beautiful day

Most people see the sun shining and say, “ Oh, it’s a beautiful day.” I, on the other hand, see the fog, like this morning, and say, “Wow, it’s a beautiful day!” I love fogbanks! It is so beautiful, I can hardly resist going out and shouting about how wonderfully perfect fog feels on my face, and how beautiful it colors the world.
Some people can't get enough sunshine, I can't get enough fog!

Tulips for Pauline

Pauline and Milo are my friends. Milo passed away recently. They lived in Pampa TX. Both, salt of the earth. I love them soo much, I just met them this summer, but I felt I knew them my whole life. Milo was a wonderfully creative person, and Pauline is, a most special woman, who makes you feel so loved, and so accepted. Thank you both for sharing your lives with me. Pauline, these tulips are for you. Bless you, Pauline, come see me. It will be wonderful for you to get away and see Washington with me. Love, Sherry
Tulips for Pauline.

Some art work.....

Arms Akimbo


ARMS AKIMBO
[Q] From Sharlene Baker, USA: “Since akimbo means ‘In or into a position in which the hands are on the hips and the elbows are bowed outward,’ why the redundancy of arms akimbo? And where did this unusual word come from, anyway?”
[A] It’s certainly one of the odder-looking words in the language. The first spelling recorded was in kenebowe, which turns up in a work called The Tale of Beryn that dates from 1400. This looks as though it ought to come from an Old Norse source that meant something bent into a curve, but it has never been found. (The last element in the word is essentially the same as our bow for a curve.) The phrase went through several shifts, variously being written as on kenbow and a kembo, arriving at our modern form in the eighteenth century.
Strictly speaking there’s no redundancy, as the word could in theory be applied to anything bent into a curved shape. But from the very earliest recorded references, it seems to have been used exclusively in reference to that characteristic position of the arms, so the phrase arms akimbo has for many years been a fossil idiom, with the redundant arms given respectability by convention.
Though at first it was a neutral phrase, the posture it describes is one that implies defiance, aggressiveness or confidence, and these emotions have become attached to the phrase. Charles Reade used it in The Cloister on the Hearth: “Suddenly setting her arms akimbo she told him with a raised voice and flashing eyes she wondered at his cheek sitting down by that hearth of all hearths in the world”; and Anne Brontë wrote in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall that “Mr Hattersley strode up to the fire, and interposing his height and breadth between us and it, stood with arms akimbo, expanding his chest, and gazing round him as if the house and all its appurtenances and contents were his own undisputed possessions”.

Horse with a face, I named Blue

I have some beautiful ranunculus in my garden, I had to share....

and yellow ones with a bug:

I also have beautiful parrot tulips, and some rhodies in bloom. It is so beautiful now with azealas and all these flowers blooming all over the place. Flowers are good!

Tents for a tent lover, you have to take a look!

more tents from India..so cool!http://mukilteodailyphoto.blogspot.com/search?q=tents

butterfliesforyou.com

see butter fly
It has come to my attention that butterflies are being bred and sold for release at weddings, etc. They range in price from 65.00 to 100.00 per dozen in containers that release a bunch, or about 12.00 each in personalized envelopes. I wanted to buy some butterflies, we seem to have a shortage here where I live. So I e-mailed a place and they said Washington doesn't allow you to buy butterflies from out of state. Maybe that is what our apple maggot quarantine is about?
At any rate, I am a little disappointed that I can't get flutterbees for my garden. I have learned they love milkweed for their larvae to eat. I am prepared to plant milkweed for butterflies to come live with me.

Invasion of the slugs

Last year I planted some sunflowers. They grew up to about 4 feet, and had nice heads on them, the stalks were think, about 1.5 inches round. The next day, the head was gone on 2 of them, soon they all disapeared. Where is that slug, he must be some predator by now, eating his way to the tropics to find more and more food to feed his expanding girth! Ok,. so maybe it isn't one 5 ft long slug, but a pack of slugs. you don't want them in your neighborhood!

The sun will come out tomorrow....

Apple of my Eye

I refer to my computer, of course!

When the Queen of Hiking gets left behind

draped villas ( canopies)

Been looking for canopies to raku under, and I have found some surprisingly exotic villas.
I want one of each!

found this charming illustration it just takes me heart!

Illustration friday," ALONE," plus...Spring and Summer Calendar for arts workshops

Madame Butterfly is what happened when I was ,"ALONE", Ever been alone playing, and wondering if anyone was looking? That is what she is wondering....is anybody looking? my 2nd Illustrator attempt...

