Back to the cutting board....

I feel like apologizing after my last two rather negative entries. I am not usually a negative person but writing is one way of exorcizing negative feelings that occasionally torment me. We commonly hear people say that writers and artists need to be tormented in order to bring out their emotions and creativity. That doesn't work for me. After writing out my negative feelings in rough draft I have purged them and have no desire to continue wallowing in them long enough to polish what I have written.

I am being good staying home this week, after last week's hedonistic indulges of eating out almost every night. I ate pizza with Fred while we played Settlers of Catan on Monday. I took Stitch out for a birthday dinner to Kadoya on Tuesday, ate out at a Singaporean restaurant with friends on Thursday and at an Italian restaurant with friends visiting from Toronto on Friday. Two nights the portions were too large and my friends gave the leftovers to me. Then there was the pot luck dinner on Saturday where everyone brought too much food. My friend Jazzy is leaving for India so he gave me several days' worth of vegetarian risotto to go with my leftover salad. I've been living off the spoils since then.

I have stayed at home to work on the first of two windows for Tulip, my faerie friend on the Sunshine Coast. He has transom windows in his two bedrooms, each 51 cm high by 107 cm long, and for each I proposed a row of mature tulips, opened wide as though they are about to fall apart. Some are leaning or falling over. They are done in shades of red, yellow and streaked orange. I completed the pattern for the first window on Sunday and Tulip gave me the go-ahead without seeing it. I have been plodding ahead a few pieces each night and now have 41 of the 202-piece project cut and ground, 30 of them already soldered together. I need some glass supplies, a new cutter and grinder head, which I won't be able to pick up until Saturday.

The last windows I made were completed for a client in May. I've had no projects come my way since then until recently. Besides the two windows for tulip, I have the go-ahead for another large window (100 cm wide by 95 cm high approx) for the "Chicken Ranch" (Wallowa's home) in Portland. It will a features rooster and a couple hens in an outdoor pen. I am waiting for Wallowa's husband Bunny to complete the window frame so I can get the exact dimensions.

On Saturday my friend Yves asked me to design a window for the door to his guest room, 52 cm wide by 165 cm high, probably a tropical forest scene. Jeremy, my former student, has also forward a client to me who wants me to repair a Tiffany-styled lamp. She will be bringing the wounded shade by for my appraisal on Sunday afternoon.

When it rains it pours.