Whee. School’s out! Time for cake!
I feel like a bit of a fraud. June used to be such a whirlwind of sports days and wrap up parties and field trips. Now I just have one left in school and she is big. She has to remember to show up for a couple of last exams and I have to remember to finally get my student fees paid. Which I did, contrite and apologetic. And Lauren got through her last classes where there wasn’t much to do, finding something to fill in the time.
I love it when my genes show up in my kids, even though they all swear they’re not creative. This beautiful thing was even better in real life.
It hasn’t really felt like June. Maybe early April. Rainy grey days and beautiful evenings.
My phone couldn’t catch the delicate shades of lavender, or the glow of the water.
The cats love getting out and running around on the porch at night. The new railing (porch redo ongoing) is wider than the old one, and Scout — who is built a little less agile than the featherweight Lucy — gallops back and forth on it in delight, where she used to have to concentrate and place her feet carefully.
Unfortunately Lucy has already brought in a bat, and usually when this happens I can get it back outside with hopes that it’ll be OK but this one definitely wasn’t OK. I felt sad for it. Poor little thing.
There have been such awful things happening in the world lately. What’s going on with us? One day I was especially feeling it all and went and worked outside, continuing on with trying to reclaim my space from blackberries and grass and trees, but in a quiet little side yard where I feel like I’m half in the forest. There’s something so calming about working with all that green, and I still have plenty of green left behind. Plenty. So much plenty.
I can never resist a shot of the two of the girls together. It happens so rarely. They were guarding me from rustles and crackles.
Better gardens than mine have started filling our bellies with these treats, and I really do prefer them to cake. They’re more than worth the collywobbles that follow after sometimes.
I like this guy’s style. A Pippin pea. Keep on swirling. I feel you.
This was the first bowl of local strawberries. I’m thinking of painting them later today.
I got the last designs for fall release done, including a dozen cakes. Now I’ve been digging into the juicy list of new designs to work on next, for release in January. This is my favourite part I think, when I have a bunch of ideas that have been calling hard from my brain for months and finally will get a chance to come out. The occasional one that just skipped and plopped itself at the front of the line. There’s no order the new things have to be done in, just one big deadline at the end, and right now they’re at the stage of juicy sketching and working with layers of tracing paper and funny little drawings blown up on my printer. I often try to start from the little thumbprints I draw all over, in sketchbooks and notebooks and on scraps of paper here and there. Sometimes in my iPad. Those little drawings usually have the freshest quirkiest feel to them, and if I use them as my first draft I think the designs turn out a little more playful. Last night I watched a movie while I waded through sketches, making notes and tracing bits and getting them all in their own folders, which mean they have arrived and are legit. I bought myself new folders last week and couldn’t narrow it down from orange and hot pink. Yum. The store called them red but they’re a gorgeous shade of cherry, and the orange ones are light like that mango colour I love. How could I leave one of those behind? So I have some new system where they’re in the orange files until they get to a certain stage when they get moved to pink. I’m telling myself that’s so I can look at the folders and have a good feel for how many designs are at the drawing stage and how many are close to being finished up on canvas but this is completely bogus. Totally bogus. I just need the story that lets me mix orange and pink together.
I will say this. I’m especially motivated to move these designs along so I can start mixing those pink folders in.
But for this afternoon I’m going to put them aside and pick up my other type of paintbrush. Stevie Wonder has been singing me through this writing, brought about some desk dancing, and I think he might follow me into the studio.
And these guys will be ready for stitching or chomping in September. Hope you like them.
