Monthly Archives: January 2009

This is my fun image of the day. I actually have been waiting for a fresh snow followed by a cold day so I could get a shot like this. (If it’s too warm, then the snow melts right off the tree. If it’s too cold, the snow is icy, not fluffy.) Even though I’ve had this shot in my head for about a month now (we haven’t had a good snow since Christmas), it didn’t turn out as I envisioned. Oh well. It’s my own fault. But I still like this shot, and I still like the concept, so it’s something I can work on as we get more snow & Olivia is willing to participate.

Part of my poor planning was that I didn’t have the proper clothes. I wanted a really long green scarf, dark pants, and a wool coat. Oliva owns none of these things. This morning when I realized conditions were perfect, I scrambled! I went to Savers (which apparently is THE place to be on Monday mornings at 9:30 am). No green scarves. No dark pants. No wool coats. I settled for this pink scarf, figuring it was about the saturation of the green I envisioned. Then I dug out a coat I bought for Cal last fall, that is for next winter (size 2T). It seemed to fit Olivia okay. The other major problem with this picture (when one compares it to my original idea) is the horizontal nature, and the distance of the trees. I had in mind a vertical image, with the trees towering over O. But Cal was with us on this photo shoot, and I didn’t want to go farther than 20 yards from the car (where he waited, unhappily). Ergo the trees were a bit farther off. It gives me opportunity to improve.

First thing I did was crop the image, clone out the footsteps in the snow, and change the scarf and pants green. I ended up changing and playing with the colors on the scarf and pants about 4 times each before I got it right. (The sample above was not right.).

Then I fixed my contrast & saturation curves and ran a slight sharpen filter on it.

Next I added some slight color to the snow, using aqua greens and blues with a brush on color dodge & color burn mode between 10-3% opacity.

Finally I merge copied all layers into one layer and ran a lens blur on it. I then used a layer mask to paint back in the areas that I wanted to be in focus. Because it’s not a true lens blur, I actually think it adds a bit of “magic” to the image . . . like looking through a frosted window pane in winter. Cool.

And the last thing I did was brighten up the scarf (yet again) so that it really pops. Click on the image above to see a larger version.

Ring, Ring, Ring.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Marsha, it’s Andrea. Hey, um, I can’t find my keys. Do you think you could drive?”

“Um, sure.”

“I think Calvin got a hold of them. He must’ve lost them somewhere. I’ve searched the whole house. I never lose my keys. Cal must have gotten a hold of them.”

[Slight laugh] “Oh, I understand.”

Later that day:

Wyatt: Anj, your keys are right here on the bed. (Where Cal is not big enough to climb up. It must not’ve been Cal.)

Okay, okay, so I loose my keys all the time. It drives Wyatt crazy. It makes me think I’m crazy. But today is a red-letter day. I found my keys (this time I lost them for three and a half weeks, not just an afternoon.)

I am sooooo much fun to live with. Wyatt, wouldn’t you agree. Don’t answer that right now. Wait until the house is clean and my keys are hanging safetly on their hook.

I’ll admit, I watched American Idol last night. I’ll go further and admit I like American Idol. I’ve watched the past three seasons, starting with season five, Carrie Underwood. How can you not get hooked when it’s Carrie Underwood?

I usually don’t like the first five or six episodes, until they are through with Hollywood, and actually in to the competition. But . . . it was the season premiere.

There was one contestant, Cody Sheldon. I laughed when I saw him. I turned to Wyatt (yes, he was watching too) and said “He must be a nemo.” Wyatt rolled his eyes and said “He’s an emo, not a nemo! He’s not an orange clownfish!”

Could have fooled me.

We have a neighbor girl up the street who informs us of all the teenage vernacular. 

“He’s an emo.”

“That guy’s a creeper.”

“She’s a mo-mo.”

“If mo-mo is a molly mormon, is pe-pr a peter priesthood?” I laugh at my own joke. Kylie shoots me a look that confirms my lameness on SO many levels.

Apparently Old MacDonald is an emo too, as Olivia sang on our way home from the store today:

Ee-Mo Donald had a farm, ee-i-ee-i-oh!

Grandma passed away 20 years ago today. I don’t have many memories of her specifically, but I remember playing at her house with my cousins when I was a kid. This is a little vignette I wrote back in college about her.

My mom’s mom got married during the war. My cousin Anna told me this one day as we were driving to the mall. She got married, and it wasn’t to Grandpa.

