This little rabbit is named "Fear No Beauty" by Kari Rives.  He's sad about the Rabbit Hash General Store that burned down this week.


Yes, we've been to Rabbit Hash, Kentucky, and we've seen the store (but we didn't go in).  How do you get there? You drive south from Cincinnati, Ohio, and pass through Sugartit, Kentucky.  Keep driving until you get to Beaverlick.  It's very famous for having all its signs stolen.  Turn to the west and make a rest stop at Big Bone Lick State Park.  Then back on Beaver Road toward Lower River Road where you'll eventually find Rabbit Hash.

No, I'm not making any of that up.

Going in a different direction (I'm sure you're thankful for that), here is another give-away.




I've used this glaze before and each time it is slightly different.

My Blog Wrangler is busy cursing just one more change in her life -- Picasa Web Albums are going to be closed out.  Every single picture in this blog is from Picasa Web Album on our desktop computer. Will Google find a way to preserve the pictures? Will Google find a way to make it simple for her to post pictures in the future?  We'll see.

Right across the street from us is a huge area of mostly undeveloped land - 75 acres in all.  It is loaded with trees like this.  If you go to Google Earth and search for Bull Creek Road, Austin TX, you will see it just on the right of Bull Creek Road.  Right now there are only a few state department buildings on it. Otherwise, beautiful meadows full of wildflowers, lots of people walking dogs there or just enjoying a quiet walk by the creek --a very peaceful oasis in the middle of a city. Nice, isn't it?

Oops! Wrong. A developer has bought it from the state, has met with all the neighboring associations (including us) and cheerfully told us all that they are going to develop a "legacy" area there. In their minds a "legacy" means office buildings, townhouses, apartments, retail, parking garages, homes priced up to $1 million, etc. They will "try" to preserve 13 acres of it as open space and some people are buying into that story. The reality of it is that they have to leave those 13 acres on the east side alone because Shoal Creek is there as the eastern boundary of their land and it has some sections set aside as floodplain areas, so they couldn't be built on anyway.

In the meantime, until the power of The Mighty Dollar begins to take control of the area, I will continue to put my Give-Aways in the trees.


Can you see him? How about this closeup ...


So far this little red birdie is staying with me.

This vase was an experiment in a different technique and it just didn't feel right to me after it was done. The inner layer of the clay shows the raku smoke color because it isn't glazed, the outer layer is glazed. Sometimes you wander down a road just  because the view is nice but then you realize you are going in the wrong direction from where you want to be.  So the vase, with some green stuff growing nearby, wound up being a Give-Away in a tree.


Next weekend I was surprised to see it was still there.  Someone added more flowers and a snail shell (there are lots of them there).


This weekend it had evidently fallen out of the tree (a squirrel? wind? a little kid?) and someone had carefully picked up all the pieces and put them back in the hole in the tree  -- a nice gesture.  I took them out and threw them away because a new piece will go there next weekend. The people in my neighborhood who walk in this area very seldom take pieces away at first but gradually, after a few weeks, they do. That's fine with me because that's what Give-Away is all about.

These pictures are taken at the Turtle Pond on the UT campus and this little Sweater Child disappeared in one week. 



Our Netflix for the weekend was Words and Pictures, we debated between 3 and 4 stars and finally decided on 3 because the story and plot was thin. But the acting was pretty good and we liked the fact that they accurately depicted what rheumatoid arthritis does to people. We'd liked to have given Juliette Binoche 5 stars alone for her painting, especially the large black-white piece. In case you didn't know, she did all her own painting for that movie - look for that clip on YouTube.

 A little birdie has found a new home.



Watched a Netflix movie that we gave 5 stars to (and it deserved at least 6): Locke. A totally flawless movie. No, it's a film, not a movie.

The character played by Tom Hardy is alternately despicable, pitiful, sympathetic,  motivating, strong, cold, warm, caring, cruel, loving, heartbreaking, you name it, he is it. In the first 10 minutes of this film you will form an opinion of Locke and of  his character, but hang on because it will continually change. One movie, one actor only, on screen the whole time. An incredible script that will suck you in and turn you around. One 90 minute movie, one actor -- as opposed to the pallid Wolf of Wall Street with a zillion actors and extras, 180 minutes of puff and wretched excess. Locke makes you glad people still make films.

