I ventured out yesterday to have lunch with my former boss. We sat and talked for two hours. We had a lot of catching up to do since we'd missed our December lunch date. She brought me a Christmas present, a set of watercolor paints and a book - a real, paper book, by John Grisham. It's been a long time since I've read a real, paper book.
Before leaving for the lunch date, I did a little painting, following along with a YouTube video. It was a painting of snowdrops, one of the birth flowers of January. It's hard to paint white things in watercolor; you don't actually paint them, you paint around them, leaving white paper showing, and then paint their shadows with very thin blue-gray.
My first attempt at the painting was not terrible, but there were things about it that did not suit me. I sketched out a couple more snowdrop paintings and finished one before I left for lunch. It was not *quite* gift quality, but I took it with me and gave it to The Boss. When I came home, I squeezed out some of the new paints and painted the rest. I did not do a background on the first two snowdrop paintings, but they needed one, so I painted backgrounds on the next two, after I'd already painted the snowdrop flowers and foliage. This was hard. These last two are not quite gift quality, either, but they're going to be birthday cards for my two aunts who are having birthdays this month. My sister's birthday is in January, too, and we have tentative plans for a January birthday girl luncheon later this month. She'll get the first card, unless the fifth one that I'm about to paint turns out better. On this one, I've masked out the snowdrop blooms and will do a wet-on-wet background before I paint the flowers.
While I wait on the masking fluid to dry, I'm going to try some carnations (also a January birth flower).
Who gets to pick these month flowers, anyway?
Do carnations bloom in January anywhere in the world, other than in a greenhouse?
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Over the snowy weekend, I made a little progress on the quilt for Granddaughter #3. You may remember that I cut off the seam allowance on one of the 20 embroidered blocks and had to make another one. I am 1.5 cross stitches away from being finished with the embroidery of the replacement block. You might also remember that I had embroidered start/finished dates on every block. As I approached those final stitches, I was pondering what dates to embroider on that block. Should I use the dates of the original block, or the dates of the replacement block? I'd been deliberately starting or ending the blocks on family-significant dates, such as birthdays or anniversaries. When it hit me that The Little Rotten Baby's birthday is this weekend, the dilemma was solved. I saved those last 1.5 cross stitches for Saturday. ;)
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