Oh, have I been looking forward to this morning. No real plans, other than to study for my exam on Monday and to get materials ready for this week’s trip to Journalfest in Port Townsend, Washington.
Guido is galloping around the house like a racehorse. He is 13 years old and still a kitten. Lucy has become much more of an attention-seeker and purrs very loudly often, which is nice. Miss Jazz is Miss Jazz, queen bee, petite and haughty to the other cats, insistent on constantly sitting on top of us. I saw a cat at Petsmart yesterday that was the exact image of Squirt, face, size, coloring, everything. It was hard to walk away. I still dream of Squirt nearly every night and think about him every day. I wish that I could let him go.
My hand is not broken, and my arm and fourth finger feel much better. It is the pinkie and the muscles on that side of my hand that are still painful, and pain relievers have not helped, even strong doses. I can type without too much pain but I’m not going to push it today. I wanted to make paper but I decided that I’d better wait until this gets better.
Sandy found his wedding ring. He had taken it off his ring finger and put it on his pinkie because it was getting too tight. When he was packing to come home it must have fallen into the suitcase.
It is supposed to get down in the high thirties here this weekend so I’ll make a serious push on the butterbeans and field peas to get the last of them. The field peas slowed down a week or so ago but the butterbeans keep going until the frost gets them. I had a delicious second wave of figs but not nearly as many. My carrots were very disappointing, and almost all that lettuce seed I planted was carried off by ants or the seedlings eaten. I dug up a handful of small Yukon Gold potatoes. I’ve harvested a few very small heads and side shoots of broccoli, enough to make a few dishes from. I have a little patch of tatsoi and other greens, Tuscan kale, lots of parsley, and one lonely golden chard in a pot. The tendergreens that I planted in the spring made a comeback. I’ll have to pick some for Lucy and Miss Jazz. They love them.
A lot of these failures could have been avoided if I had put a bit more effort into it, but this has been the year of the lazy gardener at my house.
I realized that if I wanted to get any classes that I wanted at Art & Soul in Hampton, Virginia in May, I’d better go ahead and sign up. So I contacted my roomie from last year, and signed up for two book classes under two teachers that I haven’t had before, as well as a fun printing technique class from Traci Bunkers called Roller Printing MacGyver Style. I’ve taken a couple of Traci’s classes before and I enjoy her funky free-wheeling style.
But this coming week IS THE WEEK! On Wednesday morning, I will be flying all by my little lonesome to Seattle, where I’ll get on a shuttle bus to Port Townsend, to take a class from Daniel Essig and two classes from LK Ludwig, two book artists that I greatly admire! Journalfest is all about art journaling and takes place at Fort Worden State Park, a former military installation on a spit of land sticking out into the Puget Sound. All I’ll have to think about is making art and I’ll meet a lot of like-minded artists at this one.
slowly she turned 