this week’s bits

Just a few images from this past week . . .

While our sons helped us move the last things and granddaughter Jayna helped me clean the cabin, daughter Kristen was at the farm cooking homemade Cajun for everyone. She also introduced Bill and me to King Cake — we had seen them for sale since moving to Texas but didn’t know the tradition behind them. And it was yummy — almost as good as her gumbo!

I found the hidden baby (representing the Christ Child) so according to Kristen, I host the next one.

While living at the cabin, I had tried to get bluebonnets to grow on our property but they never germinated — until we were moving out! This one is beginning to bloom right now, either to say goodbye to us or to greet the cabin’s new owners.

With so many extra keys, I decided to keep my own cabin key as a souvenir. (The new owners will probably re-key it anyway.) When our oldest son’s family moved into their new home and they were getting a key made for us, one of our grandsons reminded them to make mine plaid! He remembered that my own key was green plaid so he chose a blue plaid.

After closing on the sale of the cabin, our realtor Myrna Lopez, took us out for lunch. We had a lovely time sharing with each other how the Lord was working in each of our lives. I have a feeling that the cabin attracted so little interest the first 6 months (under a different realtor who had worked very hard to sell it) because the Lord wanted to bless Myrna specifically.

a goat welcome

Knowing that following the F.F.A. Livestock Exhibit we would end up with at least 2 rescue goats, Mikala gave this tin welcome sign to her parents for Christmas. It now stands near a prickly pear cactus in the front yard of the farm — too cute not to draw!

I drew this with the 2 Kaweco Liliput fountain pens shown to the right of my sketch. Both are loaded with the new short cartridges from De Atramentis, one Document Black and one Document Brown. De Atramentis Document inks sold in bottles are always water-resistant, but the Document Brown ink from a cartridge bled when I added watercolor — even though it was a full day after the ink lines had time to dry! The  Document Black in a cartridge resists water just fine. Curious!

Before church, we returned a friend’s trailer borrowed for moving to his workshop. As he got back in the truck, Bill handed me the clover leaf I drew in the upper right corner. It has wee purple hearts on each leaf section!

mucking about . . .

I am thoroughly enjoying the donkeys and goats here on the farm. Such delightful personalities! But all the feeding, watering and mucking out stalls is distracting me from sketching. At the end of the day, I’m more likely to grab a book to read than my sketchbook journal.

Today I thought I’d rectify that with a quick, messy drawing . . . of my “mucking about” boots! (Of course they are plaid. What else would they be?)

Trying to keep it “messy and loose”, I used a Pentel brush pen. This pen has been in my stash for years; I can’t recall the last time I actually used it. I think it is called a Pentel Aquash brush pen with soft black ink — the ink is more gray than black.

One other distraction of late: we are in the final week before closing on the sale of our log cabin —  moving the ”staging” furnishings and woodshop stuff, and then cleaning and mowing. Meanwhile, today our carpenter is busy moving an animal shelter from the south horse arena to the north pasture. We will need to move the livestock out of their temporary home in the barn to the north pasture before starting on the barn conversion. We adopted the rescue animals right after signing with a new realtor and we honestly didn’t expect the cabin to sell this fast. So we thought we’d have plenty of time before moving the beasties . . .

Wilbur the unicorn

Meet my unicorn! Actually this is Mikala’s goat, Wilbur, at the F.F.A. livestock show last week — shaved, bathed, and waiting to show his stuff. He and another goat, Norbert, were playing a bit rough, causing one of his horns to be broken off.

Yesterday a total of six F.F.A. goats were brought out to the farm. They were purchased by supporters who wanted to help the kids out but did not wish to keep the goats. Usually the goats are turned over to the meat packers — after all, they are raised as meat goats. But our son-in-law told the kids at Cypress Creek that if any wanted to donate their goat, we would give it a home. We ended up with five of their goats for now plus one wee runt from another school — and later on we’ll be getting a seventh goat who is currently serving as a companion to a lamb.

The weather is cold at nights and these goats have had their winter coats shaved off to show the judges how “meaty” they are. They’ve also been living in indoor pens. So for now they wear goat coats, which our daughter says looks like a pasture full of M & Ms!

