiral staircase leading to the top of the bus is extremely tiny? And walking up that staircase while the bus is starting to move forward is really challenging?

The National Gallery, where we were on Friday.

The London Eye.

One of many bridges over the Thames (can't recall what this one is).

DP said something like this the symbol of the city of London and the Queen can't go past this statue, or something like that (sorry, getting foggy on the details). Whatever, I thought it was cool.

We stopped at St. Paul's Cathedral and went inside. Can't take pictures inside, and I couldn't fit the whole thing in the frame of the photo outside! It's large, to say the least.


Pigeons do appreciate statues.

London Bridge.

Tower Bridge.

Going over Tower Bridge.

Got off the bus again at Buckingham Palace to gawk at it a bit. No, I didn't see the Queen.

The gate.

And a very impressive statue thing.


This is a fountain in a park (don't remember name) right across from Buckingham Palace. The leaves are imprinted designs in the fountain, but I thought it was neat how in the pic even the water looks metallic!


Walked walked walked........

It was late, and we were tired. Grabbed some dinner at the grocery store (they have a much better selection of ready-made dinners than the stores here do!) and called it a day. Next stop: London Eye.

quickie art thing

The following images will be available at the Asylum Gallery's 2nd Annual Nothing Over $200 Holiday Print Show.


"Buffleheads"
open-edition
hand-colored rubber-stamp relief print
matted to 5x7"


"Night Horse" (warm colors)
open-edition
hand-colored rubber-stamp relief print
matted to 5x7"


"Night Horse" (cool colors)
open-edition
hand-colored rubber-stamp relief print
matted to 5x7"

The two Second Saturday receptions are November 11th and December 9th from 6-10pm. The Asylum Gallery is located inside HQ-Headquarters for the Arts, 1719 25th St (25th and R), Sacramento, CA.

Will I ever catch up?

I'm tired! I got home a little over an hour ago from a weekend in Paso Robles at a poultry show. I didn't win much of anything, got Best of Breed but I had the only Rosecombs there so it was kind of a given! My birds are really too young to do much right now, they aren't filled out and finished yet...another few months and they may do some damage. But I still had a very fun weekend. I haven't seen most of the poultry people since the spring show season ended in April, so it's always nice to see my friends and catch up on everyone's lives. I also delivered four framed Standard drawings to their sponsors, and they liked them a lot, so that was pretty cool. :-)

I didn't take any photos. I don't urgently need any bird photos (can't have too many, but nothing I NEED now) and I'm still so far behind on the England pics I didn't feel like slogging through more photographs right now.

To my chagrin I found out I have four more drawings to do for the Standard. I thought I was down to the final six but the on-again-off-again Phoenix are officially back on. It's not like its the end of the world or anything, but I wish I would have known sooner. The unfortunate aspect is that I now will not by finished by the Indiana show. Dang it!!!!!!!!! Grumble grumble gripe gripe.

I REALLY need to get the rest of the England stuff on line in the next day or so, if I don't get to it soon I'll forget everything.

Oct 9: London

Monday October 9th it was even harder to get out of bed. The time change was no longer an issue but I seemed to be falling farther and farther behind on sleep. The day was cloudy but warm, and cleared up to party sunny by the afternoon. First on the schedule that day was to return the rental car, and then we took the tube to Hyde Park. Hyde Park is rather large, very green and grassy, trees in some areas, open in some areas. It's nice, but it's not really terribly exciting.




DP says that all the swans are property of the Queen!

When we first arrived (on the 6th) I was immediately struck by the abundance of phone booths in London. Phone booths seem to be nearly extinct in the US these days (there's the occasional pay phone on the wall of a store or something, but a BOOTH... not seen one of them for long time). And in London, they are EVERYWHERE. You can get them on keychains and stuff too, so they're obviously quite a symbol of the city. This one seemed like the right opportunity to get the incredibly dorky DP and KP in a phone booth photo. Does that just scream "tourist"?!?!


We walked about a zillion more miles and ended up at Harrods, which is an enormous (and enormously overpriced) department store that Mom wanted to see. It's pretty posh, with a doorman, "luxury washrooms" etc. I can't imagine why anyone would actually shop there. I suppose if you had so much money you didn't know what to do with it, then maybe it would be feasible. They have everything there, from designer dresses to refrigerators. It was crazy.

