Almost Spring!

The weather is beginning to warm up.  As I tell my mother, soon we will go from the cold winter rains to the cool spring rains and on into the warmer summer rains :-).  I'm already preparing my greenhouse.  I am not planning to do any tomatoes this year.  They just don't get enough sunshine and warmth where we are.  I will do potatoes, peas and beans again.  Also making a reappearance will be chard, kale, spinach, carrots, cucumber and loose leaf lettuce.  I know pumpkins didn't do well last year, but they did excellent the year before, so I will try again.

I have made many updates to my dA page.  All of my old work is up, as well as many new pieces.  The work above, inspired by the recent tragedy in Japan, is an example of one of my recent works.  100% of any profit it might make will go directly to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief for Japan.  Not that I think I am all that as an artist, but, if it made any money, I didn't want to profit from it.

I have been having fun teaching myself various types of fixed-form poetry.  So far, Haiku is my favorite.  I enjoyed not only learning the technical form (which is rather simple to master) but also the traditional subjects and themes prevalent to Eastern forms in general and Haiku in specific.  I think Shakespearean sonnets will become another favorite, but I haven't played with them as much as I want yet.

I have done some beautiful dye work on my homespun yarn recently.  The Easter egg dye, as you see above, comes out beautifully for projects that don't need to be washed often.

I haven't been doing as much on the free samples/sweepstakes front.  Life intruding and all that.  I have not completely abandoned it though and will get into it more again.  Until then, I have nothing to report except to say I have a few small samples coming in here and there that have been useful.

My boyfriend's Uncle Dave had been sick with cancer.  It has been less than a year since he was diagnosed.  They didn't find out what it was in enough time to effectively treat it.  He passed away just this past Wednesday.  He was a neat man and will be missed.  He and his wife Sue took the time to come and visit us and ask about my health and such.  He was really suffering toward the end though and I am glad that is over.

I will try to be better abut updating this blog.