A few Saturdays ago, I took a tapa painting class at a craft gallery in town.

Tapa: it is a bark cloth, beaten from the inner bark of the mulberry plant. It is beaten on a long log with a mallet to make pieces of cloth, which are then glued together.

Painting tapa is not as easy as it looks, the paper is so thin that all the ink bleeds and runs and messes up your designs. And you don’t use a brush, you use a small piece of … well, I’m not sure how to describe it. Kinda like a piece of bark with softer fuzzy bits on the ends.

So if my paintings look like a little kid made them, please be nice and tell me they are fabulous.

In other news, I’ve been sick with various ailments (two bouts of food poisoning, an eye infection and major dental pain) in the last week but I’m slowly on the mend.

Thanks to everyone who sent me lovely messages and listened to my complaints on Facebook.