There was a whole holiday section, like a big sparkly Christmas orgy. I had to take a picture, of course.

The escalator was a marvel in itself. The photo doesn't do it justice but it was Egyptian themed and quite highly decorated.

A whole room full of [expensive] chocolate!

This was the meat and cheese room... had things like octopus and lots of interesting looking fish.

When we finished ogling the products at Harrods, we headed down the street to the Natural History Museum. They had all sorts of cool exhibits, but what sticks with me the most is how appalingly bad the taxidermy was! You know, there are always displays of mammals and birds, and I've seen some darn good taxidermy before (for example, the African large mammals at the American Museum of Natural History in NY) and these were so bad they were almost funny. A good taxidermist can make a piece look alive. These were lifeless. Not impressed with that. But anyway...some pics (of things other than bad taxidermy).





Cool animatronic T-rex!

Awwww.

There was this fascinating yet in a way grotesque display of hummingbirds. Apparently this was one person's private collection from the Victorian era, when collecting and displaying dead exotic things was quite fashionable. I couldn't help but gawk at it.




Next stop: the bus tour.

Upcoming Art Show!

I interrupt the slough of England photos to bring you the following announcement.

I will be at this show, with one bird a lot of art. Whee!

Oct 8: Cambridge

I think we left the fair around 4pm, and headed off for Cambridge, which I guess it one of those places you just have to see while you are in England. How did D&D describe it? A bunch of American students with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement? :-) It was a rather cute town, with a spectacular church seemingly on every corner. I had to stop taking pictures of churches. There were too many, I don't know what any of them are, and they all ended up looking the same.

Awww, cute place isn't it?

Lots of bikes there! People locked their bikes to pretty much anything they could find.

We stopped and took a look at the Kings College Cambridge campus (part of it anyway, maybe this was just part?? Not sure). Anyway, it was, um, decadent. A bit different than my university experience. Nobody lounging around THAT well-manicured lawn!




Must be pretty smart cows (on campus) ha ha.

And then we just just kept wandering around. One thing that all these places have are oodles and oodles of shops and restaurants. People must shop and eat out a lot.

And this is where you... exchange corn??? (no idea)

Wandering onward... since the sun was starting to disappear it seemed a prime time to remember where the car was parked, but that actually proved somewhat problematic, I guess we'd gotten somewhat turned around.

BUT, it was fortuitous that we got a bit lost, because it was only for that reason that we wandered down a pathway leading to yet another old churchy building that at first glance looked more or less like the other old churchy buildings. And then I looked up. I'd seen these weathervanes in other towns, and commented to DP at one point "doesn't that kinda look like a rooster?" but I didn't think it really was, the others I'd seen were too far off for me to tell. But now I had no doubt. That is, indeed, a rooster.



And then arrived at the front of this building and *squeals with delight* there was a rooster on the upper part of the door!


In fact the front of the building had several roosters on it.

There are three rooster heads on this shield-shaped thing.

And one above the statue.

And of course there's me.

And this is the backside of the gate that we walked through to get in here in the first place.

So I don't have any idea what that building was, but I will remember it as the rooster church and I'm glad we got lost and found it!

Traffic that night getting back into London was awful. I know the drive took a lot longer than it should have but I don't know how long because I fell asleep and got a horrible crick in my neck.

So... there are still several more days of photos to get through. I'd actually thought I'd be done with this by now but it's a lot of work getting everything on here! (So you darn well better enjoy it!) ;-)

Next stop: back in London, Hyde Park, Harrod's, Natural History Museum, and a bus tour.

Oct 8: Fair: Poultry, Pigeons, and More!

Let me first apologize to anyone on dialup, you are going to hate me for this one. Sorry, you know how I am at poultry shows. CAMERA CRAZY!!!


There were two barns of pigeons and three barns of poultry, and in a few of them half the barn was taken up with sheep or something else I'll show you later.

