The good news is my picking style has improved markedly since my online session with @Troy in August. It’s developing into an easy almost country or folk like strum feel with a oddly loose grip on the pick which allows me to play more dynamically (soft or hard). Of course, this is when Troy generally pipes in and says “I NEVER WANT YOU TO PLAY LIKE THAT AGAIN” 
but, in the meantime, I feel like I’m making progress.
The area for which I am soliciting advice is in string muting. I’ve found, for example, when I am doing my daily Stump exercises, I can extend my #1 finger down a string to mute of the open string noise that crops up at times, well, always. However, when soloing, I still get too much open D & G string noise. Some times that’s a pick miss, sometimes it results from bending the string above, sometimes it’s just my dog in a dish playing style 
.
I’ve thought, and it could still be the case, that palm muting those strings is the canonical answer, but that hasn’t worked particularly well in my case. That could very well be because I am not palm muting properly, but I thought I would ask this distinguished forum for approaches members have discovered and work for them.
Thanks!
Hagen