It is raining here. Absolutely pouring. The wind is still blowing and the big brass bell in my alder tree out front is still dinging. I love it. This is a Northwest spring afternoon and it is fabulous! I can nestle into my studio and get a bunch of things made and done for the shops. I feel like cooking so after a quick run to the grocery, I am baking potatoes and chicken. Phil is going to love this chicken, made one of his favorite ways with a ranch dressing on them. Tangy and moist.

I used to always use Tuesdays to make my own work. To experiment and make things and artwork that did not have a necessarily retail selling price. I have let those days slip away and Tuesdays have become another work day. That ends with this Tuesday, the 21st. From now on Tuesday is going to be MY day and I will just get to play. I will make no appointments, no schedules, no set projects. Just my mind exercising its creativity and stretching wings into unexplored territory.

The nice thing about the rain at this moment? I finished knitting a baby afghan. I have worked at it for the last couple of years always putting it down to take up a new project because I did not know anyone having a baby. Today, drum roll, I finished it! My first all cotton knitting!

I also have a drawing I am working on and although it is a long way from being finished; I am really loving these new pencils! Lots of color and a soft, creamy feel. I can't remember what they are called but I love them .

This is my pencil table. A sunny yellow, vintage formica table. Nice and small with drop leaf sides for my studio. Perfect size. Perfect funk. I like my pencils being so close to where I like to work. So many ideas in my head now. I think summer will bring more drawing time. Maybe even time to play.

Many people come and go in your life. Each leaving a bit of themselves with you, imparting lessons and shared experiences to accompany you on your life's journey. Every time I sit down to draw, I think of this and the many people who have passed my way. Sometimes I can feel them over my shoulder watching me work. I am never alone even though I work alone. It is the people in my life and the people that have come and gone, that enrich each and every drawing. 

It is eleven twenty five on this Tuesday night. The house is almost quiet and Clementine sleeps at my feet, ready to go to bed as soon as I say it is bedtime. I am waiting up late to give Jacob his penicillin at midnight hearing him groan in his room as he turned in his sleep. I am surfing the internet on a tidal wave of useful and useless information. I am dreaming of a tiny house in the middle of no where and building a different life but then maybe not as another website draws me into a different world. Another place.

Suddenly, without any warning or sound, the Easter lily on the dining room table just over my left shoulder pops into open flowers and sends out the most heavenly scent reminding me of spring, and Easter, rebirth and home when my dad every year came home with an Easter lily for my mom from the grocery.

So pretty. So scent-ful sending me off to a time before I was this adult I am now. Sending me to bed to dream of remembering.

Missing you

If you knew that one of the last times you saw someone would be the last time; would you act differently? I ask that of myself nearly every day, missing my brother Bob more and more.

With the seemingly endless rays of the sun keeping me at once awake and energized, I have been spending nearly all my free time in the studio. I take sun breaks, sitting on the corner of my studio deck and turning my face towards the sky, but I am in the mood to get the studio revved up for spring and summer shop work. I have lots of jewelry to make and paintings to paint.

My energy level falls with the sun. As night comes around, I feel myself slowing down and longing to just sit and knit the dark evening hours away. I live in a part of the country that is known for moss and rain and wet, cold temperatures but we have missed a lot of that this winter. Now, when the sun shines, I almost feel as if the sun again? Ha!

I love spring and fall and lust for true winter but these early warm days when so much of the country side is in colorful bloom, makes me happy. Awakened even to the possibilities future creative projects bring me!

  I see drawing, painting, beading, knitting, collage, embroidery, and more in my future. I am loving all the color and texture and air music, this time of the year brings. Watch me go!

Today, as I put make up on my face in preparation for my cardiology appointment, I looked at my hands. Really looked at my hands. The first thing I saw was how much they look like my mother's hands. The shape of the fingers. The way the nails are colored. Then I looked again and realized how much my hands have done for me and given to others and forged my career, my life's work. I saw them caressing a lover, a husband. I saw them cradle and soothe my sons. I saw them lovingly plant a garden and move through household chores. They pet cats and dogs and any animal that would hold still long enough to be petted. They drew and painted and knitted and beaded and used saws and tools to make wooden furniture. They continued to use smaller saws to make jewelry. They tried to make my face beautiful and my legs smooth. Such busy hands that keep moving through my day, through my life, through my work. I love them as much as I need them. The blessing in this story is looking at something we see and use all the time through the eyes of wisdom, age and timelessness as my hands will carry on through the next generation.

After Tucson

Honestly I thought that I would be able to get so much drawing and knitting done in Tucson while working the show that I packed a bunch of art supplies and three ( what was I thinking? ) knitting projects. The weather was extra warm, the show kind of on the quiet side, the friends amazing as always and the work day, just plain wore me out! I managed two drawings and nearly finishing one knitting project which now waits to be rinsed and blocked.

I love my annual Tucson trips not just for the bead shopping and friend filled dinners but because of the light in the sky and the green growing things so different than here. I like the textures of the palm trees' trunks and the way their leaves ( fronds? ) make a linear pattern against the bluest of skys. I like the way the clouds form, high and white against the pink/ purple/ mauve of the Catalina Mountains. I like the artistic touches that line the freeways and overpasses. I like adobe walls and the seclusion of homes behind walls, especially walls with lots of textures. I like the long, skinny spiky brown branches that are made into fences and deck roofs. I like the smoothness of flowers on a blooming cactus against the thorns of the big green arms of fine, ancient cactus plants.

My fingers don't hurt there. I give my hands a rest from jewelry making but I think it is the warmth and dryness in the air that makes me pain free. I enjoyed for the first time this year, chocolate nachos as a dessert. An angel treated four of us to our dinners without leaving a name. Only a card with " please pay it forward " on the reverse. We will. I loved my time there and look forward to next year when we are hopefully deep in a winter that needs escaping, a winter that missed us this year.

I like the piles of gemstones and beads at the shows. I hunt and search for only the finest treasures to bring back to the shop. This year I literally reached deep into piles of cheap, imported junk to find stones worthy of bringing home. My trunk show will be worth the wait for my customers and filled with intriguing beads and stones.

I am just not one to remember at the times I am involved or having fun to take pictures. My camera may be at hand but my thought processes are definitely somewhere else! 

For now it is getting late and I am sleepy waiting for my teenager to come home so I will end this posting for this wee early morning hour. Until next time. 

It is my last night in Tucson and soon I will be heading off to dreamland. It is the end, maybe temporarily of an era for me. I have been selling in Tucson for 21 years now and I want and need a break! I am planning on taking a year or two off from doing the show down here. I'll still be shopping, playing, touristing and visiting with friends. Can not possibly give that up! I have been craving a break like this. Actually starving for a break like this and with the economy as it is and time becoming more precious and living in the creative wasteland; everything seemed to come together to make that time now. I want to spend more time crafting one of a kind pieces, work more in my shop and be home with Phil, Jake  ( even though he mostly ignores me ) and Clementine. I want to finally plant flowers in the dang pots on the porch!

I have had the best show customers and enjoy each and everyone who stops by my booth. I will be on line. I will be drifting in my own little artist world, where they know me quite well there! XO