Marja-Leena Rathje

sunny, crisp cold days
sparkling frosty nights
brilliant blue moon
foggy mornings
wet brown carpet
of magnolia leaves
filling compost box
future black gold

I’ve made good progress on the the print I’m working on, the one with the hand collagraphs over digital images. I’ve made some changes and I’ve now got the colours the way I want so it’s ready to edition.

The next piece is mentally coming together and roughly sketched. I have to prepare two of my photos, scan or photograph a section of a deeply etched copperplate and I need a photo of pebbles. I’m still thinking about the collagraph image, which I’ll likely decide on when the digital sections come together in the first trial proof.

One long day was spent designing this year’s Christmas/Holiday card, starting with a collage of cutouts from colourful old proofs, then scanned and worked some more in PhotoShop, and finally placed into a page layout. A break in the afternoon for a walk in the lovely weather was good for relieving tired eyes, and to find that pebbly beach.

Yesterday I test-printed the page of cards then did three large sheets of 20 cards each. That’s on the wide format inkjet printer in the studio. Next week calls for cut and fold and writing letters. I no longer have the patience and energy to hand print that many cards! Sometimes I look at buying but don’t like what I see out there.

Because we agreed with the family to keep this year’s Christmas gift giving small and simple, I’m planning to sew some of them, something I haven’t done in many many years. Maybe this will get me back to regular sewing and finish several projects! Finding the time….

This morning we made one of our infrequent shopping trips and were shocked at the crowds already! We went to purchase some of the new warm-white LED holiday light strings that we’ve waited for, to replace our remaining old energy consuming ones. The cool white ones bought the last couple of years didn’t please enough so I’m glad we waited for these. Now what to do with the old strings? We don’t want them in the landfill, nor to give them to someone to consume the extra electricity that we will now be saving.