tis the season

to be hot and grumpy, I'm afraid. 37 degrees here today and blowing a gale - I took A and his girlfriend to work this afternoon and the car was rocking in the wind.  If there's one thing I hate it's the hot north wind.... However this time next week we will be rugged up against the cold of an English winter and possibly some snow :)

I leave you with young W's version of Bat Santa

 

into the studio

I decided to take a day off from study (hopes supervisor isn't reading...) and spent the morning in sloth and ta da! the afternoon in the studio...

It has been ages since I just pottered around not feeling doleful about my lack of productivity. I played around with some paint (fabric paint on rice paper, silk and stitched dupion)

and some stitching (perle 8 on folded onion skin paper)

gessoed some more sketchbook pages

 and finished sewing the lace edgings on my swaddling band.

tree's up!

 

father pteranodon christmas

damn - just gone midnight but for me this is still Friday night, so still meeting my self-imposed discipline of posting every day... I was adjusting the size of various photos and lost track of time...

but the Christmas decorating has begun!

Thursday

This blogging every day stuff is not easy - I clearly need more filler photos.  Today was full of activity but no photos were taken: you will have to make do with this one, of our preaching pteranodon.

It was a vilely hot 39 degrees here but I had a very cheerful lunch with my ex inlaws, now friends who have been unfailingly kind to me in the 26 years that I have known them. My mum and auntie joined us in a local cafe and much chatting and reconnecting was had.

Then it was a meeting with my lovely supervisor who gave me the glad tidings that the presentation I was going to give next Tuesday has been postponed until February next year - calloo callay!! Hopefully by then I will know some more about the subject (even if I don't feel that I do).

Now back to hip and shoulder some cats away from the air conditioner where they are sucking up all available coolth.

wednesday

Today has been spent doing my Italian revision and some uni work.  Kind Dog and I have been doing an intensive Italian course  - 3 hours on a Wednesday evening and homework tends to get left until Wednesday afternoon..... We enjoying it and, apparently, making good progress although I find the school girl French and German of the long distant past rises up like the Amityville horror and I say Entschuldigen Sie bitte instead of scusi and write qui instead of chi.

There being no Italian class related photos available I leave you with a photo of my new bike - tree frog green and very comfortable.

I haven't been on a bike for 20 years so it's a bit scary and I get rather nervous in traffic. But the plan is to ride to uni so I will persevere.

sketchbook project

About 6 months ago I signed up for the Sketchbook Project - run out of the Brooklyn Art Library in New York, they send you a sketchbook, you fill it with your creative stuff and send it back and it becomes part of the Sketchbook Project exhibition.

Which is great - except I have done NOTHING in my sketchbook and it's due in New York by mid January.... when we will be honeymooning in Venice.

 So I have been wielding the gesso and fibre paste, and the ink spray bottle and thinking of next steps.

And because I have to send the sketchbook off forever I'm doing some similar pages in my own book as well.