LIVE from Rose Cottage

Reporting live from the studio this morning on what promises to be another beautiful day in paradise.  So glad to be connected again, from my little corner of cyberspace.  Although I really do love Starbucks' morning buns!  BeeGee is up on the table right next to me and all is well in our world.

This next Italy piece is called Meridiana.  I named it thus because the view is from Meridiana Alpaca Farm just outside of Umbertide, where I stayed for 10 days on my Italian adventure in 2007.

With all my quilted homages to Italy this past year, you'd think this was the trip of a lifetime -- and it was!  I've never had the money to travel much, but in 2007 I did have a bit and Italy had been at the top of my list since I studied Italian in college, back in the days when there was still a foreign language requirement.  I think I must be part Italian -- enough people in my life have assumed I was Italian -- but I'm not really, by birth.  But by soul?  Most definitely!

I've been reading Marlena de Blasi's A Thousand Days in Tuscany, and I feel like I'm right there with her and her Venetian husband, Fernando.  And more books in a similar vein await my consumption.

All this to say that I am planning my next voyage to Italy, although it won't likely be until I'm 70, or thereabouts.  I want to be there for a good while, rent an apartment or a farmhouse in the country somewhere and use that as a base for travel throughout the country.  And I'm definitely going alone, this next time.

Anyhow, it's a long way off yet but it is my long term plan and I know I'll make it happen.  Maybe I'll emigrate there, and never come back.  Who knows?

But back to autumn, 2010, in Fortuna...I'm feeling my creative energy beginning to bubble again.  And after relative fallowness over the last couple months, I'm ready for it.

I have a show opening at this Saturday's Arts Alive! Eureka, at the C Street Hallway Gallery, 208 C Street in Eureka.  Eight pieces, some recent, some older.  If you're on the North Coast, hope you'll drop by and see the show!