Hard to believe, but…

It was ten years ago and I was pregnant with my second son, Jacob. I had just received permanent residency status and I was ready to concede that I might be living in Indiana for a while. Now it’s hard to imagine living anywhere besides Bloomington. So last week I filled out the forms and mailed my application for US citizenship! I’m excited to move through the process, and I’m imagining a big party at the end of the process to celebrate. The food will be catered and Jim will be in charge of organizing it! I’ll let him in on the details when we get a little closer to party time.

I’m on full art creation mode these days, trying to re-stock my studio for summer art fair adventures. The outline of my poppy piece appeared in the blog last week, and more recently I created the leaflets and forty stamens per flower that I needed for accuracy. Each stamen is an individually wrapped copper wire, so they’re pretty energy intensive. I’m really pleased with how the flowers and the elegant seed pods they leave behind have turned out. I also finished my daffodil and the leaves that go with it. To finish them I pressed the leaves in my big steamer. I’m so enjoying using it—it’s such a useful tool, saving me hours of tedious ironing. Soon I’ll start on my next weaving, and I’m channeling the Hilly Hundred bike race. I’m imagining hordes of colorful bicycles rolling through the Indiana countryside. That should be a fun piece to create.

In town, I dropped off two art pieces to Options for Better Living. Next week begins the Art of Chocolate fundraiser for them, which also features a juried art exhibition. Two of my pieces were accepted for display: Six Salamander Salsa and a peacock lattice scarf. I’m looking forward to seeing them at the reception on Sunday the 29^th.

And last, on Friday night my boys tested for their brown belt with a white stripe in Taekwondo at Monroe County Martial arts. They’re moving along! After the test we headed for Mother Bears. They were pretty busy, but they found us a table and we had some great pizza. When we came out the rain was just starting to fall and freeze, which produced a slick Saturday and a lot of ice scraping before the boys could get out to Taekwondo for their classes. Sorry honey, but only one car fits in the carport at a time!

Until next week…

Martina Celerin