Big Jaws and Little Jaws

The name of this photo is "Big Jaws and Little Jaws". I thought some would like to see the snowblower machines that keep us in touch with the world during the winter here. The little red machine helps take care of the snow in our 150-foot long driveway, and the big yellow machine keeps the roads in our area from becoming too tunnel-like. (Click on the photo for the best view.) 

"Big Jaws" can take wide swaths of 10-foot tall snowbanks and shoot them up or down onto the mountain sides. It has a 7-foot opening and the yellow 3-foot berm cutter which knocks the highest snow down into the opening where the giant auger is as it drives past at about 4 or 5 miles per hour. The snow shoots out of that giant top chute (which the operator can rotate to either side of the street as well as raise and lower) and the streets have 2 lanes once again.

On the days when Jaws is out and about, we can hear its engine (the entire long section behind the cab is the engine) for hours before it arrives on our street, so we tense in preparation. Will the operator see our driveway before he shoots snow 30 feet up into it? They usually know, but we've had a couple guys bury our driveway with it, so we are always outside when Jaws comes by, day or night.

Thankfully Jaws generally comes out only a few times each season, most especially when over 6 feet of snow falls over a 7-day period as happened this week. There is no other way to keep up with that much snowfall except to bring out the big Jaws!

Winter Views

Driving home from Christmas shopping on December 19th afforded us these lovely views of the valley below our mountains, (the Sierra Nevada mountains) with the western mountains shadowing the valley even as the lower eastern mountains (the Pine Nut mountains) were still bathed in sunlight. Please click on the photos for a closer view.

The small community nestled up against the mountain as we drove above it looks like it could be part of a Christmas card, with the barren trees and distant rugged ranchlands dusted with snow.

As we rise up the mountain, the valley fades into the distance as the steep road, the craggy mountains, the deeper snow and the pines take precedence. A few miles more and we'll be home.

Winter.... again

Just like clockwork, winter has struck again. The temperature dropped to 9 degrees last night, and then warmed up to 19 degrees today. Guess who is dressed in layers? :)

This is the view out the front door and across the valley to the east today.

So, like any good polymer clay aficionado who has no desire to be out in the elements, I've been playing, um, I mean working! Keep in mind that I'm supposed to be making Christmas ornaments - so where did these autumn-colors beads come from? An imprint mokume gane stack somehow appeared on my clay table last night, and these cute little earring beads are resulting. Of course they are not baked yet because I'm going to make about a hundred more of them before I preheat the oven. :)

Wordless Wednesday

Inspired by Cinnabar

I've been really "into" expressing myself via the monthly challenges that my Etsy guild, Polymer Clay Artists Guild of Etsy (PCAGOE) holds each month. It's been very satisfying to carefully consider what each theme says to me and the art that I can create as a result.

For November, the challenge theme was "Asian-inspired", and mostly due to a suggestion from another guild member, I decided to try a faux cinnabar look. I really like it! I had a lot of fun mixing clay colors, then finding just the right hummingbird and flower mold that would give me that Asian flair. Once the piece was baked, it was time to get the finish just right. I added acrylic paint for that antique look, and then I sanded and buffed the piece for quite a long time to get just the right glow on the patina.

Please click on the photo below to see the vessel in all of its glory. :) And, please take a minute to vote in the challenge from Nov. 1-7 by visiting the PCAGOE blog here. There will be 3 voter winners, hopefully one of them will be YOU!

Bull

Yikes. Would that barbed wire fence have stopped him?

Please send workers into the harvest...

In this blog post, it will be revealed.. I am a Christian woman and deeply involved in a personal pursuit of God and all that He is. Said pursuit is great fun and I love it.

Several years ago, I read a missive about effective prayer, something that impacted my life greatly. One of the points in it explains that Christian people have an important job to do in the plan of salvation for humankind, and that is to pray that the Lord of the harvest will send workers out into the harvest field. In Matthew 9:38, Jesus instructs us as follows:

“Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest”.

Since Jesus said to do it, I began adding that request to many of our prayers, and so did hubby. We really didn’t know exactly what we were praying for at the time…. But what do you know, we found out. After years of praying that prayer, we were both touched by the Holy Spirit to check further into God’s plan, and since then we’ve learned tons of new information that was always right there in our Bibles but took depth of prayer and study to find. We are still studying, and we know there are many layers to God’s word that we haven’t discovered yet.

But back to that harvest prayer - we realized at some point that we had prayed ourselves right into actual “jobs”… because over time we’ve figured out that we are a couple of those labourers. Now don’t worry, I won’t go all “sermon-y” on any of you or anything, but the purpose of this post is to request something from all of you, I’m asking for your specific help. As is God, as explained above.

Although for me life has become infinitely happier from within, really glorious; as life does, it hands out some big problems from the outside. I’ve been dealing with some problems for the past year and a half that are difficult, to say the least. I’ve spent many days offline because it’s too hard to pretend that I’m fine, and I’ve been posting and living and doing my art with a heavy heart the rest of the time. I am not saying this because I need a pity party – not at all. What I need is help.

So I ask earnestly from all of you who pray to pray with me – “Dear Lord, please send forth labourers into your harvest”.

Whether you end up to be one of those labourers or not, you’ll be praying as Jesus asked, and you will be helping me at the same time. Because one of these days, one of those labourers that you’ve helped pray into existence is going to arrive at the door of the difficulties that I’m dealing with, and is going to help resolve the problem. I can’t resolve it, because it’s not my direct problem. I need outside help, and seriously, in my desperate prayers tonight, it was revealed that if there were enough labourers, a lot of problems would be resolved. For me, for you, and for everyone who loves God and knows that He is the way to a peaceful life here on Earth, as well as to a fantastically better life in our eternal future.

There it is – I’m asking for your help with this prayer, and I’m promising to keep asking God for help as Jesus instructed. Between all of us, we can assist with the furtherance of God’s plan by doing what Jesus asked us to… and I believe that will benefit each one of us individually as well.

So please allow me to say – thank you in advance! My faith is strong that you will want to help and that God will smile down on all of us as a result.