Wednesday 29th July - Coffee mug update

Well, this is just an update of all the sketches of coffee mugs I've done since the last time I posted them.

On Sunday 26th I was a bit bored with coffee mugs, and spent an afternoon happily watching and following a youtube tutorial on painting leaves. I did shove a coffee mug into the bottom corner!

It seemed to me that the paintings were all looking a bit samey, so I started being more experimental with using colour. Monday and Tuesday's mugs were just an excuse to watch all the colours running in and around each other, although today's picture is a return to realism.

I'm ridiculously excited because my new tubes of water colour have arrived, and a box with empty 'pans' to fill is coming tomorrow. I watched a youtube of an artist explaining why he chose these shades, and demonstrating how they work together and I was HOOKED. My current box of watercolours is in the bottom of the picture.

I've also ordered a new sketchbook, as this one will be more of less filled by the 'month of mugs' project.

The Bible quotes are all taken from the morning prayers in the Franciscan Daily Office Book, called 'Celebrating Common Prayer' which I've been following for a couple of weeks. 

Anyway, here are all the paintings so far!

Monday 20th July

Tuesday 21st July

Wednesday 22nd July

Thursday 23rd July

Friday 24th July

Saturday 25th July

Sunday 26th July

Monday 27th July

Tuesday 28th July - actually I cheated; I did this today, Wednesday 29th July - but I started the page yesterday

Today 29th July

Two more days of July, and already I'm pondering the next project...

Monday 27th July - Week two of Summer holidays

We've seen the sea!

I've been wanting to go to the seaside for ages and ages, and on Friday we actually made it. It was a grey blustery day with a sharp cold wind, the sea almost the same colour as the shingle with only a few hardy souls braving the heavy swell and breaking waves.

And then the wind dropped, the sun came out, and the sea became a turquoise with white twinkling tips to the waves. Time to remove my windproof jacket and fleece and walk along in a Summer tee-shirt like a holiday-maker.

We've been out and about all week; not Monday, which was, if I remember a bit of a miserable day, weather-wise.

But on Tuesday afternoon we drop to the top of Ditching Beacon and walked eastwards. I was able to use the 'distance vision' part of my vari-focal glasses for the first time in months;

It was glorious.

On Wednesday we panned to go to the Prairie Gardens in Henfield, but there was a fairly long (socially distances) queue at the entrance, so we aimlessly  drove into the viallge, and found a car park alongside the South Downs Link Path. We followed the path down to the River Adur, and then turned off to follow the river for a while, before circling back and up though tracks and lanes and roads to where we started.

We had another try at Prairie Gardens on Thursday;

The first delight was encountering the giant cardoons; I so want to grow these in our garden. They are like thistles, only about seven feet high.

It was fairly busy in the gardens, although there were other quieter parts, so we could wander along the paths through the flowerbeds, dodging the sprinklers which appeared to change direction and speed at random.

It was also full of butterflies - a Gatekeeper

Large Tortoiseshell

 Comma

There were lots of buterflies at Ditching Beacon too; notably a small blue butterfly, apparently called the small blue and some small dusty tortoisehell types, probably called the small heath butterfly. They were too quick and too small to photograph.

All these photographs were taken by Himself using a Proper digital camera. That's why there are so much better than my usual snaps using my ohone!

Monday 20th July - like a butterfly

I've been watching large white butterflies twirling around in the garden, often in pairs, in a sort of free and aimless manner.

I've just nipped out into the garden to see if there were any in sight, but no, only bees; awkward little furry things to photograph, but anyway we all know what bees look like so focus and stuff like that doesn't matter.

 

 Just as I was about to give up, lookee lookee at what caught my eye; there, in the middle,

 

I guess this is the one that has been laying eggs under the leaves of plants in my veg patch.

 

 Anyway, butterfly-like is how I am feeling - third day of the Summer holidays (and yes, I am counting; each day is precious. Teaching resumes on 14th September.)  

 

I feel all sort of ready to go and be somewhere else and see something different. This time last year we were getting ready for our first ever cruise, working through the list of things to get done beforehand; currency, last minute errands, sorting out clothes, making lists... The photograph below is of one of the gravel paths leading up to Monet's house in Giverny; the lavender was humming with bees and a flutter with butterflies. 

 

 

I am absolutely gutted at not having another cruise in my sights, especially before Brexit complicates everything (even the Brexiteers in the government seem to have stopped pretending that it will be 'a walk in the park' and 'as easy as an over-ready chicken' - presumably a non-chlorinated chicken?).

But, I suppose, in the grand scheme of things, we are fortunate. And anyway, we might have had a problem putting the cats into a cattery this year; 

 

McCavity is learning to communicate, at long last, now that she is over 17 years old. It's not foolproof yet; when she wants to be groomed, she sits on the hearth rug and waits, and we are beginning to get the message. It is harder to respond to her 'my plate is empty' request; she goes and sits by the plate, but if no-one is in the kitchen then nothing is going to happen anytime soon. 

