Can you find KB ????

So is this Paree ????

The streets of London ??????

A bistro in europe somewhere ?????

Oops. this is in English and the price is not in euros so we must be in the good old U. S of A. Well, NYC ???? Chicago ??? LA ????


NAAAAAAAAAA.......I spent the week-end in the wilds of Kansas City with some very Wild women celebrating the birthday of a very Wildest of the Wild Woman. We shopped, we drank, we ate, we shopped some more. No dessert was safe. No liquoer unsipped. The cosmopolitan was out, the "Girls Best Friend" was in. this is a delightful blend of Chocolate liquoer, Chambord and Champagne. Oh yes, this was a week-end of discoveries for this fly over gal.the rest of the world can keep on flying over. leave this place the heck alone. "E" artisan chocolates were as amazing as anything I have ever munched anywhere else.

After all that it was good to come home. I was missed. That is a good thing. I took off Monday and stayed at home watching spring snow swirl around our flowering trees while I caught up with laundry and unpacked my treasures. I sat making up lists for Passover and Easter. A short patchwork week this week with lots of time to enjoy the memories and the homecoming....and a securely hidden 21 piece box of wonders.

Spring Fever

I feel slightly silly this morning and I have no idea why. Perhaps it's the company I keep ?????? Pink elephants giggling at me for sipping one too many glasses of wine. Aw, come on, those glasses are very small and I only had one......and a sparkly blue pig. Everyone should have breakfast with one. first, it prevents you from eating any bacon...too much guilt......second..you can't really take anything too seriously with a pink elephant and a sparkly blue pig as breakfast partners. Pair that up with that coffee cup and breakfast could take all morning..especially if it is a Friday morning ... a particularly lazy Friday morning.

I start thinking about what kind of new plans I can hatch. It's really the season for that sort of contemplation. Hmm, a new painting, a trip to some never been there before kind of place. I have been traveling paths well worn for a bit too long. My little brain needs some new wrinkles..some fun ones, not scary ones. some blue bird of happiness kinds of paths. I was on a retreat last week-end and walked a lovely labyrinth. Actually I practically danced it while some daffodils sang me about. They can be quite noisy when they want to be and these were charmingly so. Anyway, as I moved in and out of the design I came to realize I needed to spend more time doing things that made me smile. Life is so very short and there really are so many joyful things around to see and do. Simplicity may bring far more health and joy than any 401K plan. Think of all the fun you could have with just these cupcakes on a fine spring day. Maybe I just need to eat and my little head will settle down. This bunny is looking mighty fine right now. Tea and chocolate will cure just about anything that ails you. I have to remember to create a little emergency stash.Of course the problem with that concept is that anything might constitute an emergency and there goes the chocolate !!!!!

I am looking forward to a quiet week-end, happily painting away. I have at least four projects started and really need to get them finished ...so many ideas dancing around my head and my poor self is just so tired and worn down much of the time. Got to remember to play with my friends more, dance with the daffodils and keep that little bluebird in front of me.

Tea and chocolate won't hurt either

Bring it on !!!!!

Ok, break out the bunnies. Clean up the the vases. Let's get some flowers going here. I am ready for Springtime! OK, so it's only 26 degrees out this morning. I DON'T CARE. Pack up all the gray and black and get out the yellows and oranges and reds. I AM READY.

Oh, let's play tag in the daisies. Oh, I know they aren't up yet, but we can pretend. Let's just take off our shoes, let loose our hair and start running around a bit. We'll get some roses in our cheeks. That will be a start. OK, I understand that you are all stiff and slow from all that cold and chill. How about if we just break out our crayons and paints and play awhile. The first part of this week I had a three day migraine. That would be a record. It went away, but then so did my car's temperature guage. Ooops! Ah well, but the sun IS shining. I DO have paint. I was rescued by handsome Lochinvar who may have been more interested in showing off to some other folks, but in the end he did rescue me and lent me his white horse...OK it's a ten year old Mazda, but works and got me here today.

A parade wouldn't be a bad idea. Next week-end I am running away to a retreat with the women from my church. That may sound a bit mundane to mosy of you, but you don't know the women from my church. Their little town appears to be out of a children's tale, all picket fences and pots of flowers, even a train that runs through the center of town and stops and a tiny stone train station, but these ladies are wild ones, wild ones, I tell you. They dance by the light of the moon, the moon. they dance by the light of the moon. Their great great grandmothers must have escaped from old Salem before the toasting started and they set up housekeeping on the shores of these dancing rivers, a place of confluence,a place of meeting. A place where just about anything can happen and it does.

I am making stuffed strawberries to take along with prepared canvases to begin there soul portraits. Tonight am making drunken salmon to celebrate dear Saint Patrick.

