Parade

Today was Nyack's Annual Halloween Parade. I am told its the largest outside Greenwich Village and I can personnally attest that its pretty darn large. Max's circus troupe participates (The Amazing Grace Circus) and they were first in line for the parade (a prime spot I must say!) no doubt due to the work of Carlo and Janet, the seemingly inexhaustible two people who manage the group.

Here's the group just before we began the parade -

There were lots of terrific costumes. Here's my choice for first place, although they didn't win I thought they were totally fabulous. And let me emphasize when you look at this, these costumes were totally handmade! It's Jack and Sally from "The Nightmare Before Christmas".

And finally, here's Max and I -
Fun, but I was glad to get home and take off my shoes!

Mmm, new rug?

This is why you don't go to dinner with the dogs loose and a full trash can in the bathroom.

Don't Get Jarred!

So the other night Bruce brought in all the equipment he needed to collect a frame's worth of honey. This is about 5 or 6 hanging frames in one level of his bee apartment building. Here is a photo of what the frame looks like filled with capped honeycomb.Of course the honeycomb is capped so the honey stays fresh. It amazed me that the frame sat in the den for several days without leaking honey on anything. When you examine the honeycomb in detail you can see that, in each frame, the comb is tilted slightly up as it is built. This prevents the honey from flowing out before the bees can cap it (duh!)

The next step is to break off the caps so the honey can come out (this is prior to placing it in the extractor.) The low-tech method here is just dragging a pointy multi-prong fork across the caps to break them up.

Bruce actually got around 30 lbs of honey from one frame. By breaking the caps and extracting he can place the frame (with the comb intact) back into the hive. This way the bees can refill it without expending the energy to make new comb.

And this completes our Christmas shopping! I hope everyone likes honey!

A Fair Day

Yesterday was the Annual Fall Fair at our school. Wow, what a gorgeous day. Our class handmade caramel apples, half from homemade caramel and half from purchased (we couldn't make enough). If you've never made caramel, I recommend it, your house will smell amazingly good.

We sold 96 pounds of caramel on about 525 apples. And with all that we still sold out at 3:30 in the afternoon, we probably could have sold about 120 lbs. Maybe next year!

Here are some of the helpers at our tent -

A Bee in His Bonnet - Reprise

Just to update the bee sitch - Bruce has managed to borrow an extractor, which is now in our den (along with 18 gallons of fermenting grape juice. More on that later).

Here's a pix of the gizmo, it's HUGE. It belongs in "The Secret Life of Bees".

Dr Atomic

I got the opportuniy to watch the final dress of Dr. Atomic last week at the Met. This is an important show, you need to see it.

This is what the Times had to say about it.

Found Object Art / Steampunk

So, I have been doing a lot of reading, looking and googling lately on the Gothic subcultures that are cropping up. Absolutely love Victorian Goth. I'd love the wardrobe of Helena Bonham Carter in "Sweeney Todd". Of course, being in Manhattan ever day means I get to see a lot of variation (although not nearly enough, wake up people!)

The latest one that is getting a bit more widely recognized is Steampunk, which I find combines the ingenuity of found object art, the fun of clothing as theater and the humanization of technology. It has spurred me to re-visit some found object art/altered art that I have been learning/doing. Look for some pieces in the future on Etsy.

Read about the movement in the Times:here

Here's a modded computer done in steampunk style! Wow!