Beginnings

Holy smokes folks we've had some Wagnerian weather! Wow 2014 sure is off to a lion's roar. {Why should that only apply to March?...lol} The trees bend over something scary in the worst of the gales. At our nearby reservoir, the gusts were measured at 56 miles/hour. Lovely to stay inside the cottage where it's warm and dry. How lucky we feel that we have this cozy, beautiful cottage, which is so snuggly.Chloe called at 2am. She's come down with some sort of stomach bug and by the afternoon in Van, she was feeling like death ready to expire any minute. I stayed on the phone with her till my 7:30 when the nausea subsided somewhat, the second Gravol took some effect and she managed to drift off to sleep. Poor little button. Isn't it the way that when your kiddo is sick, it doesn't matter how old she is, she is immediately reduced to a five year old in a mom's brain. Speaking of mom, she was with C yesterday and I hope she doesn't catch this. Mom's had the flu shot so I hope she'll be OK. C caught it from her plague infested friends on New Years! Wonder if any of them had the flu shot. It's still a bit of a gamble this flu shot business, isn't it? I've never had one and very rarely catch anything, and mom has to have one to work in the hospital, and last year she had a monsteroonio of a flu. Anyway, I spoke to C this evening/morning Van, and she is feeling much better but still a bit weak. It's probably only a 24 hour thing but I'm taking the phone to bed!In between the rains we rolled my beautiful mini shell out of the garage. Robert has been working on the body in my absence almost each day cutting out and welding in new bits to get rid of any rust and dents. Then sanding and filling and sanding and filling..ad infinitum, putting the majority of his own projects on hold, and finally it is painted that beautiful Oxfordshire sky grey I was telling you about in the summer. Isn't he just the most amazingest? And didn't I choose an amazing paint? Look how it changes from almost blue to almost khaki under different light sources. I love it. It's called tweed grey and is an old Austin mini colour. I'll do a better post soon and show you the transformation. R says it's such a Vancouver shade, it's sooo me...allergic to colour! I'm like, "what? it's going to have orange lights!"  :)We've been putting in long days these days working on projects and sometimes our wee pea brains don't function as well as they should. Last night one of us closed the living room door and trapped Theo in there all night. Poor little buddy, he shot out first thing this morning and has been Velcro cat all day. I gave him a slice of ham at lunch.Yesterday I picked up my paints again. I've been working on the maps and small book page paintings in watercolour and chalk and it was lovely to rummage thru my boxes of oils. Oh my gosh I love the smell and feel of oil paints.You know the funny thing? In Vancouver I'm really big on on particular blue, an ultramarine blue - it's a really warm, violety blue - but when I bought this lot of oils second hand from Ebay.uk, (from the girlfriend of an American artist who left England after they broke up...without his oils and brushes), that artist who used them used blue-green cobalt colours. I thought I would miss my blue, but really don't. The other thing is that artist had...and now I have...about seventeen different yellows!Anyway, R was off for the day on Thursday and I painted three canvases in acrylics as a quick under-painting, {acrylics dry fast, cover and tone the canvas and save my more expensive oils}, then I painted one of the canvases in oils. I had in mind to paint a small beach scene, a field scene and R asked for a bird of prey which lives in our fields called a red kite. I'm sure I told you about them. Graham the butcher throws them meat scraps and Theo the terrorizer sits in the middle of the scraps muttering, "here birdie, birdie, birdie" under his little cat breath.This is what the studio looked like mid afternoon before I got to the oils.And here are the two smaller paintings. I think they're finished.Linking with Nancy for some random, even if there are six this week...{sometimes I have too much to say} :D And the Wordpress weekly photo challenge.