So grateful for the new members joining this month! If you haven't already, please comment below and introduce yourself to the group. Where are you in the world? What do you enjoy making? What would you like to learn here? Anyone who joined in May or earlier, feel free to jump in and introduce yourself here as well. ❤️🥰 @Christine Vabre @Cynthia McPeek @Elna Vlok @Ann Yanes @Sara Gouge @Cheryl Atwood @Stephanie Poire @Hassan Zia @Igone Fanlo

I need your input on which tutorial you'd like to see in the classroom first. Choose one from the list below. And if you'd like a tutorial on something not listed- please let me know in the comments. Thanks everyone.

Hi everyone, you may not know this about me but i’ve been a practicing Buddhist for about 17 years now in the Tibetan tradition. In this tradition the number 108 is very auspicious- thats why there are 108 beads on every full size mala! 😊 So, now that we have reached 108 members in this community I’d like to post this small celebration. May you all have happiness and the causes of happiness. 🥰🙏 Enjoy these pics of my flowering cactus from a few days ago, and feel free to post your own pics of the beauty around you down in the comments! Whatever we focus our attention on grows in our life. ❤️

...with red cabbage of course! Here are my results from two rounds of dyeing with red cabbage. These are silk and wool, scoured first, and then mordanted with alum. Straight red cabbage water gives a beautiful purple. Adding baking soda gives a blue or green depending on how much baking soda you add. Adding vinegar or lemon juice gives a magenta. The wool had a yellow tint to it, so that warmed up the colors quite a lot.

Let's celebrate by sharing what you've been making recently, (or maybe what you'll be working on the weekend?) I'll go first: this is the most recent watercolor painting I made. It was a photograph from an article about a mama cat who, even though she had just given birth to two babies of her own, took on another baby kitten who had been left behind by her mama. I was so touched by the story and also by the image, I had to paint it. I haven't had the opportunity to be a mother to a child, so I like to consider all the other ways in my life that I "mother." I definitely give birth to every single work of art that I make. I mother/take care of my sweet niece and nephew Janey and Johnny (my brother's children I've painted in watercolor) when I spend time with them. In a sense, I am "mothering" my own mother who is suffering dementia-related memory loss and needs help with so many things. And I consider my work with coaching clients as another kind of mentoring, taking-care, a.k.a. "mothering," maybe more along the lines of "tough love." I celebrate ALL mothers, and ALL flavors of mothering that you are involved in. As you might not know, I am a Buddhist practitioner, and in Buddhist teachings on Basic Goodness, they say that our natural instinct to want to take care of, and prevent the suffering of a baby or child is evidence of our "Basic Goodness." ALL beings without exception have this quality, though it may be more or less obscured to some extent. Our practice is to recognize this basic goodness in others, in large and small ways; every time someone shows kindness to another- holds a door open, says "thank you", lets you in front of them in line, or even simply smiles at you--recognize that and rejoice.