the calendar is ready!

the cover....

and a few of the new designs.

fall news

fall is definitely here- and in nova scotia it seems to come with a dampness. i keep thinking of people who i have known over the years who have lived on boats or houseboats, because sometimes it feels like living here is like living on a gigantic houseboat. different, of course, because we're not actually on a boat. just really really damp.

but i'm writing with the news that i will indeed have a 2012 calendar! all the designs are done, now i just need to format it and print it. i'll list it soon for pre-order on etsy. hooray!

yay for street flyers and the people who make them

i absolutely love these. thank you to alesha for posting them, to the people who made them, and whoever compiled them.

back from the big city

back from our big trip to amma and pop pop's. such a great visit with family, and jonah now entering serious smithsonian age...
when my parents moved to washington dc i don't think any of us were really expecting it to be so beautiful in terms of the landscape. i don't have many good pictures but it's a lot greener than what i had imagined. certainly has many of the problems you would expect, but there are many great things about it...
and now back to the wonderful culture shock of returning home.

i finally am getting my studio organized and having so much fun with monoprints. so simple and surprising. some also end up being blind- i love that. and i love the moodiness of black and white, playing with the different tones...

absolute rhythm and absolute trust

as i watched the seagulls, i thought: "that's the road to take; find the absolute rhythm and follow it with absolute trust."

- nikos kazantzakis, as quoted in seven times the sun

a typical spring day at our pond

mary oliver

Invitation
by Mary Oliver

Oh do you have time
to linger
for just a little while
out of your busy

and very important day
for the goldfinches
that have gathered
in a field of thistles

for a musical battle,
to see who can sing
the highest note,
or the lowest,

or the most expressive of mirth,
or the most tender?
Their strong, blunt beaks
drink the air

as they strive
melodiously
not for your sake
and not for mine

and not for the sake of winning
but for sheer delight and gratitude—
believe us, they say,
it is a serious thing

just to be alive
on this fresh morning
in the broken world.
I beg of you,

do not walk by
without pausing
to attend to this
rather ridiculous performance.

It could mean something.
It could mean everything.
It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
You must change your life.

— from Red Bird: Poems

found on cloth.paper.string ... thanks for the reminder.

happy easter

a long overdue update

i have now joined the ranks of Moms Whose Kids No Longer Nap. for those of you with little ones who aren't here yet, i have to say it's not as scary as i thought it was going to be. but it does change the rhythm of the day, and i'm finding that blog posting doesn't seem to happen.

so here are a few pictures that fill in some gaps from the last couple of months:

jonah continues to document his life...
we had a great winter.

we had lots of good snowy fun...

and in march, we tapped our maple trees, which is pure magic. even though we knew what would happen, it was unbelievable. it was incredibly easy- i encourage anyone to try it if they have access to maple trees. we just tapped three, which meant we weren't overwhelmed with buckets of sap. we probably got just over a litre of syrup. we weren't really going for quantity, just the experience. it was such a lovely backdrop to our days.

jolene has gone to be with other cows and hopefully get pregnant again. we wanted to still be five, so there is a new member of our household:
jonah named her posalie- a name he uses often when pretending to be a dog (or cat or rabbit or koala). posalie tree, actually, is her full name. it is so wonderful to have her. and great for cedar to have a friend.

new spring designs

there are three new designs on my etsy site. this one i've been meaning to do up for a long time:



this one is something i've felt for a long time but only recently consciously thought of:


and this is something ken said to me about a week ago. he often just offers a few words that are exactly what i need to hear. this has become a bit of a mantra for me when i face a challenge:

soon i will blog again, soon i will! jonah has stopped napping and i'm reconfiguring. he is much more tolerant of me doing activities like dish washing than he is of me being on the computer, which makes a lot of sense to me.