Not everything new is better!

I recently changed over to the new Blogger option and I am having issues with it! If I try to center a picture over the blog it puts it below the blog.
I spent at least a hour trying to post a new message this evening (this is the 2nd.) and could not get anywhere until I moved over to Mozilla. Grrrrr!!!
Our WEB page reads badly on Mozilla Firefox. The lettering that should be brown is bright blue and the "buttons" are in a different order.
This is a picture james painted before Christmas and a dear friend bought it for his wife.
In April there will be a local art show - called "The Crow Show"- celebrating crows, a very intelligent and much maligned member of the songbird family. We have been creatinf work to show and realising how many crow and raven paintings James has done over the years. Here they are again, and he's done a couple more recently.
I'm g0ing to post a recurring image we're using in the poster. James made a 4 colour screen print of a raven several years back and the ravens head keeps cropping up in his work. For a fundraiser for the show James carved the image into a woodblock that various members of the Wynndel Mudders pressed into clay as a fundraiser.
Well now I tried to center the crow below and it put it above. Oh well, it keeps things challenging.

Spring will come. Spring will come!

Winter's fingers have certainly had to be pried loose this year, but despite getting up to our car doors being frozen shut the other morning, spring is coming. Yesterday, as we drove in from Wynndel, there was a large flock of swallows wheeling in air, and James heard the frogs chirping from the pond for the first time this year.
James has another show opening at Kingfisher Used Books this coming Saturday. He is planning to show some of his recent work which has a definitely tribal feel to it. I spent last evening creating the poster using part of a painting. On that Friday is the Rotary Club's annual wine tasting and they have asked a number (10, I think) of local artists to show work for a silent auction. Both James and I are taking part. Rather than James showing his paintings he is showing 2 hand carved cats one of which is a wonderful calico from the natural colour of the wood and he hopes to show one of his ducimers.
I have one freestanding "Welcome" birdhouse and will have a swallow and a smaller bird bird house - smaller as in chickadee, wren, downy woodpecker.
All the mailings are out for ArtWalk and we are getting back registrations.
We are finally full tilt into working on our (mine, not James) 40th year high school reunion. My friend Betty said, "Who would have thought this would be the hardest year to get the planning done?"
Last week I got back into the shop/studio for the first time since my hand surgery last September. This last surgery took far longer healing than the previpous and I do need to book another appointment with the specialist - in my spare time!
Life is spinning madly by.

The last 3 days James and I have been taking part in an ambitious workshop on using paperclay taught by Graham Hay, an artist from Australia. Check out his site. When I first saw his work it was so large and organic I felt like "This is what I've always wanted to do." That and learning to weld with the Oxyacetaline set James got me for our 30th wedding anniversary. but I digress. Anyway. after 3 days struggling with paper clay I still see great possibilities but I'm not sure it'll be so easy to step into. We will see. Anyway, check out Graham's site. Besides a fabulous representation of his work it has links to many articles and a wealth of information. .http://www.grahamhay.com.au

The girls are back.

Four of these lovelies just wandered through the yard not 100 feet from the slider. I took about 8 pictures but they are amazingly good at stepping behind the bushes.
You can see they are in beautiful shape after our very long winter.
James has finished dulcimer #2 and has been doing other interesting projects like making and replacing a rod in a piano, setting the sound post in a cello, more guitar repair. He is a busy boy.
This afternoon he was off to Sirdar with a friend to look at some diamond willow.
I have finally finished making a list of names for ArtWalk in Access and now am redoing forms for this year. Monday we will stuff envelopes and send out this years "seed" hoping it bears a crop of happy participants in ArtWalk. Then on to the shop!!!! Oh, and a mailing to our fellow grads as we prepare for our 40 year Grad Reunion this summer.
The shop! I haven't worked there since Sept 21 when I had my last hand surgery but I am developing a grip again and now is the time to plung back in.

"As you wish"

James took this photo yesterday of Mt Thompson, shining over the valley.
Mt Thompson is the tallest mountain of those surrounding us and is named after the explorer David Thompson.
Spring came in as a lamb - if not a somewhat chilly lamb - in our little valley. Sadly it was not so "lambish" elsewhere.