work and work and some adventures :)

Hello my dear friends,
About a month until my thesis exhibition has to be hung. I'm so exhausted. But of course have to keep swimming. Let me tell you about the last 2 weeks. As every year it was my birthday on Feb. 14th, and I spent it quietly this year, no energy to do much of anything. So i baked myself a heavenly birthday cake and had a few people come over to eat it with. It was a Layered Chocolate Cake with Raspberry filling covered in a thick layer of Dark chocolate. For a first attempt it turned out great! My friend Anne Marie brought the candles and she couldn't get enough for 25 so her, Matt and Bhinesha did arranged them in Roman Numerals. It made a big mess of wax all over the cake but it was great! The night before my birthday Scott and I went to eat Sushi at a new Sushi Buffet place that we discovered not long ago. A bit pricey but AMAZING.

I finally finished drawing my on the litho stone I've been working on for a long time and got around to printing it last week Sunday. It was extremely exhausting, I definitely over did it this time. I think I printed about an edition of 40 (but varied papers) in 12 hours. I know I have done more for less time, but this is a big stone. And I printed by myself. So after I was so tired that on my way home I had to will myself to walk the last two blocks to our apartment without calling scott to pick me up just 6 houses away. Eitherway though printing was successful.
The dry stone, ready to be printed.

The wet stone.
Drying the prints...
On Ricepaper.

Experimenting printing it overtop some of my patterns on ricepaper.
For my birthday Scott gave me a card saying: "save the date: Feb 22nd." "things to bring: 1 bathing suite, 1 nice dress, 1 set of comfy clothes". So on Monday Feb 22nd (right after my day of printing) we hopped in the car and left for the "mystery" location. On our way Scott told me that we are going to the Eastern Townships, a town called Magog, very near the border to Vermont. Once there we checked into a cute Bed and Breakfast, then left to spent the afternoon/evening at the Nordic Station Spa. AMAZING!!!!


The craziest thing, Magog is right on a huge lake, and when we went down to the "allfrozen" lake, they had turned the walkway around it into an "ice-way" so if one desired, one could skate as if going for a walk along the water. SUPER COOL! :)

After that wonderful 1 1/2 day adventure I felt much refreshed and rejuvenated and went straight back to carving my 3rd linocut. This time to help me carve faster I heated the linoleum with a pot of hot water. It made carving easier for my wrists and hands and allowed me to make progress much more quickly.