Drawing ducks

I have enrolled in the next proper watercolour class - Level 3! - but I had to order some more paint so I'm cooling my heels for a while before the paint arrives and I can get stuck back into learning how to do things the One Right Watercolour Way. It is definitely time to be brought back into the fold, the last domestika course had me swiping ink across the page with a feather. Uncontrolled hippies. 

In the meantime I am drawing ducks. Or geese? My skills are perhaps not up to ornithology.

I put some watercolour on my baby ducks (colours not found in nature) to make them even cuter. Fluffy ducks.

It has been a rainy week here and likely to continue for some time. My husband has been happily showing real estate agents around our house to see how much it is worth. They fall into two basic categories - "solid" and "flash as a rat with a gold tooth". They all think we need to declutter, and have suggested we move out before we try and sell it. Fair enough. 

House hunting

Now that the seed has been planted of moving to the country before retirement, we have both been cruising the websites and day dreaming ... and the biggest cure for house daydreaming is a day of open homes! So on Saturday we visited the five most likely candidates, and it has been - well - eye-opening. Reality is indeed a bit different from day dreaming. 

We want a decent sized house on  maybe 20 acres or so within about 45 minutes drive from work, so there are a lot of options. We saw two out in Wamboin - this was when we realised we don't want a house in the bush away from the road, as we bumped our car up half a mile of track that no ambulance could ever get up, let alone a removal van. This house had the most stunning view, but was incredibly weird inside ... they had just kept adding granny flats or studio apartments; we counted five kitchens. The second one nearby was theoretically much better - sensible layout and good driveway - but the setting didn't grab us. This might be when we realised we didn't really want a bush block, but more open country. Not so keen on the trees.

We saw another one out in Carwoola near the first one we saw - another incredible view - but this was where we realised we didn't want to put any work into the house. It was a very sketchy reno that they must have done themselves - our favourite was the external wall where they'd given up painting about three quarters of the way across. The real estate agent said he thought they'd run out of paint. Anyway, a lovely location for a young family with energy to live in for a while then build their dream home. We are too old and tired. The bad furniture photoshopping on the online listing is probably a good indicator.

There was one further out in Primrose Valley that was a nice tidy house and a good amount of open land with a lovely view - this was where we realised the edges of our search area. And that a bad road was a real problem, especially in our little car, and we wouldn't be doing that trip twice a day for the next few years. 

And the last one was only on the list to rule it out - absolutely all the things we didn't want - only a hectare of land, in an estate, close to the highway with road noise and no mystery and neighbours ... and of course we really liked it and can't stop thinking about it. I don't think we'll buy it because we are not  mentally there yet, but after the day we had, seeing a driveway and flat land and fences and a four-lane road about 100 metres away were all good things!!!!

So there you go. My husband and I had a lovely day driving around the countryside mocking other people's interior decor. We stopped for a nice lunch. The photos are from my walk around the lake yesterday, it was hot and summery. 

Botanical art

I'm back into the Domestika courses and have departed from just watercolours into a bit of botanical. I started this before Christmas, and it was fun, although I don't think this detailed realistic stuff is going to be my ongoing passion. Again, another amazingly talented Mexican artist, Paulina Macial Canela and lots of spanish that I don't understand. 

She had us doing kind of grisaille, where the pencil gives the depth and the watercolour wash just indicates the colour. And trying to do it with fine tip markers as well, and ink pens. With varying degrees of success! I had to copy her azaleas as I didn't have any in my garden.

There was also quite a lot of botanicalness - actually looking at plants and flowers and seeing how they are shaped. They are all different! I shouldn't be surprised but I am. It was fun to do the mushrooms, again in marker pen, which makes you bolder than a pencil. These aren't from life, I don't have exciting mushrooms.

She also had us do a table of all our colours and how they mix with all our other colours, which I kind of knew, but it was highly entertaining to slowly do this at the front of my sketchbook. And it's pretty. 

After the course was done I looked online for other botanical artists and there are so many and they are so amazing! I googled then freaked out so googled 'easy botanical drawing' to eliminate the ultra perfectionists. And copied a few of the simpler ones, as an exercise. 

A mixed bag of beach

Another quick beach weekend after a parliamentary sitting week - after my four week extravaganza a piddly two days seems ridiculously quick. It was a bit of a mixed bag with weather; Saturday was cold, rainy and windy. I went for a short walk but it was a bit unpleasant.

