That's a Whopper!

 I usually have minimum success with my courgette plants - very small garden and I tend to plant them in pots.  This year I took Monty Don's advice and planted a couple of them right next to the compost bin...this is what happened!  It has grown bigger even in the few days since I took this photo and we will be eating courgettes every day for weeks at this rate...

Chunk...

This has been a very poor year for commissions - I think I have only had three since Christmas, which is a first.  I don't know if it is the current cost of living crisis and people not spending money on fripperies, or whether I have become boring (!), but it sucks.

I have also not felt much like painting either, which has been a worry.  However, I got my mojo back a couple of weeks ago and painted Chunk the bear from Katmai National Park in Alaska.  It felt good to be painting something with enthusiasm again and I am very happy with how it turned out - the photo has bleached the colours a bit as always.  This is for sale in my Etsy shop.

Nothing on the easel at the moment - have spent the week assisting (or getting in the way) of Mr.B as he replaced the wooden uprights of our pergola before it falls on our heads.  Hopefully getting back to the paints in the next couple of days.

Knitting wise, I am currently working on the last few patterns for a new Nudinits book - complicated stuff this time round...watch this space!
 

June...

Apologies for yet more silence - I've not had much to write about really.  However, there has been a little painting - the above is a quick study while teaching one of my old students last week.

                                               

This is Trouble, my one and only commission in June.  Watercolour on paper.

We also went on a week's holiday - back to Middleton on Sea in the house that looks like a boat!  A very quiet week, just pottering on the beach, visiting Bognor, and eating plenty of fish and chips.

                                      

I found one of the best fossils, an almost perfect sea urchin that was also sparkly with crystal like facets.

 Last week we went fruit picking and yesterday I made a little jam....I think that might keep us going for a while!  We had run out completely as out local pick your own farm closed down last year.  We have found a new place, further away but just as good.

And on the needles - still working on patterns for a new Nudinits book.

Boring...

Apologies for being so quiet over the past month or so.  I seem to have spent most of my time in the garden trying to get all the jobs done that were left while it rained interminably.

I have finally planted all seedlings & young plants, which was a task and a half, especially finding spaces for various cabbage & cauliflower plants that were given to me.  It's all in now and I am impatiently waiting for everything to grow while fighting off the snails and slugs.

We have a pretty dire summer predicted - I hope that doesn't come to pass as I would really like to be harvesting homegrown veg this year!

We found a pick your own farm within easy distance recently, so I have been making strawberry and rhubarb jam as we had finally run out of all homemade jam.  Also made tomato & chilli jam and pickled some beetroot.

I was ill over the last couple of weeks - it was a bit concerning as I had a tight and painful chest with the feeling that I needed to cough but nothing was productive. Also kept getting a low grade fever off and on for a few days.  Went to the doctor and was told it was nothing serious, probably viral (isn't it always?) and sent home with some strong cough mixture and instructions to send in BP readings twice a day.  Thankfully, it all seems to be clearing up at last.

On the work front, I have been painting a sweet commission of a cat, plus designing and knitting more fun patterns for Nudinits.  Hopefully I will have more interesting things to blog about soon!
 

Radio Silence...

 Apologies for being MIA for the past month or so - I have been working on a knitting pattern for Nudinits which has taken up a fair bit of my time as it is very complicated to design.  Unfortunately I cannot show it, has to be kept under wraps for now!

Talking of Nudinits, we were all over the media last week after a pair of knitters in Shepton Mallet used our patterns to create a display of naked Morris dancers in a charity shop window.  Someone passing by objected to seeing woolly naughty bits and complained...and the rest is history!  Great publicity for Nudinits once they started to mention the book that the patterns came from rather than assuming the ladies came up with the designs themselves. Read all about it here

As for painting, I am suffering the worst case of artist's block, just totally uninspired.  Rather than sit and gaze out of the window miserably at the rain, I decided to paint another Otis trinket box - this one just needs lining with fabric then it will go into my Etsy shop.  Hopefully with the recent sunshine I will feel more like putting brush to paper.

Bear 610

 Here's what I have been working on over the past few weeks.  This is bear 610, who lives in Katmai National Park, Alaska.  She has quite the story - she was abandoned as a cub but managed to survive by keeping well out of the way of other bears down by the river mouth despite having a huge injury to her rear end which has left her with a large dent where it has healed.  How this little bear did not die is a mystery with so much against her.  But she did, and when she was a subadult she remained shy and aloof until other subadult bears attempted to play with her, whereupon she finally joined in and became one of the gang!  She is now an adult bear who manages just fine - I am waiting to see if she returns this year from hibernation with a cub or two of her own.

This was painted in watercolour on paper, with huge thanks to Olatz Azcona Munarriz for the use of her wonderful photo taken last year.

Moonlight...

I painted this last week - I have had it in mind for a long time, but commissions for dog portraits had to take priority.  This is Otis swimming in the moonlight, referencing a snap taken last year on the Explore.org bear cams.  Unfortunately, I just cannot photograph the painting successfully.  The above picture is slightly too dark...

...and this one is way too light.  I have tried 3 different cameras and they just do not like this painting!  The true colours are somewhere between the two photographs.  This was watercolour on paper,and will be in my Etsy shop shortly.

On the easel - another bear...