Salt Breezes and Other Stories

Hello.

This has been a funny old week - one of restless mind (yes, again) which was partially soothed by a nice morning making Rocky Road but followed by a general unsettled~ness which began with a very tiny need to be by the sea, and which turned into a bigger and bigger one as the week drew on.

Saturday promised to be a fine day, and without much persuading we gathered ourselves, buckets, spades, shrimping nets and hefty picnic and drove off pronto to the east coast, to Filey, where we set up camp on the vast sandy beach and enjoyed a warm and happy day which we finished off with delicious salt and vinegary fish and chips on a bench overlooking the Brigg.

I'm so happy by the sea, I can hardly put it into words. Its all the simple things like the wonderful scent of the salty sea breezes, the fresh and tangy air, the views, the light heartedness that inevitably comes from being by the coast...There are other little moments too, like that divine feeling of soft white sand under your feet, and cool crystal waves lapping about your ankles as a seagull cries overhead...

It was a tonic, but alas we had to drive home that evening as the following day there was a rather Important Job to be done.

We were off to buy our tent!

Well, at long last we have brought it home, along with a few other goodies such as a little stove and cooking set...and you probably want a peep at it don't you? Oh - well alright then!! Here you go!

This is our new portable home!! Next weekend it will be coming with us to the Cotswolds for its first outing. We are having a trial run (a sensible thing to do we've been told) and are going to put it up in my parents back garden first, to familiarise ourselves with it, and then probably go loopy with excitement and jump about in it a bit, like you do!

We are all looking forward to the adventures we are no doubt going to have, and I will try my hardest to remember to squeeze the camera in the car somewhere and take lots of pictures.

So what else has been going on here?

Well, some art work has been done - here are a couple of line drawings that I did and rendered with greyscale watercolour. These sorts of drawings are fairly quick to do and great fun, it's almost like messing about and not 'proper' drawing at all, the imagination can go wild!

This one above looks a bit like me, going wild in the kitchen on baking day...!

...and this one was inspired by my two little nephews, I think they're monster hunting or something boyish that boys generally do when equiped with torches and much mischief!

The picture at the bottom of this post is from my sketch book, and was done using watercolour and inks. It was just something I did for fun, but overall I'm liking the effect of ink and watercolour together, and the rather scratchy way I've edged it all. I generally work with acrylic paints and so it's nice to experiment with new stuff to see what works (and what doesn't) and move away from what's familiar. I think I'll be making some new pictures with the ink in future!

Well, someone Small is in the sandpit, the sun is shining and I can feel a spot of crochet coming on, a nice and relaxing pursuit for as long as I can get away with it methinks!!

I hope you all have a nice weekend, we are off to my Mum's village tomorrow for the yearly Carnival, I just hope the weather holds!

Til next time, much love and thanks for visiting me today!

J x