Jocelyn Curry

Cinnamon, my lithe and shy Welsummer hen, has come of age and after a long and fretful labor has laid her first and second eggs. Bess, her big sister, started laying at the end of November, and has skipped only two days since then, not counting one little preemie egg that showed up one morning. Bess has been anxious about Cinnamon, and the two of them have been trotting up and down to the nest box often during the past week.

Known for their deep, warm brown eggs, Welsummers are "moderate layers," predictably laying at least 3 eggs per week. Cinnamon's first egg is on the right. The speckles are raised, and the deep color was not yet deposited evenly until her second egg, on the left, was laid yesterday. Note that the second one is larger; as with anything, first-time eggs are not usually expertly crafted!
One at a time, I am cleaning and organizing closets and drawers in my house. We all know that this is often difficult. Indeed, we have to part with things that represented people and experiences of bygone days in order to make room, or at least lighten our load of household accumulations.

Or, we can simply wash them and put them back in the drawer, which is what I did with the warmly beautiful hat collection in the photo below. For many years, the drawer with all the old hats, gloves and mittens has cried out to be tended to. A few gems had to be kept. To read where each hat came from, and who the wearer of each was, read on:

#1 was a Christmas gift from my son and a high school girlfriend who wore hats like this. I always feel keen pangs when I come across gifts from my kids' past partners, the often painful ends of those relationships flashing through my memory as I touch and recall, simultaneously.

#2 was knitted for me by my mother, a knitter of exquisite skill. This cap matched a very heavily worn, favorite sweater she made for me when I was young, perhaps 11 years old. The hat was always too small, but I couldn't part with it. Wearing her sweaters always made me proud.

#3 is an Eddie Bauer hat we bought for our high school-aged daughter as a Christmas gift during the early years of my calligraphy career, when I created calligraphic catalogue headlines for Eddie Bauer.

#4 is a hat I knitted for myself when I was in college, just after meeting my husband-to-be. I have many photos of myself in this hat, my then-rounder face usually beaming the joy I felt in being with Rick!

#5 is another hat knitted by my mom, this time for our daughter when she was 2 years old. The hat is in better condition than the matching sweater, which was worn and worn during the years when Emily sported railroad striped Oshkosh overalls that looked très toddler chic with a pink fisherman knit sweater!

#6 is the wool pompom that has become separated from its hat. Its hat is the traditional Irish fisherman's white counterpart to Emily's pink hat described above, knitted by Grandma Curry, my mom. It also had a matching sweater with leather buttons, worn with Oshkosh overalls. The sweater is in a cedar chest, where I presume and hope the pompom's hat is also resting.

What better way to end this little woolen trip down memory lane than by happily divulging that I am going to become a grandma in July, so perhaps some of these preserved hats will be worn again :-).
I love embracing a design project for a family member. And when the family member provides artwork for me to incorporate, all the better. Did you know that when a musician signs years' worth of CD liner notes, the signature can become streamlined, calligraphic, and then ornamented? My daughter is such a musician, a trombonist who needed a new, snazzy business card. It was her brilliant idea to use her CD signature combo. Here are the parts, then the whole:

Emily's signature as it has evolved since she started signing checks, further made graceful by years of signing CD's~

The jazzy trombone ornament, complete with notes~

This stroke was done by me, selected by Emily to use as a design element along with her own~

A section of my stroke was assigned the color red in PhotoShop, then given a gradation~

I put everything together in PhotoShop, added a bit of gold to the bell of the trombone, and then ganged up the cards in InDesign. I chose to x-out all her information, but you may go to her website to find out more about her and even learn how to order one of those CD's!: www.emilyasher.com
Now here's a rooster we can all live with and love! Made in Haiti and struttin' his stuff in artistic cockiness, he was a Christmas gift from my mother and sister-in-law. Always thoughtful in their gift-giving, here's the poem, written by my creative sister-in-law, that was read to me on Christmas morning, before Rooster was unveiled:

Our Christmas Gift for Jocelyn

Christmas time 2010, time for shopping once again

The son, the DIL, the SIL, the bro, it can be very hard you know

What would she like, what does she need, to the husband we always plead

For it is always true for us – it's the SIL, the DIL over whom we fuss

This year though we think we got it, all by ourselves one day we saw it!

A boy for sure, a brother for some; easy to care for and out of a drum

Colorful, fun and whimsical too, but will it fit in? will it do?

Cinnamon, Vita and little Bess, will they approve, will they say yes?

It's so unlike our usual gifts, we realize we are taking a risk

But one worth taking we decided and the bro agreed he never chided

We hope for you that this will be, a welcome addition to the family

Of chickens of course, a Rooster for you, without the curse of cock-a-doodle-do

What do the girls think of Rooster? Well, so far they seem to be quite comfy under his watchful eye. I took this photo yesterday, during their afternoon recess. Today, maybe they'll move a little closer to the new guy on the playground.

