RIP, doodle!

RIP, doodle!

From:	Jessica
To:	Ken; Mellie; Mom; Rebekah

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In honor of doodle, who died today.

she was the runt of the litter but grew sassy and chatty with me over the months we knew her. she acquired some mysterious illness over the last week that we couldn't discern, and despite various attempts to guess at the cause and treat, she didn't recover.

i'm so glad she's not suffering anymore, and extremely grateful that animals don't worry and dwell the way that we humans do! she was a good little chicken and we thank her for the many eggs she provided us during her short life!

fyi, circus has been sick too but seems to have rebounded.

A head stone in place seems permanent indeed.

Here's the headstone I made for Maria Cynthia Quiroz. It's the only headstone I've ever made, and what an honor it was! I'm wondering how it supposed to be phrased... Did I make it for Maria, whom I never met, or did I make it for her sister Delia who asked me to do it? Either way, I felt like I knew Maria a bit by the time I was finished. I carved it during the 2010 stone carving event at the Vineyards at Florence. This is a great event and I feel fortunate to have been a part of it for the last 2 years, being among so many professional carvers makes for an invigorating weekend.
Life carried on, and the family only recently got it placed at Maria's grave site.The inspiration was simple enough, Delia told me that, at her funeral a whole bunch of butterflies appeared. In trying to come up with a design, Delia and I thought it would be nice to try and capture their appearance as a tribute I was happy that she asked me and I hope her family appreciates my amateur attempt to honor their mother, sister and daughter.

More cartoons turning real

We finally have real steel stairs off the back porch. This is one of the items I told Mike, the contractor, "I'm going to build them myself." 2+ years later... they're done.
I drew them in sketchup, mocked them up with scrap wood, decided that the top step was going to be too narrow and making it bigger would bring the bottom step too far out in the yard, pondered, pondered and pondered. Then, Matt helped me out by suggesting that I split the difference in the angles rather than worrying about them being all parallel. I decided to focus on having a nice corner alignment and to let them look like fanned out cards.

I'm going to call them The Charlie Memorial Staircase - designed to be easy on old hips.

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