Have a Green One.

Acts of God

Wow. I actually had to change the title of this chapter. I had gone into my Picassa to find these photos. They are of a painting I did two years ago. This is huge, about six feet tall on black canvas. The medium is house paint. You may see some words peeking out from the paint. The setting was my church, only it wasn't quite my church yet. God was just setting things up at that point. It was Easter morning and they had set up this huge black screen of canvas and three buckets of paint, tan, violet and white. The worship leader began to read a poem about what Christ meant to me. I wrote words on the canvas with white chalk. The words were really blocking out the face to come, but no one knew that. When the poem was done a beautiful woman began to sing a lovely song about the sacrifice a Christ and I began to actually throw paint at this canvas with my bare hands. I started with the tan paint, then the violet. I did so the face did not really appear until I placed the white paint in the eyes.

People cried. They came up and touch me like I had performed a miracle. Something really did happen, but I could not talk about it. I could not tell them that they had all disappeared. I could not tell them that I had began to feel something else as I stroked the paint onto the canvas with my hands. One friend who was watching said she did see me change my pace and begin to stroke the face. I couldn't tell them I felt something warm reach out through the paint and into my heart and tell me I had finally come home. You would have to know me very well to understand what that meant and why a few weeks later I joined that church. Oh, and I should also mention the painting was done twice at two services and there were several practice pieces. Two were auctioned off as fund raisers for the church and went to a men's seminary and a convent. all were donated by me back to the church.

So here is the post script. Lenten services were held Wednesday night and no, I did not throw paint to make Christ appear for my fellow Christians, but I was sitting with a friends who pointed me to a man who wanted to copy my rendition in stained glass. he wanted a photo of the painting to work from. He understood it would be a challenge and he didn't even understand why he wanted to do it, but he felt moved to do so and wasn't it strange we had wound up sitting together. I told him I would get him the photos. so this morning I went into Picasa and found them , printed them and thought I took them out of the tray and placed this heart in hand into the tray to blog with, but some how they wound up in the blog. Hmmm.

Something tells me my Lord is not done with me and this little project. Well, my heart is in my hand. Ready. I wait.

More minis

I really haven't had any time to get back to this tiny playground, but I'll share what I did get done. I bought these great little paper punches. They are my toys du jour. I buy one a month at a local scrapbook store that is nice enough to send me a 40% off coupon. They are a bit pricey so I use the coupon to acquire a new one and oh the choices ! I have a tiny heart, a butterfly and a largish circle. I lust for a larger heart...perhaps this month..then there are so many other lovely shapes. Even Squares would be fun...little frames of sorts. some delicate scrolls..then there are edgers.

Oh the toys. and all of this when I have cleaned off my credit cards at great cost and sworn never to allow an accumulation of debit again. Actually last year I swore to thrift shop wardrobing except for shoes and lingerie and I had quite a bit of fun with it. I wound up dancing at a gathering in a leopard print silk skirt and designer black lace top with lovely boots that were also thrifted. I actually got quite carried away with it in a good way. so with all the financial grief that abounds, I am once again so swearing..even more so as I have noticed what and where my spending wanders. In truth, I would rather focus on art toys. I am lucky enough that I really don't require a professional wardrobe. I wander into an office, but it is my own and no one can really judge or demand. Hair and make-up demand care. pricey, too. sigh. Part of me would be happy to run off and live in a cabin, let my hair go gray, my skin get tanned and leathery and just paint away. Be a next generation Tasha Tudor. But there is a husband and family and taxes and stuff. Oh, the stuff. I read a blog where the author was divesting herself of one thing a day. 365 things. I liked it. I wanted to do it. I still may. Of course, I will need that stuff within a week of giving it away, but that would just make me more judicious about what I wanted/needed in life. an important lesson, no ? Art supplies...yes. 35 handbags..maybe no. sketchbooks..yes. a never used dvd player....no. Good winter boots...yes. four coats I have not worn in three years...no. hmmm.......appetizers for thoughtfulness.

Some days I feel like this, aswirl in something or other mystical, magical. I walk about grinning and not sure what its all about, but happy its there. The week-end is aswirl, yet I feel very centered. No headache..so sweet. No backache. Oh very sweet. A walk at the lake on a cool and breezy afternoon, a trip to my favorite Trader Joe's for vital fluids: coffee & wine. A Mexican casserole waits to be popped in the oven, then off to a lecture on calligraphy..which will fill my week-end. I have packed papers, mixed up my inks, potions and pens, tomes and quills. The classes are actually held in an attic room of an ancient stone house. I will come home each afternoon into the reality of husband and dog, perhaps a glass of wine and a bit of that casserole before going aswirl again.

