Talking with a friend of mine recently, I was elaborating on the history of the flowers and why I thought the art form died off. What we couldn’t figure out though was why, all of a sudden, the art form started in the first place, or where exactly.

So now I’m trying to locate the beginnings of the flowers and I’m not having a whole lot of luck in that area. But the current project is to get some of the actual writing done since my hands need a break from construction for a week or so.

My latest haul of library books isn’t quite as helpful as the prior batch was and I’m running out of directions to pursue.

But I’m still working on the project. I finished a carnation last week (which I think is why my hands are stressed) and several dandelions. I will be working on buds when I get back to it next week.

After an amazing and wonderful weekend I am back in the workroom.

There was a commercial about an old lady who “put all her photos on the wall” and her friend says “it doesn’t work like that – none of this works like that.” And that was going through my head as I taped a bunch of photos on my sliding glass mirror closet doors in the work room. I could only fit ten columns of pictures but it should help me figure out some of the finer points. I have the picture of the shrine on top and then photos from the shrine below it so that lilies go across and roses go across – a pictorial graph if you will. I think being able to look at the pictures like this will help me make connections that I can’t make by just looking at the pictures one at a time. And I would like to add that the photos look much better on paper than on the computer.

In other news I got to meet another flower fanatic on Friday and we had a great conversation about the different types of flowers and the progression of designs through the ages. On Saturday I spent time with a large group of friends and just relaxed. Sunday I went shopping and got silk  – lots of different silks. I’m going to try a few more different types and I got a few more colors of the ones I like. I found it a bit odd though that the woman at the store didn’t know the difference between filament and spun silk – I now have to look up what I bought because I can’t determine just by looking at it on the spool.

This is the first weekend back. Almost right away after returning I decided that I needed to move furniture. I like moving furniture – but I couldn’t find my special wrench and then I did – and so I moved the beds but didn’t get to the rest of it. Anyway – yesterday I rearranged the rest of the furniture and the closets and now I have everything where I want it to be. I have a workspace setup now so that I can actually work on flowers. I even got to try out the new Optivision goggles and I just know it’s going to cut down on eye strain but will probably cause me to get manicures because my nails look like crap at 7times magnification. I still have to organize some pictures and send off some emails to get some more info. I also need to get a real computer – and get that all setup so I can scan and print but I’m not sure yet where I want to set that up. I want it to be somewhere comfortable but not the living room or the bedroom. I’ll have to think on it and then I might have to just get a laptop and a wireless printer.