New beginnings

This will eventually become No.73 in the Beachcombing series: Hulls Cove, March 6, 2014.

This is how the Beachcombing pieces start - sorting the debris from a day of beachcombing, looking for patterns, colors, likenesses. This one seems to be leaning toward warm greys and off-whites. 

And for another new beginning, I'm going to be moving this blog from the Blogger host over to Wordpress this month, and I'm not sure how that will affect the feed. Cross your fingers that it goes smoothly. I'm digitally literate but not fluent!

Beachcombing Research

I don't know how many of you have discovered Pinterest, but I find it very useful for storing research projects - places I will be visiting, rooms I am decorating, and even identifying things I find while beachcombing.

The link above is to the Beachcombing board, where I've stashed all kinds of fascinating sites dealing with stuff found on beaches: everything from clams of the Pacific Northwest to drift seed identification to explanations of sand formations. There's even a Feather Atlas! Fabulous stuff, so I figured I'd share it with you. If you've got some favorite sites, let me know in the comments - I'm sick in bed this week and could use some virtual exploration...

Moose Island, October 12, 2013 (Beachcombing series No.72)

Sea glass, Dog Whelk (Thais lapillus), Smooth Periwinkles (Littorina obtusata), Blue Mussel (Mytilus edulis), feather, Rock Crab (Cancer irroratus), and fishing rope. I wrote about this field trip back in October, but only recently finished the still-life.

This winter my husband and I built a new lighting support for the light box, and this was the first photo I shot on my new rig. It's much less cluttered than the six mic stands I used to borrow from him, and simpler than re-setting them every time he has a performance. 

It's pretty simple - the base and the four uprights are screwed together, and the top square is clamped on so I can move it up and down as needed. The design flaws are already becoming apparent. The front piece is annoyingly in the way when I move from arranging pieces to looking at them from above: I bonk my head every time. Must figure out how to remove that but keep the frame stable.  I still want to prop the foam core boards around the outside and lay one over the top, but that has also gotten more complicated. I'll need to trim some to fit within the frame, and tape others together so they are tall enough to rest on the floor. It's a work-in-progress, that's for sure!

Beachcombing series No.71 (Hulls Cove, August 14, 2013)

Beach stones, Blue Mussels (Mytilus edulis), driftwood, U.S. penny, acorn cap (Quercus sp.), sea glass, barnacles (Semibalanus balanoides), Waved Whelk (Buccinum undatum), stoneware fragment, Moon snail (Lunatia heros), paper scrap, beach china, aluminum soda can fragment. The red paint on the rock is left from last summer, when the schooner Margaret Todd was hauled up on the beach to repaint her hull.

A wonderful and surreal thing about blogging is that you can become friendly with people who you have never met, and they can live anywhere in the world. You feel like you know a part of them through their posts, and another bit through commenting on each other's work. Anke and Ariadne and Diana, if I ever end up in Germany or Greece or Montana, for sure we will meet up over coffee or cocktails (depending on the time of day) and talk! 

Every now and then, all the planets line up and you get to meet someone you've only known through blog posts and emails.

Back in August, Justine Hand (of the so-beautiful Designskool blog) was vacationing in my part of the world and we finally got to meet face-to-face. And because we are quirky this way, instead of meeting for lunch we went beachcombing with her family. (My teenagers won't come along anymore.) Check out the hoodie her son wore:

 Even better accessorized with seaweed and attitude:

Justine's daughter is the best beachcomber I've ever met. Maybe it helps that she's so much closer to the ground, but she has an eagle eye for sea glass. That gorgeous blue piece in the center of the top photo? I didn't find it, Solvi gave it to me!

If you'd like to see more photos from the day, Justine posted some lovely ones on her own blog.

Hulls Cove, August 6, 2013 (Beachcombing series No.70b)

Remember back here I said I had too many finds for one photo, so I was working on a second? Finally finished it!

Blue Mussel (Mytilus edulis), fishing rope, beach stone (might be rhyolite), Green Crabs (Carcinus maenas), china fragment, lobster-claw bands, Common Periwinkles (Littorina littorea).

