Clear Vision, Living with Grace, I'm back!

Who's Grace, you may ask...as Tim did. By Grace, I mean to try to keep my head and proceed moment by moment with a minimum of railing against the inevitable changes that come with my accumulating time on the planet. To be grateful for what I have, instead of craving what I have not or have lost...and my recent cataract surgery has made me most grateful for colors and clarity.

It has been a while since I've posted, lying low, healing, trying to be Grateful for What I have. Bertha Cooper, at right, interviewed me about losing my vision, and now i have something of a reprieve. Colors and clarity are improving daily, although I need to go back and have my eyeball pressure checked again in two days, and my
pupils are still somewhat dilated from 5 hours ago--
I don't re-adjust as rapidly as I used to...in lots of ways.





Since I'm back to having a day off in the middle of the week again, today in fact, I'm hearing from my Hot Flash Women class and noticing for my own life that having too many good things to do, and feeling like a spinning top as I turn from one to the other, never staying in one place long enough to accomplish anything and just generally driving myself crazy.

Diana Somerville, science writer and environmental activist. She's fighting a proposed co-generation plant that would burn logging slash and pollute our pristine air. I'm reading AGENDA FOR A NEW ECONOMY, by David C Korten, tracing our devolution to a culture run by corporations for corporations, but as Allen, at Port Book and News says, the large populations of emerging economies like China and India are not willingly going to give up raping and pillaging the environment the way we did to get all the "goodies" of "advanced civilization."

I have been concentrating on painting my
100 Hot Flash Women portraits, but that has been on hold while I get used to my new vision...this morning I did everything I could to avoid returning to the painting I started before surgery...what's that about? I also have a bunch of ideas for soft sculptures or mixed media sculptures, since I'm really really happy and calm when I do some stitching every day.

I started a fabric book that I was going to teach back when I thought I might do a week-long class in France. I've since decided that the economy and my shaky job situation dictate that I don't think about traveling any more...I have been to Paris and down the Nile, so what else do I really need to see, except vicariously. The fabric book is called FRANCE/ROMANCE, and I see that maybe I'm bidding good bye to both of those. (an old flame
was going to come and visit at the end of March,
but canceled a week and a half before. Part of me
was disappointed and a part relieved.) A simpler life is...a simpler life.

I don't want to think that I am limiting myself more than I need to. It has been fun to pick the fabric book back up again, and it gives me a small project to stitch on while I watch movies, AND I can enter it in the Fiber Arts Festival in Sequim in October...I try to consolidate projects to fit multiple needs. There are also two classes not too far away, one with Anne Grgich http://www.annegrgich.com/ and one with Jonathan Talbot...both on collage and layers... I don't know about you, but sometimes I go through periods of not wanting to do anything for myself that involves either time or money...maybe the way we women were raised, the stupid martyr complex just makes me angry in the end.

I was looking through my stash last night, and now there's fabric all over the floor of my sewing room, but I'm thinking of another run of Venus of Willendorf-like figures, somewhat different from the ones I did last year, but I'm liking series of 100. I also did 100 small drawings last year, with limited parameters, (size, colors, materials) and for me a series gets me past the point of too much preciousness and worry about making just the perfect one.

I am Amazed and Delighted at the clarity of my view of the world outside--must bring that clarity to my view of my own life and activities.

OK, I'm still avoiding painting, so I'll sign off.

Creative Frenzy

OH MY GODDESS! I've started a second blog--as if I didn't already have way too much to do. Barb Kobe and I have teamed up on the Hot Flash Women site at blogspot.com so please follow us there as well. The Celebration of Women is just too big for one blog to contain! The dancing friends to the left are from my new online experience, Hot Flash Women. Sign up NOW!

I am rapidly reaching a major milestone in my life, the age of 65, when I carry a Medicare card in my wallet, but still have to keep my day job in order to be able to afford to stay in my lovely home on the hill. Luckily, OT's (Occuational Therapists) remain in short supply on the Peninsula, so it looks as if I can continue gainful employment, and even get back to working only four days a week, with Wednesdays off, starting next month, to keep my Art Self alive and nurtured.

ART is taking a larger and larger chunk of what I
laughingly referred to as "Free Time," but I'm not complaining at all. I want to do as much looking and
drawing and painting as I can, as long as I can see
to do it...like most people of my age, parts of my
body's engine are starting to wear out, and unfortunately for me, it's my eyes. Little chunks of retina are being
obscured by drusen--deposits of something that doesn't
belong there. No huge crisis at the moment, except for
my own acceptance of my mortality.

