Category: Sketching

Water, water, everywhere – 28 May 2023

Posted on by Zogman

We’d been promising ourselves for over a week that we’d water the garden. Today we did … and a little bit more besides.

Spoke to Hazy before we got started and we were pleased to hear that Penny was no worse for her op and was making good progress, despite having a blue lampshade on her head. Heard too about their progress with getting a new boiler installed.  I asked her about a book I’m reading The Left-Handed Booksellers of London and she laughed, because she’s presently re-reading it! How strange is that?!

The hose was unrolled and the tap adapter fitted in place, but this was a fairly new tap and the adapter didn’t fit very securely, but it would do, or so I thought. Scamp started on the front garden while I kept an eye on the adapter. I went to check that the pressure was suiting Scamp when I heard the splash. The adapter had worked loose, but was still connected to the tap and sending a fountain of water over the kitchen window. I turned the tap off and fixed the adapter again, this time tightening it was a pair of mole grip pliers and turned the water on again. This time it seemed more secure so I removed everything from the kitchen sink area and wiped the window and the sill down. I was just about to tell Scamp to keep the water flowing when she was finished and to tell me, because the back pressure would blow the connection again, when the same thing happened again. She hadn’t turned the water off, but a kink in the hose had done the same thing and stopped the water flowing and the back pressure had washed the windows again. A few expletives later we were back in business with a reduced water pressure this time.
I watered the back garden and as Scamp said, you could almost hear the plants sighing after their fairly lengthy drink.

With the watering done and the kitchen back to normal again we had lunch and I went out for a walk with a different lens combination: Wide angle, 50mm macro and LensBaby 50mm and +1 diopter CU lens.  That should cover all eventualities!  I was looking for a little bluebell I’d seen yesterday and I reckoned the LensBaby and CU lens combo would give me the effect I was looking for.  However, despite having the correct tools for the job, the light just wasn’t right. I took some photos, of course, but they just weren’t what I’d intended. Then I saw the bright yellow splash of colour. At first I thought it was a Brimstone Butterfly before I got close enough to see that it was a moth, not a butterfly. Later research discovered it’s true identity. It was a Brimstone Moth. I’d never heard of such a thing before, but Google Image Search confirmed it. That was PoD sorted.

Plodded home, happy for once that I’d seen something new in St Mo’s woods.  Scamp was reading in the back garden when I got back with a glass of wine, so I thought a bottle of beer for me was in order.  Later Scamp went to prepare dinner which was Caprese Salad for starter followed by Prawn Salad as a main and Apple Pie for dessert.  Thoroughly enjoyable and while we were eating, Tubular Bells was playing in the background. Isn’t it strange to think that Tubular Bells is 50 years old this year!!

We’d just finished when Jamie phoned to tell us about the Open Gardens project they are taking part in this year and that Their boiler might, just might be being fitted quicker than they’d thought.  Keeping our fingers crossed for you both.

Today’s prompt was A Tin Opener.

The only one we had in the kitchen drawer was a clumsy plastic scissor action tin opener, then my wife suggested. this one.
It was sold to us a long time ago as a Baby Can Opener. it’s only 50mm (2″) long which probably accounts for the name.

We did a lot of Youth Hostelling in our younger days and this tool was ideal. It took up very little space in a rucksack and could open tins and bottles, plus it was much cleaner and sharper than the “Bonzer” can openers the hostels supplied. They had been clean once, I believe, but one look at their fearsome blade was enough for me to reach for our Baby can opener instead.

Since it is such a tiny little tool I thought I’d be generous and sketch it open and closed!

We watched an interesting and crash happy Monaco GP.  Wildest Monaco GP we’ve seen for years.  It even rained, which is strange.

Tomorrow we may go in to Glasgow.

Intense – 27 May 2023

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Drove through some fairly heavy traffic to get to dance class and it was hard work, the driving and the class!

The traffic was heavier than normal for a Saturday morning, but we managed to pass the slower traffic and ended up in Brookfield earlier than I anticipated. The class started with a Foxtrot. We’d expected Joy’s Waltz v2 and had practised it last night, but after a few dummy runs, our foxtrot was decent enough. No fancy rise and fall, just the basic routine but smoother than it sometimes is. It took me a while to fall into the order of the steps, but by the end we were looking quite good, and able to finish the routine and start again without stopping.

That foxtrot took us and the teachers a lot longer than they had intended, but the next one, Queen of Hearts Rumba was new to us, well it certainly was new to me. It’s a sequence dance, and after a couple of walk throughs, I was getting it right most of the time.