Oh yes, I know I posted this one before. She crept in and surprised me, the show off ! See the butterfly in the bottom part, another in her hair. I just happily punch out shapes from magazines and scraps and tuck them into a pretty little box until I decide I need a little something. Oh, and I did her in art crayons. such fun to play the child coloring away with her tin of crayons, gluing bits of paper here and there.

Time to be off to the woods and see what the lake has to say. My husband asked me if I get bored just walking out there in the same place all the time. I tried to tell him it is not the same place all the time, but a different place almost everytime, but he couldn't quite see that. He said it was the same path, the same lake. I disagreed, but then I realized that when he went with me, he really didn't see anything at all and if you don;t see anything at all, then it would be the same everytime, so he would have been correct.

The last time, there were battalions of robins so busy pecking at the ground for worms, they didn't even move when you came near. They might lift their heads and look at you as if to ask what you wanted, but they were very busy and went straight back to it, stuffing their little beaks. It is colder today and I don't expect to see them at all, but I certainly expect to see something.

Seadreams

I always wanted to be some sort of sea creature. A shrimp would do. They are really kind of cute. An oyster would br fine..a little more secure, though I've watched seagulls make short work of them. Most romantic, of course, would be a mermaid. My favorite mermaid tail, er , um tale, is rather contemporary. It actually is about a mermaid and a human female drawn together by the machinations of men...or it would appear that way. The woman's husband nad company "capture" the mermaid and have her on board a ship when all sorts or misadventures begin to happen including the mermaid escaping and eating one of the sailors. Then she loses her fins and becomes human and vulnerable to the revenge of the sailors who want to do what sailors do to women and she is rescued by the human female. About this time a storm breaks lose, the ship founders and the mermaid transforms once more into a sea monster. She is a Circe feeding all her mermaid children chunks of tasty sailors until the only living thing is the woman who will find herself pregnant with a strange child after this adventure, but that will be another story.

a little macabre to like such a bloody story, but I liked the vengeful fish woman who had mercy on her human sister. I liked her beauty and her strength. Temptress who would eat her lovers for dessert. Yum-yum.

So she came out into my little book. An odalisque under a full moon which just may fortell a transformation. What kind, you ask???? Oh you may not want to know. You may want to turn the page a search a gentler image than this waterlady. No seagull is going to bother her. No sailor will. No one.

Wandering

Where have I been ???? Good question. Happily burried in paint up to my elbows. Hiding beneath the poppies so no one would find me while I dreamed my ultramarine and quinacridone dreams. I bought this tiny moleskine which would not , under any circumstance accept any watercolor. I understood. sometimes you just don't want all that water sloshing about..and I did have all this acrylic stuff sitting about...and I did have these dreams floating around that really wanted to make a landing somewhere soon. so I began. A little collage, a little stamping. some mettalic pens, a few new pencils, a wash of color, a glaze over that, a bit of stencil. this is just too much fun. The book is only 3X5 and I am working over a spread.

I tried some self portraits. Just peaking around the edge to begin with. Myself as a mermaid whistling bubbles. I used a heart shaped cutter along the edge that actually works with both images. Trying to stay loose..adventurous..not photographic...trying to maintain a bit a dreamlike quality. I finished five images in January..which got me going and brave enough to start some larger pieces. I would dearly love to do a series of larger pieces...of myself and the women of Scared Space.I began to photograph them. They are lusciously willing victims and I love them so for that.

I think this one looks most like me. I tried not to hide the softened jawline and drooping eyes. I gave myself grayer hair and smoothed my neck a bit only because it looked as if I had on a turtle neck sweater, which I never wear,though I do wear butterflies. I had fun with this. I want to do even more. it is very challenging to look into a mirror and draw oneself. I had to use a reflection from a window at night. Haunting thrift stores for a studio mirror is now on my agenda though it seems my time has not allowed that recently with my husband's travels, though his travels are what has allowed me more studio time as I must remain close to home to care for our dog, an aged fellow in need of more intense care.

January saw me clearing and oraganizing my studio. I excavated my easel and set in a corner, the better to do the larger acrylic pieces. I finished a set of adorable cupcake paintings for my kitchen and made that space more my own. I let go of trying to create art for to please buyers, husbands and friends and founf a tiny book set me a new path I am enjoying for the journey itself.

Business is slow and needs much attention. the harder I go the behinder I get, but the art flows. How funny is that. There may be a point of critical mass, but today is not that day. A steep car repair bill frightens me, but also guarantees another year of freedom from car payments. A gift of travel beckons and I believe I will follow. New opportunities seem to present themselves in ways I would not have imagined a year ago and I accept with a smile. Yes. I say yes.