Painted daisies at the bottom of my deck steps.

I thought I'd give everyone a catch up on how my work on my pond is coming.  I finally ordered a pallette of rocks that I have been lusting after for years.  They arrived today and I distributed them today and I discovered that one pallatte needs to be about 3 to do everything I want to do; nevertheless, I accomplished much to the back of the house, which I see the most, so the front will just have to wait.

I also decided that it would be easier just to throw up pictures randomly from my "pond" file than to try to do a lot fo ArtOMatic pictures and try to link.  Typepad's new improved system is driving me completely bonkers.  I will keep saying that until they fix it.  And they have gotten verrrrryyyyy slllloooowwwww at responding to help tickets.  Gee, you think they're putting out fires?  I apologize ahead of time for complaining in real time as I type, but it keeps me sane.

Anyways, below you will see that I have finished the wall, despite not having a clue what I'm doing.  You can check on what it looked half-way done here.   I have back-filled behind it with dirt and stomped on the dirt, and the wall is still standing.  This is a very good thing.  I am very pleased.  Now I have to decide if I want to design an architectural tile piece specifically for the wall or fill it with random pieces and tiles I already have.  Random pieces would not only make it unique (as would a site-specific design) but it would also clean out a bunch of my bins where I keep pieces for making totems.  This would be a very good thing.  I am leaning hard toward using miscellaneous pieces and seeing what comes of it.  To that end, I am also going to share with you some ArtOMatic work by Jane Pettit who works in broken ceramic pieces and I am quite taken with her work.  I wanted to interview her; alas, her email bounced.  So we will just have to enjoy her work without a lot of information.  On her ArtoMatic page she notes:  "I knew I'd found my ideal art form for creative expression when I could combine three of my loves:  combining wildly disparate parts into an aesthetically pleasing whole, recycling and finding new uses for old things, and sparking humor and curiosity in others.  I'm a self-taught mosaic artist.  My primary materials are vintage dishes and ceramic objects of all sorts.  also making their way into my pieces are found objects, jewelry, shells, sea glass, stained blass, stones and paint.  Although each piece starts with a vision, it is an exploration of texture, shape and color that takes on its own personality." (OH HOORAY!  the buttons actually worked on the photo insert, and so far the links seem to be working too!.  SHHHH – don't say that too loud or the cyber imps will be back to play again).  This is her piece titled "Maiden of the Deep".

Oh and because I am so overjoyed that everything is working, I will share with you another artist, Tiik Pollet and his painting, for which I could not find a title, but liked it anyways and want to share it. (well, now, see, the silly system erased his name when I linked it – or tried to.  Must have said "it worked" too loudly…trying again).

So now that you have your daily does of new artists, I will, without further ado, show you pictures of the very nearly completed pond wall, with stones, as well as pictures of my new short stone walls along what we call our "lane" (it isn't a lane, but that's what we call it), and some new stones to fill up space at the bottom of our deck steps where we put stone several years back, but which needed more.

oooookaaaayyyy…well, we won't have all those pictures because suddenly I can't get the picture thingy to come up and I am terribly afraid I will lose this whole post (as now the type is starting to come slowly and that usually means that something is confused, and confused computers eat posts.  I will stop while I am ahead.  Perhaps later I will come back and add more.  Or not.  We'll see what typepad has up its sleeve).(Oh!  I think I just found out how to delete:  hit "cancel" instead of insert.  Woohoo!).

thought for the day:  The thing that I know after 30 years is that you just make things, and it is the act of making things that A, makes you happy, which is another thing we aren't told.  B, it makes you an artist, and that even when you have all the credentials in the world, you will still sometimes have those nights where you don't know you're an artist.  So you have to learn to do it anyway.  You need to learn to know that mood does not mattter.  it's like sex.  You can think,  I'm not interested, but once you begin, you may find out it's more interesting.  It's the same thing with creativity.  If we keep waiting for the perfect mood, we're ogin to end up starved.    Julia Cameron with Michael Toms,  Unlocking Your Creativity, The Well of Creativity [ed by Michael Toms] [no spell check either.  I am pardoned for not being able to proof read my own typing – never have been able to do that]