Perhaps the last day to burn this year

I began my day yesterday using my miter saw to cut up an old ladder. This is the hardest thing I've ever cut on the miter saw.

I'd already burned a bunch of the ladder before I thought to take a photo. I couldn't get the metal out of the pieces, so decided to burn them with it.

I have no idea what happened to a bunch of my photos, but I also burned a lot of old baby jar lids, some metal tins, and a couple of cans at the same time. Since I had to watch the fire, I also cleaned my garden tools in a bucket of oily sand, then put linseed oil on the handles and put them away for the winter.

The fire was still blazing away in the chiminea, so I got a sheet of rosin paper (a roofing material found at the hardware store) and gessoed it. I added a few pages from a wonderful child's arithmetic book

and kept adding pages until I was happy with the results.

By now, some of the metal was cool enough to put away.

Before I did, I had to show my favorite piece in the bunch. Of course, since it was a ladder, there were two of these pieces. I'm not sure how I'll use them, but I will find a way.

Although it was nearly 3 pm, I still had not showered. I didn't want to bathe, then smell like burning wood. So after my shower, I went to my neighbor Sally's and helped her get her things together for the cleanup today. By this time I was tired and it was getting quite dark.

After I ate, I sewed the backing onto the piece I made at Dana's. Although I had brought muslin home to use for backing, I decided to use some red material that matched the front. It is now all ready to iron and sew together after I get home from our cleanup today.

It was time to glaze my arithmetic pages with orange and blue. I love glazes because you can see the images and words through them.

I have to admit, my camera gets flaky when I take a couple of photos in a row. The colors are not exactly true here, but I wanted to show why I chose the glaze colors. Each of the headers were either orange or blue.

My next project was to paint gesso on the left over piece of rosin paper. After dealing with yet another lame foam brush, I got out the big guns (or 2" brush) to spread the paint.

I first used dark green, and since some of the gesso was still wet, I got a lovely combination of greens mixed with white. Then I added a cinnamon brown. I'm thinking of calling it "Christmas tree."