On Wednesday, Baby Soldier and I had some time to kill between appts, so we had lunch and strolled around this little mall area in London that I had never heard of before, and would be hard pressed to identify.  The building is on Talbot St. and ?Fullarton???  It's a big blue glass office building, but on the lower floor, there was a food court with nary a sign of chain shops - for less than six dollars I had a beautiful lunch of a homemade egg salad sandwich on 12 grain bread with a giant pickle, a huge hazelnut coffee and freshly baked banana bread.

There was a fountain, live music provided by a man with an acoustic guitar, and some of the prettiest shops: a flower shop, a Celtic jewelery shop, a gift store so beautiful that I made a point of talking to the owner and complimenting on her decor.  Finally I was drawn into an area where a woman was seated, adding some final touches to an oil painting of tulips, and 8 or 10 large painting were hanging on the walls.

The colours of her paintings were incredible - - my favourite painting would have to be one of dark pink zinnias with a hand reaching in to the scene.  Any quilter who loves fabric would have been drawn in to look closer, because while those zinnias "read" dark pink - there was yellow, green, blue, and dozens of other colours in each petal.  To me, the centre of the zinnia flower looked alive with pulsing arteries, and plump veins, fleshy and warm.  I was completely hypnotized by it.

All of the paintings excited me, and so did the artist Rose.  We spent quite a while talking and asking each other questions.  I'm sure Baby Soldier was as uninterested as I was enthralled.  I remembered he was with me for a minute, and said to Rose, "I think we've lost him.  I'm surprised he hasn't whipped out his cell and dialed 1-800-BORED-NOW!!"  We laughed, he groaned.

We talked about our "Power Colours", and discovered that we had yet another similarity: her's is scarlet, mine is rose, although we are both naturally earth colour women.  And I was thrilled to learn she teaches art classes in her home, and will be "in residence" at this mall for at least another six months.

On to Thursday.

While I was dressing yesterday morning, I knew I had a couple of appointments ahead of me, and I was still feeling a little shaken by all the CRAP that happened the day before - so I intentionally picked pink panties with raspberry stripes hoping my "power colour" would energize me, and "gird my loins" against whatever battles may erupt this day.

In the afternoon, I went for a two hour walk to work off some stress, and then came home, stripped off my wrinkled clothes, and laid down for a bit of a nap.  At quarter after five, Itty Bitty woke me up, and we visited and giggled together for a little while, and then I remembered at 5:36 - I WAS PICKING JACQUI UP IN NINE MINUTES TO GO TO GUILD!!!! ACK!!!!  I quickly threw on some clean clothes, ran a comb through my hair, jammed my challenge quilt into my bag, and ran out the door.

Thursday night at my house is Grey's Anatomy.  When I got home from guild, Itty Bitty already was in my bed with the TV tuned to our show.  I grabbed my nightgown, went to the bathroom to change, and that's when I realized.........

......I was in a room with about 70 women wearing white capris, and pink and raspberry striped ginch.  OMG

It was Challenge Reveal night at Guild.  Here's mine:

"Square Dance of the Sea"

The Laurel Birch fish fabric was the challenge fabric.  We were each given a fat quarter, and instructed to create something using this fabric. Sooooooo many beautiful projects.  My favourite was a small handbag, and another favourite was a quilt with folded hawaiian shirts in the blocks.