Moving into spring...

I am still working on the Nativity maquette, and am getting very anxious to get to the point where I can start weaving again! I miss my loom time very much. In the meantime, I am still doing sketches almost daily, setting different challenges for myself. The little sketch above is about 6x6", and the challenge was to use just contour lines to try to capture an expression. The subject is my 7-year old grand-daughter. I think I captured her expression pretty well, sketching from a photo, as she doesn't live near enough to me! I know she looks older than 7 in this photo, but she was presenting a school project, and was looking serious and thoughtful. In many ways (intellect, reasoning, etc.) she is much older than her short seven years. I am so glad she is 'just seven' in other ways! (I won't evoke the typical grandma phrase, "they grow up much too fast.")


This is a new friend. He visits me, and all other gallery artists, it seems, when we work at the gallery. He really wants to come inside and be the gallery cat, but contented himself in the flower pot on the patio for a few hours while I was there last week. He has no collar, but the locals say he does have a home and a family, or I'd have brought him home with me. He is so sweet and friendly.

I paint with my Alzheimer's patient friends again this afternoon, and must run some errands first, but thought I would post a short 'Happy Spring' post. My daffodils are in full bloom, and the lilacs are leafing out, with buds getting bigger every day. The iris leaves are at least 7 inches tall already. If the wind would quit blowing here, I would get out and spring clean the garden! It blew so hard here the other day, and the dust was so stirred up from the surrounding desert, that my guitar teacher decided he will get me the music this week to learn to play "Dust in the Wind." While he thought of the band, Kansas, I thought of the windy western part of the state where we once lived. I also just couldn't help but feel that I was in the remake of a Beau Geste movie.

(From Beau Geste, by P.C. Wren)

But the wind will die down, and the garden work will begin. Before that happens, I hope to be working away at my loom!