Anyway, good excuse for a 5-year project, to take me
until retirement. You know I've been fascinated by doing
portraits for several years now, and the 100 HOT FLASH WOMEN Project, photographing and painting at least
100 women of all ages that I admire for their spirit and style will give me a good reason to keep turning out the
paintings...and drawings.


Dianne Drake (above) runs the Sunshine Cafe in Sequim with her husband. They will be showing my work for the months of March and April...and I'll be ending a show of my paintings at Red Rooster in Sequim for February...Port Angeles better get moving, as Sequim is becoming the neighborhood of Artistic Activity. Stop and see me at Sunshine during First Friday Art Walk, March 2nd, 5-8. I'll take your picture.

Last weekend I was one of the attractions at Olympic Cellars, drawing 10-min portraits for $10 each during the Red Wine and Chocolate Festival. When I wasn't drawing for money, I was practicing with water soluble crayon drawing from photos I took for my painting project.

Next is Barbara Houshmand, an Amazing quilt and mixed media artist living between Port Angeles and Sequim...I hope to get to see you and your new work soon, Barbara.

Another sign of aging, I have a new Grand Niece, Avery Marie Lind, born one month ago, and she will be my youngest Hot Flash Woman portrait.

Renne Emiko Brock-Richmond, the culture maven of Sequim, is of course flashy all the time, and even had
a whole head of curls at February's Art Walk...and that RED eye shadow...Ou La La!

One minor distraction: spring is coming and croci are in bloom, in spite of the brief blowing snow today...the outdoors calls when the weeds start to pop, and more stones need arranging...I'll just have to draw faster!

The Virtues of a Snowy Weekend

I see on Facebook that my cousin, Holly, is complaining about living in VT, where white can be the predominant color from November through April, and of course we all want what we don't have. Their temps are in the single numbers...and I can remember a January living in the old schoolhouse in East Ryegate, VT, where it never got above zero for the whole month and the sink trap (inside) froze. I slept by the wood stove to keep throwing in some of the 12 cords we spent the summer cutting and stacking. Sometimes I do miss at least the idea of cross country skiing on sunny crisp snow...no better way to enjoy the short days of winter!

Here in the NW, snow is an unusual occurrence. White flakes on green grass in January an occasion to photograph...and an opportunity to stay inside and work on projects. The snow started Saturday with huge lazy flakes.

Here it is Sunday night, and the snow continues, along with sunny breaks, and the most
amazing cloud formations...I should have taken more pictures. It's supposed to continue through Wednesday, but I won't be home to photo in daylight. Since we only have 4 plows in Clallam County, All Activities may grind to a halt...although I'll still have to be at work and hoping that my new automatic transmission Honda Fit makes it up the long hill to home.










Now that I have a renewed focus for my portrait painting: to prepare for a large show of portraits of the women who inspire me. Melissa Klein worked mighty hard to fill Studio Bob with all her own art, having taken an online class in self-promotion. I need to talk with her more about how to do the same for myself, but in the mean time I keep making paintings. I started Sandy Long today.



Barb Kobe has me working hard to write a HOT FLASH class/online group experience, and being snowed in gave me the push I needed to finish Session One. This project is an Intention-Setting doll.


My word for 2012 is BOUNDARIES...focus my energy onto what I Really want to do. As I write the classes and design projects, I see how much FUN we're going to have!

Express the wisdom and emotion of this very universal process through doll making! Celebrate your femaleness and maturity—or your ability to continue to have fun playing with materials at your advanced age.

Barb Kobe has also taken my Fabric Journal and Altered book online classes and transformed them into down-loadable self study guides, along with tons of pictures and projects, and in these snowy winter days--and the steamy days Down Under, I know you're going to Love going into your studios and play along with me.

See more and more, buy books and patterns at: http://www.pamelahastings.com/

To explore all the Possibilities, go to Barb's Site

My Love/Hate Relationship with Art/Life/Time

Seattle for Christmas...I think this is the 6th one. Family is so precious, and Mom had so much fun out here last summer, she came to join us for Christmas, with performances by David and Hugh, and a wide variety of other festivities.










Through the magic of modern communication (SKIPE) Serene and Thayer were able to see and practice Arabic on their cousins in Isreal AND we got a real time tour of Shannon and Chris' house in South Carolina, well-decorated with Hastings' Art. I'm making a quilt for Steve's first grandchild in February.


