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The Beauty of the Kestrel

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Often on a Sunday Peter and I go birding.   Today we spotted a Kestrel sitting on a telephone wire.     .   Kestrels are the smallest falcon and they have very sharp eyesight.   We watched this bird sit quietly looking on the ground for food.   All of a sudden he swooped to the ground and then flew to the top of a telephone pole with an insect.   He stayed there and ate his snack   – probably a grasshopper.   I enjoyed his feather patterns of peach, reds, gray, brown, and yellow mixed with beige.   The Kestrel is the most colorful of all raptors.   He has a pair of vertical black stripes on each side of his face often called a moustache or sideburns.   He is most often seen in deserts and grasslands that extend to alpine meadows I was reminded of the Kestrel we saw in the desert near Picacho Peak AZ.   We noticed a bird making several trips to one of the trunks of a dead palm tree.   Kestrels use other bird’s nests for their homes and this Kestrel probably had babies in the nest.   Qui

Learning As We Go!

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Viking knit is the oldest method of chain making and I've become fascinated by it.  Once I conquered the single knit, I decided to add beads.  I could have googled or asked how it was done but it seemed like something I could just figure out.  And I've learned a lot as I proceeded first with tumbled turquoise beads and then with pearls.  I thought I'd share a few of the things I've learned.   Iif you want a great tutorial on viking knit technique, Trina Ann at http://blog.trinaann.com/  has written a clear concise easy to understand tutorial.  I highly recommend it.    Tumbled tuquoise beads in viking knit  I used tumbled turquoise beads in the first viking knit chain and I did not really know what I was doing.  But I went right ahead and as it turned out, I liked the end result.  Since the beads were irregular in shape there was a random quality to the finished product. During that process, I began to really understand the technique of viking knit.  Loo

Pouring A Soleri Bell

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 Just how I felt!  Last week I went to Cosanti, Paolo Soleri’s Gallery in Paradise Valley Arizona.   This is a place I have wanted to go since getting my college design degree.    Ceiling of the Gallery  Soleri is a world-renowned architectural innovator and Cosanti is a place that he designed and built that features experimental earth-formed concrete structures in terraced landscaping.   It is once again gaining in popularity because it was originally built to be ecologically friendly.   More with less!   It is one of Arizona’s historic sites and over the years many architectural students have studied here.   Cosanti   ( http://www.cosanti.com/ ) is a non-profit organization and   produces bronze bells that Soleri is famous for designing.     There is a foundry on site and I was able to watch the process of the pouring of the bells and of course take pictures.   Some bells are polished, some have patina, some are signed by Soleri and the prices range from $79(sale price) t