Blair and I and a group of six others will be trekking for 17 days near Manasalu in Nepal. We plan to give these images as gifts to our hosts and acquaintances we meet along the trail. I just hope I haven't breached some cultural taboo or somehow shown poor etiquette with this offering.

After weeks of failed experiementation with color laser transfers, I bought some Epson ink jet transfer paper and finally made good transfers of the DalaiLama onto Premo gold/copper clay. I mixed metallic clays to resemble what I think of as aged brass. We'll string the images on wine colored satin cord. The backs are stamped with a small sun image.

The beads passed their first test, both of my children wanted one...always a good sign.

We take off on April 1 and will return April 28.