Although Serene has declared a major in Industrial Engineering at Northwestern, her culinary skills are blooming. Her cake with the fondant ribbons looked even better than the model in Bon Appetitte



Hugh and Connie looking picture perfect on Christmas Day....and then in the painting I finished of them today.







A new year, and a three-day weekend are occasion for both joy and stress, since I want to believe that my life is more than only job/eat/sleep. Is my difficulty getting into the studio and facing the blank canvas/page/whatever because I don't enjoy the process? NO, it's because I don't feel the time freedom to founder or fail, to spend the time contemplating and exploring making Art demands.

Now that my time and energy are so short, the whole meaning of my life seems to hinge on finishing yet another painting...looking at all the potential side trips: revisiting my aptitude tests at Johnson/O'Conner with the book Doug gave each of us. I'm pointed toward three- dimensional visualization...my monumental sculpture wrapped in plastic in the garage. I see that my aptitudes do Not point toward successfully marketing my work.

My home is seriously grungy around the edges. I like cooking, don't mind laundry, and even iron my napkins. Money or Time Freedom? I need an obsessive/compulsive house cleaner...who will work for portraits! The giddy pleasure of completing a painting makes the aching knees worth while!


Final version of Doug and Amal from last Christmas morning. Living in the Northwest in
winter requires great courage, the too-brief transit of light low across the southeast quadrant.
A good walk for a new finances notebook, seeing a small tree with brave pink blossoms.

I was inspired by the size of Melissa Klein's show at Studio Bob to plan a monumental portrait show...hot flash women, meaning celebrating women who have dreams and are working to realize them.

There is never, never going to be Enough Time for the person who dreams.

See more paintings and books for sale at:
http://www.pamelahastings.com/

Opportunity and Focus

After a 12-hour work day yesterday, today presented the opportunity to be free with unaccustomed daylight and time available to me...but What to Do??? How to spend these precious gifts? I drove around, thought about beaches and/or food that I might like, and decided I was well-supplied already--with delicacies from my Book Group Party Monday night, and two pails of white rocks still in my garage, waiting to be arranged. I keep one smooth rock in the pocket of my lab coat at work.




How do we define ourselves? I've immersed myself so thoroughly in this new 5-day a week schedule at work, I sometimes forget that I define myself as an artist/writer/reader/thinker, and not as an OT. How to take advantage of unexpected gifts, this late afternoon/evening when I have enough energy left to think, "what shall I do?"

You are the beneficiaries of this extra spurt of creativity. I pledged to myself to put paint on canvas at least once a week, and so I am learning to spend more time on each painting, staging them from week to week. The one up top seems to be finished, from a photo Loel Annie Barr took--all those geometric lines and planes and colors I love, although I don't have the patience to make the lines perfectly. The implied story of the 2 men.

The second one is of Doug and Amal from a photo I took last
Christmas morning...I did a green under painting, and am fascinated to see the forms start to develop, the relationship the three-dimensionality.

My best job has always been working for myself...too bad it doesn't pay. I don't want to work on marketing...I just want to keep making Art...and seeing what comes out. That's my identity and my quest, so I try to maintain grateful awareness of my job.

Last picture: me, in Ballard with David H last January, enjoying a fried lunch of onion rings and calamari. Seize the day, Grasp the moment, Enjoy the hell out of all the good stuff and take the rest a moment at a time. Maybe David C and I will get a successful business going, teaching others like us how to survive the coming retirement years in style...even though they may be quickly slipping further and farther into the future. Start building the Perfect Moments now! Better than money in the bank...although money is certainly nice, too.

More Fun, No Art...Oh, well

Again this year, Brother David rented this Huge studio space at Fort Worden, with acres of tables on which to lay out the layers of his prints. I am SO jealous! It was fun to see his work to date (last Tuesday) then go to Akamai to buy art supplies and to dinner at Finn's together.








Large pale rainbow from the Fort Worden common. David enhanced the colors on his FB page...stunning!



Fall is creeping across the North West...not as stunning as VT last year at this time, but not bad at all.

I am certainly a rich woman when it comes to brothers! and Life is Too Short not to drop everything when a visitor shows up. This last weekend, brother, Hugh, came over from Seattle after a 6-week tour of the Midwest with Connie, selling Holland America tours. He posted great Roadside Attraction pictures from North Dakota down to New Orleans.