Our only regret is that we didn't think it would be any good ("one actor? boring?") so we had it sitting around for about a month before we watched it. Big mistake.

Yellow-Head is about 6 inches high and is now a Give-Away.

As for Weird Heads, this guy, who was refused entry into Dubai, takes the cake. He'd better hope he never needs an MRI. Susan just wonders if he can use Chapstick.

At least this Yellow-Head makes sense.


Watched the 1976 movie Network on TV last night. The "p" words sum it up perfectly: prescient, predictive, and prophetic. How much worse can it get? Be afraid, be very afraid.

Do you see the little Sweater Child? The Lost Child? Look harder.

He lost an ear during the firing and you first saw him back in April. I just wasn't ready to give up on him but now he's somebody's Rescue Dude. He stayed in place for a week before disappearing.


In Austin we have Ghost Bikes as memorials. I put a Sweater Child here over a year ago. It's still at the bike.  Sometimes miracles happen.

And another Give-Away at Jennifer's wall. If you want to see what the whole area looks like, pull up Google Earth and put "1101 W 31st St, Austin, TX" in the search box, then drag the little Google man over to get the street view. Their image is better than my pictures.


Netflix report: The Wolf of Wall Street was stupid. I can't believe Martin Scorsese did it. A huge self-indulgent, self-absorbed swamp of the F-word. It made Susan mad for 2 days. Finished reading The Boys in the Boat - 5 stars for that great book.

My favorite street-art/graffiti wall. It's been painted over so many times it could probably walk. The little tile piece is at the top left. If you aren't from the south just remember that "y'all" is the same as "you guys" but is gender neutral.



Latest Netflix movies: Lunchbox - 5 stars for creativity and because I had to have Susan explain that the ending really did resolve the Final Question of Did He? (If  you aren't sure, replay the first few minutes and then look at the ending again.) Her - 5 stars to Joaquin Phoenix and for eerie creativity. Bad Words - 5 stars for holding your attention, sappy ending but you kept wondering the next day what had been so horrible in the guy's childhood to make him such an evil yet strangely sympathetic character. The little kid was incredible.

Actually, this time it's Susan who is Flummoxed. She was researching jigsaw puzzles for our group that does them here and put several into her Amazon Wish List so everyone could "vote" for the ones they would chip in to buy. A few days later she happened to be looking for something else on Amazon and decided to check out the "Recommended for You" section, just to see if there were some new art books mentioned.

What??? She had absolutely NO idea why Amazon would recommend bug stuff for her because we've never bought any of that stuff online and besides  we live in an apartment where we have "Eco-Pest" treatment provided several times a year. So she clicked on the link that asked if she wanted to know why they recommended bug stuff . Oh yeah, being interested in butterfly jigsaw puzzles means you might want to kill bugs. Nice search algorithm, Amazon!


Another Sweater Child Give-Away. Can you see it here in the path by Shoal Creek that I walk down?


How about now?


On Friday I'll be back down there and see if it's still there. I use a long pole thingy to put it up high.

When we got home I painted this small picture. In the mornings I cut up fruit for myself and always leave some for Susan, who hates fruit. She feels guilty if she doesn't eat what I fix for her but she often forgets to look for it in the refrigerator (or that's what she claims anyway) when she comes back from her walk or swim. Now I put this picture right on the counter by the front door - no more excuses!

She took the same watercolor class I did. Here are two of the pages from her watercolor journal. She did two leaves on every page and then the flower and then asked Gina for more images to copy and did the bird and some other stuff.  She is very "wiggly" in classes (her word, other people might call it Attention Deficit Disorder) and works fast - she says if she works fast she doesn't have time to wiggle and think about what her work looks like and fuss about it.



The other day I did a long bike ride and put another little Give-Away (a bird) in place.  This is Jennifer's Garden wall in a front yard where I'd previously put a smaller bird down low - both show in the top picture. This week-end I'll check to see if they are still there.