Mother Time

"Every twenty-eight days the moon moves through all twelve signs of the zodiac to return to the same place in relation to the stars. Due to this lunar cycle, twenty-eight day months have divided the year in many cultures and still do in various Hindu, Islamic, and Hebrew traditions. Women’s menstrual cycles average twenty-eight days and have been symbolically related to the moon’s cycle throughout history. Interestingly, human gestation, the time it takes for a fetus to develop in the womb, averages 280 days. No wonder that the moon is often feminized and in many native cultures is called 'Mother' or 'Grandmother.'"

This is an excerpt from my new book edition project called Mother Time. I am working on 3 projects at once, all towards various deadlines. All the holidays are working ones for me! Billy has been a big help, cutting stencils and some linoleum for me, and cleaning the press in between as usual. I don't know what I would do without him. Shweta was also in the studio with me this weekend, helping me with excellent color suggestions and making multiple serious offers to organize and clean my studio. I could use some of that!

We were all pretty tired after having a lot of grandkids playing and climbing all over us, cooking, dish washing, and eating lots of pie. (It was all good.) We all had such a very good time. (The pies were 4: apple, cherry, pumpkin, and coconut cream. The grandchildren were 4, adult children were 4, Grandparents were 2, and the dirty dishes were endless.) There was even a snowball fight!

But we were tired the next day and Bill still worked so hard on a stencil for me to use for the print up top. Unfortunately, he cut a 42 pointed star instead of a 28, and we had to start all over again! I know I'll use it eventually, so it's nice to have it in the back file.

By the way, this printing style is done with stencils. The printing technique I learned from Kathy Kuehn, but designing and cutting stencils to make them I figured out on my own. I love it!