10 Years Ago 1997

Some people have bills and newspapers piled on their kitchen tables, but Toni Spencers table is swathed in silk. Yards and yards of it, gorgeous purples and soft yellows and midnight blues, dyed with images of angles and flowers and, yes, golf courses. While preparing for her upcoming art show, Northwest Sports, this 49-year-old batik artist created marvelously lush and whimsical images of various sports. One rectangle of silk, ready for matting and framing, depicts a heavenly creature holding a tennis racket. Another shows a man holding his follow-through on a golf course, which spreads out before him in ripples of emerald. Spencer learned the art of batik while living in Kodiak, Alaska, with her husband Darrell. Now that Darrell is retired from the Coast Guard, the couple has made Marysville their home base, where Spencer creates batiks for year-round art shows. A prolific artist, Spencers art fills two bedrooms, the kitchen, the hallway and overflows into the living room. You ask if its hard to sell the original, she said. It would be, but I just seem to keep making more and more. Spencer makes batik by penciling an image on a piece of silk. She then melts wax in an electric frying pan and applies it strategically to the fabric. She dips the fabric in different colors, starting with the lightest to the darkest. The textures seen in a finished batik art are caused by cracking wax. After the final color is applied, the wax is removed by either ironing or dry cleaning. It took Spencer about a week to make the With a little help piece, though she works on about 20 pieces simultaneously. She also makes matted laser prints of her originals, as well as ornaments, pins and switchplates, to make the art affordable for everyone. Sometimes, people commission Spencer to create art. Her most recent commission depicts a little boy-angel sitting on a crescent moon with a shower of stars nearby. The art was requested by a couple who had recently taken care of a terminally ill boy. I guess they wanted to remember him as an angel, Spencer said. The art show will be held at Freighthouse Art Gallery in Tacoma, Feb. 8 through March. The Freighthouse building has nearly 100 shops with specialty gifts and international food, in a safe part of Tacoma.

25 Years Ago 1982

When was the last time you went shopping and found a blouse or shirt that would go great with a pair of pants you had at home? And when you got home, you found that it didnt match at all. Never again will you have to worry about this and other color mistakes if you are among the 20 to register for the color key class offered through Lakewood Community Schools. The color key class will be presented for one night, Feb. 23, at 7 p.m., in the Lakewood Junior/Senior High home economics classroom. The color key system is based on Robert Dorrs theory of pigment relationship and is the only scientifically proven method of color analysis since the turn of the century. It eliminates the color wheels and triangles and all other complicated approaches. With the use of the color key aids, you also eliminate guesswork for professional and personal color selections. In other words, you will never again make a color mistake. The color key system applies to human pigmentation with 100 percent accuracy with all races and can be used in all walks of life. Areas such as cosmetics, hair coloring, fashion for men and women, interior decorating and more. This system is based on the fact that everything we see is a color made all or in part from the five basic colors. These color are the same basic colors of skin pigmentation. The color key system can, therefore, give an individual their most flattering colors as well as the ones to avoid.

50 Years Ago 1957

We suspect that the ground hog saw his shadow on Saturday, Feb. 2. That is if he had not been driven back into his burrow by cold weather and snow flurries, for the sun made a fleeting appearance during the morning. The prediction therefore is six weeks more of winter weather. The continued winter weather has caused considerable comment during the past week, some contending that the weather is changing, winters getting colder, etc. And so, we go back into the files of The Arlington Times for some weather reports. In the memory of those living here at the time, 1916 still holds the record for snowfall. According to The Times of Feb. 3, 1916, the new depth here on Wednesday, Feb. 2, 1916 was 43 inches, surpassing the big snow of 1893 by over a foot, recorded the news item. The heavy weight of snow at that time caused the collapse of many roofs on barns and other buildings, and isolated the town as all roads and the railroad were blocked for several days. The publication of the story in The Times in 1916, however, caused a real old timer, Mat McCaulley, to report that in the winter of 1879 the biggest snow of all time fell, when 52 inches was recorded. In more recent years it is recorded that in 1951 over a period of eight days, March 3 10 inclusive, 30 inches of snow fell, and in 1954, eight inches of snow fell on Jan. 26. So, there it is, some years we get by without snow, sometimes very little, and then again it may be four feet deep. Last Saturday, with the temperature at 20 degrees in the early morning a light snow began falling. The temperature rose to 33 and by Saturday night snow was falling heavily and by Sunday morning about eight inches of snow covered the ground. However, the temperature rose and a light rain began with melting temperature.

An intersection on Highway 99 was the clue that helped 49 contest entrants correctly identify the Singleton Farm, pictured in last weeks Mystery Farm contest. The farm buildings are located a short distance south of the Pilchuck bridge on Highway 99, with the acreage bordered on the south by the Stillaguamish river. Mrs. Edith Roal, of R. 5 Arlington, was the winner of Mondays drawing at B. & H. Equipment Co., which included all the correct entries, to determine who would receive this weeks prize. Last weeks star sponsor, B. & H. Equipment Co., is awarding a $40 trade credit toward purchase of a new Roto-tiller, or McCulloch chain saw, or, if she prefers, a smaller merchandise prize, Manager Arnold Jarvis said. In 1885 Halvor Thorsen, then in his early thirties, forsook the mines and woods of the area, and claimed 80 acres of forest, bordering the Stillaguamish, for his homestead. Later he added another 100 acres. The land was logged with oxen, and clearing was a one-man hand job. Thorsen split the finest straight-grain cedar logs and built a comfortable home where he and his young wife reared six children. They are Carl Sorenen, R. 4 Arlington; Peter, of San Diego, Calif.; Mattie (Mrs. Curt Miller) of Arlington; Agnes Smith, of San Diego; Homer Thorsen, Arlington, and Emma, deceased. Mrs. Thorsen now lives in San Diego, Calif. In the absence of roads or bridges, the Thorsens crossed the Stillaguamish via logjams, or by boat sometimes ferrying a cow across on the end of a towrope. Such were the hazards of a trip to Silvana in those days. Under the more modern siding of the house as it now appears, the original cedar walls still stand, as was discovered by the John Singleton family, who acquired the farm in 1919, and lived there until 1941. In later years, the Singletons removed a section of the cedar wall to add a fireplace. They found the 4×12-inch planks to be painstakingly grooved and shaped to fit together. Both the Thorsens and Singletons lost or gained acreage each year at the whim of the river. Mrs. Singleton recalled the loss of an acre the first year, and the return of 12 acres the second year. Over the years, however, the Stillaguamish seems to have left the net acreage about as it was 70 years ago, with some 27 acres of bottomland, where Mr. Singleton ran 56 head of stock, with 34 milking. The farm has changed hands twice since 1941, and the house now stands vacant. The Times, unable to contact the present owner, has awarded the free aerial photo to Mrs. Curt (Thorsen) Miller, with permission of B. & H. Equipment Co. This weeks photo has no easy clues, and The Times expects considerably fewer correct identifications.