Daffodils...

Here is the painting I mentioned in my previous post.  I was given a sweet bunch of daffodils on Mothers Day a couple of weeks ago, and they were so pretty when they opened up that I had to paint them.  It was tricky finding somewhere to photograph them that didn't have a busy background - I ended up putting them outside with the blue sentry box behind them.

Watercolour on paper - they may well end up in my Etsy shop soon!

Pope's Oak

I don't know where Pope's Oak is, but I think I'd like to go there!  I finished this yesterday afternoon, just squeaking within the deadline - it's been tough finding time for painting with the dire New Year we have had so far.

This is painted in acrylic and the composition was very tricky.  I was told what was wanted, but given a selection of about twenty photos to work from as I had to paint the woodland walk, put in three children walking/running, none of which were in a photo together.  I also had to age them by a few years as the photos I had were from a while back. Then I had to add three black labradors...no photos there, and the French Bulldog.  Oh yes, and I had to make up their clothing as well. Thank heavens for Google Images - hours spent looking for photos of teenages walking away fromcamera and suitably posed labradors!

I am relieved to say the lady who commissioned this was over the moon with it and picked it up within an hur of it's completion.  I now have absolutley no work on, but that's OK - I haven't had a break since about last September so am going to take a few daysto re-group and paint a fewthings of my own.

Plus today is the day my darling Clovis goes in for an echocardiogram - I'm praying the news won't be too dire, but I'm not very hopeful - so I think I will need a bit of space for a while.

On the needles: a dog coat for Daisy.  This has given me a couple of ideas.....

Playing Catch Up...

As far as work is concerned, the New Year started well with an order for a Clanger - Tiny this time, the little girl one with a bow in her hair. I also decided to give her a set of pan pipes, in line with her character on the tv show.

I remember the first Clanger I made seemed to take forever for some reason - now I can get the main body done in a couple of evenings. 

This one is staying in the UK for a change!

I've been trying to put some hours into this painting - I have a tight deadline now and am pretty cross that all the spare time I had over the past couple of weeks has been taken up with either cooking, cleaning or sorting out our run of breakdowns.  As of yesterday the heating is fixed, the ceiling is fixed, nothing else has broken, the dog is awaiting an echocardiogram next week & ticking along on his meds quite well and my streaming cold seems to be dissipating, so hopefully I can knuckle down to it over the next few days.  I'm enjoying painting this although it has taken a great deal of thought as I am composing it from about ten different photographs.

Somewhere In The Middle...

Firstly, I hope you all enjoyed your Mothers Day yesterday - mine was pretty good, although probably not everyone's cup of tea.  My lovely daughter made this suncatcher card for me - I think it took a very long time!

I seem to have a stack of projects on the go but nothing finished as yet.  I'm knitting some very small daffodils...

...this thing that looks like a skinny octopus will eventually be a tree - honest, it will!

I'm on the home straight with the aeroplane cardigan, just finishing off the sleeves, but whenever it gets too much (it's very heavy!) I knit another few rows of this lace shawl.  A simple repeating pattern, easy to learn off by heart and I am using a laceweight mohair yarn in a soft off-white with sparkles threaded through it.  I think it will be very pretty.

And after a whole year, it would appear that we are finally free of builders.  Over the weekend we quickly walloped up an extra bit of trellis to fill in the gap the fencers left and covered the first panel with some bamboo screening.  Now I feel we are protected as much as possible from prying eyes.  I planted some clematis plants which will hopefully climb up the rest of the fence and trellis and provide a living screen.  We may get perfectly nice new neighbours, but it doesn't hurt to take precautions!

I also painted my sentry box blue last week - it's such a pretty colour that I was tempted to paint everything else blue as well, but then commonsense prevailed!