It must be Spring!

Where does the time go?!
We are enjoying some wonderful flowers in the garden, mostly they make up the view from my studio window.

I will try and scan some of the letters I have been working on lately and get them up. Guild members travelling to ABC 2010 this summer are going to donate autograph books to the registration gift bags. The paper is being folded by our member Jo and the cover art work is progressing. The books will be Japanese stab bound very similar to the donations Molly and I made to the ABC 2000 gift bags.  I said that I would also donate a handmade journal for their silent auction - paper is torn and folded, covers have been done and I shopped for inside papers to use when Erin and I went to Seattle for her birthday. So many projects! no wonder I can't see the top of my desk for paper and tools!

Although we won't hear until mid June what classes we have at the conference this summer, I have had to book things like a rental car, and extra night on campus and we are currently trying to decide what hotel to stay at close to the airport so all of us can be on time for our flights home.  Glad we aren't headed there today, there was snow overnight in Calgary!

Yellowpoint

Every March the Fairbank Calligraphy Society in Victoria, BC have their annual retreat to Yellowpoint Lodge. http://www.yellowpointlodge.com/     
It is an absolutely wonderful place to meet year after year.

The weekend always begins with a 'voyage' for those of us who live on the mainland of BC; a ferry ride across Georgia Strait.  The last three years I have been met at Duke Point by my friend Jeanne who lives on the Island and we drive the few miles south to Yellowpoint.  Down the long driveway and it feels so good to be back.  The days revolve around food and calligraphy!  All the meals are served in the main Lodge and the accommodations are either in the Lodge or in cabins and cottages around the vast property. 

This was Madrona Cottage, our home away from home for the weekend.  It has a large living room with a pullout couch, large bedroom and large bathroom.  The nicest thing was there was a table and two chairs so we could work! Jeanne worked on a watercolour painting she brought with her and I did a bit in my letter a week journal on Saturday afternoon after lunch.

This was our early morning view on Saturday morning.

Another beach view.

I thought that this toadstool, found on a fragile meadow on our walk on Saturday afternoon, could be the inspiration for a children's book.....

Saturday morning is always a 'shareshop' class where most of us there for the retreat meet in the large recreation room downstairs in the main Lodge.  I had volunteered to lead the morning, sharing with everyone the Akim Cursive way of lettering.  I have long used this for writing in my travel journals, discovering years ago that it is a little difficult for just 'anyone' to read over my shoulder!   As the theme for this year was "Journalling", Akim seemed very appropriate.  My emphasis was 'making it your own'.

Did I mention that the weekend revolves around food.....?  Friday evening for dinner we start off with seafood curry, salmon, rice and lemon tarts for dessert.  Breakfast is always eggs any style, bacon, sausage, toast, fruit, porridge, and juice.  Yum.  Lunch is make your own sandwich with croissants, sliced meats, cheese, cucumber, tomatoes, salads and soup.  Saturday evening dinner is always a Prime Rib dinner with yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes and vegetables and for those of us who do not eat red meat, we had fresh cod. Dessert was Baklava.  Anytime you might have felt the least bit hungry during the day or evening, it seemed there was always a plate of cookies or cakes or muffins with tea or coffee in the Great Room of the Lodge.   Sunday lunch is a vegetarian lasagne with salad and soup.  They feed us very well at Yellowpoint!

Many years ago, maybe 27 or so, I thought it would be a great idea to hold a raffle on Saturday evening with the proceeds all going to the staff for a tip.  It started out small and not taking up too much time and now it is "the" evening entertainment on Saturday. This year there were 135 prizes to draw for! a great time to spend with everyone sitting around the great room (huge room) with a roaring fire in the fireplace (big enough to stand half a dozen people in) and prizes to win! The staff really appreciate it too.  Next year my friend Pat and I are going to be organizing the raffle.......we did the first one, we thought we should do it one more time! It will take some doing to crazy it up like the ladies who have been doing it for so long but I'm sure we'll manage. We already have some ideas!

The rain held off until we were all on our way home.  Funny how the photos from Yellowpoint just don't look half as warm as the photos from Mexico!

Apologies again for my Photoshop skills on the photographs. I really must start looking for a scanner.

my heart is in Mexico - at least when it is winter at home!

I love travelling to Mexico. I love being in Mexico. And in particular, I love going to the Yucatan Peninsula and being able to see the Caribbean Sea and all the colours it offers.  So already I have strayed from letters to give you a taste of a wonderful place to visit and I am absolutely open to try living in Playa for at least the cold Canadian months...

I sure wish these two trees would thrive in BC!

This is an awesome place to have breakfast!

A holiday is not complete without a visit to the Peanut Pet Shelter and a chance for some puppy cuddles.

http://www.peanutpetshelter.org/

and to think the adorable little puppy in their masthead - Miguel - might have distemper.

That is absolutely heartbreaking. He has been adopted by a couple in the US. They are waiting for their vet's diagnosis right now. Distemper is pretty much unheard of in the US and Canada and that's why the work they do at the Peanut Pet Shelter is so important for Playa del Carmen.

on the beach in Tulum

The beach in Tulum where my friend Heather lives.  Lucky or what?!

What would you give for a view like this?

a letter a week

With two Mexican vacations planned for January and February, I needed to organize art materials to take with me that wouldn't fill my carry-on.  I always write a trip journal while I am away but there are times in the evenings when I like to relax and do some lettering or w.h.y. 

At the same time as I was reading the book "Ella Minnow Pea" by Mark Dunn - a progressively lipogrammatic epistolary fable or so he says, I came across Gemma Black's challenge of doing a letter a week for the next 52 weeks. 

http://canberragem.blogspot.com/2010_01_01_archive.html

Perfect! small projects wouldn't take up much room and the tools needed would be able to fit in one of my  tool pouches from Paper and Ink Arts.    http://www.paperinkarts.com/shop.html  I was to find later that this pouch of pens and pencils, etc would attract a lot of attention each time it went through a security scanner!  I could work along with the letter a week project and work in a journal and have something portable to take with me on the plane. 

Here are some of my letters so far - photos rather than scans as I have yet to replace my scanner that is not compatible with Windows 7, but that's a whole other story. Oh, and what did the book have to do with the letter project?! I decided to do my letters in the same order that they disappeared in the book.  They will not likely show here in the same order as the book... I have to figure out how to move photos around in here.

Looks like I could use some Photoshop lessons to get rid of the shadows... but there you have them, some of my letters so far.  Yes, a bit of a theme going on. Maybe I'll grow out of the phase before the end of the alphabet!

A good place to start...

Every year our guild has a Christmas luncheon with a card exchange. This artwork was on the front of my card with Yuletide Greetings inside.

The words sum up how I feel about our world of lettering and I think those of us who are calligraphers do indeed make this place more beautiful with our art.