Lake Oswego Chronicles piece, day 12

I didn't play hooky and go to the coast. I was a good girl and did my pruning (finished with all the barberries and then spent another 15 minutes digging little tiny thorns out of my hands), and then finished the Lake Oswego Chronicles piece. Well, I think I'm mostly finished with it anyhow:



Doesn't look like there's much difference between this and when I last worked on it, and there isn't. I added an undertone of orange to the window frames on the left, reshaped the bird's nest on the right, and painted out the lines that connected the flowers on the bottom. I like the fading away look of the 'winter' side of the piece. And yes, I decided to keep the bird's nest. When I took it out, it looked ok when I I had the image shrank down pretty small so that I could take it all in with one glance. But with it larger, without the nest, my eyes never would move over to the right side of the piece.

I might play with it here and there some more, but I'm mostly done with it. But we'll see what happens after my critique group meet next Thursday.

When I was out for a short walk this afternoon, it looked like someone had sawed off the top of Mt. Hood! The clouds were almost the same color as the sky:



I haven't been sleeping very well for the last week or so, mostly staying up half the night thinking about the book project with the seniors, wondering about format, structure, printing, imagery, etc. You name it, I'm worried about it. Then surprisingly, I slept well last night (probably because I'm just really tired by now), but then had one of my stress dreams—I dreamed that I woke up and discovered that I was 70 years old, except that I didn't look any different. I kept on trying to talk to people about age related issues, but nobody would listen to me, saying that I wasn't qualified to discuss the subject!