Tag Archives: cabin chair

Still Sitting Around

This cabin steps and chair look so inviting; I never saw anyone in residence there but did meet an owner at another cabin.

Something about a chair or bench on a porch is so inviting. One of the established but unwritten elements of cabin etiquette is that if someone is sitting on the deck, it is okay to stop and chat from the road. They can invite you up or not, but it is always good to exchange greetings as you pass by folks just sitting around.

This cabin belonged to some friends of my parents, but they were no longer around when I began work on the book.

A built-in bench? Why not, if it can handle a heavy snow year.

More Chairs

But wait! There’s more. . . chairs, that is.

There are several reoccurring themes in the book, but we’ll continue to focus on chairs for awhile.

A blog reader might reach the conclusion that folks in Wilsonia just sit around.

Brings to mind something my weird old uncle said once: “I can only sit in one chair at a time”. Brilliant observation, Uncle!

Chair Obsession

Do I have an obsession with chairs? It is possible.

Have a look at some of my favorite pencil drawings from The Cabins of Wilsonia. (The reason I have to reannounce the title of the book is so that anyone asking The Google about it will have a better chance of locating it. Tech. . . sigh.)

There are plenty more, but now I want to show you the chair in my studio. It is a recent addition, so I feel quite happy about it. It is the blue one, and the first day I sat in it to do computer work, I fell asleep! (I am quite happy about the wooden one too, but it has been here since 2002 when I moved my studio into this little building.)

My young cats feel quite happy about it too.

Doug, I Lost Your Email!

pencil drawing from the upcoming book The Cabins of Wilsonia

This is a personal note to a friend, but you are welcome to read it. Duh. I posted it on the internet!

Dear Doug,

Thank you for using the Contact button on my blog. I was delighted to hear from you, and meant to set your email aside for a thoughtful response later. Instead, I deleted it. My excuses are that it was at the end of a long weekend away from the computer so there were many emails to read and sort AND in spite of continually changing my password, my email is being messed with by some unknown entity which causes me to manically delete messages (or maybe the unknown entity is deleting them. . .?)

Excuses aside, thank you for contacting me! I have been so curious about that little A-frame – is it Doug’s family cabin? Does he ever go there? Will he be up here when I am? Will he be disappointed that I only drew the funny lounge chair? Will he be pleased that anything from the cabin appears in the book?

My choices about what appears and what doesn’t are not based on historical significance. The book is about cabin life today in pictures (276 of them) and quotes by cabin owners and visitors. Not all cabins are included, because the goal is to show an overview album rather than a cabin-by-cabin directory. It is meant to show a balance of the typical and the unique.

I chose your chair, void of cushions, because it tells me a story about cabin life.

In other news, thank you for sending me a customer named Roger. He is gathering photos of a barn in Michigan for me to draw. (I’d rather he gather me a round-trip airfare, but no one does that.) Receiving a recommendation from such a fine artist as yourself really does my heart (and ego!) good.

Blessings to you, my old (as in long-time, not aged) friend,

Jana

The Next Challenge

The cover design has given me fits.

It took awhile to decide on the picture for the front of the book. Nope, not telling!

Then, I had to design the cover in my head. That wasn’t too hard – title, drawing, my name.

Then, this is where it gets hairy. Adobe InDesign is not an easy thing to use, and the world of covers is not a place where I have a map.

The printing company sent a diagram for the cover design with confusing dimensions and terms like “cloth size” and “board size” and all sorts of fractions that didn’t translate into clean decimals.

Then I saw that it was for a vertical book. Oops. My book is horizontal.

I requested and received a new diagram, which was just lines and measurements. Still no clarification on “cloth size” versus “board size”, and don’t even get me started on the whole issue of the spine dimensions!

It took the better part of an afternoon with InDesign, Googling for instructions, sending out an SOS to Carol in Seattle who was on a ferry returning from the San Juan Islands, which is where I want to live when I grow up, more googling, experimenting, and gritting my teeth with the effort of not screaming or slamming the laptop shut and picking up some nice soothing knitting.

I thought I got it. I sent it off. Then, the design department at the printing company sent me an email with a real template to use with InDesign so I redid it.

The person in the design department is named Jana. Why does that matter? Because I may be temporarily insane from the frustration of InDesign, which means everything takes on a new significance.

Perhaps it is time for a break. How about a nice cuppa?

So worked up here I forgot to mention the title of the book, The Cabins of Wilsonia, in case Google is listening.

Blue Things and Sunshine

Now that the drawings are finished (with the possible exception of a couple of do-overs and some frou-frous for wordy pages), it is time to work on the written parts.

But first, let’s take a little break and enjoy some sunshine.

blue things and sunshine

What do we have here?

First, the chair is my redwood throne, made by Bob Kellogg of Three Rivers. I noticed 2 of these chairs on the deck of a cabin on Fir Lane (FINALLY know what to call these streets!) and was aghast, nay, HORRIFED to see they had been painted. When I reported it to Bob, who is in the category of My Amazing Friends, he said he was the one who painted them, because they are not redwood. Always good to go to the source.

Next, there is a lovely blue garment, a congratulatory gift for completing the drawings in 2013. I LOVE blue, particularly this shade, and THANK YOU, PAT!

But wait! What else is blue? It’s a new briefcase to carry my laptop back and forth between the house and the studio. The old one developed holes on the bottom, and then the zipper permanently unzipped itself. It did pretty well considering I got it for free for joining the Book of the Month Club back in the 1980s.

I thought I could sit in my throne in the sunshine while wearing my new blue top, and work on the written parts of the book. Nope – it was too warm and too sunny too see the screen.

painted chairs

P.S. I’m sure that tree is leaning because Perkins The Outdoor Cat has been scratching on the same side, trying to push it over since it was planted in 2002.

P.P.S. (I think that’s the right to indicate a second post-script) I KNOW the studio needs painting. I’m busy putting together a book. Priorities, priorities. . .