Sunday was glorious though and the waves were amazing! And the water is super warm, well relatively warm, it never gets exactly tropical. But warm enough to not squeal when you get in and to stay happily in for hours. There were heaps of people there and it was all just lovely, until the point where you have to go home, which is horrible. But if I go to the beach every weekend and work long hours I shouldn't have to spend much time there at all, which is good.

The other mixed bag about the weekend was that the friends who had come to stay after I left did not leave the house in an entirely adequate condition. We had emphasised the need to deadlock the doors (after their last stay) but they didn't, so I was annoyed when I got through the front door but busting for the loo, so noticed the lights left on but went straight to the toilet which had not been cleaned at all and was super disgusting, so my irritation level after three minutes in the house was really quite high. I took a photo of the toilet bowl and sent it to my husband so he could share my pain ... in hindsight that was probably a strange thing to do? But he said he would have done exactly the same, we can be odd together. So I spent Saturday crossly discovering new gross things, and feeling slightly psycho because it's not really that big of a deal, but as we know that is my happy place and I don't like my happy place having other people's dirty tissues. Or wet towels. Or wet swimmers. Or food scraps. Or not deadlocked in ALL external doors. 

Number two has been in contact from Melbourne including a facetime last night. He is having a ball, orientation activities, gone to a party, met up with some course-mates, walked home from the city with housemates then cooked 2 am noodles, went to the beachfront ... it all sounds lovely. His room-mate has turned up too, from Tasmania, seems quiet but that is surely a good thing in a room-mate. We miss him, the house is very quiet without his comings and goings. 

Melbourne

We did it - drove number two and his stuff 700 km down the road to university and settled him in. The room was as small as we thought but doesn't feel cramped, and the building has some lovely shared kitchen and social spaces, including outside, which is great, and is very close to lots of parks. His room mate hasn't arrived yet, which was quite good for unpacking - they have their own rooms and share a bathroom and little kitchenette. We did a big grocery shop, got things like bus cards and pillows, checked out the campus a little bit, and then left him there. How strange.

I am a bit limited in what he will let me post but here is a view from his floor back to the city. About four km and on a main tram line. It is very exciting for a small town suburban kid. 

Number one made me take this photo of the sun as it set exactly in line with the alleyway we were walking down after dinner. Slightly more spectacular in real life. We stayed in a hotel in the middle of town so managed to get in a little shopping and mild tourism - the weather was beautiful and it's nice to be out and about after so much pandemic. I have slightly lost my taste for crowds and big cities which could be pandemic or might just be old age. Here we are walking back over the bridge from Southbank to the city. 

We took two cars so I drove back on my own and didn't cry at all ... not that I thought I would. He was so excited and looking forward to it that it would be hard to be sad, but the house is emptier. It is strange not keeping track of him after seventeen years! I have spent a lot of time remembering my first year and just how exciting and scary it was. Different times though, I was allowed to ring home collect once a term, and otherwise just letters. On paper. Through the mail, and delivered to pigeonholes in the foyer. We now have a discord chat :) 

Yesterday his cooker was broke, and in the course of that he discovered that the maintenance guy for the building went to my secondary school in NZ and remembers playing basketball with my brother ... not only that but his wife is ALSO from my school and was a year ahead of me and I remember her quite clearly, she was lovely, and her mother worked at the school too and that is the lesson, number two son, you cannot escape from people I know, no matter how far you move. Haha. 

Dyeing wool again

Doing some weaving really made me want to dye up some wool again - it is satisfying and much easier than fabric. Well, not really easier, but it takes less time and is less fuss. So I dug up my skein winder, made some balls into hanks, and dyed and dried them.

Not the most fabulous of colours but yarn is very forgiving, especially when you weave it together with another yarn. You can make unappealing colours look just fine.

After they were dry I wound them back into centre-pull balls. See how boring and blotchy the hank looks on the winder.

But how cool it looks on the ball - this one is on the top left. I would totally buy that in a shop. 

It was a good hobby for this weekend as I was operating in ten minute bursts between getting number two organised for uni. It looks like a lot of stuff but it's not really, just spread out. I'm sure it will fit in his (tiny) room. He's not taking the painting with him, that is just there because, some reason, husband, who knows.