I Heart Homer

My hubby found this beach rock for me in Homer this weekend, it was quite "romantical." Our halibut fishing trip was great too, under blue bird skies we departed at 6:30 am on an all day charter with our friends Sean and Gerri from North Country Charters. We fished in three different holes, about 50 miles out in Kachemak Bay. It took 2 hours to reach the holes, but the scenery was spectacular. We saw Puffins, sea otters and even sea lions that had hauled out onto a rocky island. Everyone on the boat limited out, 2 halibut per person, which is down from last year's limit of 3 per person. We also hooked into some nice fatty, sea going Silver Salmon. That's a picture of my salmon biggie in the fish tub. Daddy-O hooked a nice 30 pound Halibut but most were averaging a small "chicken size" of about 15-20 pounds. The day before our fishing trip we also packed home crates full of new drift wood for my Wind Salmon sculptures. The guys helped me collect the perfect shaped driftwood pieces from Bishop's Beach, which is just about a 100 yards away from where we stayed, Two Sisters Bakery, Suites By the Beach. 

The big news was that "ocean girl" got so seasick I could hardly reel my fish in! Poor Derek had to do triple duty for our whole family! I have NEVER, EVER, EVER been seasick before and I LOVE 

being on the ocean and on boats. It caught me (and Derek!) by complete surprise as me and two kids (ages 7 & 11) from New York had to share the garbage can in the boat's cabin! It was totally demoralizing but made for a great story for the other tourists on the boat. Derek, Gus and I were the only AK residents and considered ourselves quite the "veterans" on board -HA. I did gain everybody's respect though, wanting to catch our limit, in between dry heaves and the shivers, I hooked all my fish and my sweet hubby helped me reel my Halibut in! The Salmon was easy, I sat down on

the deck with my head down between my legs and just reeled him in on the lighter weight pole! As we were under way heading back to the Homer boat harbor I was fine. Got my coloring 

back and was even able to think about a cold beer and pizza at Fat Olives! Now that's an Alaskan Woman, or so my sweet hubby says. 

As soon as we got back into Anchorage I headed down to pick up some more steel. I'm hard at it as the season's last G Street Artists Fair

is this Saturday. I'm making some more Wind Salmon now that I have some new driftwood pieces and I'll also weld up more ravens and a couple of 

customer requests to have on hand at the Fair. Though I'm feeling 100x better, I swear I will NEVER, EVER give anyone who is seasick a hard time EVER again (including my best friend Patti!).

Holy Yellow Jackets Lawnman!

Daddy-O first became aware of a wasps nest somewhere in our yard by him and the dog getting stung a couple of times while mowing the lawn. But he wasn’t sure of the exact location and today we found out! Who would have thought it was under ground?! These busy little wasps dug UNDER an old railroad tie and burrowed into the ground to build this GIANT nest. We flipped the old tie over and couldn’t believe the Yellow Jackets actually ate away at the stinky, icky creosoted wood as well as dug out the rocky ground to build the nest. We weren’t sure at first if they were hornets, wasps or what, but after a quick internet search of matching up pictures we determined these ground scavengers had the perfect location –near where our neighbors and us set out our garbage cans for the weekly collection and were in fact, Yellow Jackets. Luckily, Tauzer and Daddy-O avoided being stung today but had to “eliminate” the col

ony. He said it was kind of sad to watch the brain-shaped structure deflate, and kill the angry wasps as the spray we used took affect. Sorry PETA, but the nest is situated right where kids will walk by when back-to-school starts and in addition to D and Tauzer-Schnauzer being stung, so had a neighbor. My whole nest fascination continued as I poked at the beautiful earth colored layers in the Yellow Jacket’s nest. Before seeing this ground nest, I had only seen the conical gray, papery kinds of nest hanging from trees and roof eves. The swirly outer construction of terra-cotta rings inspired me. When it's safe, I'll collect some of the

outer shell of the nest for a project, I was thinking something in different colors and layers of clay…

It’s hard to focus on getting all of my work done (not because I've been watching the Yellow Jackets) because not only did the sunshine return but I have fishing on the brain! I LOVE TO FISH. We’re heading down to Homer and going Halibut fishing again with long-time family friends Sean and Geri of North Country Charters. I’m bringing plenty of ibuprofen though, because last time I went deep sea fishing, my muscles were killing me from all of the reeling in we did! Since I 

had Halibut on the brain I made a couple of the fish in steel for the upcoming G Street Artist Fair  on August 15th that a customer requested I have for sale. Shhh, don’t tell, but I also made a small Halibut (they call it "Chicken" size -which is the best eating!) 

for Sean & Geri as a surprise. I’m sure they’re not reading my Blog because this time of year they’re up to their anchors with charters and fish or taking pictures for their customers who caught fish!