...and Mondays

I find Mondays generally quite annoying because I have all my plans for the new week but I have to go to big tesco to get food for the week (which is preferable to walking up the road to local tesco every day), which means I have to plan what to have for tea every night before I go. So by lunchtime I'd planned our food, been to tesco, put the food away, made soup for my lunch for the week, done the washing up... ok it doesn't sound like loads now but it felt like it at the time! The soup was pretty random today. I had a load of new potatos left from last week and some sweet potatos and cabbage so I make potato, sweet potato, cabbage and carrot soup with of course plenty of onion and garlic and a chilli added as I had some spare. Now I have soup for lunch for five days. Oh and of course it has to be eaten with a couple of slices of fresh granary loaf with primula cheese spread. Mmmm...


This afternoon I went on a bit of a mission to Inkspot, a great art and crafts centre on Newport Road in Cardiff. Well that was after going through my old collection of oil paints...

I actually have quite a lots more than this but they're in huge tubes in boxes. I also checked out my collection of paintbrushes and decided I should probably get at least a new detail brush and maybe one other. Anyway, I ended up buying a pack of five paintbrushes! Absolutely ridiculous but at the same time quite necessary really. I also bought some acrylic primer. Priming was always a favourite part of producing paintings. The pristeneness of the canvas once prepared for painting is awesome. It holds so much potential - the thought of producing a masterpiece, the thought of it all going wrong, the excitement of placing beautiful colours together and the feeling of blending and working the paint. I'm making it come alive for myself just writing this. I always hated gesso primer though. Because I like to blend blend blend my paint to produce a smooth finish, I hate the chalkiness of gesso which makes it much harder to achieve the effect I want. Acrylic primer is just nice and smooth.
On the way to my next stop at a sewing shop I stopped at the library and, wanting to refresh my memory a little on paint additives and oils etc, picked up "The Artist's Handbook" by Pip Seymour. I was thinking about his name because I was sure it sounded familiar, and realised he used to come to my uni to sell oil paints and I still have loads I bought from him. I think the company is called Ashby. Thought that was quite cool, and it looks like an excellent book. I also got "The Quilters Block Bible" and "The Compendium of Quilting Techniques" as I still need to plan my next quilting project (as well as finish two others!).
The other week I gave a lovely lady at my patchwork and quilting class one of those mini stitch sewing machines. My MIL had given it to me several years ago but since she has upgraded it with a proper sewing machine (!) I had no use for it. I knew this lady did a lot of sewing with her granddaughter so thought it would be ideal for her so gave it to Jenny (the lady) and said she absolutely mustn't give me anything for it, as it really wasn't worth it and I never did and never would use it. So she bought me a gift voucher for a sewing shop, Crafty Sew and Sew, so I went there next and bought some embroidery canvas and thread which I've been wanting to get for ages. The threads were only 50p each so probably not the best quality, but if you've never done embroidery before I can't imagine it'll matter.

That little card is the gift voucher which is a sweet little pattern for a cross stitch which is on the reverse.
Anyway, when I finally got home, after spontaneously meeting a friend for a frap and having a tour of the newly refurbished library and fitness centre complex at the end of our road, I came home and primed a piece of rather textured cartridge paper and I'm hoping to be doing some more priming tonight as Marno is bringing me some mdf home from work and a lovely piece of white acrylic to use as a pallette. How exciting! I really need to finish knitting my MIL's socks...