Ever heard of De Quervain’s Tenosynovitis? Wish I hadn’t. It means I did too much of something. A right-hander did too much with her left hand. Now my left thumb is in a weird splint that removes the opposable function of my thumb.

It is temporary. I said, ‘IT IS TEMPORARY!” This second shout is in case the splint is muffling the ears on my thumb and it hasn’t yet heard that it needs to heal quickly.

Perhaps having 2 opposable thumbs is really over rated.

A Customer-Friend (or is that Friend-Customer?) asked for seven 2″ square paintings. He knows a lot about a lot of things, and likes his art to have significance. Because of this admirable quality, he researched the 7 top fruits and nuts produced in California and chose them to decorate his kitchen. (I know some really interesting people, by the way.)

My normal way of holding the mini-canvases on my left-hand is currently unavailable. (My normal way of doing many things is currently unavailable but for purposes of the blog I’ll just stick to the subject of painting.)

There are many little items in the workshop where I paint because I share the space with my Always-Prepared husband. These little clothes-pin-like items worked perfectly, but alas and alack – a lack of enough of them drove me to improvise.

I don’t know what these pipe thingies are but they fit just perfectly into the back of the canvases and my 4 non-splinted fingers wrap around them just fine. As an added bonus, they are free standing.

An added benefit of the little clothes-pin-like items is that I can pinch them onto the edge of a cardboard box flap. (American ingenuity at work on a Chinese box)

The paintings are not finished – they need to dry, get retouched and signed, dry again, get varnished, dry yet again and get shipped.