Hulls Cove, August 6, 2013 (Beachcombing series No.70a)

It was another perfect summer day, and I spent several hours on the beach. There were so many interesting things that I've had to make two photos for this day. This one shows three European Green Crabs (Carcinus maenas) and a random crab claw with a length of the nylon rope used to tie lobster buoys to the traps. I couldn't resist the juxtaposition of the orange-and-turquoise rope with the crab shells, and the rope was just too stiff to incorporate into a more elaborate composition, so this is No.70a. I'm still working on 70b.

It was an interesting day for wildlife, too: I saw a baby guillemot, a small flock of Semipalmated Plovers, and a Sanderling: I posted photos of them last week, but the guillemot was so cute I'll have to show you another one. Something about those little feet paddling away:

I went all the way out to the point - that's the village of Hulls Cove back there.

Beachcombing series No.69 (Old Orchard Beach, Maine; April 27 and 29, 2013)

Old Orchard Beach, Maine; April 27 and 29, 2013

Old Orchard Beach is a classic Southern Maine tourist destination, with a long sand beach, a restaurant-lined pier, and an amusement park. I'd been there once in the summer when my kids were little, and just about lost my mind with all the crowds and the heat (and the over-excited toddlers.) In April, I love it. This time was gorgeous, sunny but not hot, and lots of people (but not crowds) were out enjoying the sudden end of a long winter. The beachcombing finds are a little different from what I see here in the north, most notably the skate egg case in the middle. I've never found one of those on Mount Desert Island. If you're not familiar with them, skates look a bit like rays (you've probably seen photos of manta rays), and we have seven species here in the North Atlantic. I can't tell which one this is.

Also in this photo are razor clam shells (Ensis directus), driftwood, sea glass, coralline (Corallina officinalis), a moon snail shell (Lunatia heros), a sanddollar (Echinarachnius parma), a blue mussel shell (Mytilus edulis), a lobster-claw band, a feather, an acorn, and an Atlantic Oyster shell (Crassostrea virginica). The snails and the oyster are shells I don't see often on my home turf. And the driftwood was fantastic. I have to say that Old Orchard Beach in late April was a treasure trove of small, beautifully rounded driftwood bits. There was even one piece, just above the egg case, that formed a perfect ring (but is just a little too small for my fingers.)

All together a very happy day of hunting!

Sand Patterns, Ogunquit, Maine

 The beaches at Ogunquit had an amazing variety of patterns left by wind and wave action. I couldn't stop taking photos of them:

Maybe because my home shoreline is so rocky, sand fascinates me. There's a marvelous blog called Through the Sandglass whose author, Michael Welland, offers up fascinating tidbits about the physics of sand movement, creatures that dwell in sand (like the sand skink, which swims right through it!), and other sand-oriented info.

Yes, that stretch of beach was really and truly pink. I believe the color comes from nearby formations of pink granite. Doesn't it look like strawberry frosting?

June 2, 2013

P.S. Just found out the pink in pink granite (and therefore in this sand) comes from a mineral called  feldspar.

Ogunquit, Maine

My sister and I ran away to Ogunquit a couple of weeks ago, and I got to play tourist in my own state. It was awesome! The company was great (yay, sis!), the weather was idyllic, and the town was adorable. Every morning I woke around seven and went straight out for a long walk along the beach.

 On my way back to meet up with my sister (whose circadian clock runs about two and a half hours later than mine) I stopped at the Bread and Roses Bakery for a chai latte. Wow, those were good - not too sweet, with lots of cardamom. And such nice people, too.

 

They do have rocks in Ogunquit:

but the star of the town is their incredibly long, sandy beach.

I had lots of company on my walks:

 eiders ducks in the waves,

 periwinkles in the tidepools,

seagulls keeping an eye on me in case I had something edible,

a curious mockingbird inspecting my camera,

 and my sister!

Ogunquit has the tiniest, cutest, most-likely-to-end-up-at-Disneyland harbor I've ever seen. Even the signage was quaint. It's hard to believe that the expensive hotels and summer homes can coexist with working lobster boats (which have really loud engines and start work at the crack of dawn.) I guess they've made it work somehow, and good for them!

A few more picturesque buildings:

I'll close with my two favorite photos from the weekend:

 A Blue Mussel shell in my favorite purply-blue,

and an extremely self-expressed gathering of gulls.

