In process. Much more to go. After I’m finished for the day, I like letting it sit on the easel overnight so I can look at it occasionally from the living room. I already see elements I need to tweak. This, by the way, is one of my favorite pieces of Roseville. The pattern is Ixia, a flower I hadn’t heard of. It’s also known as Corn Lily. When I get around to adding them, you’ll see that the flowers themselves are on the smaller side. I’m sure you know by now that I love Art Deco and this particular vase’s design is definitely Art Deco. I have another Ixia piece as well. This shade of green is also one of my favorites and I think I’ve mixed the right color, which is not always so easy to do when trying to match the glaze on a Roseville piece.
All in all, a satisfying painting session yesterday.
It continues to rain here, which will make for a quiet day today, perfect for painting. Though I woke up way too early today, so there’s that.
Painting, a bit of cleaning, and reading.
This rain will continue through the Fourth of July. Monday will be rainless. I’m not sure when fireworks are happening. Around here, during the holiday weekend, there are usually fireworks every day in one of the neighboring towns or the campground. In the days when we had Scoutie it was a nightmare. Most dogs don’t like fireworks, but collies, especially, are known for very sensitive hearing. And she was a border collie. There was nothing we could do to calm her. I don’t know how well they work, but we saw a commercial for a thunder shirt last night. They weren’t around back then, but I sure would have loved that option for our girl. It might have relieved much of her stress.
My beloved sister’s birthday is today. How thankful I am for her! She is an extraordinary person in every way and I love her dearly. Happy Birthday, Meredith!
Stay safe.
Happy Saturday.
That painting is off to a great start! I love the color and shape of that one. Well done!
We will have sunshine and heat but that seems appropriate for our 4th of July! I will have a bunch of my children and grandchildren for a cookout tomorrow and I am really looking forward to that!
Stay cool!
Have a wonderful Fourth, Ellen!
Stay safe.
another very good start, claudia, plus cooler weather and time to paint … i’m glad for you.
too bad about noises from fireworks upsetting so many pets and other creatures. a friend tried one of those thundershirts on her big dog and said it was helpful. better yet, how about making fireworks silent (and not allowing them in drought areas)?
hope you sleep better tonight.
and happy birthday to your sister meredith. glad you have each other.
still feel bad, but getting better. will take it easy. also, wishing i had some ice cream … haha not haha.
happy saturday.
kathy in iowa
Glad to hear you’re getting better, Kathy!
Can someone in your family bring you some ice cream?
Stay safe!
I think you’ve nailed the color of the vase and the shading and shadow around it. I love that color too.
We are not celebrating this 4th of July. We usually have extended family over for a cookout. I am too exhausted from the granddaughter situation to have a party. The other factor is the gypsy moth situation. Our yard is trashed. The yard is littered with little shreds of dried leaves, and the trees are almost completely bare. The deck and furniture is covered with caterpillar poop. It looks like someone poured a bucket of black peppercorns all over the deck. You can sweep and an hour later you can’t even tell. I have seen a few of the moths finally so the caterpillars will be gone soon. The female moths will lay their egg masses and die. We can try to destroy the egg masses but we have 10 acres mostly oak trees so it’s hard to make a dent. The county will probably spray next spring. They use a bacillus, not a chemical, so it doesn’t hurt birds or pollinators.
We are going to have a quiet weekend for my granddaughter. She is at the end of her rope. She is very irritable and exhausted. Her head still hurts but her fever seems to be down and her appetite is improving. She barely ate anything for 2 weeks…a few saltine crackers, a few bites of something, and this is a 12 year old that could eat a footlong sub after a track meet. So seeing her eat anything makes us very happy. She has a long ways to go yet, the headache is pretty bad at times and she is very weak.
She has some lab work next week and an appointment with a pediatric infectious disease specialist. Still, no idea what virus caused this but she has tested negative for covid again a few days ago.
Have a good weekend and stay safe
I had no idea about the destruction that gypsy moths could create. I can’t even imagine. Fingers crossed for your granddaughter…May she continue to improve. ;)
Marilyn- Prayers for your granddaughter and you.
I hope you soon have some answers about your grand-daughter’s condition. Uncertainty is the worst. You both are in my thoughts.
Wishing you a quiet but fun weekend for the Fourth!
The moth situation sounds awful. We were working in our yard today and saw the 1st of the Japanese Beetles. Oh, how I hate them!!!!!
So glad to hear your granddaughter is improving and may they soon have answers for what it is that has been so hard on her ~ and all of you.
Gypsy moths and your granddaughter’s illness. Way too much to cope with!
Rest up, Marilyn.
Stay safe.
I love the shading, color and depth you are achieving with your latest painting. Anxious to see it completed.
Beautiful morning here…we sat on the deck and just enjoyed our coffee with a slight breeze. It was so quiet…we only had the birds to serenade us. No rain this weekend, but the heat returns with humidity tomorrow.
