Hello to my blog followers! After a few months of thinking I was posting blog updates, I started hearing from people that they were not getting the posts. I contacted someone more computer-savvy than I am (a vast field) for help, tweaked my settings, and then discovered that I was putting up the blog posts on a page not designed for that. Oops. So I think I have finally figured it out. I’d like to give people a chance to catch up on the posts I have already written, so I will send the old ones, one a week or so, until I get caught up to present time. As bonus entertainment, this will also give you a chance to read a kind of speeded-up version of the seasons changing as I comment about what is happening outdoors. If you don’t want to bother with these prior posts, just ignore them. Thanks for bearing with me. Here’s the first post I wrote, on April 10th:

Finally, finally, finally, I am actually starting a real blog! I have been inspired by participating in Kat Sloma’s “Liberate Your Art” project. Kat is a photographer in Oregon, and she has been organizing this event for years, but this is the first time I have participated. What fun! You make postcards of your art (I took photos and taped them to card stock cut to size), then mail those with postage and self-addressed mailing labels to Kat. She (with the help of twenty of her best friends, I hope) mixes them and sends them out again, so that each participant gets half a dozen postcards over a period of three weeks, five from various artists and one from Kat.

I was so interesting to see where the postcards came from (I got one from Northern Ireland) and the great variety of art. Kat asks that you include a message of encouragement on your postcard, so lucky me, I got six messages of encouragement! And this happened during Vermont’s Mud Season, when we need all the encouragement we can get. For three weeks, I happily looked forward to the mail on Mondays and Thursdays, knowing there would be something other than bills and junk mail.

Making art can be an isolating undertaking. I have the good fortune of frequently painting with an artist friend or two and it makes a huge difference to have the company of someone else engaged in the creative process, even if we are mostly silent while painting.

A foot of snowpack still here in north central Vermont. But the first of my snowdrops are blooming (where I strategically planted them next to the foundation of the house), so hope is in the air. I hope you enjoy my blog!