(Thank you Sues and Jan!!)
I have to brag about little Bess, the Barred Rock(er), who has laid 27 daily eggs with no day off. She's my advent chicken; each day in December I've lifted the lid to the nest box, and there's been the perfect little pink/tan egg. Why is this unusual? It's rare for any chicken to lay more than 6 eggs per week. Bess is classified as a "moderate layer" meaning about 4 eggs a week are to be expected, especially during winter days with less daylight. So, 27 in a row?

Merry Christmas from Bess!
…and the realtor is my big sister!

Kath asked for help designing a card to send to her list and to give to colleagues. She has always liked my travel sketches, and she liked the suggestion of making a bookmark in place of a standard card. The travel sketch she selected for the bookmark card is one that is also incorporated on her Thornwall Realtors, Inc. website. Fittingly, Kath and I were traveling together when I did this sketch in Italy.

Design details: First, I suggested bleeding the sketch off the edges of the finished bookmark. While looking through my greeting card illustration archives, Kath selected some coordinating bright border images to use at the top and bottom of the piece. An appropriate message for me to write in my handwriting at the bottom came to her mind right off the bat. It's not hard to think warm wishes when looking at an image of a 210 year-old Tuscan farmhouse outside of Siena (sigh)…

I placed the flattened PhotoShop file 4-up, and then printed the sheets on my Lexmark laser printer on Fox River felt finish card stock. Crop marks allowed me to hand cut the bookmarks accurately. Another Two Sisters project is complete!
While doing my routine coop-cleaning day before yesterday, I glanced back into the nest boxes and there, nestled next to the marble egg I placed several weeks ago, was a real egg. A real little beauty of an egg! Yesterday, I took a bowl of oatmeal out to the girls, and peeked into the loft when I didn't see Bess with the other two down below. There was the plucky little Bess, settled in in the classic pose of a hen laying an egg. Let the omelets begin!
Ever since I ate my first pomegranate as a child, I have loved them. I loved them so much then that when I picked blackberries in the summer, I'd take the biggest one I could find and pluck each black lobe off the berry one-by-one, pretending that the berry was a pomegranate. Now, one of the things I appreciate about them is that they are true autumn fruits. One cannot buy a pomegranate in March, at least not in grocery stores around here. Yes, they have become very popular because of their health-giving attributes, but that hasn't made them available all year 'round except in juice form.

Over the years I have incorporated varied images of pomegranates into artworks – everything from hand-carved eraser stamps to textile stencils. For this final Autumn Image entry honoring the pomegranate I selected a page from my travel journal from my October, 2007 trip to China. As our bus traveled the roadways of central China, I was quick to notice that it was pomegranate season there, too. Vendors sat by the road with their small tables of fruit stacked in orderly pyramids. When we reached Kowloon City, I struck out for a fruit stand to buy one of the paler-hued Chinese pomegranates. I missed the deep red of the western fruits, but the colors of the Chinese one were pleasing to paint.
Edgefield, a former poor farm and nursing home, has been in business for 20 active years as a hotel. The gardens seen in the foreground provide vegetables and herbs for the restaurant. Trees and shrubs with changing leaves puncuate the beautiful grounds. We were there during the time of the grape crush for this year's wines.

Early on Monday morning I headed up a pastoral path behind our comfortable and interesting lodging: Edgefield McMenamins in Troutdale, Oregon. I selected a spot to stand and sketch the appealing landscape laid out below. A Douglas squirrel was nibbling in the shrub next to me, and birds flitted in and out. Raindrops began to fall; note the unintentional dappled texture on the small sketchbook page. Walking back to the hotel from my lofty point, I heard tree frogs (couldn't see them), and passed a tree loaded with orange persimmons. Half of its leathery leaves were on the ground. Here is one of them. Edgefield operates at capacity during the summer months, but Autumn is a quiet, reflective time to visit.
The handsome birds in this photo have been raised by my son and daughter-in-law on their 10-acre farm in Castle Rock. How convenient for my drawing group that I happened to have good reference material for a Thanksgiving-themed drawing project.

It was delightful to see how we each interpreted, with pencil on paper, the proudly displaying Tom. My two drawing partners prefer to "remain anonymous" so their names are not given.

An overall graphite coating on the paper provided a ground for the drawing of this tom. Erasing all the pale parts of the turkey reveal a softly toned bird. This is becoming a signature drawing style for this artist!

Pencil, gel pen, and watercolor pencils were used in this drawing. To my eye, there's a charming, early American quality to the finished image. This tom may appear with calligraphy on place cards for Thanksgiving dinner next week.

Here is my pencil sketch which I transferred to a Safety-Kut block, shown below. I'll post an image of the final print after I complete the carving and experiment with the printed images.

The drawing was reversed before being transferred to the block so that the final print will be oriented like the drawing.

Here's a finished print. I used Daniel Smith black oil based relief printing ink so that I could tint the print with watercolor when the ink was dry. The image is 4"x4".

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