Coloring...

  

Coloring now with many pencils. I just do not want markers. My favs after trying a LOT of pencils are Polychromos, LYRA, Goldfabers, and even my Staedtler Design Journeys. Prismacolor, few Irojitan as well. The Tombow Recycled are really nice too. For the best budget pencils ever, it is the Faber-Castell red Classic.  Not really impressed with the Cezanne or the Marco Renior I bought but I got a lot of colors.  I bought a few white pencils to try including a few expensive brands. Still the best white - Prismacolor.  But Derwent Drawing white is really nice. OH - the Derwent Chromaflow pencils are excellent and the colors are vibrant.  When I want flowers to really have some pizzazz, I reach for my Chromaflows.  

 Here is a link to probably the best artist site I have found, and within which your coloered pencil fever will find sustenance. 

Fueled by Clouds and Coffee  featuring Urban Sketching, and illustrated with Seattle neighborhoods including the area where I enjjoyed such good baked goods and coffee at Cloud City Coffee, in Maple Leaf, Seattle. Happy times. 

Coloring In Again...Johanna Basford Inspirations...

 So the coloring bug came back full bore in 2024. Coloring for relaxation and stress relief, no pressure to do original work although I could probably do some but nowdays coloring in, as the Brits say, is a good way to relax. Pursuing any art form really is almost always good for the brain, so though I have hardly colored in since 2019 or so, I have become an appreciative fan of Johanna Basford's work. Her drawings alone are worth buying her books. These are not ordinary coloring books. I have now donated almost all my other coloring books and concentrated on Johanna Basford's books.  I color slowly and intermittently, so I have now got enough books and pencils for the millennium. I only use colored pencils, and the occasional Gelly Roll Sakura pen in white. I did acquire a couple of small bottles of a glittery substance to give a try at the smallest touch of embellishment - say in a winter scene with snow?! I don't like backgrounds in my pages, nor do I want over-the-top flamboyant touches.  Everyone has their own style, and mine is rather understated I hope. Johanna's drawings seem to need a light touch in the colors, and the ethereal worlds they evoke need some ethereal coloring. :)  Pencils - I have donated loads of pencils over the years as well. But now I am settled with Prismacolors, Polychromos (recent addition), Faber-Castell Goldfabers, and Staedtler Design Journeys, as well as the nice Faber-Castell Classic Red.

 Secret Garden was the first book she published, and it is my favorite but that could change as I get into the others. The British editions of most of her books are the nicest, and I want to slowly get the British editions of the books I have in the US editions.   I do have a lovely coloring book with Japanese designs. Might write about one or two pictures from that book later on.

Short Notes on Sword of Honor and Letters From Egypt...

 Checking in on this blog for 2024...view below from the back of University of Vermont Campus. Lovely view of the Adirondacks in the distance as well.  Reading - in the last couple of months I read Sword of Honor by Evelyn Waugh. One of the best trilogies ever. Set in WWII, and a story of experiences out of the stereotypical WWII mode. Read it.  Humor and pathos, reality and unreality. It's all there, and makes you wonder how the war was fought successfully, except that the underlying GRIT evident in the British is on display here, no matter what the idiotic circumstances.  Evelyn Waugh has always been one of my favorite writers.  

Currently I am reading Letters From Egypt by Lady Lucie Duff Gordon, published in full about 1879, awhile after her death in 1869 in Cairo.  She was certainly not typical for her time. Diagnosed with tuberculosis, she sought a warmer climate than Britain, and eventually lived several years in Luxor. Her observations on life, culture, religion and persons in her surrounds are insightful and informative, especially in light of the world we live in today. If her observations had been closely attended to, we might not be in the mess we are today.  There are of course, other aspects of her letters which jar on modern ears, but overall her letters are hard to put down.  She is both serious and humorous at times, and always very kind. 

Reading Staying On...and a Pink Teapot...

 

Been quite awhile since I wrote anything here. Meanwhile we had a covid epidemic, and we still see the effects of that plus ongoing infections. On the plus side, today is almost an early Spring day, and I have a new teapot. Little things to be thankful for. Here it is sitting on a hot pad I made a few months ago.  But really I came to talk about two books.

For those who have read The Jewel in the Crown by Paul Scott, I hope you read Staying On. It is not the hilarious romp the reviews (must have been written by the very young) might make you think it is. No, it is very poignant and ultimately very sad. Having family who were part of the British in India thing years ago, it hit home, I wondered about what it must have been like for them coming home to Canada.  It is an excellent book. I think it particularly was influenced by the fact that Paul Scott was dying when he wrote it. You can read more online about the book itself and it's impressions on various critics. I did cry. And there are parts where you laugh out loud, but not always because it's FUNNY. No, more because of the irony and the sadness in the situation that cannot be helped. Both the English and the Indians who populate the book are human, and have various of the traits we see every day for good or not. 

