It's Curtains

This picture of my hand-dyed scraps is lit by the strong afternoon/early evening sun at 5:30 pm. This is nice to have the light when it's not super hot, but it's a lot of direct sun. It honestly feels like too much direct sun in a room filled with fabric and thread. 

Last summer we had to go as far as to mount on the outside of the house a shade curtain. It worked very well, but it was quite ugly from both outside and inside. So there's a curtain project afoot to see if I can avoid having that shade put up again this year. 

The window in my workroom is an unusual size, it's quite wide at 8' and it's 4' high. So that means that buying grab and go curtains from Target isn't in the ballpark really. Unless one has a sewing machine....mwahaha. 

All I can hear in my mind's eye memory is the Bugs Bunny version of "It's Curtains for You":

So I bought some "light-filtering" curtains from Target that need to be modified down to size as they are much too long at 84"

These curtains are very simply made, and I discovered that both the top and the bottom have a similar big hem that's open on the ends so that they're can both be functioning rod pockets. 

Here's the before picture. The current curtains on the sides are very old and made out of a fairly heavy damask that is also lined. They were made for a normal 6' width window. So they block too much light and also don't cover the whole window. The dumb thingy on the curtain rod in the middle was what I made out of the leftovers from shortening DS's blackout curtains that we got for the same afternoon sun situation. It was made to try and block the bright light that was coming through the top of the exterior shade we put up last year. Unfortunately it didn't work and also looks truly demented.

Tah-dah, much much better. No more demented pouf crouching up on the curtain rod and a very nice filtering of the light as per the package. The two curtains were both shortened to 4' high and then I used the left over fabric to make a third curtain (seen on the left) for when it's really bright.

This is great, I feel so much better, like I now have some control over the amount of light coming into the room. 

Even with the strongest sun of the day coming in, it's still much better. I love the moving shadows.

I'm counting this project as Done✅

 

Sun Block

 

(Photo taken at 6pm)

This weekend it was time for some "whole house sun block" efforts. As I've mentioned before thanks to the winter storms we lost a stand of redwoods that had previously been blocking the afternoon direct sun to the western facing side of our house. That's two rooms downstairs, and two rooms upstairs. One is DS's and one is my workroom. The direct sun has been driving me nuts and I was beginning to worry about sun fading the contents of my studio. We were contemplating buying solar powered outdoor vertical shades that would be installed above each window on the exterior, but even if we ordered them, it was going to be 2 months until they arrived (ie the rest of summer). We also weren't sure that it would help enough to be worth the price.

To test out the proposition that some sort of outdoor vertically hung shade would work, I remembered that we had one CoolaRoo rectangle shade that we hadn't used yet, so DH figured out how to hang it up on a (hopefully) temporary basis. It involved using our new very very tall ladder. I was happy to hold and stabilize the ladder for him and not have to climb up it myself.

It looks absolutely atrocious. 

Here's how it looks from the inside at around 1pm with the shade installed outside. These curtains were leftovers from the previous (before our house expansion) much smaller window. I made them out of a fairly heavy damask and they're lined so they were blocking enough light when I needed it before the trees fell. I'd never gotten around to installing window shades or anything in this room mostly because we weren't using it as a bedroom.

But now with the shade installed, I don't really have to use the curtains at all. This picture was taken at 1pm, so that's before the direct sun starts hitting the window, so it's plenty bright already. The air is still coming in just fine as the windows open on the sides. Unfortunately the top of the window not being covered by the shade is a bit of a problem, so maybe I'll make a temporary valance of some kind to block it. 

A downside is that I can't see out the window very well to see the sky or the trees that remain, and I can't raise and lower it like I could a shade. This is the view this morning sitting at my sewing machine.

That took care of my studio window as well as the downstairs window as well. But then for DS's window, we bought at Costco for the stellar price of $24, a pair of floor length sun block curtains. While I cut and hemmed them to non-floor length (avoiding the sewn-in magnets) DH got a curtain rod installed. They look great, and he's happy with how adjustable the light in his room is now between his blinds and the new curtains. What should I do with the leftover cut off parts of these curtains? Oooh, maybe the temporary valance I mentioned above.

Situation Update

 

We're back to Situation Mostly Normal now. The three weeks solid of rain have finally taken a break. It was gloriously sunny out yesterday. We're cleaning up from the garage flood, which is a lot of bleah work I won't bore you with, but the drier days will help out. The slide on our road hasn't budged, and the trees have gotten trimmed back from the power lines in more than a few places.

