red bellied woodpecker

Some of my original watercolors I am working with at the moment

I've been working on my watercolors and fabric patterns for this coming spring and summer, which is both exciting and annoyingly agonizing.  Yesterday I spent hours arranging and re-arranging patterns, and the day ended before I had anything I liked enough to keep.  But to make something good takes time, and when I create the right thing, I will recognize it, and it will be worth the work and the wait.  In the meantime, to encourage myself to be patient and not to overlook things that are happening outside of my seemingly non-existent pattern-making progress, I remind myself of a message I got on the tag of a teabag about a month ago:  "Every smile is a direct achievement."