Time Flies

Funny to think that I started this blog to journal my daily art and I haven't posted any pictures of it in almost a month. Also funny (and very gratifying) to look at the book I keep my tiles in and know I'm half way done.

Two days after I started this daily art journey, I found out that Carm was moving, but not until summer. Not until the kids were out of school and the house was sold and they found somewhere to live in DC. We had time.

The going away party is tomorrow and the moving truck comes a week from Monday. We are staring down the barrel of the unpleasant certainty that my friend and neighbor will be my friend who lives in DC in a little over a week.

Carm said she's just keeping busy and not thinking about it. Right now she is probably spackling all the little holes in the dry wall where her pictures hung, carefully painting over the patch so that it looks like it was never there; a gracious hostess even upon departure. It was Carmen I was thinking of when I made yesterday's tile (bottom row, third from the left.)


If I can presume that there is someone out there reading who has been with me since the first of the year besides my parents, you may recall that Carm had loaned me a priceless box filled with antique pictures and scrapbooks she'd acquired when living in England. She later told me to keep them, saying that "they were in a better place," as if they'd died and gone to photo heaven. After all, she explained, they'd been languishing in storage for years until I revived them.

I have made two gifts for Carmen from her gift to me. (And I returned her blender so she could pack it.) All of these presents are a surprise but surly she's too busy spackling and packing to read my blog.

The item below is a 1" square bezel (Provo Craft) that I put on a key chain. I did something I seldom do: I used the original print. I have scanned and preserved it for future use, but Carmen gets the original back. I look at it this way: if she can give me a whole box of these treasures without batting an eye, the least I can do is give some of it back to her. I didn't know if she'd wear a necklace, so this seemed like a good alternative, something she can use every day instead of wear occasionally.

I still have to trim out and frame them, but the other gift will be prints of these three pieces, all from what will be known as the Carmen Collection. I'll take a picture of them in the frame tomorrow before the party and put it up when next I post.

The last gift is store bought. It's a paper cutter. I bought it because it's the only thing of mine she consistently (as in about once a year) borrowed. A once a year paper cutter loan in exchange for what has to equate to at least one months shopping for a household of six. Goods that were ferried across the side yard by her children and mine, cups, cans and sticks at a time over the last five years. The grass between my front porch and her side door is going to grow again. And I'll have someone to visit in DC.