Oh, the joys of summer days! And yes, I still say that after we had two days of extreme heat and humidity.

Our Hallelujah Garden is full of gladsome color – photos and p’raps poems to come in future posts.

Last week with two friends I visited an old forgotten cemetery that has been uncovered and restored. Blog post to come. It’s been a long time since I posted in my Grave Musings series and I am looking forward to it.

After some feedback from faithful blog readers, I’ve gotten some items to dress up our dinner table when we have guests. Thank you! Photos and musings to come.

But at least today I can share with you some water coloring I’ve been doing lately.

No, that’s not for somebody named “Art,” although my father-in-law would qualify. I thought I might string those together and hang them somewhere in the craft room.

A butterfly and many dragonflies. I feel unsettled about the butterfly. It looks somewhat poorly proportioned. If you got that on a card in the mail, would you wonder why the butterfly is sagging a bit or would the gold paint distract you from all of its flaws?

The dragonflies were my attempt to follow a tutorial I found in which you put four dots of paint in a small square and make the dragonfly wings from those. The artist made it look so easy! You can infer from that statement anything you want.

You will show me the path of life;
In Your presence is fullness of joy;
At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
Psalm 16:11

Many words were deleted in the production of this post and perhaps more will be in the morning.

What’s the difference between frugal and just plain cheap? I hope you can tell me.

I have a favorite purse. It’s not too big, it’s not too small. It’s a purse that would suit Goldilocks: it’s just right.

Into this happy fairy tale, a sad note must be interjected. The straps kept coming off of this nearly perfect purse. It seemed like too much work to try to sew them back in, so I used large safety pins for a while. Clearly I’m not driven by fashion.

Let’s switch to Cinderella. Like Cinderella’s shoe, the safety pins just did not want to stay and would occasionally pop off. And there would be my purse, on the floor looking sad. And with no handsome prince to pick it up, either.

I could order a replacement. The purse was less than $30 after all. But why should I throw away my Goldilocks purse just because the straps were like Cinderella’s shoe?

I went to a shoe repair store and asked them how much they’d charge to sew the straps back. They’d do it for $15. Very reasonable and only half the cost of buying a new one. Of course I did not agree to this reasonable cost. Why should I pay them $15 when I could still find a way to do it for free?

The purse wouldn’t fit under the foot of my sewing machine. I’d have to sew it by hand. I asked my husband to punch a small hole through the leather strap and the purse so I could fit a large needle through with extra tough thread. We are now in the Shoemaker and the Elves story, if you hadn’t figured it out, with my husband playing the part of one of the elves. I had to play the part of the other elf, the one who did the actual sewing. Those elves are completely underrated – it’s hard work. I’ve only completed one strap and the repair job looks ugly. Regrets, I’ve had a few.

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Frugal or just plain cheap? You decide!

Sigh…I’ll probably pay you $15 to delete this in the morning.

I’m working on making drawing and painting more of a daily discipline than doing it on a whim.

This goose is the last watercolor painting I did on the non-watercolor paper. My dad used to ask if we wanted to learn some “Indian” phrases. “Sure!” Then he’d have us repeat them one at a time as they are on the painting above. “Now say it faster,” he’d say. Eventually we’d get it. He loved that joke, even though he could only do it once for each of us.

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Again, these are all sketches and paintings copied from things I found on Pinterest.

I’m making progress on the mobile, too!

I’m thinking of starting a drawing/painting series of owls. They’re such interesting looking creatures!

Thanks for sticking with me to the bottom.

Oh-wah, tah-blah, guy-am. In the morning.

I’m still doing some watercolor “roughs” in a book with non-watercolor paper. They turn out rather bumply and weird, and are impractical for making into cards, so why I am even doing this? Good question. I don’t know why, but it’s motivated me to do watercolor work more often than before, It’s been great practice for drawing in proportion and using different lettering styles. It’s been a valuable workshop for mixing colors. It’s also a lesson in why watercolor paper works better for blending. At some point, I’ll transition to doing these in a book that that contains watercolor paper in it, but for now, I’ll keep on with the roughs. These are all copies of things I found on Pinterest except for the words. The words are always mine.

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That’s enough for today. I’ll return to old posts tomorrow to save my arm the stress of typing.

Therefore, we do not lose heart,
but though our outer man is decaying,
yet our inner man is being renewed
day by day.
2 Corinthians 4:16

I’ll probably rough this post up in the morning.

The Blizzard That Never Came. So far, our skies have been surprisingly blizzard-less, which goes to show you that the weather peeps don’t always get it right. But maybe it’ll zoom in late and have the last laugh.

So, here’s a fun project:

Isn’t it adorable? My friend and co-grandmother, Martha, alerted me to the presence of this pattern on Etsy and I was smitten right away, smitten enough to purchase the digital download within seconds of seeing it. What a wonderful world.

To explain the term “co-grandmother,” Martha’s daughter married our son and they just had their first child. Doesn’t that make us co-grandmothers? I might have just made that term up. Anyway, this crib mobile (or changing table mobile) will be for our newest granddaughter. Shh – don’t tell!

I’ve got the items cut out and ready to start sewing. I’m hoping that the mysterious parts of the pattern will become obvious as I go.

One of the artists I follow on Instagram just started a project in which she does a simple sketch and painting three days a week. The part that intrigued me was that she’s not using watercolor paper – just a little notebook. Well! That opens up all sorts of possibilities! My brother-in-law Karl gave me a beautiful little blank book made by Baron Fig. (I’ll bet Baron Fig is related to the Earl of Sandwich.) The pages are unlined and just beckoning to be used by this very kind of project. I have begun.

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I’m excited to have a painting project that is contained in a book. It will allow me to experiment with painting and lettering without using a lot of expensive watercolor paper and I can cast caution to the wind. Where it belongs.

I’m casting this post to the wind in the morning…where it belongs.