Sunday: Oh, My Aching Back!

I won't bore you with TMI, but I had a couple of back surgeries about 10 years ago, and most of the time it's pretty good, but every once in a while I have an "issue."  This time, the trouble started helping our yellow lab, Lily, up the back steps. This old girl, tried to give that old girl a boost, and now I'm creeping around, unable to put my own socks on. 

That was Thursday, and fortunately I've had the excellent, Mr. C. waiting on me and tending the horses. Nigel has also stepped up, and is keeping me company on the sofa.

I've had to make myself content with doodling...

And reading...finished "Believing the Lie" by Elizabeth George. Loved it! I'm a huge fan of Inspector Lynley. You may have seen him on Masterpiece Mystery.

And finally, I did just enough puttering around to gather supplies, because tomorrow, come hell or high-water, I am starting "Bloom True: the e-course with Flora Bowley." 

Hope you all had a great week-end, and remembered to "lift with your knees."

WordHop 2012

Welcome to WordHop 2012. The Fly-Tribe is blog-hopping again. Many of us have chosen a single word to guide us through the new year in our creative pursuits. Hope you'll take the time to visit many of the Fly-Tribe bloggers as they reveal their individual words and the reasons for choosing them.
The word of intention that I have chosen for 2012 is...

PRODUCTIVE

There has been much discussion among the artists of the Tribe in recent days about choosing a word of intention. I believe my word chose me, as it was the first word that popped into my head when we began to discuss the idea, and try as I might to come up with something a little more exciting, I kept returning to it. Productive isn't a very glamorous word, but when I really think about it, it is what I want most in the coming year, not just in my creative life, but in every corner of my life. It is my hope that embracing this word will give me focus and will help in shaping more specific goals as the year unfolds.
A year from now, I hope to look back and see that I made time for art everyday, even if only a few minutes. I hope to have more of my work published, open an Etsy shop, grow my blog, and take more art classes. I have already completed a major clean-up of my workroom, something I've needed to do for the last year. If only I had chosen the word "productive" last year, think where I'd be!
Outside of art, I intend to exercise more, ride more, travel more (something pretty exciting already in the works there), read more, love more, and (cover your eyes Mr. C.) adopt another dog. I'm thinking all this adds up to a pretty productive year.
It has occurred to me that part of being more productive has to include less of some activities. So, with that in mind, I intend to also focus on doing less of those things that only fill time and produce nothing. Less television, less worrying, less playing of word games on Kindle (painful!), and less obsessive checking of my blog stats. I should probably also dial back on the Pinterest a bit.
Please take some time to go here... Fly-Tribe, learn a bit more about the Tribe and the origins of Wordhop and find links to all the incredibly talented "Flyers" who are participating in this blog party!
A great big thank-you to those Flyers who organized this party for the less tech savvy among us.

What I Made On Wednesday

This little quilt is dedicated to the "Fly Tribe," a very talented group of artists who offer support and encouragement everyday. The first in a series of "what if's" dedicated to this amazingly supportive clan of women...

Hope your Wednesday was amazing, or at least pretty good.