Third was Joy’s Waltz v2 and that v2 made a big difference. None of that complicated foot entanglement we had two weeks ago. That didn’t mean it was easy. Both of us found that we were turning the wrong way, but with a few helpful shoves from Jane I got the idea of the correct way to go.

A couple of sequence dances to lighten the mood and to bring us up to the end of the class. One, of course to Scamp’s favourite ‘Shivers’, and Stewart’s favourite ‘Green Door’.

The traffic going home is always terrible, but today for some reason it was fairly light and although we went the M74 route, we could almost have made good time crossing the Kingston Bridge instead.

I went out for an hour when we came home, but didn’t get anything startling. PoD turned out to be a buttercup flower which I liked.

The prompt for today was Your Favourite Game. Mine was Wordle

For the past year or so, since Scamp found this addictive game on a friend’s page on Facebook, we have struggled to complete it every day.
Like all good games, it’s the simplicity that makes it addictive. Six tries to find the hidden five letter word with minimal clues.

One of the best things about it is that you can only play one game a day, so you have to make the most of it, but it doesn’t take up all your day. Unlike Angry Birds which is my second favourite.

One of the worst things about it is that you need an internet connection to play it. That means if you are flying or on holiday in some remote place you can’t complete the game and if you can’t complete it, you lose all the points you’ve gained. That is maddening!

Dinner tonight came from Bombay Dreams and it was a shade poorer than is usual from them. Scamp had her usual Mushroom Paneer and I ordered a Special Handhi. I’m not sure that’s what I got, because there was no mention of a tomato sauce in the menu and there were none of the onions that were advertised. However the bread was good, Tandoor Roti. Best bread we’ve had from there.

There had been a sprinkling of rain today during the morning and afternoon, but nothing serious. We may water the garden tomorrow. Apart from that, no plans.

A glass of wine and a cucumber – 26 May 2023

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The glass was a prompt but the cucumber was in the garden.

While Scamp was off at FitSteps class this morning I did a rough sketch for today’s prompt which was A Glass of Red Wine or Juice. I chose the wine of course and as usual, the rough sketch got more and more refined until it became the painting. I was running out of free space on my concertina sketch book, so I’d drawn it on the back of a sheet from my A5 sketch book and I’d already been doodling on it weeks ago. That meant I had a lot of erasing to do once I’d finished painting. I think it worked really well.

When Scamp returned we went for a wander round the garden and that’s where I saw the wee green spider. It’s a Cucumber Green Spider and it looks like it’s just caught its lunch on its web. The web was stretched across one of the rhododendron flowers in the garden.

After our lunch, Scamp went and sat in the garden for a while and I put up a hook on the fence to hang the watering can from. That was the sum total of my work today, other that frying my lunch which was a venison burger that I found in the freezer. It was a bit past its ‘sell by date’ and had lost a bit of its flavour, but was ok with potatoes and beans. Scamp had the same potatoes and beans, but with a veg sausage.

She stayed out a bit longer but eventually gave up because the sun was coming and going all the time, just as the weather fairies had predicted.

Hoping to go to dance class tomorrow if we can get a quorum.

Leeks, Kale, Flowers and a Bow Tie – 25 May 2023

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Today we went to Torwood to buy some plants. We didn’t buy a bow tie.

We were off out this morning to get some flowers for Scamp. I bagged myself a tray of Kale and another of Leeks, both of which will be going into the raised bed once I get it fixed up again. Lunch was at Torwood too. Quiche for both of us. Scamp’s tomato and cheese seemed fine. My chicken and bacon was a bit too dry. Maybe I’m just a perfectionist! When she was last there, she’d seen a garden kneeler that converted into a seat and was quick to add it to the trolley.

Back home, I started work on today’s prompt which was “A Gift Loop or a Knot or Towel Day – a tribute to Douglas Adams.”
That is a bit of a mouthful and I had no idea what a Gift Loop was, so I took the Loop and Knot part and made today’s sketch a Bow Tie which has a Loop and a Knot. Simples!

While I was drawing and painting, Scamp was eager to get her Rozanne Geranium, planted out and an ornamental grass put in its place for now. I left my kale and leeks to stand outside for a while until I get some wood to repair the raised bed. With that done, she took her seat out and found a place in the sun until a call from Jackie interrupted her. I knew the two of them would be busy blethering, so I took that as my cue to get out of the way for a while.

