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.

Arizona Adventure Pt.3

Connor was going to be in Arizona a bit longer than I was because of his conference. So while it wasn't his last day in Arizona, it was mine. We met up with Brennan again (Sydney was at work) and went to the Tucson Botanical Gardens. There were just as many interesting critters around as there were plants.

After touring, we all sat down so that Brennan and I could paint a little. Brennan had been my art buddy back in college, so it was fun to be able to "art" again. I plopped down by the Mexican Fire Barrel to start with.

There were more than cacti to see at the garden, but I found the large variety rather inspiring.

It was sad to leave Brennan, but we had to drop him off so we could get back to Phoenix for the conference. Although, along our way, we stopped by the Casa Grande ruins. The Casa Grande ruins consists of a four story house that was built out of mud loaded with calcium carbonate. That made it stronger, but not immune to rain. A roof has since been built to help preserve the structure.

Around the grounds were lots of neat plants. I'm sure those of you from Arizona won't be nearly as impressed as I was, but I had never seen some of these plants. I didn't know that Prickly Pears could have any purple in them. I'd only seen the plain green kind.

I'd never seen a Palo Verde before this trip. When Connor and I first landed in Phoenix, we had a discussion over whether or not the bark had been spray painted; the green was so vibrant.

It turns out that the bark can perform photosynthesis even when the tree has no leaves

My favorite was the Ocotillo. It is sometimes used as a living fence. Often it doesn't have the green leaves, it just looks like spiney sticks. But after Brennan described them as Cthulhu emerging from the ground, that was all I could see. They all look like tentacle monsters to me now. Thanks, Brennan.

Of course while we were out and about in Arizona, we procured a few more patches and magnets for our collection. I've updated the patch map accordingly.

Even though I was only there for a few days, I came back feeling refreshed. It was good to see such a different landscape than I am used to.