You could hear fireworks close by last night, we had the windows open because the temps were lovely. Sure wish people would stop with the personal fireworks. I thought there was a shortage out there…evidently I was wrong.
Enjoy your day! ;)
Fireworks at the campground near us were last night – way too loud.
I’ve grown to hate them.
Stay safe, Donna.
My cousin had a hard time transitioning his elderly dog to condo living where there was a lot more noise than when he’d had, for 25 years, his stand-alone, single-family dwelling (he thought he needed to downsize in retirement; hated it; sold the condo and went back to a regular house; couldn’t stand the reduced space of the condo; bought an even bigger house than he’d had before, and he’s just one guy [he actually tried to buy back his original home]!). The dog had difficulty with the new digs but especially being in an environment where you could hear the comings & goings of so many other people in a large condo complex. So, on the advice of the veterinarian, because my cousin learned the dog was barking too much and disturbing the condo neighbors when my cousin would be away for parts of a day, the thunder shirt was tried out on the dog and it, unfortunately, didn’t do the trick. But I did have a dog when I lived on the Gulf Coast for awhile who totally frothed at the mouth with literal thunder/lightning, and we had a lot of it there (including, at times, hail pounding on the windows), and I feel pretty certain that a thunder shirt might have helped her. In the meantime and in present day, for our old shepherd/retriever girl here on the 4th and as we’ve been doing the last few nights with stray fireworks, we turn on the a/c ‘blower’ so it goes continuously as background ‘white’ noise, we consequently turn up the television because it’s more hard to hear anyway when the ‘blower’ is going and about all else we can do is just reassure although I know we could medicate her. But that’s dicey, too, at her advanced age, because she doesn’t seem to now react well to ANY medications for anything. Sigh. At least we’re home with her; we haven’t left her alone. We could NEVER be gone on July 4th. Not for as long as we’re still blessed with having her. They’ve resumed our community’s LEGAL fireworks show this year, to which I make a small donation each year to try to do anything to help toward legal vs illegal fireworks, but we can only try to glimpse a teeny bit of it from our house instead of going to various places around town for better viewing. Because we have to stay home for the frightened animal. But I’m cool with it; I’ve seen a lot of wonderful fireworks shows at other times in my life in other places. I think there are a couple of TV shows with fireworks on Sunday evening (CNN? PBS?) that we could watch with the volume, in this case, turned down if it’s too much boom-boom-booming.
Enjoy your rain; think of all it’s doing to nourish and replenish. I wish you could send even one drop of it my way in desperately-dry and dangerous Southern California (dried-up or shrinking creeks, rivers and lakes in my environs; SO many brown lawns because homeowners aren’t watering). I’m visualizing you having a nice afternoon indoors for your weekend!
We never went anywhere on the Fourth when we had our dogs.
Stay safe, Vicki!
I love how you’ve captured the shape of the vase. You are impressive Claudia. I just stay in and Annie hides from fireworks but they aren’t usually too bad where I live. Hoping to have a cooler relaxing 4th of July. Happy Birthday to Meredith. Hugs!
Same to you, Linda.
Stay safe!
We had windows open last night and the “personal” fireworks went on until after midnight. Our Greyhound is so frightened, it makes me cry. The cat is also so afraid. Tonight is our annual town fireworks over the river, which is about 6 blocks from our house. For the past 1/2 hour the windows have been shaking. Any minute now the Finale will begin with non-stop thundering. Oh, how I despise this night! Hubs has to take the dog out for a ride about 15 miles out of town. The cat is next to me and shaking. Hopefully in about 15 min this will be over, but the idiots who blow them off for the next several hours make me crazy. Thunder shirts don’t work for us. How I wish they did!
I hate them. I really think they should be outlawed.
I wish thunder shirts helped for your babies!
Stay safe, Chris.
July 4 weekend is my least favorite of the year because of the fireworks. Lizzie spends it in the linen closet and if she must move from spot to spot creeps so low to the floor she looks like a swat team member or jungle fighter. We have fireworks right across from us on the lake and I always panic about sparks going amiss — not so much from those, but from the yahoos around the lake who buy them and set them off — and who knows what kinds of precautions they are taking after a half-case of beer or whatever else. Last night I said to Rick, “these are feeling like a book that could be edited by a good 250 pages,” and I realized they no longer excited me. I might write about that.
I’m watching an interesting series if you have Acorn — Victorian Arts and Crafts House. These six or seven people each week must create things in the style of William Morris, John Ruskin and others and decorate one room in Victorian manor house, using the tools and materials of the day. So the wallpaper, for example is done block by block with very old, traditional equipment, same for the furniture makers. It might be on Britbox, too.
I hope you have a safe, lovely Fourth.