Our rescue donkeys seem to know they are the goats’ guardians, having a successful meet-and-greet today. The tiniest goat, Mikey, has become Tater’s special friend!

comparing fude nibs

I have a bit of a love / hate attitude towards fountain pens containing a fude nib — a nib whose tip is bent at an angle to create a variety of line thicknesses.

I have tried the popular Sailor Fude de Mannen but I didn’t like how the feed interfered with a broad line, adding an unwanted “ghost” underline, so I gave it away.

My first fude nib pen was this Hero M-86, a gift from my sketch crawl buddy, Cathy “Kate” Johnson. Very stylish and a great nib, but the body is heavy and unbalanced __a bit clumsy__ and the cap doesn’t always post well.

So I tried what Kate did with hers: put the Hero nib onto the body of a Noodler’s Creeper. Her blog post can be found HERE. Her’s became a quick favorite; mine, not so much. Maybe my Creeper is to blame — it is very hard to get any ink to flow smoothly and the ink refill mechanism doesn’t work very well.

Nina Johansson’s Instagram videos of drawing with various fude pens can be quite mesmerizing! So after giving up on these pens for a time, I find myself returning for another try. She posted a Lamy Safari hack, actually bending a Lamy nib in a vise. I tried this and it works well . . . but the Lamy barrel is a bit too awkward for switching line width smoothly. My previous post on the Lamy conversion can be found HERE.

Larry D. Marshall once mentioned a Duke 209 fude pen on his blog and I like this one a lot. Always quick to start up again after being ignored and smooth to manipulate for various line width. But it tends to make “railroad tracks” if I draw a line too quick and the metal barrel tends to slip out of my hand. I suppose it is still my best choice. But just for fun I refilled the Hero M-86 with ink. I may play with it a bit more . . . .

slowly but surely . . .

Lately my sketching seems to get slower and slower. Not the initial sketch — I drew the basic lines above rather quickly during our Sunday morning Bible study class. But I didn’t get around to adding watercolor until early this morning. (I think it was around 4:00 am — I couldn’t sleep so I gave the wee cats a treat and then painted a bit.)

Not sure what type of paper this is in the middle of my hand bound sketchbook; maybe Stonehenge? It seems to show a lot more texture in my paint mixes (this is mostly burnt sienna and ultramarine). And my Kaweco Liliput fountain pens won’t write smoothly on it at all! This bit was drawn with a “Frankenpen”: a Hero M-86 bent nib in a Noodler’s Creeper body (Cathy Johnson’s instructions can be found HERE).

And here’s my main distraction that pulls me away from my sketchbook: my main “job” at the moment is to tame these two donkeys. Tater and Tot came from a farm (near Austin, I think) where the old man who owned them had died and a donkey rescue group re-homed them with us. They come to us for carrots and cucumbers but so far they haven’t allowed us to touch much more than their faces. We need to get them halter-trained before the vet will come out for a check-up.

So I’m spending time each day just sitting in the east pasture, allowing them to get used to me (As I just typed the last few sentences, Tater came right up to me, curious about what I’m doing — or hoping for another carrot?). Today we need to do something about the stinging nettles in the pasture — it seems to be irritating the jennies’ legs a lot. Bill unknowingly caused it to spread by his constant mowing before we adopted them.

Another “distraction”: we signed a contract on selling our cabin so we’ve been moving the rest of our stuff to the farm. For anyone curious, the new listing can be seen HERE. After the previous 6-month listing getting us nowhere, with this agent it sold in only 16 days!

at St. Joseph’s

Recently our doctor sent Bill to a new neurologist, this time at St. Joseph’s in College Station. His previous neurologist at Scott and White seeks to help patients through surgery; this new one tries to help with pain management specifically for nerve problems.

We waited for his new MRI in a separate building where there is a wooden statue of St. Joseph holding his carpentry tools. We overheard a tiny boy excitedly exclaim “Look, Mommy! It’s Jesus!”

BTW, the new doctor has tried a different pain killer and this one is actually working! Bill is able to sleep at night again, for which we are very thankful.