I took the A7 back up to Fannyside, but first I went to M&S to get the makings of tonight’s dinner which was to be potatoes and spaghetti with a pesto sauce. Then I posted a card I’d been given in the postbox at Condorrat. Then, finally I was on my way into the great wide open. It’s such a lovely place, Fannyside. Much nicer than its name implies! Unfortunately there was a lack of insect life today. A few of the black Hawthorn flies, but that was it. I did get a quite twee rural scene of sheep lazing in the shade of the big pine trees. I quite liked it and it became PoD.

The potato and spaghetti pesto was not voted a great success, which is a pity because the pesto took a long time to get looking right. However I’ll remember to forget it for the next time!!

Hazy’s cat, Penny was at the vet’s today for a little op.  She got home tonight and was looking quite sorry for herself in the photo Hazy sent us.  Poor wee soul having to wear a lamp shade for a week.  How embarrassing!  Hope she  feels better soon.

Scamp is intending to go to FitSteps tomorrow morning and I might go for a walk to get a photo, because the weather fairies say it will be a bit cloudier than today in the afternoon.

Grass Cutting and Water Drops – 24 May 2023

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Not me, Scamp was doing the grass cutting today.

I was the hired help who moved the plant pots for the gardener to cut right to the edge of the path. Then once the cutting had been done, I moved them all back again. It wasn’t an onerous task and I’m much rather do the lifting than the cutting.

Today’s prompt was A Water Drop. It seemed such a simple task, but even with a few photos in front of me, I just couldn’t get anything like a drip to grace the paper. After three attempts, I gave up and had a “Piece ’n’ Sausage” for my lunch. I really needed to clear my head of water drops, so I drove up to Fannyside Moor and went for a walk with the A7. I’d two lenses with me. One wide angle and one macro. I reckoned I could use both today and I did. I took a few landscapes with the wide angle, the best of which is on Flickr. It’s a view from my parking place, across the moor to the Campsie on a beautiful spring day. Changed to the macro and caught a little ladybird, a Striped Ladybird to be precise. Red with white spots and stripes. I also saw a strange beetle which Mr Google says is a Two Banded Longhorn Beetl, quite a mouthful, and a host of slow flying Hawthorn Flies.

The best of the wildlife was still to come and it was the PoD. It’s a Drinker Moth Caterpillar, about as long as my middle finger and it was walking along a barbed wire fence. It was walking because these caterpillars have feet, not all do. I remember seeing one before, but I can’t remember where. Will have a look through my records.

Back home Scamp was reading in the garden and I encouraged her to have a glass of wine while I had a beer. Well, it’s ‘hump day’ (the middle of the week) so we were allowed. Scamp made stir-fry for dinner and it was really good, better than mine. After dinner I returned to the painting of the water drop and went back to basics. No fancy backgrounds, just the water drop. It worked, but I’m still not happy with it. Could do better is the expression I’m thinking sums it up.

No real plans for tomorrow. It all depends on the weather.

Where did the sun go again! – 23 May 2023

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Yesterday we sat in the garden in the sunshine.

To risk that today would have been foolhardy in extreme. Cold wind from the west, although Scamp said it was just cool, not cold. The furthest we got today was the Tuesday shopping run to Tesco.

In the morning I finished Jimi Hendrix Live In Lviv. I put a review of it in Goodreads and just in case you were thinking or reading it, I’ll warn you that my review has spoilers. Rated it at 3.5/5

Later in the afternoon I took the A7iii for a walk in St Mo’s and captured a photo of three snails climbing a dried up weed by the edge of the path. After a fair bit of post processing I came up with a mono version of it that looked better than the original colour one.

Dinner was my version of Amatriciana, perhaps with too much chilli flakes.

The prompt today asked for The Contents of a Drawer.
You don’t really want to see the contents of my drawers, do you? You certainly don’t want me to sketch them, because that could take until next week to accomplish. What I have given you instead is a sample of the contents of my acrylic paint drawer in my useful IKEA cabinet. I don’t know if the contents of any of these tubes is still liquid, because the last time I painted with acrylic must be pre-covid, maybe even pre-historic! Anyway, it fulfils the brief.

No plans for tomorrow.

Recovery – 22 May 2023

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Today was a day of recovery. No dancing, no red hot feet!

Scamp was out meeting Isobel for coffee while I ran the computer red hot, rather than my feet. I wrote up three days of blog, if you can call yesterday’s a blog. Saturday’s epistle made up for it though.

