dog trot cabin, Old Baylor Park

 

When we lived in Washington county, we often drove to Independence, TX — site of the original Baylor college, Sam Houston’s homestead, the Antique Rose Emporium with its lovely gardens to stroll through, and this old dog trot cabin. This site of the women’s college was my favorite place to sketch wildflowers.

I put together a mixing Demi palette to go with one full of color — then thought, why not add some warm and cool blacks and whites? This sketch was a trial of just the shades of gray from that palette (at the moment, it also holds my mixed “glacier green”, which is more of a blue-gray). 

a different view

Our wee log cabin is on the market again, listed with a new realtor. Her photographer took some overhead shots using a drone — it’s interesting to see our first Texas home as the Crested CaraCaras and Great Blue Heron do!

The large pond to the center right is one of several ponds at the ranch across the farm road, home of the Longhorns, horses and donkeys we love watching. At the horizon is a portion of the lake.

That’s our cabin with the darker colored roof and covered patio seen in the lower center in this second shot. The building with the metal roof is Bill’s woodshop, and the new carport can be seen under an oak tree left of the cabin.

waiting . . .

So how long is “normal” in selling one’s home? It’s been a couple of weeks and no one has asked to view our property in person yet.

When we sold the Craftsman Tudor Revival bungalow we raised our family in, we put our own sign in the yard — and we had a buyer in about a week. The 1920 apartment building we renovated was on the market only 6 days before being sold.

I realize that both of these previous experiences were unusual, but we really thought we’d have some activity by now. Our realtor says there’s been daily “hits” on the online sites and one interested caller in particular, but no showings yet. But it’s currently a “buyer’s market” in this part of Texas.

With our two previous experiences, I guess we’re just impatient.

Sketch With Me: challenge

This past weekend was the monthly virtual sketch crawl with the Sketch With Me group, and this month’s prompt was “challenge”. The challenge of a hard subject, a new medium, etc.

For me lately, the real challenge is taking time to sketch at all! With Bill’s ongoing dentist appointments, my periodontal appointments, our going through stuff to get rid of anything we don’t wish to move (if we haven’t used it in 5 years, why keep it?), meeting with the realtor to sell the cabin, taking time for get-togethers with our kids in Pflugerville, Needville, and Houston . . .

In fact, getting photos for the realtor proved to be my biggest challenge this weekend! The company’s photographer came out to take photos — and they turned out horribly! So dark and depressing, I sure wouldn’t want to look at the property as she captured it! She’s young; perhaps it is just a summer job for her. I admit taking photos of a small space in a dark log cabin can be challenging, but I knew we could do better. After all, it was a great bunch of photos that made Bill and me consider buying the cabin in the first place — and we have improved it since then!

So our daughter came out to stage the furnishings better and take new photos. And what a difference they were! It’s good to take time for sun or cloudiness to get the right outdoor shots, and get the right angle to enhance a space rather than making it seem to close in on itself! Our cabin, though built of darkly painted logs, is really quite a sunny place with lots of gorgeous views of trees.

I gave the new photos to our realtor to replace the first ones online but ran into another glitch: Kristen’s camera resolution was too high, creating files too large to upload. So, with our son Jason’s help, I now have the correct pixel size and hope the new photos will be posted later today.

Leaving very little sketching time. But ever since we moved in 5 1/2 years ago, I have wanted to draw this view of our loft from the steep stair-ladder made of half-logs, looking upwards to the peaked roof log beams. That’s my great-grandmother’s quilt hanging over the right railing. At first I thought I’d just paint it and leave the heavy logs with the white bead board in between them in ink only. But now I’m not so sure . . . Should I paint the logs as well?

Sketch With Me — gratitude

The past two days have been sketching days for the Facebook group, Sketch With Me, and this month’s theme is gratitude. While I had planned on sketching on Saturday, we ended up looking at a country property that our daughter and son-in-law considered purchasing. They are wishing to move away from Houston’s suburbs to a small acreage in the country . . . and they are specifically looking for a place with an in-law house, hoping that we will join them.

We both dearly love our log cabin here, north of Brenham, as well as our church family and this area. We also love the many improvements we have made here in the past 5 years, including a woodshop, a new carport, a remodeled bathroom in more of a rustic style, and real stone tile floors. Getting rid of the 2 previous ugly carports and the small building that blocked the cabin’s view made it much more attractive as well.