I've been keeping a list of local sights for when company comes.


In my 6 years here, I've never been up to the Sol Duc Hot Springs. Here's a hairy tree along the way.
The mossy trees in this damp climate fascinate me, probably
because they were never
part of my experience living in the NE. The hairy branches make a fascinating pattern high up into the air. The Spanish Moss festooned trees in Savannah, Georgia were the closest I've come before.

We admired the steaming hot springs (98-110 degrees) at the Spa, and vowed to come back with bathing suits and fluffy robes after the re-opening in March. Last March Hugh and I hiked to the Olympic Hot Springs, east of this mountain chain. Legend has it that 2 dragons fought over territory at the top of the mountains, and since they were so evenly matched, neither could win, and each eventually settled
into his own valley to create the steaming baths.

A beautiful triple waterfall above the hot springs. As you can see, Hugh is growing his beard to play Buffalo Bill in Village Theater's production of Annie Get Your Gun.

On our way back down we visited an ancient stand of trees, some of which were alive in 1492, when Columbus sailed to "discover" the New World.











The light in the NW forest is quite magical.

Then it was on to Murdock Beach--one of the many, mostly-deserted beaches along our coast, where some particularities of water and wind create the spherical and strangely-scooped out rocks I've never seen anywhere else.


After all the exploring, we'd worked up quite an appetite...we Foodie Hastings don't need much of a provocation to start cooking! And Hugh had been away from his kitchen for 6 weeks.











We heard about Pannecotta on NPR in the AM, looked up a recipe on the web, and that's what's sitting in the small ramekins (Cream and cream, cooked a little with sugar and vanilla, then jelled) OMG!

Hugh is whipping up a fruit sauce for pork tenderloin baked (perfectly) with garlic and herbs.


Sunday morning, after bacon and egg sandwiches and blackberry pie for dessert, we hiked to the overlook to check out progress on removal of the Lower Elwah River Dam...the water (white area to the left) has been diverted around the former dam and power plant so those parts can be dismantled.

Public access to the upper dam, on Lake Mills, is closed, but there is a web cam.




Ah, some ART after all: My Water of Life banner hanging at the ceremonies last month for removal of the tallest dam yet to be taken down in the US.

And finally, a bit of Wildlife, that my friends back East will appreciate: a slug, as long as Hugh's hand...and he's 6'2" tall with long hands!






Back to ART tomorrow, on one of my last few precious Tuesdays off: Finish the latest portrait of David, more soft dolls for my online class...and Barb Kobe says that I really must finish the HOT FLASH class, complete with dolls to make...

Take time to explore your own neighborhoods and cook with family and friends--Life is Good!

Precious Time!

Time is more precious than money...but without money, it gets awfully cold living outdoors. Corner of my deck with white stone patterns on gray gravel through the newly-cleaned railings...Amazing how much mold can build up in 5 years!

My Sungold and Sweet 100 tomato plants, attached to rebar with quilting scraps have almost given up, and are certainly not cost-effective...but after the HUGE garden in Saugerties, NY, it is


kind of nice to step out back and pick something I can eat. As I talk with my patients, more and more are short of money, scared of the future, and trying to grow more of what they use. I wonder if this trend of Wall Street Occupations will lead to more true attention to the needs of the People as opposed to the desires of Corporations, who have declared themselves people? We have good conversations as I treat hand injuries, since my clients come from the whole spectrum of this small, but varied town.



Through the magic of the World Wide Web, I'm teaching an online class in Three-dimensional Cloth Doll Construction, as well as Doll Making as a Transformative Process, and now a downloadable paper doll class through Barb Kobe's site: http://www.healingandtransformativedolls.com/ I've been sharing the progress on my latest doll/sculpture with class, along with all the mistakes and changes in direction I do along the way. I am sharing process with students all over the world--how cool is that!


Today is one of my last Tuesdays off for a while, as I will be the only OT at work from the end of this month until we get another. Aaron is opening his own practice in Sequim, and I said that I will try to do the work of 2 for the time being...Why are women so eager to try to fix everyone and everything??? Can I keep my work time down to 44 hours a week?

Anyway, I do appreciate my time more than ever today, as I am telling students to keep lists, take pictures, make sketches, so they can come back to their own flow of projects, knowing how challenging it is to pick up a dropped thread in my own life.

So, I celebrate Tuesdays, weekends, hours after the children are asleep, or whatever few moments we can carve out for ourselves!