First off, some pigeons. I don't know a darn thing about pigeons and most of my pics ended up blurry but there were some interesting colors:




I didn't get to count the poultry or anything, but it was a decent size show. I mean, for being a "fair" rather than an open show, it was pretty impressive, considering State Fair had all of like 50 birds or something. There were several hundred there, but I talked to the show superintendent for a while and he said normally they would have several hundred more than that, but numbers are down because of the bird flu scare. Sounds like here a few years ago when Newcastle dropped the show ranks a bit.

There were plenty of very familiar looking birds, which I didn't really make a point to photograph because they didn't look any different than what I see at shows here. There were breeds that are the same but due to differences in the Standards appeared VERY different. And there were things I'd never seen before. Unfortunately there were no coop cards, so nothing was labeled with breed or variety. Sometimes I can figure it out, other times... not a clue. But I took a lot of pics anyway.

Familiar birds or things I'm guessing:

Presumably a Mille Fleur d'Uccle, but the American ones tend to be a lot more pale in body color. Don't know if there's a difference in the SOP but I think this guy looks really pretty!

Blue Laced Red Wyandotte, not a color I've seen too often.

I think these are Old English Game Bantams, which I know are much stockier over there.


Self Blue Cochin, not a color I've seen on this breed.

Muffed Old English??

Silkies there were not as rounded and had much smaller crests, they would not place well at an American show.

A call duck, but I don't know what color. This is the female. The male was like a gray but without the claret breast.

Ohiki?

Yokohama

A gray Runner, Reserve Champion Waterfowl. You would never see this color of Runner win anything around here, I've never even seen a good one, so this guy really knocked my socks off.

In the sale barn, these were labeled Ko Shamo.

In the sale barn, ROSECOMBS YAY!!!! There were no Rosecombs in the show itself.

Sebrights for D. :-) There were none in the show, these were in the sale barn, not exactly great birds...

Best in Show, a Rouen. Looks different than American Rouen, a difference in the Standard perhaps. The owner was adorably delighted, apparently it's a rare win there like it would be here.

Things I can't identify:

A Blue something...







Whew!

And there was an egg show too!




And then, on the way out, I was mortified to find... VERMIN! Okay, I'm sure their owners don't consider them such, and I've had a number of rodent pets in my life... :-)

These little green boxes had mice in them, and the lady at the table would take the mice out and examine them. I didn't know people showed mice.

And rats! There were some HUGE rats there, ugh! Would this be a bad time to mention the dogs and I wreaked havoc on a nest of rats today? Hmm.


And that concluded my visit to the fair. I wish there had been more time, I would have liked to have been able to meet and talk to some of the exhibitors, but the whole thing felt sort of rushed because we had other plans that day.

Next stop: Cambridge.

Oct 8: Fair: Shire Show

An English Shire show, in England! I spent quite a while drooling over these big horses. It was interesting to me that there were a lot of bays, whereas in the US you mostly see black or gray shires, and hardly any bays. The English ones seemed heavier and less leggy than their American counterparts.



Never seen one this gray this young!



I was completely surprised to see that part of the Shire show was a class under saddle. I've seen people ride drafts, and seen it done as entertainment at draft horse shows, but I'd never seen a competition with drafts under saddle, so that was really neat.

And they finished it off with a lap around the ring at the canter!

This horse was kicking up and having a bit of fun, the rider looked like she was having fun too!


They had a real odd way of grooming the youngsters. Personally I thought it looked rather unappealing, like someone had an accident with the hair gel. All the little guys were groomed like this, with the hair all stiff looking and brushed upward. Bleh, I prefer them in all their fuzzy glory!


Unlike the pickups and horse trailers that you would see at a horse show around here, a lot of horses (ponies and donkeys too, this was not limited to the drafts) were hauled in these horse vans, I'd never seen anything like those before! The few horse trailers I did see looked very different than the ones I see around here, none of the fancy shmancy expensive bells-and-whistles trailers!



Next stop, the poultry show (this'll take me a while to sort through the photos!)

Oct 8: Fair: Pony Club and Donkeys

Out between the pigs and dogs there were several trailers with donkeys lined up along side (miniature and regular donkeys) and a few out driving around in carts.



There was also a very large Pony Club event, loads of kids and cute ponies jumping. I wonder if anyone rides Western in England...hmm. The smaller kids mostly seemed to be riding what looked like Welsh ponies (and I also saw one that might have been a Fell?? Darn I thought I took a pic but I guess not). The older kids were on more horsey-looking critters.





