Clean Hard Fast: 10

CLEAN: the patio. Prepping for Winter... whether we want to come or not.

HARD: the FROZEN leaves of kale and chard. I went out into the dark freezy night - armed with knife, bowl, and flashlight. Didn't need knife. All leaves snapped neatly off whereever they were touched. Not thrilling, but easy. So made one last batch of gardeny kale chips the next day, and had one last eggs with chard. Boo hoo. I want Spring already. Sorry, Christmas. I don't care. I want to walk out into warm garden full of buzzing insects and flitting birdies. And I'm a Big Snow Country kid from Northern Wisconsin. Argh!

FAST:how I want Winter to go.
Last night I attended the November meeting of The Lake Country Pastel Society. We watched a demonstration of how to make pastels. All you need are bags of this, bottles of that, spatulas, a hard surface, dust mask, apron, gloves, and will. Will post photos soon. It was quite the fascinating process, and we could have dried samples of a variety of colors and hardness. Lucked into four of the still-damp pieces as well. Most are quite soft- they will be fun to work with when ambition happens to happen.

Upcoming events include: Gift By the Hand at Hudson, Wisconsin's Phipps Center for the Arts (will be ongoing in Nov./Dec.), Landmark Center's Holiday Bazaar in St. Paul, MN - the first Thrusday through Saturday in Dec., and The Very Merry Holiday Fair, Dec. 13-14, in Baraboo, WI. Then the season will be officially over and we will start the applying for next year's art fairs. A person asked recently when our downtime comes. Nope. No downtime. Good in a way. Bad in a way. We won't be doing art fairs, but the doing keeps on going. It's the daily deciding what exactly to do that is the mystery. So many tiny tasks. Lots of Priority One. And the laundry.

Bitch bitch. Moan moan. But, yes, I know I'm lucky to do what i love. Most days. And the web site is up again - hooray! Check out www.suerowe.com if you're in need of a token bear.

Ever onward. Time for tea and a nap. It's only not-quite eight  PM but the recliner is calling. Maybe it's time for tea and a book. And a nap......

Fare-thee-well,
Sue