Never throw anything away

Now there's a dangerous philosophy and really, I don't subscribe to it. There are others in my family who are far worse than I—don't look so innocent—I know you are reading this and you know who you are.

But I digress. I have been in a mood to clear things out. I took a load of fabric to S.C.R.A.P. I took a bunch of clothes to Goodwill. I even cleaned out the spice cabinet. (I can't believe how many partially used bottles of cumin I had—) Sometimes it depresses me that I have accumulated so much stuff, not least of which are sketchbooks and folders with old artwork and ideas.

Last week I decided to make a salmon quilt for Illustration Friday. (See previous entry). I could have researched salmon and found photos to work from, but as it happens I did that about 20 years ago when I did this drawing.


It was for an invitation to a salmon barbeque fundraiser. It has been hanging out in a file of drawings all these years and last week I whipped it out, scanned it and it was a starting point for the new salmon.

This was not the first time it has come out of the file in the past 20 years. Several years ago when I was designing pieces for our garden art business, I pulled that salmon out and used him for a stainless steel salmon that can be mounted on a stake or on a wall.

It's hard to know what to hang on to and what to get rid of. I'm glad I'm still keeping most of my sketches.

This week's Illustration Friday topic is "Robot". I think I'll take a pass on that one.

So, have you looked at our Ecuador blog lately? We've been writing about the time we spent in Cuenca, our favorite city in Ecuador. Ray got some great pictures at the ceramics factory we visited and the Vega gallery was very inspiring. We had an interesting meal that is an Ecuadorean favorite and I share some of my favorite photos of Cuenca. Check it out—