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Painting and thinking
This morning I was feeling unsettled. American government is transforming into something unrecognisable as the democracy that I am comfortable with. The Constitution is being cherry-picked just like the Bible. Whatever supports the narrative is mentioned and everything else is ignored. Checks and balances of power in Articles I-III are out the door in favor
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Planning the Color Garden
Energised by spring’s return, I’m starting to plan the hatake for 2025 and beyond. Having been told that monkeys, boars, and deer are likely to eat any vegetables I might plant, I am pivoting to my interest in botanical color. I will create a color garden that produces plants I can turn into dyes and
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Lake mishap
I was all excited to make a lake pigment with some iron-modified cypress (hinoki) dye I boiled up last week. It was a dark grey and the paper I made with the color is gorgeous. But when stabilising the pigment for paint, I messed up. I didn’t warm the water for the alum, so my
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Project 2025 Bingo – Valentine update
We are 25 days into the administration, a quarter of the way through this Bingo game. Time for an update. We are getting closer to BINGO: Spaces on the Card Below are the items on the bingo card. There are so many items not on this card that probably shoudl have been. Plastic drinking straws
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From branches to paint
[Apricot colors, part 2] Yesterday I reached one of my long-standing goals. I made paint from raw ingredients. Artists have been doing this since art started but I have mostly purchased supplies ready made. I love knowing how things are made from start-to-finish and making pigment from apricot branches, then binding the pigment into a
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Cedar Cone Color
Last weekend, Tod ran a fancy extension cord to the shed for me and now I have electricity. I can run the IH cooker and boil up color baths! So the first thing I did with my new electricity was to play with the cedar cones I collected a couple weeks ago. The results were
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Running a Retreat
After 18 months at 555, I am finally ready to open the space to the public for a Drawing Meditations retreat. Won’t you take this as a great excuse to visit? These times definitely call for some quiet and self-care. With everything going on in the world and in your life specifically, give yourself a
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Project 2025 Bingo – Day 1
Well, here we are at the first day of our 100 day bingo game. I am finding stamp-worthy articles in the news already and the White House website lists all of the executive orders signed during the inauguration. No BINGO yet, but the card is filling up. I will continue to update this through the
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Vigyan Bhairav Tantra No. 79
I set myself up for the weirdest meditation experience this morning. On Sunday my yoga class practices meditation. We have tried many techniques over the years – everyone has a different way of getting to their inner silence and we don’t know what will trigger an interesting insight. So we try as many as I
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Winter colors
We had a big wind storm yesterday and this morning when I went to remove fallen branches and cedar debris from the driveway, I remembered a video of someone making color from pinecones. We have an abundance of cedar cones always blowing down on the driveway. Free color! I did a little test with some
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