Pippin sleepover

These girls.  They’re mermaids.  They’ve taken their sweet time getting their colours and such sorted out in my head so I could come along and pour them out of my head and onto canvas.  I’ve been fiddling with them the last couple of days.  Still a ways to go, as you can see!  They’re (probably) the last of the new designs I’m trying to get out the door to release in September.

I was down meeting with Jill and Mary last week, doing one of our lucky-girl retreats in Anacortes.

We’re very fortunate to get to occasionally borrow this amazing space for a couple of days, and all three look forward to these retreats where we have a bit of calm time to figure out what’s happened and what’s coming and what we’d love to get to.  We lay out our things and laugh and stew and ponder.  And then we eat yummy things.  Talk a bit of girl talk.  My head starts to glow with all of the new ideas that start running through it with the chance to be away, regroup, and focus.  So far we’ve only been here in fall and winter so my head was swimming in the fresh colours.

I came home from our last retreat in February with a list of designs we want to release in September and I’ve been pretty disciplined getting them done, but inevitably as my head swivels back and forth between the list and the calendar I start to chew my lip a little.  I always have so many more designs I want to do than I can get done.  But at this retreat we hammered together the new list of designs to aim to release next January.  It’s yummy.

This was my first list but it got a bit scattered and ambitious.  I bashed it down into a second list that feels a bit more do-able.   As I work on the missies up above I can feel my mind starting to wander through the list, picking out colours and patterns, and thinking about which is calling to start on first.

When I was away I woke up too early one day and doodled this out on my iPad, and then eventually turned over and got back to sleep.  So far it’s one of those ideas that comes out pretty ready to go.  Love that.  Crossing my fingers that it goes onto canvas as easily.  If so it will be waving hello in January.

Hard to think these lovelies weren’t playing in my head before drawing this.

I also used the warm cement patio outside to finally get a better shot of these three.

And on my way back I found our favourite Annie’s but in peace signs instead of the usual plain penne we get in Vancouver!  Score!  My youngest was pleased.   And I’m feeling that bunny’s groove.

It was a lovely time away and I’m back refreshed and chomping at the bit to finish up the ladies above and then dig into the new group.  Fun fun.