When she got back, Scamp started on the garden. There were flowers to plant and seeds to sow and tidying up of pots to do. There were snails to capture and put in a bag for later disposal. Our lupins have been covered in snail slime for weeks now but before we went to Perth, Scamp dusted the pot with lots of slug pellets. It wasn’t slugs that were doing the dirty on the lupins, it was snails. How they managed to haul their big fat bodies and their shells up those fine stems I will never know, in fact I don’t want to know. They have nearly all been dealt with. Hopefully the remainder will go for a walk with me tomorrow to St Mo’s. It’s said that snails have a homing instinct. Well, good luck to them crossing the road from St Mo’s!

After lunch I took the A7iii out for a walk in the woods and that’s where I got today’s PoD. It’s a pair of Lousewort flowers (Pedicularis sylvatica). Tiny little things. There wasn’t much else on offer today. I was hoping the warm weather would bring out some damselflies, but none were to be found. I did find a couple of Wolf Spiders squaring up to each other with their little pedipalps raised like a couple of prize fighters wearing boxing gloves. They were a bit quick for me, I’m out of practise at catching spiders on the hop.

By the time I got back, Scamp was sitting in the garden reading with a glass of wine in her hand and I chose to keep her company with my glass and a book. The book is Jimi Hendrix Live In Lviv. It is very, very strange. Based in Ukraine around 2011 and translated from Russian!

Dinner tonight was yesterday’s leftover risotto made into arancini (deep fried rice balls dusted with breadcrumbs) and they were really quite filling. We both scoffed them.

The prompt today asked for Vegetables.
The basket full of vegetables I have for you today, carrots, onion, leek and mushrooms, would make a good pot of soup, perhaps ‘Just Soup’, given some water and a stock cube or two.

No plans for tomorrow as yet. Something will turn up, I’m sure.

 

Dancing, Dancing, Dancing – 20 May 2023

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Dancing lesson in the morning, practice session if you’re up to it in the afternoon and the gala ball in the evening.

Breakfast first and, of course, we had too much of a good thing. The breakfasts are very good in this place. Self service and a bit like a works canteen, but the actual food is good, especially the fruit. After that a short rest and we were in to the practise session with a surprise in store.

Jane announced a change to the joyless Joy’s Waltz. She had rejigged it and replaced the Overturned Spin Turn with a Half Natural and an Open Impetus which probably means the same to you as it does to me. The main thing is the replacement is much more doable than the previous overcomplicated manoeuvre. I won’t say I was overjoyed, but I was relieved because:

a) She had been listening and watching us all dancing and saw the problem.
And
b) She had found something that looked similar but was danceable by all.

Later she (Jane) may try to fit in the OST again, but if not, we have a substitute.

There were a group who’d come down from Aberdeen to join us in Perth and they demonstrated their Strictly Fun Dance. It did look like so many of the sequence dances we do, but it did look much more fun than most. We might learn it.

Lesson over we had the rest of the day to ourselves. First things first, Scamp wanted to return the dress she’d bought yesterday. Next we were looking for lunch. We looked at the menu of a posh(ish) French café, called Briezh. We looked, but decided it was a bit expensive for what we were looking for. Instead we went round the corner to a Wetherspoons and had Fish ’n’ Chips with a Gin ’n’ Tonic for Scamp and an American burger with a pint of Broadside for the price of a main course in Briezh.
Next was a visit to an art exhibition we’d seen yesterday. Some lovely paintings, in fact, I was tempted to buy one but chose not to. Some pretentious dire efforts too. Beautiful building which doubled as a church and a community hub. In the exhibition we bumped into a couple of the dancers who seemed to have invaded Perth. It turned out they came from Airdrie and gave us a fair bit of information about tea dances and such around Lanarkshire and beyond.

I bought some coffee and tea from the Bean Shop and we walked around a much more prestigious and even more pretentious gallery outside Perth museum before we dumped the coffee in the boot of the car and then walked along the railway bridge that crosses the Tay then walked down the opposite side of the river and back to the hotel.

Dinner tonight was at our table in the ballroom and was much better fare than yesterday’s. Two of the couples at our table were from East Lothian and I recognised the East Coast accents. It turned out that they were from Pencaitland which was just a mile from Ormiston where my Aunt Sarah and Uncle Bob lived and also where we went for our summer holidays every year when I was wee. The other couple were Barry and Cath who we know well from Salsa and tea dances. Lots of good natured banter with them.

The usual professional dancers were giving two demonstrations tonight and then mixed with the rest of us answering questions and just mixing with people. No airs and graces from them.

