Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

Another Jay Strongwater turtle box (the one in the middle, you've already seen the one on the right). His shell is tiger eye (so is the sphere on the left).

Santa dropped this off a year or so ago.

Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

A herd of Swarovski crystal turtles.

Santa left the one on the left on Christmas morning. He usually doesn't leave two turtles. We must have been extra good this year.

Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

A Fred Conlon Turtle made from an army helmet.

Santa dropped this off on Christmas morning. He leaves a turtle every Christmas.

Time for coffee

Bobbie and Mom visited last weekend after they went to Kevin's graduation. We went to Julian on Sunday for a day of shopping, lunch, and pie. We shopped till we dropped.

We bought an accessory for Silvia.


Its tongue is a pendulum.


If you need a whimsical clock, Allen Designs has one for you (I don't know anything about the company I linked to...they just seem to have the whole catalog).

(The pie was much better than what we had when Peggy, Michele, and I went up there last month. Sorry.)

Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

A pewter turtle on an agate (?) base.

Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

A herd of ironwood turtles.

Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

Malachite turtles (and a hippopotamus).

Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday, Special Christmas Edition

Here are the turtles on our tree! Some have already been featured in this space.


A Jay Strongwater ornament.

A Christopher Radko ornament.

A metal and enamel ornament.

An unsigned gourd. (A gift from Peggy and Michele)

A gourd signed something like "D Meyer 1999" (It's probably Denise Meyers but her web site is broken when I wrote this. The site shows up (without pictures) in Google's cache.)

A gourd by Robert Rivera.

No tree is complete without a herd of turtles!

Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

Cast glass.

Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

Concrete and tile stepping stone.

Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

Our kitchen clock.

MLM: Memory Lane Monday, First Edition

Back on The Saddest Day, I said that I had found some souvenirs from my youth that, like it or not, I will be sharing with you. Later, I posted some memories of some nice ladies I didn't marry who told me "I Love You!*" and that reminded P-Doobie of the nice Jamaican woman I didn't marry who has Two Lovely Pairs of Eyes. In a comment to that post Colleen suggested that I could have a regular feature where I post these remembrances of things past.

So I am embarking on a stroll down that old memory lane. Like Ina's stroll down the Santa Fe Trail, this can't be done in one, uninterrupted stretch. We need to take this slow and easy. Once a week should be enough.

This First Edition of Memory Lane Monday is really a cop-out. It's a follow-up to an earlier post where I remembered being embarrassed by a shop project where I made a comedy mask and the teacher wondered where the tragedy mask was. I didn't know that they were supposed to be a set. I just wanted to make the happy mask.

During The Crapture, Izzy found the mask in the shed. Mom had found it a few months ago and told me that she had put it up there. I figured she'd send it to me when she had something else coming my way or that she'd hold onto it till I made another trek to New Mexico. Izzy took it home with her and sent it to me. So I was probably the last one of the family to see my long-lost treasure. For those of you not present at The Crapture, here's my comedy mask!


I traced the pattern from the mask that was hanging on the shop class wall. I didn't come up with its hair (or is it horns?) on my own. The thing looks sinister to me.

On the back I wrote my name. I also wrote the name I've always know "Izzy" as. Did I give it to Izzy as a present? Is it really hers? Do I need to give it back?

False Crapture

Years ago, inspired, I think, by the Cerro Grande fire, we made a feeble stab at Crapture. We dragged stuff out from under Mom's house with the plan that we were going to get rid of stuff. We searched the piles of stuff very carefully to make sure that nothing of value would be tossed.

Nothing was tossed.

We found lots of valuable things. We found the box that my old Dennis the Menace doll came in. I would never have seen value in that piece of cardboard but it went for something like $40 on eBay.

The most valuable thing I found was the ducky planter that I got on a trip to Kansas in the early '60s.

The only thing I remember growing in the ducky was a chili pepper as part of a fourth grade project. It amazes me that the pepper grew...the ducky has little room for soil and no drainage.

I don't remember the story of who made my ducky. Was it a relative? A family friend? Where did we go to get it?

I think that we each got to get a piece from the artist. There was the money bowl. What did everybody else come home with?

That's Life

The view from my recliner now includes this:Liō is one of my favorite comic strips these days. Some time ago, the San Diego Union-Tribune gave us some comic strips to vote on as their replacement for "Foxtrot." One of them was "Liō." It was the only one that had any appeal for me (and at the time it didn't have a lot of appeal, just more than the other choices). They chose "Bliss" instead. ("Bliss" is starting to grow on me but certainly not as much as "Liō.")

I have to read Liō online (you may have noticed I've had a link to the strip's web site in my "Stuff you should look at" list over there on the right).

Liō is basically "Henry" with a wild imagination.

An entry in the blog for another comic strip I read, "Pooch Café," pointed me to a site that is selling a Pooch Café "laser cel" of one of the comic's Sunday strips. It turned out they had a couple of Liō strips. Including the one I find the funniest of all. It's now on my wall.

You, too, can get a copy at lasermach.com. Hurry. It's limited to 500 copies.

(Yesterday, Liō was hauled off by some men in black. He's being replaced by "Li'l Dicky." He won't say or do anything offensive. Old folks love 'im. It's going to be an interesting strip for a while.)

Things are just ducky!

Years ago we got a little ducky from Shidoni made by Shidoni's gallery dirctor, Karen Avila (who, sadly, is no longer with us). It's the cutest little thing. The ducky has been in the bathroom basking under the light of a lamp held by a pile of turtles.

The day after Thanksgiving every year there is an Arts Festival at the convention center in San Diego that Jerry and I go to. This year we came home with a little ceramic bathtub from Wild Earth Fantasy Sculpture. It's got a couple of turtles sitting on its rim. There is blue glass on the bottom of the tub that looks like water. It's a nice little knickknack.

We put it in the bathroom next to the turtle lamp. The little ducky was excited about it and took to it like, well, a duck to water. It now spends all its time swimming around the tub exploring its new universe.

Concentric Ball

Howdy, Poss! Welcome. Thanks for asking about the concentric ball. Here's a picture of it.



It's hard to get a picture of an all white subject that shows a lot of detail. The outside ball has a bunch of dragons snaking around the holes. They have some rather nasty looking fangs. Here's an attempt at showing a dragon's head. It does show up pretty well.



The first ball on the inside is not separated from the outside ball. I forget how many balls are in there. The ball is about two and a half inches across.

Ivory Chess Set

Here's the ivory chess set Don told Colleen about. The kings, queens and bishops are all different. The knights are basically the same with one facing right and the other left. They hold spears. The rooks are identical pagodas. There are eight different pawns with each side getting a copy.

Royalty:

Bishops:

From what I recall, Jack's mother gave Mom and Dad money to get the kids presents. I don't remember what the occasion might have been. The chess set is what I got.

One question I've had all these years: Where did grandma get her money?

What did my sisters get?