Tuesday, January 26, 2021

Strangely cheerful

I had an early morning messaging chat with the Aging Hippie in California today. It was good. 


I haven't spoken to her since January 6th when she messaged me to ask if I was watching the news. What a relief for America and the world that two weeks later  Biden was installed. Now they have hope. Here we have none, but let's not go into that, because I am actually, strangely, feeling quite chipper today. 

And this is despite my thinking that although I was hoping to visit the family in Colorado this September, it now looks unlikely.

I am not a knick-knack person - not at all - but I have a little Boulder shrine on the top of the bedroom bookcase:



Lux and Cece made the fimo pots and I bought them in their shop. The jigsaw pieces came free from the amazing Liberty Puzzles shop on Pearl Street. They make the most intricate and attractive jigsaws I've ever encountered, and you have to go on a waiting list these days to buy them. There's always one out on a board downstairs at Boulder Hepworth Towers. 


Bar Taco is where Griffin the barman told me his margarita recipe, and Brasserie Ten Ten is where Isaac took me for lunch one day - white tablecloths and Croque Monsieurs, an ex-pat's taste of Europe. 

The dried husk back left has an incredibly silky interior and I cannot for the life of me remember what the plant is called, dammit. (Lux has now told me it's a milkweed pod.)

I'm digressing.

Why am I feeling so upbeat on this icy grey morning? It's because I'm in the middle of another painting, and it's so wonderful to wake up to a project I can't wait to get stuck into. Last winter I had DAYS ARE WHERE WE LIVE on the go. The winter before that it was EVEN WHEN THEY KNOW YOU.   

Now I am painting.




Dave made the easel out of his old beech desk top. He had replaced it some years ago with a desktop made of parquet flooring tiles that a friend had rescued from her office floor when the building was being demolished:




He's one clever dude. He’s currently in the shed making an Archimedes Trammel.

Now it's light, and I'm going to start painting. I'll leave you with these two quotes from the Maggie Smith book, Keep Moving. They seem quite apposite today.










2 comments:

Kristine said...

Hi Sue,
Creative work does have a way of helping you cope with the world.....loved your painting of the quilt and Dave's table top.
I've just started reading a book that I think both of you would love - it's "The Offing" by Benjamin Myers - set in northern England after WW2 about the friendship of a young man and an older, eccentric woman - a novel in which the natural world is one of the main characters. Beautifully written too.

Sue Hepworth said...

How strange, Kristine! Someone mentioned The Offing to me only last evening. I will check it out. Thank you.