It has been a while! I didn’t attempt to post in September as we were going away at the end of the month, so rather than rushing I thought I would do a quick catch up now, covering both September and October. I’m still not sure there is that much to tell. Most of September was fairly quiet, we managed to see both my in-laws and my parents over one long weekend, that was really nice. We knew they were all doing okay but that is never quite the same as seeing them in the flesh. We also wanted to make sure we squeezed a visit in before the Covid second wave arrived and we potentially weren’t allowed to visit again. It was the first time we had seen my in-laws since February, and my parents since last December. My brother (who I hadn’t seen since January also popped in on his way back from dropping my niece off to her first year at university (fortunately she is in the south, so for now at least, while there are still restrictions to abide by, she is still allowed to have some small classes), so that was wonderful too! Now it is only my sister and her family I haven’t seen in almost a year, I’m really ready for this pandemic to jog on now!
We have continued to squeeze in as many early morning walks at Black Down as we can at the weekend, again we are just waiting for the rules to change, telling us we can’t go. Sunrise walks can make for a very long Saturday, but it is a great way to pack lots into your day, even if the most exciting thing after the walk right now is cleaning and watching Netflix!
The beginning of September also saw the release of the Inktober prompt list, followed not far behind by the Peachtober list. I always appreciate these lists being released early as I prefer to plan ahead rather than come up with an illustration on the day, especially as I knew that this year I would be away for the beginning of the challenge, I knew if I didn’t plan and start early, I would never catch up once I got home.
I decided to use both lists, some illustrations being just Inktober prompts, some just Peachtober prompts, and others were a mash up of the two, which was quite fun. I worked through both lists picking out which words I immediately had ideas for in a random order, chose a selection of coloured pencils for my palette, and then started scribbling down roughs in my sketchbook and giving them a quick colour so I knew roughly, where everything needed to be.
On the 25th of September we headed back up to the Lakes, a holiday we had booked last year. We go self-catering, so apart from having a quick stop at the services (it is a long drive), we hardly had to see anyone for the whole week. As well as doing some walking, we usually pop into a couple of the towns while we are there, but we decided to give that a miss this year. We have everything we need where we stay, including a hot tub, so it was just really quiet and relaxing.
We went for a couple of drives along a couple of the passes, as well as an early morning walk around Buttermere (which was still quite busy) and an early morning walk up Sale Fell.
Sale fell is one of the smallest fells in the Lakes, but on the morning we went up, it was utterly beautiful, and was even worth my husband accidentally taking us along the awkward path rather than the well defined one!
On the drive there we weren’t really expecting as it was dark, grey and foggy, but just a short walk up an incline of the walk took us above they misty clouds. With the pink, orange and purple light from the sunrise, it was strange and magical to see a carpet of cloud below us.
It was also my birthday while we were there and that turned into a really lazy day.I spent most of my morning drinking tea and opening my presents, before spending most of the afternoon in the hot tub and then watching Rocketman, which I really enjoyed, we then had a take out for dinner!
We had a couple of take outs while we were there, the best was probably from Shill’s of Cockermouth. They have a take out tapas menu Thursday, Friday and Saturday night, so we ordered form them (in advance) twice. It isn’t a conventional tapas, but really naughty things like crispy beef, sticky baby back ribs, chorizo and sticky sausages, and the best bit is that you could also order cocktails that came in little premixed bottles – it was so much fun, and I highly recommend the Bon Bon Sour. My photos aren’t great, I was in a hurry to empty things out on to plates and dig in. We didn’t actually eat the meat platter on the same night (that was far too much food) we saved it for lunch the next day.
We have had a number of take outs from various restaurants/pubs since lockdown as eating places try to diversify, and while some of the others have been quite good, Shill’s has done the best job – you have to order in advance, so everything is well organised and works seamlessly, they recognise that not everything on their normal menu would work as a take out, so have a different menu with items which are easy to produce and will keep hot for long enough for you to take them home, and they pre-make cocktails for you - they even supplied ice, I can not rate them highly enough!
The day after we returned home from the Lakes I was off out again for my birthday meal with two of my friends (above), who I hadn’t seen months. One of my friends lives in Rugby so we needed to meet somewhere easy for all of us. We booked a table at The Five Arrows Hotel in Waddesdon and we had such a lovely meal. All the tables were well spread out and the staff we all wearing protective gear so we felt very safe, and my friend had mentioned that I couldn’t have dairy when booking, so our waitress talked me through the whole menu, showing me things I could have and explaining how they could change other items so that I could eat them too. I felt really well looked after and the food was delicious. We had also booked in for a walk around the Waddesdon Manor grounds in the afternoon, but by the time we finished chatting over lunch, we had to get up there quickly before we missed the final entrance slot for the last hour before closing. We had an excellent little post lunch stroll.
My lovely girls also bought me a gorgeous pendant with little Harry Potter charms. I don’t usually like Pandora because I associate them with jangly bracelets, and while I sometimes wear lots of things on my wrists, I personally don’t like the feel of things jangling, so I never think to look at what else they sell, but the pendant is absolutely perfect.
It looks like a normal size pen when the lid is screwed on to the bottom…
We celebrated our anniversary in October - 7 years! We generally don’t do anything too fancy to mark the occasion, even less so this year as we chose not to go out for a meal. However we did exchange our copper gifts, I gave my Mr. a copper bookmark with a Terry Pratchett quote engraved, and he gave me a gorgeous mini copper pen that I can plan and write my stories with (please ignore the grubby finger marks that I’ve already splattered all over it).
…but is actually mini when the pen is on the top!
We then had a Greek kebab take out, (which I ate while drinking some bubbles), because we are classy like that, while watching The Personal History of David Copperfield, which I think is one of my new favourite films, I’ve hardly read any Dickens, and now I want to read them all, it was a great film, with a great cast!
For the rest of October I mostly kept my head down every day working on my Ink/Peachtober illustrations. Each illustration was A4 and created using coloured pencils. Some of them took longer than I had anticipated and if I join in again next year, I am vowing to complete them in A6 and A7 so they don’t take up too much of my time.
I do love taking part, it gives me a great feeling of satisfaction when I get to the end of the month and I have a pile of 31 illustrations, and it is brilliant for proving to yourself that you can push through those “I just can’t draw” days, because you don’t really have time to take a day off, because if you do, you fall behind really quickly.
The only thing that bothers me, is that by the end of the month, you realise that if you went back, you would redraw about 50% of them with some kind of improved composition, as rushing, in my case at least, produces a lot of middle ground illustrations, and once grouped together they can look a bit too similar and not dynamic enough. Still there is a handful I’m really pleased with.
So now, I head into November with a plan in my head to slow down a little, and a to-do list on my desk as long as my arm, hopefully I will find a nice compromise between the two. Today I have already updated this website a bit, added some of the October illustrations to my Pinterest board, made a meal plan and shopping list and ordered the shopping for next week, and I’ve written this post, so I’m still fairly productive.
I really want to make some time to read too, but now I’m off to make tacos, drink a little gin and watch a film.
(Oh and if you think it a little strange that I haven’t mentioned any books, it is because I don’t know where to start as I have lost count of what I have bought over the last two months, I need to regroup, and then hopefully I’ll be able to share a book post at a later date).