Beachcombing series No.68: The Shore Path, November 3, 2012

The Shore Path, Bar Harbor, Maine; November 3, 2012 (Beachcombing series No.68)

Well now, here's the very last Beachcombing still life from 2012, number 68. After number 67 sat on my light table for six months I felt guilty, somehow, as if I'd been procrastinating on a process that should have been much more efficient. But when I finally got the test prints back, I really really liked the photo. It seemed brighter and more balanced and somehow more satisfying than many I did last year. And I like this one a lot. So maybe my object-arranging-mojo needed a break. I spent a lot of the winter inland, too. You'll have noticed there are photos of snowstorms and beavers and fox cubs and frog eggs, but there haven't been any beaches yet this year. It certainly wasn't a conscious decision, just that when I've wandered, my feet have been going into the swamps and the woods this spring rather than down to the shore. But a couple of weeks ago I took a mini-vacation with my sister and we spent two days walking along the coast in Ogunquit, Maine. It's taken me a long time to edit all the photos, but very soon you'll get a nice, long post full of views of southern Maine beaches. It was so exotic - they have sand over there!


Common Periwinkle (Littorina littorea), driftwood, schist and granite beach stones, lobster-claw band, Dog Whelk (Thais lapillus), White Pine cone (Pinus strobus), Rockweed (I think it's Fucus distichus) covered with Coiled Tube Worms (Spirorbis spirillum), rope, Blue Mussel (Mytilus edulis), Red Pine cone (Pinus resinosa), Coralline (Corallina officinalis), sea brick.

Hulls Cove, October 26, 2012 (Beachcombing series No.67)

Hulls Cove, Maine; October 26, 2012 (Beachcombing series No.67)

The first new Beachcombing series in six months! I don't know why it took so long to pull together, but I've been moving these pieces around on my light table since early November.

It was a gorgeous October day, warm and sunny with deep blue skies and a cold wind. Most of the debris that caught my eye was typical of what I usually find: clam, crab, whelk and slipper shells, driftwood, fishing rope and shotgun shells, all of them anonymous. I do know where the white mesh disk and the half-burned piece of wood came from, though, and it's an odd feeling to find something on the beach and know its history.

The plastic disk is one of 4 million that were accidentally released from a New Hampshire sewage treatment plant during a storm overflow in 2011. They washed up on beaches along the Massachusetts and New Hampshire coasts for months. In spite of official attempts to recover them, at least 400,000 are still at large. Now they have entered the currents that circle the Gulf of Maine. Harry Johnson has an excellent report on tracking their migrations in his column for the Portland Press Herald. And just look at it - two full years in the ocean, and it's practically like new, only a little dirty. Forget diamonds - plastic is forever.

The piece of burned wood was probably washed down onto the beach after a fire earlier in the month at the R.L.White carpentry shop just across the road. Fortunately no one was injured in the blaze, but R.L.White's has been around since 1903, and they lost all their historic tools, moldings, and a large quantity of old-growth lumber that they had stocked back in the '30s, all of those irreplaceable today. Weeks after the fire the beach was still littered with charred wood and tremendous quantities of wood shavings.

The seagulls distracted me from my gloomy meditations. Three of them, third-year juveniles, were splashing in the shallow water. (Mature herring gulls have a pure white head. First-years are brown, like the one in the background above. These with the grey wings and the mottled head are in their third year.) They would energetically shake their wings in the water, dunk their heads way under, and then stand, spread their wings and shake all the water off.

If they were bathing, it was a very aggressive bath. There was a first-year juvenile watching, and sometimes the older birds seemed to be threatening it and sometimes trying to impress it.

Eventually the younger bird seemed to get fed up, and chased one of the others. I watched for a long time, but I never did figure out what they were doing. Any bird-watchers out there who understand seagulls?

In the still life: Green Crabs (Carcinus maenas), plastic sewage treatment disk, acorns (Quercus sp.), driftwood, lobster-claw bands, Waved Whelk (Buccinum undatum), fishing rope, feathers, White Pine cone (Pinus strobus), Soft-shell Clam (Mya arenaria), Dog Whelk (Thais lapillus), plastic shotgun shell, Coralline (not sure of species), peach pit (Prunus persica), sea brick, Common Slipper Shell (Crepidula fornicata).