Trials, Tribulations, And A Lack Of Guacamole

It's been a week, let me tell you! On Monday Connor got rear ended in a three car accident. We are thankful that he wasn't hurt, the car still moves, and the guy who caused the accident took fault. Then on Wednesday we learned that we were the victims of credit card fraud. We are thankful that it was caught early, we aren't on the hook for any fraudulent charges, and the very nice customer service man had a new card sent to us faster than their usual time frame. But the worst was yet to come! Yesterday we went to Chipotle and they were out of guacamole! There is no upside to that.

Ok, all kidding aside, it's been a little rough. In between the trials, I've been doing my best to insert some fun into each day. For example, last week I learned how to film a time-lapse of myself painting. I posted it on my @audrynicklin instagram page.

A post shared by Audry (@audrynicklin) on Apr 28, 2018 at 11:55am PDT

After stressing over what new paints to get, I bought a silly amount in order to redo my travel painting palette. (As I mentioned in my previous post, my current palette won't dry, so it doesn't transport well. I've switched the travel palette from M Graham to Daniel Smith watercolors.) It all arrived and I made a new swatch rainbow.

Bottom left is the new pallet, the top right is the old

Then Connor and I went to the ocean and I challenged myself to paint (with my new palette) the seals that like to sleep under the wharf. I'm not sure how successful I was as it turns out brown seals on brown wood looks a lot like indistinguishable brown lumps. I still had fun. And better yet, I was able to figure out some things that work about my new palette and some things that need to be tweaked.

Seal or lump? In a way, seals are just brown lumps.

I've also continued to knit on my socks.

Both of these are second socks. Yay!

Even though it's been rough, I'm thankful that my creative mojo isn't gone and that I've had snippets of time to indulge my interests.

Rainbow Of Possibilities

Have you ever looked at your to-do list and said, "I have no idea where to start?" That has been me for the last two weeks. Every item on the list was really 50 hidden jobs in order to finally cross it off the list. I've been doing my best to break down each job and work on them a little each day. Some of those items have been more mundane like returning a pair of pants or cleaning the fridge coils. Others have been a bit more fun to tackle, like the quilt.

I finally decided to do the quilting with 3 strands of embroidery floss (out of six) in a square pattern that doesn't match latitude and longitude. In order to make the lines relatively straight, I decided to baste little x's into the quilt. Part way through basting, my measurements started to go off and I raged.

Enter Connor. He offered to help and we've spent our evenings with him measuring and basting while I do the actual quilting. We've been listing to Anne of Green Gables on audiobook while working. Of course after watching Anne With An E on Netflix, Connor was curious about the book because I had so often yelled at the TV about how "that wasn't in the book!"

I didn't realize how big this quilt was until I put it on our Queen sized bed for the photo. I might need to make the quilt a little less tall.

I've also been trying to work out what brand of paint to use for long distance trips. I love M Graham watercolors, but they just will not dry in my pans. (I poured these more than a month ago and they are still wet.) It's fine working with them near home, but as we have a bigger trip in the works, it has become clear I need to come up with a new solution.

The reason I love M Graham is because they rewet so easily; great for painting, not great for tidy transportation.

Deciding what paints to use instead isn't easy, especially when you are still sad that your favorites aren't working out. I started by making swatches of what I do have. Then after puzzling a few days more, I decided to order a color dot card that will allow me to try out some new colors. I'm just waiting on that to arrive. Hopefully I'll be able to make a final decision soon.

What kinds of things haven't been coming off of your to-do lists? And is it because of lack of time or a lack of a plan? (Or something else?)