Confused Flowers and Reincarnated Paint

 

In-progress oil pastel sketch of Birkenhead Park

It has been a very long time - years, in fact - since I had used oil pastels. I'd been tidying up my art studio when I came across them stored away in a wooden box. The photo above shows a nearly-finished piece based on a sketch done on location in Birkenhead Park, where I've been regularly sketching for six years or more. I quite enjoyed using the oil pastels, and so may well turn to them again. The drawing is on dark grey A4 Khadi paper.

While tidying the art room I also found two tubes of watercolour so old they'd gone solid. Rather than throw them away, I carefully cut open the tube, scraped the pigment into a large-sized palette, ground it into powder then mixed in some water. This has since dried into two pats of paint, one yellow ochre, the other crimson, which will be put to good use now they've been given a new lease of life..

Our garden seems to be confused. The winter jasmine is now in flower but so are the fuchsias and dianthus. The lawn has devolved into a saturated quagmire as we've had so much rain. The temperatures have been mild for December, with only one frost so far all winter.

Mum's settled into a new nursing home in Southport, following the closure of the place where she had been living for the last two years. The new place is a modern, purpose-built facility which offers several community rooms including a bistro.

While typing this, I'm waiting for a man from a guttering company to arrive to inspect our leaky gutter. Yes, the same one which was supposedly fixed earlier this year by another company but clearly wasn't. When I grumbled, the company owner came out to look at it again, agreed that it was still leaking but said he'd "done all he had said he'd do". Erm, didn't that mean actually fixing the leak?!! End of interest, on his part. So, the person due this morning is from a different company, (and we'll simply never use the first company again, even though we'd originally planned to).

Rosie and Jim.

Rosie and Jim have now been with us for one week and are settling in well. They're very playful and friendly, and almost housetrained. They clearly love having a garden to play out in, and have been exploring a huge pile of dog toys. Rosie's the feisty one of the pair - half the size and twice as yappy as Jim. They're both absolutely gorgeous little buddies - 15 month-old siblings from the same litter; chihuahua crossed with an unknown breed. They're both very reactive to other dogs when out walking, so that is something we'll have to work on to improve.

We adopted them from Freshfields Animal Rescue, who have a no-kill policy and who offer sanctuary to both domestic and farm animals, look after any health issues and aim to re-home them appropriately. They're always in need to funds, of course, and are a registered charity. You can read more about their work on their website.