Dust and Ink

I went to town a couple of days ago to get groceries after the cold weather.  I stopped off at the Tough Cookie for a latte and some avocado toast.  So good.  I'm trying to be gluten free again and that is a good place to have gluten free bread and sweets.  They are situated in an old building down by the river and are planning on moving up to Main Street soon.  It will be harder to find parking but they will probably get more walk in traffic.

Their decor is the old wooden walls and floors of the original building.  They have art and lots of odds and ends decorations.  The art is abstract at the moment.  I sat and sketched but I was thinking about the shopping with it being the first day most of us were out and about, Friday and almost the after school hours so my mind wasn't really on sketching.  I made the list this Hunt so wanted to get started.

Number 2, healthy - food at the Tough Cookie is healthy.  The bread machine on the back wall is huge and was working hard mixing up something!

Number 3, jelly or jam - I substituted the jars of cookies

Earlier on Friday at home I sketched in the ArtStreet sketchbook with a Micron 02 that is about out of ink and nib so it gave some texture to my sleeve.

Number 1, buttons

Today, I sketched at my footstool in the living room with a Micron 02 (in better shape) in the ArtStreet sketchbook.

Number 4  thumb and Number 5 xylophone using a sub of X-acto knife, really a box cutter.  Any substitute if you don't have an item should start with the same letter is the challenge on the Hunt.  There aren't too may Xs and I sure don't have a Xylophone.  I wonder if anyone does or will find on in a store to sketch.  Hmmm.  I hope so.

We worked on reconciling our checkbook.  The program we use was corrupted so I'm starting over for the year and it has not been easy finding something that we both can use.  I was using Quicken for my art and it doesn't work on my computer and I don't want to have my stuff on line so....  My mind went blank so I decided to play in the dust instead.

 

Number 6, potato - I wiped off the blue paper again and used a variety of pastels.  I only spent about 30 minutes wipe off to finish, but that got me "sane" again.  I can zone out in a few minutes with the pastels in my hand.

I don't mind recycling the paper as I always have a photo of the sketches.  If I kept them all we would be accused of being hoarders.  My studio is crammed full as it is.

 This was my board and paper, pastels and set up.  Pretty messy but I feel at home there.

A few photos during the cold spell.  Thank goodness we never lost power or had damage like folks in Austin and farther west.  We were mainly just cold.

Ice on the tree by the mailbox.

And the mailbox, you can see some saggy trees in the background.

And a panorama of the frost yesterday morning with the trees all upright and happy again.

Sorry for such a long post, hope you stuck around for the end!