Sierra’s new friends

When Sierra came here to live after showing in FFA shows and eventually at the Houston Rodeo & Livestock event, she was by herself. Except for a feral Siamese cat we named Egret for her habit of following the cow around her small pasture. Most cows in this area have white egrets hanging around them but none visited her.

Now her pasture has been opened up and she has joined four FFA goats and two female donkeys that rule them all. And Sierra absolutely loves her new “family”! Then, recently Michael discovered some egrets coming to call on Sierra.

books, books, and more books

Admittedly, I am a voracious reader. Always have been. These days, mostly ebooks checked out from a Houston library. The only “real” books on my shelves tend to be those that I intend to read over and over.

Normally I don’t care for books written by new authors about existing characters from previous authors. But “The Beekeeper’s Apprentice” sounded intriguing (featuring a 1920s young lady apprenticed to the now retired Sherlock Holmes) so I put it on my library “hold” list. And waited and waited. Apparently, it’s a popular book series, much in demand.

Finally I was able to read the first book — and loved it. So I waited again for the next 2 books in the series. Being impatient, and realizing that I would enjoy reading these over again, I planned on buying them. . . . . “They want HOW MUCH for the ebooks?” 

Instead, I found the first 16 books of the series on eBay for less than half the cost of ebooks. 

The following week, I won a bid for these illustrated Dorothy L. Sayers mysteries that I also love to re-read. I’ve apparently become a book collector.

wild morning glories

I had to really work to get morning glories to grow when we lived in Kansas. Here, they grow wild like weeds! In fact, this year has been an exceptionally good year for them.

The washi-tape I used to tape off a frame for this sketch tore some of the paper when I removed it. Odd — it hadn’t done that before.

feeling better . . .

The Jelly Babies that made my sore throat feel better are gone — but so is my sore throat. All-in-all, this has been a pretty mild case of Covid, and meds took care of the strep throat and flu. Bill only had Covid, and he is doing much better as well.

And our Corgi, Butters? She happily insists on several games of fetch every day. She knows we need the sunshine, after all. 🌞 

(Because it is autumn, I used my palette of earthy, granulating pigments.)

one sketch for Inktober

In past years I have had fun joining online sketchers doing one ink drawing a day for the entire month of October. This year I am not participating, but I just refilled my Falcon fountain pen and drew this to celebrate Inktober anyway. My current viruses and strep throat are making me feel a bit foggy, so I added a Demi Palette full of “foggy” colors.

Then as an afterthought, I added some Jelly Babies. They are very soothing to my sore throat right now! Dr. Who #4 would approve.

The Art Toolkit in the second photo is my favorite, an in-between size that is no longer offered. It has my favorite color turquoise trim, and holds just enough supplies while still feeling small in my hands. The footstool is one that Bill made me years ago to go with the Morris chair he also made — Butters has claimed it as her jump-on-the-couch stool so I had to clean Corgi hair off before taking the photo.

Butters has now reclaimed her stool.

inconceivable !

Today I was told that what I thought was a sinus infection is Covid . . . plus the flu . . . plus strep throat. (“What, all three?”)

So I sketched about it in my sketchbook. 

I’m feeling very ridiculous at the moment. 🥴

(Drawn in continuous contour line using a ridiculously tiny turquoise fountain pen, then a bit of fluorescent watercolor added, in keeping with the silliness of it all.)

greeting cards

Closing my Etsy shop a couple of years ago left me with several small sketches just stored on a shelf. So I decided to turn some into greeting cards. (Has anyone else noticed the increasingly poor quality of commercial cards?)

It began with a sticker . . .

This week I am getting a new iPhone, so I ordered a new case. It came with some small stickers, one of which is a corgi camping; I had set up my green Demi Palette for using when camping in the forest and my corgi camps with us — so I added the sticker to the palette.

The forest color card folds out to show some of the mixes from these pigments. I also have an alternate color card should I wish to not include the mixing palette.

Then I remembered a small cactus sticker (I can’t remember where I got it) — and added it to my “Baby Cactus” Demi Palette. 

While I am personalizing palettes, I removed the paints from my Triad Pocket Palette, moving them to another pocket palette. Turquoise / Teal is my favorite color so I moved my most-used colors to this case. These are the colors of our part of Texas, influenced by Lisa Spangler’s Gulf Coast & Texas prairies choices from a few years ago. Originally I put it together as a Demi Palette; the larger size includes two new colors (Schmincke’s Shire Blue & Letter Sparrow’s Black Current) just for fun.

UPDATE: True to my normal habit, as soon as I posted this I made a change in the “Texas” palette! Potter’s Pink is not in Lisa Spangler’s original set that inspired this palette, but she includes an orange and a violet. Since Black Current is similar to Potter’s Pink, I removed the pink and added mini pans of orange and violet.

random sketches

Just a few random sketches of interesting things seen in the past 3 weeks . . .

The American Beautyberry plant was growing in the Sam Houston National Forest we camped in — great for keeping mosquitoes away! I saw the rooster perched in a wheelbarrow at Bill’s sister’s home in Kansas. And Bill brought me the small rose-colored mushroom because he knew I’d like to draw it.

sketching with friends

After spending a week in the Wichita area, we headed up to Excelsior Springs, Missouri to visit our dear friends, Kate and Joseph. Sharing tea and cookies with us were some of her whimsical “Little People”. After returning home, I sketched Duran hugging his dragonfly from a photo.

The four of us (and my corgi, Butters) later headed to Isley Park where Kate and I used to sketch springtime wildflowers. There, I drew a wonky sketch of the shelter’s fire pit — and Kate snuck a photo of me when I wasn’t paying attention!