I'm going to keep the portrait series going. Here's stage one of David from a picture I took last weekend. He's doing a week-long studio retreat at Fort Worden in Port Townsend--what luxury, and how frustrating! I'm going over this afternoon to have dinner with him and then Hugh's coming for Crab Festival this weekend. I have the third blackberry pie waiting in the freezer...Life is GOOD!

Seize the Day!

Our days are full of busy-ness...Multi-tasking is a highly touted skill...and yet...what are we sacrificing to all this productivity?

I normally have Tuesdays off, which, in addition to a time for all my various appointments, is my Art Day. With a stack of projects in the works, I was charging through my 24 hours...taking time to email my brother, David, also busily working at his computer. I said, "I feel like playing hooky, it's SO gorgeous outside and I don't know how many more days like this we're going to get before winter!"

He said, "Go" and that was my conclusion as well. The gallery won't miss one sculpture more or less, the easel with the unfinished painting will still be in my studio on the next day off, and the next. Sometimes Experience is more important than Product. I left at 1:00pm, taking myself to North Beach in Port Townsend...you can see Mt. Baker as a faint white triangle on the horizon in the first picture, my shadow and yellow sock against a lovely profusion of rocks.

I also had time to buy a new pair of pants for work and watch a movie about singing and dancing in Naples at my favorite, Rose Theater, with the best popcorn in the world...


Friday David came over from Seattle and we ate pizza and blackberry pie, with berries picked right in front of my house. Saturday we walked down to the Farmers' Market and back (5 miles?), stopping at the Blackbird for coffee.


Fall's Bounty at the Farmers Market.












So, no great art to show you from this weekend, either. It was supposed to rain today, but instead
the sun came out and I seized the day yet again.

The Port Angeles Fine Arts Center Gala last night was Quite Delightful and inspiring with all the creativity that had gone into dressing in silver...I wish I'd taken my camera. I swear there was a woman in an aluminum foil dress, and lots of sparkle...a town with a sense of humor!

I'll go back into the studio tonight, although probably not to paint...I feel I have to be fresh to do that difficult and exciting task justice. I am making some new cloth dolls, and one will have a yellow painted face with crackle paint over the top and some added bones...maybe I'll have more Art to show next weekend. After the last endless winter, it's a heady experience to be out in the sun. Plenty of studio time in the dark days to come. Here in the Northwest, we have learned to suck the juices from any sun we see.




An August sunset...I love it here! Please visit my website: http://www.pamelahastings.com/ and buy books. Thank you!

On the Beauty of Not Working

After a seemingly endless winter, summer has finally come to the Peninsula in September. Last Sunday I introduced Mercy and Anita to the wonderful beach at Port Williams, seemingly miles north and south, and usually very few other people, although that day 30 made a crowd...a very quiet and respectful and friendly one. We kept meeting people at least one of us knew, collected beautiful rocks, and shared a delicious picnic. As long as one is always kind, there is no drawback I can see in living in a sparsely-populated area.


I spent my free time last week stitching on this banner, WATER OF LIFE. It's for the celebration of the tallest dam removal ever in the US, on the Elwah river. I always volunteer art work when needed for town events...I love stitching and watching movies, and when I can do it for a worthy cause...is it Work? After polling a group of my patients (captive audience) about how they feel about this huge project, I'm not sure about Reasons and Results, but nevertheless, water is going to be a bigger and bigger issue in our world as we just keep growing in our demands, and from what I've heard, the amount of water available does not increase...important thing to ponder: In our climate of All Rain, then No Rain, I have a gravel-covered yard.

I talked with Mom yesterday. She spends so much energy avoiding tasks she doesn't really
want to do, I told her to take the weekend off.
What is this Calvinist super ego that insists
we MUST be "productive" every second
of every day? Play often leads to Creativity.

If we can enjoy the beautiful days thoroughly, the friends, the stitching and watching movies when they come, we'll have more energy for the
deadlines. As long as I have at least one painting in the works, I know I'll get back to painting. (these are the endless conversations I have with myself)

This is Kiki Smith, artist. This is the third version and good enough to stop here. Skill in Art making...and probably everything else...accrues by Practice. So by all means, keep the Practice going, but stop to enjoy the other things and people, too. If you love what you're doing, it
won't seem so much like work.

Blessings to the people touched by floods, by wars, and by the 10th anniversary of 9/11/01.