A pony being a pony.. ;-)

Oct 8: Fair: Dogs and Pigs

I have never seen so many dogs at a fair before. Dogs of every shape and size, dogs everywhere. There were several dog shows there, a "lurcher and terrier" show (is a lurcher a greyhound? Does anyone know?) And also a mutt show, and an agility course. But whether all the dogs there were in a show or not, I don't know. I think it's just one of those things people take a dog to. I saw dogs I'd never seen before. Unfortunately I didn't get a lot of photographs, as it was pretty crowded and I didn't get a chance to talk to any of the dog owners. I could have spent the entire day doing nothing but photographing dogs, had I been so inclined (A.R. you would have gone insane here with the plethora of odd looking dogs). :-)

Certainly not rare, but such a pretty dog!

Lots of these hairy guys, what are these??

This cutie was tied to a horse trailer.

Lots of these!

It was interesting to me what types of livestock were there versus were not there. There were cows and sheep on display in the rare breeds barn, but none competing. There was a pig show though. Whoa.. The pig shows I've seen at CA fairs are always market shows (where the pigs are all muscle but not really huge), I've never seen any of the breeding stock competition, so maybe big pigs are normal but I was astounded at the size of these things.


I don't know what breed this is but that's the funniest pig face I've ever seen!

Oct 8: East of England Autumn Fair

For most of the nights in London we stayed in a hotel, as D&D's place was a tad on the small side for an extended stay. The hotel was nice, the room was very modern and extremely small. They don't use washcloths over there, I thought that was quite odd. Apparently they are hard to find at all.

I had decided, before we left, that if I was going to be on another continent in a CITY for a week (I'm really not a city person!!!) that I darn well needed to see a poultry show. Finding one proved somewhat challenging, since it's a bit early in the season for the big open shows. By following a maze of links I did eventually stumble onto the East of England Autumn Fair, and was able to confirm with one of my British poultry connections that there was indeed a nice poultry show at the fair. So I insisted we go see it. The idea seemed to be meet with a bit of confusion (after all, can't I see all the chickens I need here??) but in the end I think a very good time was had by all.

So Sunday had nice weather again, though a little more overcast and a little more breezy. We drove to Peterborough, which was 90something miles from London.

I'd have to say this was my favorite part of the trip. :-)


It was VERY different than a fair like we have around here. While a place like the CA State Fair has a tendency to bring every white trash person in the state out in the open, the English fair was nothing like that. People seemed much more normal. Lots of tweed, lots of berets...just like you might imagine!

There were lots and lots of vendors there, but again, unlike a CA fair there were no mops, no salsa-makers, no sunglasses, none of that ultra-commercial stuff. It was much practical. Lots of clothing (coats, boots, sooo many socks!!), livestock equipment, pet supplies, hardware, artwork, kitchen items, specialty foods, and THREE vendors selling portable chicken coops!! How neat!

I had a Cornish Pasty for lunch (pastry filled with meat and potatoes) which was excellent. Apparently this is one of those traditional foods. Very hearty meal... And later in the day a bit of Turkish delight, which is candy, and wonderful.

I took so many photos I'm going to break it up into sections and talk about each thing separately. But for starters here's Mom (hiding on the inside row), me (YES I'm riding the giant rooster, of course!) and DJ on the really neat old steam-powered Merry Go Round.

not done yet

I still have a bunch more photos and stuff to post on here, just haven't had much time this weekend. One month til deadline. 6 drawings to go.

I think I can, I think I can, I think I can......

I'll try to get a lot more pics on here tomorrow, I have to get through that so I can get back to commenting on my normal (boring) life! ;-)

Oct 7: Bath

After Stonehenge, we proceeded onward to the city of Bath, home to the ancient Roman bath (hence the name). This is a major tourist town, and it's amazing to see the ancient ruins.

Looking down over the Great Bath (sorry, bad shadows):

The Great Bath:

One of many ancient statues, with Bath Abbey in the background:

The set of a movie being filmed in Bath (no idea what movie):

A park in the city of Bath, which is quite picturesque:

I believe this is the River Avon:

No, the boat doesn't go down the steps...