Our power finally got restored on Sunday night, so we ran around and did chores like laundry, running the dishwasher, and vacuuming with All Of The Lights On. One of the very rare occasions I was happy to do chores. We also got to turn the lights on our tree back on. 

It was a long nearly two weeks (12 days) of no power, which meant we didn't plug in the tree. It made me sad to have it sitting there all decorated but dark.

It's really really nice to have our tree lit up again. Thankfully, it's still very green even with the use of the wood stove keeping us warm during the power outage so it can stay up a little while longer. 

My Home Office

When it's not raining, I'm lucky enough to be able to say that this is my home office:

1. Comfy cushions - ✅
2. Charged up laptop (that is gets a better wifi connection outside than in for some reason?)✅
3. Cut up Cara Cara Orange- ✅
4. Nail Polish because I need some color on my toenails -✅
5. A beautiful day ✅✅✅✅✅✅

Will I get anything done? Well...that's a topic for another blog post I suppose.

Sunsets Are Series

 I was just looking at these pictures I took recently of a really spectacular sunset in Santa Barbara.  And realized that they really are a series.

 Just struck by that, the sun does this (twice!) every day for us, and it's always different.  Never the same twice.

Just like any good artist, endlessly pushing for innovation while working in a series.

There are just so many variables for our human perception of the sun's daily series work. We really are lucky aren't we?

Sun, Clouds, Sea

The Pacific ocean

on a January afternoon

in-between rainstorms

as seen from the side of Highway 1

near Pescadero

Sunshine Daydream

Not much is getting done around here.

We're all just lying about.

Soaking up the new spring sun.

Joys of Sun Tea

I've been experimenting with different sun teas this summer. The yummiest so far was the lemon balm/green tea concoction pictured here. We have way too much lemon balm growing all over, so I can ruthlessly harvest it for sun tea. It is a plant in the mint family so it spreads really easily. It is a nice looking plant so I don't mind it too much, and it sure smells good when you mow it.
Anyways I took about 10 stems worth, stripped the leaves, mashed them up to get the essential oils activated, well, squished in my hands really, added water and four green tea bags. Stuck in the sun for several hours, and presto-chango-rearrango, a refreshing beverage. I strained it into a pitcher that got put into the refrigerator.
No sugar needed, just add ice. It disappeared within a day.

I'm planning on making this combo again and adding it half and half to lemonade.

And oh dear, I was looking for a link to post for ideas on making sun teas and found on Snopes.com that it is actually a really bad idea due to bacteria growing in the sun heated water. Not hot enough to kill the bacteria. Yikes and Hmmmm! May have to resort to refrigerator tea.

Sixteen Absurd Suns

I got sun burned on our recent beach camping trip. And now that my face is done peeling, I'm left with that first blush of tan for the year. I keep seeing myself in the mirror and wondering why I look healthier. Isn't that funny how tan=healthy in our minds? And knowing what we know about skin cancer tan is the opposite of healthy, right?! Absurd!

I of course know that sunburn and tanning is exactly the wrong thing I should be doing with my skin, especially at this age. But I live in California, this is how I've been conditioned by my fellow traveler's here in this very sunny state. I have the example of my mother who has religiously applied sunscreen for as long as I can remember (I guess 30 years!) and her skin looks wonderful (not just for her age, but for any woman over say 40). So I know I should apply sunscreen. And usually when I know I'm going to be out in the sun for a while, I do manage to remember to do this crucial step. But I don't use it every day like I'm supposed to.

But I worry about the interaction of the medications I'm on, with the acne skin stuff I use, and the sunscreen. I don't know why, but I do. Something I read somewhere lodged in the worry section of my brain (which seems to be getting larger every damn year) and now I wonder/worry/fret about that. Which may lead to me not using sunscreen as consistently as I should. Absurd!

And yes skin cancer does "run in my family". So I really should get over my sunscreen worry right? Or at least wear a hat more frequently. I'll try really I will, I promise, just as soon as I get a bit more of a tan this year. Absurd!

So here is my self portrait for the month of absurdity on selfportrait challenge, considering the absolute absurdity of simultaneous sun worshipping, tan coveting, skin cancer fearing, acne product using, sun bleached hair loving, outdoors living, sunscreen toxicity worrying, vitamin D needing.