painting, sewing, and so far no luck

The tallow in the little backyard illuminated by the outdoor light.

We had our coldest two nights Sunday and Monday nights. Near freezing but not, I decided to tempt fate and not cover anything or bring anything in and so of course Sunday afternoon in the north wind blowing I was out there covering my enormous Queen Of The Night and a few other things and bringing the enormous stag horn fern into the garage with a few little tender things. Already on a warming trend now which I knew and was the reason I initially decided not to protect anything. 

My new trick for rolling out my yoga mat on these cold mornings before the house has warmed up and I’ve slept later than usual is telling myself it doesn’t have to be a lot but it has to be some. Once on the mat it’s easy to just go through my basic routine. Regardless I did not roll out my mat Monday morning which I justified with the knowledge that I was going to class that night.

I finished the little painting, pulled off the tape, slipped it in the frame I measured it for and, oops, some of the white border showed because my measurements were off so I painted the white border trying to smudge the hard line created by the tape. It worked mostly but because I know I can see, although once in the frame it’s not really noticeable. I had two solutions, the one I acted on or using the bigger frame I have and cutting a mat to the tape line. I do like matted paintings so I may ultimately do that. We’ll see. I’m mostly happy with the background though the ‘clouds’ are too evenly spaced. Nothing I can really do about that now except remember for the next time I do something similar. I created those by using a paper towel to randomly pick up the blue color while it was still wet, not so random as it turned out, but it’s fine since the butterfly wing is the focus.

Now that I’ve finished the painting I can put my paints away and get my sewing machine back out and start on Paisleigh’s name blanket. If you read Ms Moon who writes Bless Our Hearts you know that she made name blankets for each of her grandchildren which I thought was a lovely idea. Since my grandkids are all adults in their 20s, I’m making them for my great grandchildren starting with Paisleigh. Harrison’s will be done when he’s older. So Saturday between working on the little painting I started on the blanket. I cut the printed fleece to the size I want and then made patterns for the letters and omg, that girl has nine letters in her name (thanks Mikey who decided the spelling), set up the spacing and measured for the solid color rectangle the letters will go on. Yesterday I cut the blue background piece for the letters and cut the letters out while Cat insisted on helping. 

Today I try to trap Ghost. Got the other cats in the catio where they will now spend the night since Ghost knows something is up and has shown no interest in the food in the trap. So we’ll see if he’s in there in the morning.