Tuesday 30th June - what heatwave? When was that?

A week has passed - weeklyblogging seems to be happening at the moment.

I have to read through the previous blog post to avoid saying all the same things over again - a sign of my age? Or, more likely a sign of these times.

Anyway, Wednesday last week might have been hot, but Thursday was in a different league of hotness. My plan to walk every day last week foundered; on Thursday I stubbed my little toe and didn't feel like walking, not even in the evening when it did cool down, and then Friday it was raining when I might have gone out. That's my excuse; and I reckon Thursday's temperatures had drained every drop of energy (not forgetting that I taught eleven zoom lessons on Thursday and Friday).

Then came the weekend - and Satruday and Sunday are recuperation days, so I recuperated. Some of the time. It was my father's 91st birthday on Sunday - we celebrated with a family zoom including relations in Florida on the Saturday afternoon, and then on Sunday morning we packed the car with three chairs, a table, cake, light-up happy birthday cake decoration, plates, forks, coffee in flasks, paper napkins, and had a little coffee morning on a grassy area outside the flats where he lives.

No more family birthdays now until September - who knows what the situation will be then?

******

I have discovered hair gel. How can I have lived all these years without it? It seems to stick my fringe back away from my face somehow, without making my hair feel as though it is coated in glue or covered in grease. Magic. It has made life so much easier. Who knew such a thing existed - oh, you've already heard about it!

It reminds me of a comment by a visiting bishop, begging the candidates for confirmation to refrain from using it to look smart at the comfirmation service, when he has to place his hand on the candidates head to confirm them into the church. The bishop's face as he described the feeling of landing his hand on a head covered in gel... again and again... it did set me off wondering about head lice, too...

******

I've started messing about with water colours again. I've been trying to sort out my 'palette', if I may dignify the random box of colours by that name. I had added another 6 colours to the ones suppled in the box, based on recommendations by watercolourists on the web or in how-to books, and decided to reassess and reduce back down to 12.

Here's what I have at the moment, not exactly what Liz Steel recommends but fairly close. It gives me an opportunity to order more colours - how exciting!

The top row is Raw Siena, Burnt Siena, Cerulean Blue, Ultramarine Blue, Permanent Rose and Cadmium yellow.

The bottom row is Burnt Umber, Quinacrodine Gold (I bought it because of the name - it is a lovely colour), Sap Green, Turquoise, Crimson Alizarin and Lemon Yellow

This is the colour wheel I attempted from Ultramarine Blue, Permamnet Rose and Cadmium Yellow

This colour wheel is made from Cerulean Blue, Crimson Alizarin and Lemon Yellow.

Well, that's a start. Or rather an ending. The other thing I did was go through the pile of unfinished sketchbooks I have somehow acquired. This has some stuff at the beginning that I did a couple of years ago; I have just turned the book upside down to start at the end of the book, rather than waste the rest of the pages.