The Bath Abbey. Flying Buttresses!!! Yay, finally get to bust out with some art history terminology! (Flying buttresses are the support columns that stick outward and down from the upper part of the building, they "fly" versus normal buttresses which are completely attached to the building. In this pic they look a bit like a sideways "V" shape. Buttresses help distribute the weight of the building, so the weight is supported by the ground rather than other parts of the building.)

I guess this is where you take your mineral water if it gets sick??

Oct 7: Stonehenge

Getting out of bed on October 7th was NOT easy, since I was not adjusted to the time change, so even getting up at 9am felt like 1am... ugh! We finally left the city around 11am and headed out into the country. In my mind, getting OUT of the city was the best part of the trip! :-) They sure don't make it easy though, I'm not sure how anyone manages to navigate a way out of London.

The weather was gorgeous that day, sunny with big puffy clouds, not too warm, and not too cold. Much better than the day before!

It amuses me that familiar things have different names. Well, then again sometimes things are a little different. What we would call a "rest area" they call a "welcome break." And it's not just the ole toilet-and-vending-machine stop, it has a restaurant, shops, gas station, and hotel! Lots of other things have different names, let's see if I can think of a few...

elevator=lift
detour=diversion
exit=way out
yield=give way
chips=crisps
fries=chips
cookies=biscuits
biscuits=scones

Anyway, back on topic... so we left the city that day, and the first destination was none other than Stonehenge. The countryside is SO beautiful, and SO green! Right here right now it's brown and dusty, so it was pretty amazing to see all that green. And I saw some horses! No Gypsy Horses (darn it!) but a Belgian and some ponies and several regular size horses (no idea what breed, they were far away anyway).

A few views along the motorway, taken from the car.




This made me laugh... yes, those are cows crossing an overpass! An overpass made just for the cows!


These cows looked happier than the happy California cows. Saw a lot of nice looking cows in lush green pastures. No idea what all the breeds were.


And here are some sheep.


So we made it to Stonehenge, it's hard to imagine that the whole area used to be surrounded by trees. DP says much of England used to be forest, and it was cut down for firewood hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Some has regrown (naturally or otherwise) but there is a lot of open space. There were a fair amount of people at Stonehenge, but I can imagine it must be a lot worse at times. You can't walk right up to it anymore. It's amazing, even from a distance. I can't imagine that it would be like to walk through it, I think that would be some sort of spiritual event... and I don't tend to say stuff like that.

Nevertheless, Stonehenge from all angles...





And to prove I was there:



Next stop: city of Bath. More later...

Oct 6: London

*note* I am not going to give a lot of history on things, though there is certainly a lot of history there. I'll put in links where I can, so if you want to know more, check the links!

We arrived at London Heathrow airport around 7am London-time, on no sleep. I was feeling fairly miserable, and I got increasingly zombie-ish as the day went on. It took almost an hour to get through the passport check because there was a huge line. Customs was a breeze.

DP met us at the airport, and we took a train to Paddington Station, and then the tube (subway) to D&D's apartment. I was feeling completely lost by that point, how does anyone find their way around?

The architecture is quite different. For one thing there are a lot of OLD buildings, and they are often fairly elaborate (and gorgeous). But things tended to be tall and narrow, very square, with pointy roofs. And close together! Like everything's attached to something else. Lots and lots of and lots of brick. And then in the midst of all the beautiful old buildings there would be a horribly tacky mid-1900s building. DP said that means the OLD building got bombed in WWII, and they put a modern building in its place. Makes for an odd mix. You can see bomb damage on a lot of old buildings.

All I wanted to do was sleep, but unfortunately for some reason I couldn't manage to fall asleep in the half hour that we stayed at D&D's before leaving again. Ugh, I felt quite awful that day, missing a whole night of sleep! We left around noon, took the tube to the Westminster station, and wandered around London for HOURS (OMG my feet and legs hurt so bad by the end of the day!).

Big Ben (1858) and the Houses of Parliament, as seen from a few points along the Thames River.




This is from the other side:

A gargoyle on the Houses of Parliament:


On the other side of Big Ben is Westminster Abbey (13th to 16th century) which is amazingly impressive. The line was long, we didn't go in.