A NUMBER OF THINGS: Promise and Pressure

Today is the last of five days off from the job that supports my art habit. I can see why retired people wonder how they ever managed to both work and live. Time off is a source of both Promise and Pressure. I did two paintings, one I like (at the right) and one with which I'm still struggling.

Playing Blog catch up this morning before I go to Port Townsend with Suzanne, with whom I share love of: Art, Food, Books, Beach, and Uninterrupted time to paint.

So many wonderful visitors this summer: Experiences are So Much more Important than Stuff! I need to remember that.






Dear Katie and Mike at the Elwah...as if the two years since they left for sunny AZ had never passed. I took another day in Seattle with them, and Katie and Karen (Mike's sister) and I went shopping at the special sale at Beppo...I promised I'd post a picture of the goodies I got, which will become Christmas Angels.


As often as I say I won't buy, don't need Any More raw materials, I still succumb to temptation. Life is FULL of Unlimited Possibilities!

Mike and Katie brought me my favorite presents: Food (pecans from Green Valley) and a Very Impressive rock for my yard collection:








A subtly-colored Chrysacola from AZ now sits at the center of my infinity sign (look at previous blogs for an overview of my gray gravel yard with desgins drawn in white beach stones).

David brought and placed a glass globe from one of their rejected lights in the home remodel, and I have a VT white quartz at the center of one of my spirals...hope the VT government is back to work and that your cabins and house escaped flooding, Will.

Other activities for my days off: I cleaned the house and new car, baked a blackberry pie
from the Himalayan bushes that threaten to creep up and take over my yard. I picked 3 quarts in 3 days and hacked the bushes back. The buck (3-point) that lives in the neighborhood thought I'd made a path just for him. I keep reminding him that he doesn't like my hens and chicks, but he keeps eating them and spitting them out...not very smart, And disruptive to my landscape design.

We keep having our perfect NW sunny summer weather (finally) and I can't resist running outside to arrange rocks and take walks to the library.

I'm reading books and watching movies about artists (Lee Krasner, Cezanne, Patti Smith, Robert Maplethorpe, and Van Gogh) and what strikes me again and again as I bemoan my dearth of paying Art customers is how hard these famous ones had to work to get known. Then if success does come (Pollack), it can be ruinous.

Why do I and so many others keep going back into the studio to wrestle with demons...or angels? When I do a painting I like, turn a phrase just right, the answer is obvious. Yesterday, when the painting just got more and more murky, it was time to take a walk. I'm soaking up
sun to remember during the fast-approaching dark days of fall/winter/spring.



I've always been fascinated by a photo of Kiki Smith, and took it for the subject of my painting yesterday. Then forgot that I've been liking the clean-ness of the portrait series, and worked too long, struggling, and adding way too much stuff, including the gold paint, that just breaks up the surface even more.

Learning when to STOP is an important part of art making, and as you'll see by the second image, I went way too far, and now must see if I can back up and save her--or start fresh.

I feel a little more hopeful today.



I see how Important it is to just Keep Working...the little lessons from just going at the problems/challenges again and again DO accumulate over time...Even if I'm just practicing for my own amusement...and yours.

I've developed a warm-up exercise, mentioned it in a previous blog, the series of 4" x 6" drawings inspired by a video I watched about Richard Tuttle and how famous he got for Very, Very simple drawings and paintings. (publicity helped)

I limited myself to 4" x 6" Bristol paper, taped to an old piece of cardboard, using 4 colors of pastel pencil, 2 shades of yellow acrylic in clear glaze, scraps of one or two kinds of paper. My brother, David challenged me to do 100, and I've finished the series with 101. The simplicity of the materials and size made it easy to use the project as a beginning exercise to get me involved in the studio and start the flow.



It's Amazing how many variations are possible with such limited parameters! For my next project, a slightly larger square format with a collage element and drawing...I hope it doesn't slow me down. The guys in Port Angeles who are doing a painting a day, got some impressive pieces out of their exercise.

I like my big piles of little drawings...maybe I should put them for sale in my online gallery.

How about $5 apiece plus $2 for shipping--order multiples? I have some kind of vague idea of a small project in an envelope cooking, And another project this week has been to put the missing paper doll images onto my web site, since Barb Kobe is offering my online paper doll class as a down loadable self-study at: http://www.healingandtransformativedolls.com/ along with Three Dimensional Doll Design and Doll Making as a Transformative Process.