We danced with the Aberdonians and learned a bit of the Strictly Fun Dance. We might manage to get the finer points of it later, but it’s unlikely we’ll get to dance it with Stewart & Jane. The teachers seem to have an unwritten law about ‘poaching’ each other’s dances.

We finished the night with the Last Waltz finally waltzing off the floor just about five minutes to midnight while others finished the night with It’s Later Than You Think!

PoD today was a couple of wee models we saw today. They’re based on a poem by William Soutar the Scottish poet. I just think they brighten up the south bank of the River Tay.

Today’s Prompt asked for a Garden Tool. This is a garden trowel made with a mild steel blade and a rolled steel handle the two parts are riveted together. It’s used to teach pupils a variety of metalworking skills. These tools last for years if they are looked after, and even if they aren’t.

Tomorrow it’s usually a sad wee dance class in the morning. Only half the dancers are there, the sensible ones having left early.

A Busy Morning – 19 May 2023

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Bags to pack, Cards to post, Sketches to do and Photos to take

Strangely for me, all the above were achieved in a morning!

This afternoon we drove up to Perth to the old dilapidated Salutation Hotel which started taking paying guests in the year 1699 and is still taking guests to this day. Inside it’s an overheated maze with a wheezy old lift that struggles to carry folk up to the third floor and that’s where we were going. We had a corner room, not open, airy outside corner room, but a tight oddly shaped internal corner with a view into a compactor where the day’s rubbish and all sorts was compressed in a skip. Delightful. I won’t mention the shower which wasn’t so much a shower as a warm drizzle. There, I said I wasn’t going to mention it, but I did. I will not speak of it again.

We had plenty of time for a walk round Perth which was looking at its best today. An almost totally calm and still River Tay gave perfect reflections and one of them became PoD. We walked through the park beside the river on a beautiful spring day. On the way back Scamp went browsing in M&S and found what might have been a new dress, only to discover when we returned to the room that it was the wrong size and would need to go back tomorrow.

Dinner tonight was served in the breakfast room. Last November it had been a slightly shambolic buffet in the ballroom. Today’s was a better arrangement and the food was ok, just ok. Dancing started around 7.30pm and continued until midnight, but we had had enough by 11.30. One of the good things about having the dance in an old hotel is that the walls and floor seem to be a lot thicker and sound deadening than in newer establishments. In our room there was not a whisper coming from Stewart’s sound system, or maybe we were just so tired by then that we didn’t notice.

The prompt today asked for Sports Equipment.
I’m not really a sporting person these days. Maybe a couple of days cycling a year but nothing more energetic. There was a time I liked a game of badminton, but that was many years ago. I almost reached the point of the owner of this racket, but not quite.

More dancing, much more dancing planned for tomorrow night, plus the dreaded Joy’s Waltz with its Overturned Spin Turn.

Stay home lunch – 18 May 2023

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What is going on here? We had to make our own lunch today after three days of eating out, we’d almost forgotten how to make lunch!

Luckily we remembered in time. Scamp remembered how to make a speciality omelette whose content must remain a secret. I had Brie, Apple and Honey on Brown Bread. I don’t mind disclosing the ingredients because it’s the way I cut the brie and the way I slice the apple and of course the way I manage to make the ordinary honey become runny honey that make mine special.

After lunch we drove down to Calders to get some flowers to fill a planter that will sit on a corner of the front lawn. She chose some Violas, some Nemesia and a little trio of plants in a pot. The planter is now full and we’d like some rain soon to augment the watering she did after planting everything out. But it was the buds on our Golden Torch rhododendron bush in the back garden that made PoD.

Not only did we have to make our own lunch, but we also had to make our own dinner tonight. It was ‘Easy Fish Risotto’ the one you make in the oven then add Creme Fraiche to lighten it I made. Then we watched Jim Moir painting gannets, a program I’d recorded from Sky Arts. Fred Parker had told me about it and it was actually very good. Painting tips and of course guest artists who got a little bit of air time. Overall, it was worth watching, as is Clive Myrie’s Italian Road Trip on iPlayer. Fifteen episodes of beautiful Italian scenery and away from the tourist traps. Recommended.

The prompt today asked for A Hat or A Cap. I settled on the old wide brimmed hat I wear on holiday when the sun is hot. It’s not the most elegant hat, but it does its job well shielding me from the sun and folds up quite neatly to go into a case. Roll on the time when I need to use it again!

Tomorrow Scamp is intending doing her FitBit thing and I think I’ll make an early start on the prompt for tomorrow. Oh yes, and post a card to Murdo who will be 80 on Saturday!