A Burnt Orange 🧡🤎

  For this Burnt Orange blog, it feels especially fitting to share my small experiment with oranges as part of my winter solstice observation. I’d seen dried oranges appear again and again in winter imagery and seasonal traditions, so I wanted to give that a whirl. One suggestion was to make a garland: slicing the oranges, baking them low and slow (200–225℉ for about two to three hours), and letting the house fill with that bright, citrusy scent. At the same time, I’d been reading about Yule and winter solstice traditions - the honoring of the sun at its lowest point, and the use of citrus, evergreen, spice, and fire to call light back in. I intended to make a garland from the baked oranges, but without twine on hand, I placed them temporarily in one of my small orange bowls. Then added a cinnamon stick, a couple of star anises, and ground nutmeg and cloves to the mix. That was when the arrangement took on a different gravity. What began as decoration shifted into something deeper...

  Nov 6, attempting hex #EA7800 and #E65D00 - A quick nod to a certain Stevie Wonder album I've always cherished This November, I dove into my very first Huevember challenge. I loved the rhythm of it. Something about waking up, meeting the hue of the day, and seeing what could emerge. It felt gradual, organic and instinctive. But the part that caught me off-guard was the community- or rather, the lack of one. Huevember is supposed to be a shared challenge, (right?) A hashtag party and a month-long of, “Hey, look what I made too!” I noticed it early on. Not just that my posts weren’t getting much engagement, but that everyone’s Huevember pieces seemed to be floating in the same lonely algorithm. I’d scroll the hashtags (#Huevember2025 and #HuevemberDay1 for example) and see gorgeous work from artists I didn’t know, and their posts were sitting there with two likes, maybe four. Little comments. Sparse conversation. Just color after color posted into the void. It made the contrast w...