The back:


The front:

And then we went other places I don't quite recall, saw lots of old building and pretty things, and darned if I know where we were, but here are some scenes from some park. Yay, geese!



While walking down some totally random road the way to some other place (did I mention I was TOTALLY exhausted that day?) I spotted a little gallery showing work by the Society of Wildlife Artists. WOW, there was some amazing work there, and this is just the sort of thing I would be a part of if I lived there. It was purely by chance that we ran into it, but I'm glad we did!

Walked, walked, walked...

We went to the National Gallery. I wish I had been more awake, I might have gotten more out of it! It was amazing to see originals by Michelangelo, Van Eyck, Da Vinci... The highlight for me though was seeing George Stubb's Whistlejacket. I had no idea this was still on exhibit there, I could have drooled over it for quite some time (so I bought a little poster print).

Trafalgar Square as seen from the front steps of the National Gallery.


Onward to an outdoor bazaar, where we finally sat down and relaxed while watching some street performers and eating wonderful chocolate chip cookies from a little cookie shop.

Walked, walked, walked....

At some point we went to the car rental place and DP picked up the car for the weekend. Most people in London don't have cars. It's expensive and parking is scarce. I could NOT drive there. Not just that they drive on the opposite side of the road, but the roads are insane, they are little and winding and appear and disappear and don't tend to be too straight! London was a city built for horses!

That evening we walked over the London Bridge and got a nice view of the Tower Bridge (1894) at night. I'd thought London Bridge would be pretty (since there's a song about it after all, "London Bridge is falling down, falling down...") but it's not too interesting. Tower Bridge is the famous one, it's quite spectacular. I really like this photo! :-)


We had dinner at a pizza place, which was quite yummy, then went back to D&D's, hit the hay, and was asleep in probably about 5 seconds, if that.

Oct 5

By the end of this series of postings, you may be sick of my photographs. I took a zillion of them. I'm trying to narrow it down a bit, but that's tough, so many are so nice! There will certainly be multiple views of the same thing though... It's not the same as really being there, but I'll attempt to take you on a virtual tour.

So Mom and I left on Thursday October 5th, to spend a week in London visiting DP and DJ and seeing the sights.

Thursday was a blur. We left here early that morning, and took a short flight on a propeller plane to San Francisco, and then boarded a seriously enormous jet bound for London. I've never been on a plane that big-- it had two stories, and three sections of seats across the plane (two aisleways). What it did lack though, was knee room, so it was a thoroughly uncomfortable flight, particularly when the person in front of me put his seat back (gah! I hate that!) and it also didn't help that the couple in front of us had a baby that screamed darn near the whole flight. Grrrrr. Why on earth do people travel with little kids anyway, it's not like a baby is going to remember the trip! Ugh!

So I didn't get any sleep on the ~9 hour flight, and the food wasn't fabulous. They called it pot roast. Ha. Meat loaf maybe, possum loaf perhaps.

No pics from Thursday.

Somehow we went through a time warp or worm hole or something. It was nighttime for part of the flight, and we arrived at 7am Friday the 6th. Time changes confuse me. It's 8 hours ahead there.

It'll take me a while to sort through the photos and get everything posted, bear with me!

More later.........

I'm back!

My gosh, have you nothing better to do than sit around and read my blog?! ;-)

I am back. England does indeed exist. I took several hundred photos but will not subject you to all of them. It'll take a few days to get that sorted out.

I don't know why my email address is often not working.

I had a good time.

I'm EXHAUSTED.

new stuff

"The First of Spring" is now available on a multitude of items in the CafePress Store.

well that's weird

So you've heard of a partridge in a pear tree. Well today I was rather surprised to come home and find a pigeon in a Japanese maple (a very tiny maple, I might add!). Seems an odd resting place. I went out to have a chat with it (pigeons are NOT encouraged to hang around here....) and it flew away, so at least it wasn't sick. Weird.


In other news I hung ten art pieces at a real estate/home loan office in downtown Sacramento. It's in this super cute old Victorian house, and the art looks REALLY nice there. There are two other artists showing also-- a photographer and a painter. Everyone's styles are extremely different, so that's fun.

The day was a blur.