Retreat's Thursday flows into Saturday

My Thursday at the Women's Retreat just echoed another day in paradise, with no relief in sight! After arising early (yes, only the quiet fishermen we up on the lake at the same time), awareness-awakening yoga, and another amazing breakfast, I introduce paperclay, one of my favorite mediums. Here you see one of the participants determinedly creating paperclay pizza! Yes, I did say pizza!! Endless ideas have to cease to allow a quiet Buddhist Meditation before it's lunch time.

Chef Izzy outdoes herself again (with Roasted Asparagus, Poached Egg, and Brioche and Creamy Shallot Vinaigrette) and happy round tummies we waddled down to the "Miwok Holes" area. There Jean instructs us in the dual assignment of imaging and writing our own Haikus. I love these stacked granite shore rocks with fasciniating rings demonstrating different water levels with a few yellow leaves clinging on to Autumn. So this become my subject for the Haiku. And you can see my resulting page too.

Thursday evening tumbles into Friday. We are served home made jams by Izzy and not only were the yummy but all us artists were in love with the glowing colors as the sun shown thru the jars! Of course, I had to paint them! Friday at the Retreat included making our precious individual books (stay tuned to upcoming blog entries to see mine). The formal instruction/schedule ends after our Alumni Lunch and participants sprinkle around doing their own bidding.

Saturday finds us all finding our own fun direction. I'm seeking some solitude and head off to the East end of the lake for a solitude filled sketch. Some of the others had gone on out on a mission to pick up any stray fishing line and/or fish hooks cluttering the beaches. So when they all returned with some actual "beautiful" rusty ole' hooks, I selected one that had to go in my journal. Here I've installed the hook in Mod Podge and sliced the business card of the quite delicious Mexican "El Vachero" Restaurant we ventured off to Arnold to try.

I'm really pleased with the diversity of this page and how it all melds together. It so is reminiscent of the quickly flying-by-time there at the end of the retreat. We all wanted to cling onto the close friendships and the exuberant laughter that we so often shared. But we all knew . . . our time together was trickling away.

I found my journal actually got kinda of shaken up and out of order. You see we had a medical emergency that had to be dealt with and it did scatter the usual organization of my mind. But I learned I could handle it and come out grateful for my health, the "miracle" participants present at the retreat and the eventual positive outcome nurtured by everyone's caring.

Life is a miracle . . . sometimes I just need reminders!

Settled Back In . . .

Yes, I have now, finally gotten settled back in and relishing my charmed life at home. I'm updating my journal . . . attempting to catch up all the incomplete pages from my "Women's Journaling Retreat" at Lake Alpine Resort (http://lakealpinewomensjournalingretreat2010.blogspot.com/) in California. Here's one I just HAD to re-do.

This was from a Mandala exercise and the image I received was of a hawk. He was very up close and direct, not necessarily confronting, but honest. Boy, have to tell you, on the spot, my mind could NOT conjure up the face of a hawk.

So, I did my best. I wrestled because I wanted a closer viewpoint, but ended up with this sad rendition of what looks like to me, a parrot with a "bad bead" day. I was further bother by my use of wax crayons, making the image speckled because of the cold press watercolor paper. ARGH! I just kept apologizing to the "Hawk Spirits" and as soon as I got home ... one of the first things I did was correct the vision of what I'd REALLY seen.

I did keep available for viewing the under drawing ... just to remind myself that I've not mastered the memory of a hawk and need pay more attention to creatures of nature. I hinged the left corner and then, using a thin ribbon, made 3 slits. One slit was in the edge of my new piece and the other two are in the journal page itself. Tying a knot under the new piece, then threading the ribbon thru the bottom up, affixed the ribbon to the movable piece. And then I could weave the ribbon down into the first slit of the journal page, coming back up thru the second, forming kind of a "tension" fastener.

The sweet lil Aspen leaf was from the hike my co-instructor, Jean Warren (http://www.jeanwarren.com/), and I took. It was our first full day at Lake Alpine and we'd wanted to drink in the lusciousness of the area. I knew of a mild hike (4 miles) that took us to Duck Lake. There were the gorgeous beauties of Aspen trees that had inspired this image many years ago. All of them had gained much circumference, just gaining power and beauty in my opinion. As we were leaving the meadow, I found this sole yellow Aspen leaf and, of course, had to revere it in my journal. I used "Mod-Podge" to seal it into the journal and preserve the leaf.

It's a perfect way to punctuate the ending of one of my journals . . . on to many more . . .