The Autumn Spirit

I'm getting into the autumn spirit so for my last oil pastel I drew an autumnal field with some crows. I think it looks pretty good, some of the crows look better than others, but they still look pretty good. My little sketchbook is filling up with oil pastel drawings, I'll need another sketchbook soon, and I think I am finally learning how to use oil pastels. One thing I've learned is my preference for the junior artist oil pastels I bought from Blick over the Crayola set. Even though they are a low quality art supply, they are much more smooth and leave behind fewer "boogers" than the Crayola oil pastels and I'm ready for a full set. I bought a box of both black and white since I use those colors the most and I'm assuming the other colors in the set will be similar in texture. If you are interested in trying oil pastels, get a Sakura Cray-Pas Junior Artist set, you'll be much more pleased with their quality and your drawings. 

Dahlias

Last week I spent a rainy afternoon visiting a dahlia farm and snapped lots of flowers. I loved the variety of colors and especially forms. Maybe I'll need to expand my cut flower garden for next year! Here are a few of my favorites.

Fish Stew

It's the last day of August and I'm finally sharing this month's Craft Book Club project for A Clash of Steel: A Treasure Island Remix by C.B. Lee. The food I decided to make was straight out of the pages of the story, a fish stew made with rice, vegetables, and fish. It was fine tasting, but I should have added much more soy sauce and miso paste and some other seasonings because I added lots of sauce to my portion while eating it. It looks pretty yummy in the photo though.

The book was much better than my sad attempt at dinner. I really enjoyed it even though I felt it was a predictable story and thought Xiang, the main character was a bit dumb for not realizing her mother was the famous pirate with all the evidence pointing to that. I kept reminding myself, she's just a child, but she was still kinda dumb. I enjoyed the book so much I kept thinking I needed to read Treasure Island to compare... Well, I thought I hadn't read Treasure Island before, but in 2016 I read it for Craft Book Club and made a pom pom parrot. Now I think I remember some scenes from the book, but generally can't remember what happens in the story and have considered reading it again. Not sure if that will happen and if I do reread it, will I even remember?

The next book we are reading for Craft Book Club is Travelers along the way : a Robin Hood remix by Aminah Mae Safi. This time I am sure I have never read Robin Hood. I have however seen the Disney movie version and at least three other films based on the story.

Pink Lotus

I spent an unexpectedly drizzly day looking at flowers yesterday. Apparently I was enjoying my time too much to remember to take photographs because I only snapped photos of this lotus. They are cool and strange flowers so it was a good choice if there was only going to be photos of one plant. 

The Grapes

Needed to share this quick garden update. It’s much sooner than normal because something major happened since sharing my update last Tuesday. A *expletive* squirrel ate my not ripe grapes! So sad! Now I have to wait a year to try them. Maybe I’ll be more protective of my grapes next year. The squirrels ignored the figs this year, much to my surprise, so I was not even the tiniest bit concerned about my new grapes.