Ellie has taken up quite a lot of it, as I'm sure you can imagine. From tomorrow she is all safe to go out in the big wide world so that will be another huge step forward. She is growing well and has a few basic things understood. Mind you going out to the loo when it's pouring with rain isn't one of her favourites, and who can blame her! Thankfully the dogs have their own area in the house and accidents are kept to a minimum.
We had the Openreach engineers here on Monday trying to fix everything. Apparently last Friday one of the maintenance teams had been shoving cables down the wrong conduit in their eagerness to fix the storm damage and totally messed up the whole village. There were crossed lines everywhere, quite a lot of door knocking with messages and diverted calls to mobiles by BT for those of us who had them. Unfortunately the people we were crossed with didn't own mobiles so we were receiving their calls too, including one at 1am wondering if everything was all right! By then tempers were a little short. We seemed to have the most complicated problems because of having two lines, that new fangled internet thingy (not many in the village have internet, see comment about not having mobiles either, talk about back and beyond!) and other things attached like security and fire alarms. The poor guy we had assigned was backwards and forwards between the exchange, the green box and us for most of the day and he had been given 15 jobs to do that morning! Mind you sorting us had a sort of knock on effect for a couple of others but he still moaned that his targets would never be met that week. Hardly his fault. There were at least six other vans in the village too all trying to sort this mess made by one slip of a maintenance team. Why do these this always happen on a Friday too?
I have managed to do some very quick bits in my sketchbooks. Not many as it turns out but at least some. Just mainly sloshing a bit of paint around whilst waiting for a certain pup to settle at 6 in the morning really.
This was pure doodle. And then a bit of paint. And an alternative background added so a few mornings worth really.
I found a picture in a magazine and tried blending it into a background.
This one I picked up my pencil whilst sipping coffee and sketched a owl pincushion Elsa had made me but I put him on a branch
Ellie has been very good overall but one morning she did discover my box of willow charcoal. With a piece that was left I sketched my mug and rug. I may go back and fiddle with this one.
I can't tell you how hard I find it to do these things! They are too naive for me! I really am not used to just sketching quickly, I want detail and accuracy and I struggle with just accepting that all these pictures are OK in their own right. The urge to rip them out of my sketchbook is huge but I am resisting. I am not a great natural artist, I have to work at it so I focus on detail. I want to let go of that and just 'do'.
And I have done a little stitchwork. :-)
I have to do a few samples this morning for the C&G and this afternoon Elsa, Cat and I have a girly time in Salisbury booked. Something to do with a wedding I believe, lol!
Thank you to those who commented whilst we were out of connection and those who emailed. Hello to some new followers. I have a lot of blogs to catch up on and I apologise if I don't manage to comment on any for a bit, there's a lot to plough through as well as life to live!! I've missed you all.
Have a great weekend.
.