I am grateful for the time we have been able to live in this place and for all the Lord has worked out in our lives since coming here, including bringing Bill safely through the years of chronic pain and an unexpected second bypass surgery.

But we do not trust the current situation with our community water well. Those in charge of its upkeep have refused to listen to sound reasoning . . . or the fact that the state does in fact have the right to demand that wells be brought up to state code or they can be forced to be shut down. There are 30 some homes depending on the well system and we have a lack of confidence in the board members doing the right thing. Bill tried serving on the board for a time but they would not listen to his vast knowledge and experience in these matters.

Yesterday, instead of regular sketching, I scribbled the above in my sketchbook as we checked out the in-law cottage on the 7 1/4 acre property we were looking at. After much thought and discussion, all four of us agreed that the acreage is a bit more than we need and the larger ranch house is not special enough to move our kids to buy this early in their search. But we had a great day together anyway, which is another thing I’m grateful for!

new kitchen light

Bill is now back in his woodshop now — his first project was to turn a vintage galvanized milk strainer into our new kitchen light. And we love it! So much that we are keeping the old lights just in case; if we should ever move away from this cabin, we are taking the new lights with us!

His next project, make the task light that goes over the stove — out of a galvanized chicken feeder!

(The cool thing about sketching is all the dirty dishes and clutter instantly disappeared!)

soon-to-be kitchen lights!

I’ve finally caught up with the actual date of the Inktober challenge! I’m not following the official drawing prompts and I began a few days late, but this sketch is my #7 drawing and I actually drew it on the 7th!

When we bought our log cabin, it had lots of ”fru-fru” type lights and decor  — even a silly chandelier! Definitely NOT our preferred style for a rustic log cabin in the woods! One by one, we have made changes that better fit a simple country cabin.

The current kitchen lights are frilly-looking glass shades on lots of chains — chains that collect lots of grease and dust! After thinking through lots of ideas and visiting lots of antique shops for inspiration, Bill found a vintage chicken feeder and milk strainer on Etsy. He plans to wire them with LED lights and hang them upside-down from the log rafters: the large milk strainer as the central light and the chicken feeder as a task light over our main work area.

to lose a building

When we bought our cabin almost 5 years ago, it came with this additional wooden shed. At first, we put it to use storing tools and materials from Bill’s wood shop. After his new shop was built, for a time we worked on plans to turn this shed into a guest house but that fell by the wayside as there were other improvements we wanted more, such as tearing down the two ugly car ports and replacing them with one unobtrusive one.

The log cabin got a bit lost among the ugly car ports on one side and this shed on the other; we wanted the cabin to be the first thing seen. And I wanted to see the ranch across the highway from my window, with the longhorns, donkeys, and horses among all those trees — not a big brown wall.

So we let it be known that we’d give the building away free to anyone who would move it. There were three different parties who wanted it but none could find anyone willing to move it. Until a neighbor’s cousin heard about it — he had a smaller shed for his hobbies and his wife wanted to use a corner of it. So he gave her this one! They found a Mennonite guy willing to move it and within one week, it was gone! It was fascinating to watch this one guy maneuver the building all by himself, attaching large wheels and pulling it out to his truck’s trailer.

log cabin at Old Baylor

For today’s direct watercolor painting, I used a photo taken at Old Baylor University’s Women’s Campus located in Independence, Texas . . . just across the road from the home of Sam Houston. This original log cabin has been moved onto the site, just east of the ruins of the women’s buildings. Every spring the meadow next to the cabin is filled with wild bluebonnets, Indian paintbrush, and coreopsis.

I did use a very few pencil lines to ensure the cabin’s proportions were correct, and dots of masking fluid for where the wildflowers go. But I don’t feel that either of these tools were overdone; it was still painted directly in watercolor. That sky is nothing like I aimed for, but it worked!

30 x 30, day 2

Today I tried a watercolor sketch of some red lilies that bloomed against our log cabin a few weeks ago. We took down the small fenced yard recently, no longer owning a dog, but I didn’t want to get rid of this gate Bill had built — so I leaned it against the cabin to let roses climb on it. Roses that may or may not have made it through the colder-than-usual winter.

