The Cat's Pyjamas.....

Here's the cat portrait I have been working on this week.  I think he's nearly finished, although there is one part of it that I am avoiding - can you find it?  It's that ear - the photo I have to work from is very small and of extremely bad quality - I can just about make out everything else, but the detail of the ear hair eludes me!  So I am getting on with everything else and will leave the ear until last, by which time I will be so keen to finish it, hopefully I will stop worrying and just wade in.

This is in my favourite medium,  Derwent Drawing pencils on pastel paper, with white highlights in acrylic.

An unexpected parcel arrived this week and in it another addition to my mug collection.  I ordered this from a newspaper way back during the Jubilee (over three months ago!) and had pretty much forgotten about it.  I just love the design - initially it looks like splodges of colour until you realise the actual shapes*.....

So this morning I had a bit of a mug cull - hardened my heart and took out all the mugs given as end of school year presents and ones we never, ever use and put them in the charity bag.  That made some space for perhaps a couple of extra new ones in the future......

*outlines of the British Isles in case you just can't see it!

Due to the freak weather conditions this year, there has not been a good harvest to be foraged from the hedgerow.  During the Spring, when the trees were in bloom, we had torrential rain which deterred the bees and destroyed the blossom. So there have been very few apples and sloes and I had resigned myself to not getting a fresh batch of sloe gin this year. However, on the long walk to the vet with the dog today I came across a small tree loaded with sloes and stopped to pick the lot (much to the dog's disgust!) It's not a great haul but should make for one bottle at least.