Peggy's Jibber-Jabber: I Got...

I got...

Nothing.

Or at least not much.

But we shall persevere!

Bondi’s wheelchair came.

“It’s a bigger box than I thought it was going to be,” my handsome mountain man said as he carried it in.

“I know, right.”

Mike opened the box and pulled out an already assembled doggie wheelchair.

“I thought we’d have to put it together. Didn’t the reviews online say it was easy to assemble?” I asked.

“Yeah, it did.”

We were trying to adjust the width across the back and discovered it was already as small as it would go.

“It’s too big,” I said. “What size did you order?"

“Small.”

We left it as small as it would go.

There were two straps on the back, one on each side. “Where do you think these go?” I asked and while trying to figure it out I found a small white tag hanging on the front that had a capitol M on it. “It’s a medium,” I said and showed him the tag.

Returning stuff is a pain and we almost never return things but in this case it was expensive enough it merited return.

“I think it’s one somebody else already returned,” Mike speculated. “That’s why it came put together and no instructions. I think whoever filled our order just grabbed it off the shelf and didn’t check the size.”

The first and only other time we returned something to Amazon we had to drive down to a drop off center in North Abington. This time, when I checked for locations that accepted Amazon returns, I found the UPS store in Sayre takes them. That makes it a lot closer for us. Hopefully it doesn’t mean more returns, because we don’t order stuff to return it, don’cha know.

And talking about Bondi, I don’t see any improvement in her this week, but I don’t think she’s any worse either.

Speaking of ordering expensive stuff...

I had enough money in my craft account to buy a very expensive set of high-quality, professional watercolors. So I ordered them.

This company has been producing watercolor paint in Erkrath, Germany for over a century. They’re known for a level of craftsmanship that even other professional paints don’t match. The pigments are milled incredibly fine, each pan is poured in multiple layers for maximum density, and the colors are consistent from batch to batch. If I was going to spend this amount of money on paint, I wanted the best.

And they didn’t come from Amazon. I ordered from Blick Art Supply and it was free shipping.

I have a commission here ready to paint as soon as they come in.

In the meantime, I painted a birthday card and a couple of practice pieces.

The black blob on the left-hand page is the drop of ink from last week’s oopsie that bled through the paper.

There are two colors in watercolor you’re never supposed to use. White and black. White because you’re supposed to let the white of the paper be your white. And black because it’s “dark and dull.” Many artists say you can achieve a better, richer black by mixing your primaries together. That would be red, yellow, and blue.

As you can see, I broke both those rules.

In this other one her little face gets lost in the words on the page.

It’s practice, folks.

In both of these I outlined with a liner brush and paint. Not perfect but, again, practice.

For the birthday card I searched Pinterest for ideas for my mentor, California Susan. She seems to really like my paintings and she’s been with me from the beginning of this journey. She saves even the most silliest of cards I’ve painted for her.

When I think of California Susan I think of a sophisticated and elegant woman. I found an image that made me think of her but it looked hard. Complicated.

It’s not that I thought I couldn’t do it as much as I was in a time crunch. I didn’t remember her birthday was coming in time to paint a card and get it to her on time.

I needed something simpler. I considered this one because it had a cute message.

“Isn’t it weird being the same age as old people,” it says.

I know I can paint this one in a short amount of time!

But I really wanted the other one.

I can throw it away if I mess it up. Sometimes I have to encourage myself to at least try.

And I almost did throw it away.

I wasn’t happy with her face.

I “erased” it and went looking for a different brush in my brush drawer. There I found one made to apply designs on fingernails. It’s a really fine, long-hair brush with like three hairs in it but it doesn’t hold much paint.

That’s okay. Her face is no bigger than a dime anyway.

Just for comparison, here’s the first brush I used, which is one of my smallest brushes, and the brush for nail art.

I was much happier with my second face, then I softened some of the background elements. I thought they stood out too much.

“You don’t look a day over fabulous!” I wrote on the back.

I hope she likes it.

Speaking of my brush drawer...

All of my brushes rolled around in a jumble.

I didn’t like that.

I found a couple of pieces of wood in the way back and measured them. Mike cut and put ‘em together with brads.

“My pieces are too short,” I told him when I put it in the drawer. “I should’ve let you measure them.”

It doesn’t matter anyway. It does the job it was designed to do.

All that’s left are photos.

I took this one from the internet. It was photographed at the Wyalusing Rocks and shows you the smoke from the Canadian wildfires that have drifted into our area.

I love that our electric co-op has a native pollinator habitat.

This guy sauntered across the road like he owned it.

“It has two driver's seats. Does that mean it needs two operators?” I asked.

“No. It’s so he can sit on whichever side he needs to sit on to see where he’s going and not hit things,” Mike said.

Three the same!

Take some inspiration from this knapweed. You can’t always choose where you’re planted, so bloom where you’re planted.

Crows getting a drink from our creek. We really need a good, soaking rain.

“And not in November either,” farmer Randy says. “It’s doesn’t do us any good then.” He was referring to his hay crop.

The sun through the smoke.

Queen Anne’s Lace.

This hawk sat for me. We had just left our road and not gone far when I see him.

“There’s a hawk! He’s sitting on the hay wagon.”

I was on my morning love call to Miss Rosie and I made her wait while I took several photos.

We were on a section of road where there was good visibility in both directions. There wasn’t any traffic coming either way so Mike stopped and backed up so I could get my pictures. A truck came into Mike’s rearview mirror. He stopped and moved as far to the side as he could and waved the truck around.

I caught a bee, a skipper, and a Tiger Swallowtail on a bull thistle.

Two views of the same unused mailbox. I would normally pick just one or the other to show you but I’ll have lots of room this week so you get to see both. Which view do you like best? You can even say neither if it’s not your jam.

Bergamot is blooming.

Look at all the fluff! It’s a veritable finch buffet!

“What’s that?” Mike asked.

“Snapdragon,” was the first name that came to mind. “Toadflax,” was the next. “Butter-and-eggs,” I ended. Apparently my mental filing cabinet needed a minute to locate the most common name for this pretty wildflower.

“That’s the one,” Mike said.