My mom didn’t even know this little family secret. She asked me about it about two months after Anna and I had talked. She was surprised I already knew because she had just found out. She asked just how much I knew, and that was about it — she got married during the war, divorced after the war. Then she met and married Grandpa.

That was all my mom knew too. In fact, that seemed to be all anyone knows. No one even knows the guy’s name!

I think it’s terribly romantic. Since I don’t know enough of the facts, I feel at liberty to create some of my own. I imagine that it was a wonderful romance, the type where you meet at the dance hall and fall desperately in love. Then his regiment is called, and he’s got to go. You find a Parson; spend a few hours in the park whispering your last good byes. And then at the train station, the the steam from the heavy gears warming to take him away, you stand at the platform, handkerchief in hand, heart crying, watching until the train is out of site, and then turn to go home — alone. I choose to leave out the fact that something must have gone wrong, and that’s why they got divorced. Instead I imagine the telegram every war bride dreads, sealing their love on the platform of the train station.

It probably wasn’t like that at all. But no one knows, and probably no one ever will.

My mom’s mom died when I was 9. I don’t remember her much except that she used to always buy the grandkids Jell Gelatin Pops and drink Tab and sit in her orange and lime floral rocking chair and watch Bob Ross paint.

My grandpa remarried just two months after her death to widow in his ward. Of course that caused a rift and some resentment in the family. She got the brunt of it. She became the focus of all that was wrong. Her name is Darlene. I really like her. I call her Grandma.

My mom’s dad was a mechanic. He owned a gas station across the street from Sugar House Park in Salt Lake. My aunt Lori worked there as an accountant. She always had a jar full of candy, and her office was upstairs, away from the smell of Lysol and grease.

When I turned 16 my grandpa gave me a pair of his cover-alls. Across the bib, on a white tag, is written “Big Mac.” They’re Big Mac’s. A bit of a disappointment to a 16-year-old, who may have been looking for something more along the lines of Old Navy or Gap. But now I think they’re the greatest. I wear them to work every day. I work at the mechanical shop at BYU. I love that job. Just me and a bunch of old guys playing with big machines. It makes me feel tough. It makes me feel like a girl.

“The Station” as it was called in my family,
was across the street from Sugar House Park.

There’s a scene in the Disney movie Bedknobs and Broomsticks, where Angela Lansbury’s character receives a broom in the mail (she plays a witch apprentice). She eagerly opens the package, then holds the straw broom lovingly up to her cheek, and with a dreamy look says: “My first broom.”

That’s how I feel when I think about my first rug.

My grandparents have owned a cabin at the top of Big Cottonwood Canyon forever. And when I was a little girl, I remember there were giant braided rugs – their reds and greens and browns kept my feet warm as they lay over the sanguine asbestos tiles. My grandmother passed away just after my 9th birthday. My grandfather remarried just six weeks later. His new bride set to updating and redecorating the cabin almost right away. The rugs were thrown out, the tiles covered up by a durable nondescript carpet. 

Somewhere in my young mind I determined that my grandmother had made those rugs by hand. And while I love my grandpa’s new wife, I wished my grandmother had lived long enough to teach me this art form.

Years went by. I determined someday I would learn how to make hand braided rugs, just like my grandma. With the advent of the internet, I did online research into the art. I found a woman back east who hand made rugs. I emailed her asking for instructions. She pointed me to a couple of good books. Still years more passed by. I had bookmarked her site and checked in every six months or so. Eventually she made her own “how to” video (apparently I wasn’t the only one asking her for help). I added it to my list of things to get “someday.”

Then last year I determined it was “time.” I added it to my Christmas list. Wyatt had already gotten me something way out of budget (my mac); but passed the word on to his mother, who gave it to “us” for Christmas. 

I promised her my first rug would be for her.

And yesterday I finished it (yes it was late for Christmas, and yes, it did take me a whole year to make just one rug). 

My mother helped me with the rug, lent me her sewing machine, and sat and watched as I stripped and coiled the wool. As I told her my memories of the rugs at the cabin, and my motivations for learning this art form, my mother laughed. “Your grandma didn’t make those rugs! They were bought from a catalog somewhere!” 

It’s funny the things you get stuck in your head, and hold dogmatically as truths when reality is something quite different.

My rug was hand braided and hand laced.
The only sewing was done to sew the
wool strips together for the braiding

I chose to do a yellow rug for Lois’s kitchen.
She chose the specific colors of yellow.
At first I wasn’t so sure, but I think it turned out pretty.