Turquoise Ink and silly ideas

I adore those seductive little Italian shops that sell exquisite leather bound sketchbooks and journals that I can't afford and could never bring myself to make a mark in anyway. Temptation doesn't stop there because they also have glorious pens and handmade inks, like liquid jewels. Well I'm learning to resist them. These days I just leave a little nose smudge on the window. Imagine my delight when my dear friend S, who's been visiting from Sydney, presented me with a bottle of Turquoise Ink, beautifully sealed with wax. Magical.

A while back I told our neighbour that I would love a little white Vespa 50L. He's an antique dealer who relishes a challenge. Having since mounted something only slightly more powerful and almost taken out a fence, I'm very nervous that he'll turn up with one. The terror of actually having to ride it ......

After John Singer Sargent

I'm a keen reader of Katherine Tyrrell's blog Making a Mark and am inspired by her post about the John Singer Sargent project. I've been in a rut with watercolours for months, feeling I'm making no progress, afraid to put paint on paper. So I copied a favourite JSS watercolour Corfu: The Terrace - not as big as the original. While I missed the mark by rather a long way, I was please to achieve more contrast of light and darks than usual. I'm posting it here in the hope that my next attempt (after studying all the resources Katherine has generously provided) will show more progress.

Anna's Car

My year of art is off to a very slow start, but visitors from home are a lovely distraction.

When we first arrived in CF, Snowy and I were nearly bowled over by a little Fiat 500 held together, it seemed, by packing tape. As it passed us in the narrow street and careered around a bend, the driver's door flew open and an elegant arm reached out and casually caught it. Without, it seemed, even coming to a stop it was thrown into reverse and screeched back into a tiny parking spot. I was fascinated by its driver, an intensely elegant dark haired woman waving a cigarette around as she slammed the door and swept off up the street. Eighteen months later we now know that this is Anna's car and that she is the charming proprietor of a very classy boutique a few doors down the street from our apartment. Today Snowy and I don't even flinch when a car bowls past with barely an inch to spare.