I’ve been trying to walk every day. I don’t typically take more steps than I have been doing for years, now, but I’m trying to increase my pace and make sure it’s more exercise than stroll. Sometimes I just get on the treadmill for a while, but if the weather is nice and it fits my schedule, I’ll walk outside.
Around here, this time of year is much better for outdoor activities than the summer, in my opinion, but it’s very up and down—chilly and windy one week, warm and muggy the next.
When the weather is nice, winter on the Gulf Coast is perfect for walking.
I’ve noticed tons of these little spider webs everywhere—in trees and dotting the lawns.
Candy Dish
This prompt was on a list of ideas I jotted down during a brainstorming session. I like to have something to refer to when I’m in the mood to doodle, but have no specific plan. It comes in handy!
So, I doodled a page of candy dishes and jars:
Then I painted them, keeping it simple and using one color per “dish”, rather than adding different colors for the candies or decorative details.
Corked Jars
I’ve done something like this before and enjoyed it, so I decided to try it again. It’s just a page filled with different shapes and sizes of glass jars, jugs, phials, etc. They’re all corked and contain a variety of random objects.
I used the brown ink in a fude nib pen for this doodle.
When it was time to paint, I tinted the glass containers first, sticking with a limited palette.
Last time I did this type of doodle, I felt I’d used too many colors, so I wanted to avoid doing that again. I may have gone a little too far in the other direction, sticking with just a few colors—but I do think I prefer this to the other result.
This was fun!
Uninspired House Doodles
I’ve done this kind of thing many times before, but sometimes you just want to keep it simple and do the first thing that pops into your head. So here’s another page of house and tree doodles:
Even though I used just a regular pan palette of watercolor (no special effects or neon colors), one of the greens I chose looks pretty neon-ish.
Nothing special, but it was something to do. Actually, I’m remembered that I’d planned on going back and maybe adding some color pencil details and texture, but I never did. Oh well! I could still go back and do that, but I might just leave it like this.
Broken Dishes Quilt
Months and months ago, I mentioned that I’d made a bunch of string squares in blue and grey. I had a plan, but I just wasn’t excited about it, so it sat and waited.
All this time later, I still wasn’t feeling interested in the old plan, so I went looking for new inspiration. It came in the form of the traditional quilt block known as “broken dishes”. I’ve decided to combine the string squares with neutral (or neutral-leaning) fabrics to make enough of the broken dishes blocks to make a quilt.
Below is what I’ve done so far. There’s quite a way to go, still, and I’ll also need to make some more string squares to reach the number required.
I’m not aiming for perfection (which is a good thing, because it’s certainly not perfect). After the initial trial run using cream fabric, I decided to make the ones with the “busiest” fabric first, to convince myself that it would work. That one fabric is very busy, but I think it’ll be okay in the mix with everything else.
At least it feels good to be sewing again. I’ve missed it.
Tiny Glade (Yes, Still)
Yeah, this game may be part of the reason why I haven’t been spending as much time with my other hobbies, lately. Some nights it’s just easier to get cozy in front of the laptop and see what you can come up with…
