"Red Umbrella" copyright Ruth Armitage 2011, Watercolor on Paper 15x11"

This is a painting from my workshop at Umpqua Valley Arts last month. I’ve been absent from the studio most of this month, preparing for the holidays, enjoying the camaraderie of friends and fellow artists. Thank you for your interest in my work and support over the past year here at my little internet home.

According to my stats counter, this year has seen over 18,000 unique visitors to the site. You’ve visited 41,558 times, accessing over 109,000 pages! According to Google Analytics, over 30% of you are return visitors, and the blog has been read from 46 different countries around the world. Many of you have found me via Facebook, others through Google and via other blogs and websites. However you arrived, I thank you for your visit and hope you’ll come again! If you find something that interests you, please pass my link along to a friend 🙂

I would like to say something about giving here. It is not easy to find the right gift for those dear, rare people we want to spend our lives with or those who have been entrusted to us to care for. The best we can hope, is that our overflowing hearts are imprinted on the small tokens that we choose to pass over the spaces between us. I hope that your giving and receiving contain the overflowings of many hearts this Christmas season. My gift to you below:

The Lanyard, by Billy Collins

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khQ9e0QpEM8]