 

Her latest communication is to come and sit close, but not settle, and occasionally give a little mew. Eventually a maliferous odour will make its presence felt... she wants her back end cleaning. After a couple of messy incidents, fortunately dealt with by giving her a dose of worming medicine and a mouthful of viscous gloop called 'defurrem', she has discovered that she can get us to do this unlovely task for her. I can't imagine that a cattery would take kindly to being asked to perform this routine...

 

Here she is resting from our labours. All things considered, I would rather deal with her back end beforehand than start putting soft furnishings through the washing machine afterwards. Having babies is good training for dealing with elderly cats.

 

Did I mention vegetables earlier on?  What magic is this? Dwarf French beans from the garden; 

Raw

 Cooked; 2 minutes in the microwave, in just a splash of water

 

I prepped and cooked them within minutes of picking them; yes, yes, half past three is a strange time of day to be eating a bowl of green beans, let alone purple beans, but they looked so extraordinary, and I didn't totally believe the friend who said that they would turn green when cooked, so I had to try them.

 

They were d e l i c i o u s. These pictures are from a couple of days ago; the next batch were stored overnight in the fridge before cooking - nowhere near as good, but we repeated the quick-pick-prep-cook scenario yesterday and they were just wonderful again. There's a message in that somewhere. 

 

I've spent this morning finishing off the facemasks from Saturday. The fiddly sewing in loose ends bit. A friend has given me some elastic, so they will be in the post tomorrow, I hope. I was pondering the relative merits of hand and machine sewing... one is slower, with no finishing off stage. The other is quicker, and then you are left with nearly a dozen thread to tie off and clip. 

 

Ho Hum. This week I intend to be intentional; to do things 'on purpose', rather than let things just happen. It's 2.30pm on Monday and I'm doing well so far. 

 

 

Saturday 18th July - And.... breathe.... relax

I finished teaching for the term (officially) yesterday.

The last two weeks have been a maelstrom of piano lessons scattered throughout the days, schedules changing almost hourly as students miss lessons, have other lessons, go on holiday, have extra lessons at school - oh, you name it... it happened...

The net result is that I would end the day reeling, and blogging just didn't happen.

Ah well. Summer has propery i-cummen in, at very long last. I've reired now, from one of my employers, or will have done after Monday. I had a splendid time this morning recycling loads of the blah blah blah paperwork that used to blight my life... when I've finished this post I can feel another happy half hour operating the shredding machine coming on.

(I have just had the typos pointed out. I'm leaving them in. Seems fitting)

I managed to keep up the painting...

no cup painted on Sunday the 12th, by the look of things; I did other stuff instead.

I'll keep this up until the end of July, then think of something else!

I've also been making facemasks; the shaped ones, not the pleated version, simply because that's the video I watched first.

I tried one on - it's not that annoying to wear. I've used the leftover fabric from making this top a couple of years ago to I was a bit matchy-matchy - I suppose I could make masks to match my other tops that I've made and got scraps; no, and there again maybe not.

Someone sitting quite close to where I am at the moment told me that this is the expression I had on my face when some of last week's zoom lesson's were more than usually wayward.

Saturday 4th July - Discouraging Weather

I'm very glad it is grey and cold and blustery today. That might sound a bit mean, but today is the day that pubs andbars re-open, from 6am (six o'clock in the morning!! although I suspect not many will open their doors at that hour) and the tabloid headlines have be all 'let's go and have a good time at the pub! Although, to be fair, most are also saying (in smaller type) 'don't blow it.

Zoom piano teaching continues; we've upgraded the internet something or other in the dining room, where the piano is, involving miles of purple cable and several torrid hours of crimpimg connections to ends of said cable (and a few choice words). The result is that zooming is much improved - most of the time. I have a couple of students with truly horrible connections, where I'm listening with intense concentration to try and distinguish the actual sounds they are playing from the surrounding 'snap, crackle and pop' noises. I think this extra noise comes mainly from having other children playing and talking and using the computer in the same room, confusing the poor old zoom connection.

I shall still be zooming in September, as far as I can see. I've probably said it before, but zoom lessons are far more intense to teach and administrate than face to face, so I will have to manage my time carefully.

I'm following a number of watercolour sketchers; one, Liz Steel, starts her day by painting a sketch of her coffee. That's a good idea, I thought;

Liz Steel gets to go out for her coffee to a coffee shop whenever she wants... that's because she lives in Australia. Going out for a coffee is one of the things I am sooooo looking forward to.

Perhaps I should start a list of things to do once I feel that the chances of catching covid19 are properly reduced.

Meanwhile, there are books to read, weeds to pull up, and potatoes to harvest. Yes indeedy! I dropped a couple of chunks of potato into a suitable container way back at the beginning of March, and they are ready just in time as we are about to run out before the next delivery in a week's time.