 

Rather different, and very touching as well, but in a very soft and lovely way, is the set of two books from Shion Miura: The Easy Life in Kamusari, and the second is Kamusari Tales Told at Night. This sequence was a pleasure. Soft stories, the setting different than you would ever imagine. A small mountain village with people who are hard working, and for the most part, happy. Traditional while taking modern aspects of life into their own milieu, we hear about the village and it's stories from Yuki, a new Forestry intern from Yokohama. Yuki is a city boy and he is not happy to be going to Kamusari. Yet, in the end, we see his view of the life that creeps up on him in that small town, and we can imagine the strengths of that way of life. 

Miura is an excellent writer - almost ethereal in her handling of people and their emotions and yet very boisterous in parts where that adds so much to the story! I will read everything she writes that gets translated into English. In these books the translation is wonderful as well.

Around and About Seattle and Invirons...Again...

 

 

More photographs from around Seattle and King County...Spring and Summer lovely flower....and a few fish....

 

 

 

A couple of snails live in there as well. Tough things, snails.  Below is another angle on UW.  Verdure aplenty.

 

 

 

 

Above taken at a gas station. Yup. They have Bear sculptures there at the gas station. Interesting and well placed. Something different to look at.  

Then there is the wonderful Cloud City Coffee...

 

 

We saw this little guy popped in a narrow garden along the sidewalk near Cloud City.  

 

 

 

And the ferns at home....

 

 

 

And Yakima never disappoints in its bounty and color...even in the rain...

 

 

 

And then Fall...

 

 

 

And as October waned in 2019...a warm fire. 

 

 

Around and About 2019...

 University of Washington in 2019. Been awhile since I wrote here. Looking back to a year when I guess things were normal?  Enjoyed two trips to Washington in 2019.

You could eat out then. And we did. 

Yakima Fruit Market was lovely....

Cloud City Coffee was fun...and then we went to Patty's Egg Nest! Family visit awesome...

 

 

Then there was Fall...Washington in the Fall....

 

Seattle and Environs....2018

Another trip to the lovely Pacific Northwest...photo highlights of the weeks...of which the major event was graduation!

For those who have not traveled to Seattle and environs, please consider traveling there in future because it is truly a vibrant and scenically impressive area of the country. 

My favorite places to eat are Asian restaurants, of which there are many, including Yummy Pho!!  Love the food and the atmosphere. 

Another restaurant, in Kirkland, with interesting lighting! 

This one has interesting fans as well, and is a rather hipster place, with great food, nice people and fantastic baked goods!!  

Shot of Jay's Cafe in Kenmore.  TEAM SPIRIT!!!!! GO HAWKS!!!

Lovely aren't they? Volunteered in a random plant pot on a deck....

Architecture in the PNW - fascinating angles...colors....trees on top!

It was late in camellia season....but a buttery one left...

St. John's Wart....low growing and beautifully flowered out...another visit with memories for years to come. 

Donna Leon and Tomatoes...

You can tell Fall is on the way when the tomatoes start to really go to town...Our plant is in a huge pot and is now about five feet up out of the pot.  Beautiful tomatoes.  Meanwhile I have been reading all the books from our library which have been written by Donna Leon. The Inspector Brunetti series. I think I can safely say they are a vehicle to bring Venice and the Italian culture to the forefront of our minds. That is what has happened. Fascinating books in the detail, food, mind set and humor of the Italians of the region. Having never visited, it's the only clue I have as to that lovely City. I am thankful to Donna Leon for having written so many in the series. There is a gap in the middle of the series that I haven't read, so will probably be lurking on Thriftbooks for those.   You can read reviews in the links I have posted here, so no need for me to grow verbose. Just read the books.  They are in the Literary Mystery mode.  More texture and culture than mystery, even though the mystery carries us along. I would like to see what Donna Leon could do with a full length historical novel set in Venice.  I think she would nail it!  Not to sound to plebeian, but nail it she would.

Roses and Reading...

Summer in the lovely Vermont urban environment.....Breezy, mild, lazy Summer days. With all the commotion out there in the world, I will be posting some gentler reminders of our world....now and then. Reading Donna Leon books now - my library has several, so may as well give up on reading them in order. Each pile I check out I do read in order of publication, but from pile to pile it varies.  I like Brunetti.  The plots don't always resolve of course because her work is more literature than genre, and the setting being Venice, given Italian politics, you have to take the stories as more of a cultural and intellectual pastime. Given the pile of books I have in the unread category, I may get through some of the piles by next year. :) 

Summer...Flowers...

Some more lovely Vermont Flowers - Hanging basket above and Day Lilies below. Here in Vermont where the winters are long and chilly, and so much of the Fall is bare trees, we really love the Spring, and even more the Summer of color. Flowers galore. This was a good year for rain and snow in Fall and Winter and Spring, and now the Summer is in full bloom. Nice days to sit and relax on the deck in the shade and read a good book. I am reading Daniel Silva's latest at the moment, and as usual it is absorbing.  Some Steven Saylor in the wings, and Michael Chabon, plus Lisa See, Elizabeth Bunce and a whole lot more. Get to those details later...for now it's resting and reading!

Summer in Vermont 2017

Giving Vermont equal time, as this year the flowers and trees are just lovely - enough rain and last winter's snow has produced some lovely living beauties....my peonies, flags, rhododendrons, roses and hostas....