I have been compiling lists and calendars for the upcoming raku workshops, kids camps, and private students I am taking on beginning May.
I have a 3-month calendar ready, and it looks full. Wow, is it ever easier to make a calendar than what you are proposing, but I would prefer to be in the thick of it.
In May I begin with adult raku workshops, ( 2 evenings a week) and semi private classes of a 9 week duration, ( twice a week). In mid June I add kids camp, twice a day, three days a week to that schedule, for a month extending into July. After that I will be going to Alaska on the ferry for up to 3 weeks, then back for more classes I have not yet scheduled. Last 2 weeks of August I will take on new students again for fall, begin raku again, and do more of my reiki work. And, of course, my art work will be something I will make sometime….during those busy days.
I am looking for a really nice canopy for the back yard for over the raku kiln (since it ”might rain.”) You think?
Am also considering family backpack trips so that people will know hw to take their kids to places that really count this year, and teaching them skills to be out in nature together appreciating nature, and each other. I really look forward to these weekends this summer.
All in all, it appears that it will be a busy summertime, gearing up to fall, and winter when I will have more time to work with students and make lots of art work to sell come spring.

Transformations

Have you ever watched a flower fade? My tulips are fading. I watch them everyday to see the beautiful colorful changes as they become the loveliest colors I could ever behold. I watch the dull pink flower make it’s transformation to a multi colored bloom, becoming shiny, and soft, light and dark, streaked and lovely, all at once, and I imagine a room painted just that color, but it isn’t one color, or one sheen, but many, so exquisite I cannot tell you, but I have photographed them most everyday.


The petals twist and turn, and the once tulip is then transformed into another plant completely. The petals fall, and small black and yellow seeds are left studding the piston. I collect the seeds carefully. In three years they will each become a bulb, the ones that make it, that is, and each bulb a unique variety that has never been seen before.




It brings to mind the small ivory hand of my grandmother as she lay dying, Skin so exquisitely thin it looked like some delicate almost sheer cloth laid over her small bones, draped there, revealing an uncommon beauty.
Beauty comes in so many ways, and we don’t see it most of the time, we are too busy trying to preserve what we have decided is beautiful to allow maturity to manifest itself, in beauty, and look upon it for the wonder it is.

If of thy mortal goods thou art bereft, and to thy slender store, two loaves alone to thee are left. Sell one, and with the dole, buy hycinths, to feed they soul! ( unknown poet)

Aboriginal Art Show in Seattle soon

will include work by Mangkaja artist JANANGOO BUTCHER CHEREL

Date of Birth
 c. 1920
Clan
 Homeland
 Gooniyandi
I will try to get gallery information and post it here soon from the contact Ken provided. Check back.
I have been searching Aboriginal Sites
This page has some really nice B&W works ..and you can go through other work from this page..I love Daisy Andrews work!
nice to see art work from Australia.

Anastasia

Anastasia is the first of the work I hope to continue. I love the idea of a dinner table set with porcelain plates, footed bowls, etc. decorated like Anastasia here. It is so fun, and it really does reveal my influence of Wiinblad's work, so this is my Wiinbladisque line. I guess. Or beginning of. Anastasia will be for sale for 250.00. Wouldn't she be adorable with maidenhair fern or persian violets coming out of her head?
I can't wait to get a bunch of this work under my belt. I will accept all encouragement, and opinions concerning price. Each piece will have it's own name, of course!
Merci....

Photo by Ken Ford, Australia, "Outback" Friends... love these happy smiling faces!

Beauty to me....

Daisy Andrews, Lumpu Lumpu, acrylic on canvas cotton. 1950 .00 $aud. beauty has always struck a simple chord in my heart, most of my life I have been holding one desire abover all others, to live with people who are what we refer to as primitive. Simple, spiritual people, who know things we don't because we intellectualize too much, don't trust our ability to know, to intuit.

Maybe Ken Ford is as close as I have come to being in a place that meets that dream of beauty, life. My interest in so piqued that I am that close to one who is living that way. I knew Ken was one that knew aboriginal ways, and I am facinated that he says he is so glad he came thre. I can't wait, simply cannot wait to hear what he is going to share with me about the beauty of that experience. It gives me chill bumps all over just waiting to hear his stories. What a miracle we connected again!

He has sent art work to me and I to him, and we exchanged postcards, letters, nd photos, some years ago, but mostly online writing. Always the unexpected letter or packet made my heart skip a beat. It is so good to receive letters from around the world! I am just delighted!

Old friend from Tasmania writes again!

I received a surprise from an old friend who was living in Tasmania going to art school. I lost touch with him, we met on some clay art forum years ago, and years ago. A web site he works with, I recommend it...He is now in Kimberly, or The Outback, in Austrailia, and he sent a photo that is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen of a children smiling and laughing, and it is soooo lovely. I am so happy to be in touch once again with Ken Ford. He is loving what he does in The Outback, helping artist there to show work worldwide and locally. I can't wait to hear more from him, and I will share that here!

Garma Etching by Stumpy Brown
Maybe I wil go to Austrailia and finally meet my penpal!


For Ken and his friends in The Outback, my Crater Lake shot...

It is tulip time again in Washington!

My indoor tulip garden...one of them. I support tulip growers! I fast so I might.
Here are a few more photos of mine taken at LaConner this last week. The flowers are exquisite, fields of color. I tried to bring them all home!