I can see right off that I need to be more careful with tonal values. The leaves had a yellow-green for highlights but the deeper green bled into the lighter, overwhelming it.

a bigger cabin

When we purchased this wee cabin, the former owners took the curtains with them, leaving some bamboo roller shades --- which offered NO privacy at all. So we quickly bought the only curtains we could find locally.

Now after over three years, we were able to remove the curtains and replace the old shades with shades that have a privacy liner. And they make the cabin look HUGE to us! 

Bearcat moping

We "cat-sat" for our son, Jeff, during a recent trip he took with his college class. His cat, Mist, does not like other cats and never allowed our Bearcat to get close to her. That did not stopped Bear from hoping that he would eventually befriend her. He's a very friendly cat by nature.

When Jeff took Mist home, Bear moped in the loft for a day or two, making sure we could see him peeking over the loft edge. Didn't want to waste a good "pout", like it was all our fault for letting her get away.

Sketched with a mixed dark sepia ink (Noodler's polar black and polar brown inks) and white pencil on Mi-teintes toned paper in a hand-bound journal.

loft studio

A few days ago I sketched my folding camp chair; now I drew it in its environment -- up in the loft of our tiny log cabin. That door on the right leads out onto a wee balcony.

a bit of a cleanup

Over the summer my loft 'studio' was lost under all the clutter. It's a bit too warm up there in summer's heat to work anyway so it just became a place to pile stuff.

But a friend has asked me to do a couple of sketches for him and I thought maybe it would seem more 'professional' to do them in a studio --- so I cleaned the place up, rearranging some things to make it more usable.

This is the same space from another angle --- I even straightened up the books! A friend at church gave me the two easels but I have no art to put on them. So they hold some color charts and some painted postcards others have sent me. Actually, the card on the small easel is from the amazing Brenda Swenson!

little log cabin, deep in the heart of Texas

After a week of looking at lots of houses in 5 different areas, we ended up buying the exact house we first drove by last June when we first began looking at houses for sale in Texas. Very surprised that it was still on the market, since houses in the area usually sell withing 1 to 2 months. Even more surprised when they accepted our first offer, quite a bit below the asking price. We both love log houses --- never thought we would actually get to live in one someday!

A VERY tiny house, just right for the 2 of us, near a lake. No woodshop for Bill yet, but with such a large yard (3 lots) we can build one ourselves . . . with a guest house attached for visitors. There is additional sleeping in the loft but not everyone would be able to manage the steep stairs --- more like the stair-ladders Bill knew aboard a Navy ship.

Part of the loft has a balcony & windows facing north-east -- that will be my art space. Along with the whole outdoors, of course. There are a variety of trees on our lot, including a small treehouse for grandkids. And a small planting strip along the sidewalk leading to the front patio, perfect for an herb bed. Provided the deer stay away from it. Not sure if they come into this housing development or not.

searching for a home . . .

Bill drove down to Houston to drive me home (I flew there the first part of June). Because his time away from work was limited, we asked all our kids to drive to Brenham to meet us for lunch on Saturday, Brenham being sort of centrally located between everyone's homes. Had a blast eating at Ernie's, a downtown restaurant I found doing a Google search.  They gave us a private room and we could let the little kids run and play. Quen, Jayna, and Josiah also painted a bit in my journal:

 

  

After eating, our son-in-law took us driving, looking at homes for sale in the area. Our top three favorites, located out of town near a lake, are sketched above -- two of them are log-style cabins! We would like to find a smaller home with a large detached garage or outbuilding to turn into a woodshop for Bill when he retires later this year -- two of these had such buildings already on site.

So after driving home to Kansas, we called a realtor friend to start the process of finding out what our building would sell for. We renovated a small 1920 apartment building in 2000 - 2001; originally there were four 1-bedroom apartments, but we combined two of them into a large 3-bedroom apartment for ourselves. Rent from the apartments easily paid off our loan in short time, but it's an unusual building to put on the market -- nothing similar in the area. 

This is going to take some time and answered prayer to accomplish! Meanwhile, I'm still looking at possible towns in Texas to relocate to. An older, smaller community that would be an easy drive to Austin, north Houston, and Richmond. Preferably with an H.E.B. grocery store. And definitely with a REAL lumber yard for Bill (rather than a mass-market box store). He's a wood furniture artist, not a weekend crafter.