Not a Lot of Stuff

Last week there was a lot of stuff to post about, but this time I have very little.  Didn't see any birds other than the regulars. Didn't draw or paint anything worth sharing (massive failure during our Zoom sessions--sigh.)  Mostly I worked on decorating the outbuilding room, and did some garden shopping.

You may recall that the outbuilding, which I'm now going to call the Summer House, had one finished 12x12 room.  New flooring and baseboards were put in, and it was ready for use.  Unfortunately, the walls had been painted gray, which in my world, Simply Would Not Do.  Fortunately, I had paint leftover from doing my living room--some pale blue and a lovely lavender.  There wasn't enough of one color for all the walls, so I just did half and half.

Here is an in-progress pic, with the hideous gray on the far left:

I put test patches of each color on each wall, let them dry, and then determined which walls would look best in light blue (the ones that didn't get as much natural light), and which would be good painted lavender (the brighter two walls).  

Then I added an area rug, some thermal curtains, and a little wall decor:

I also had a fan, and an extra dog bed to toss in there.

After a bit of shopping, the lawn chair soon got replaced by a quite nice sofa:

Next came a small desk for the laptop and radio/CD player.  It's a comfortable spot, and the dogs enjoy it.  Now all it needs is lots more decorative items!  Whee!

As for my gardening efforts, the flowering perennials finally appeared at the local nurseries.  Hoorah!  Below you can see a few that are starting to bloom -- the two in the rear are penstemon (aka Beard's-tongue) and delphinium, and in front of them, lavender and lungwort (such an ugly name for a lovely plant!).  The heather I planted a couple of weeks ago is in the very front left, still looking good.

I also planted more stuff elsewhere, but it's too early for any of them to look like much, so no pics yet.  Later, I hope, if they grow and bloom -- I got more lavender, a liatris, a clematis, and two rudbeckias (aka Black-eyed Susan).  Fingers crossed!

Finally, a long time ago (well, okay, November) I started a second Good Omens needlepoint, using my colored pencil of Aziraphale as the pattern:

I really struggled with this one.  The first half or so wasn't too awful but by the time I hit the two-thirds point, I was ready to give up.  The complexity of the pattern and the colors, which turned out more in the orange range than I liked, were not happy-making.  It was taking a long time, too -- each 2,000-stitch row averaged 9 days of work, and there were 17-1/2 rows.  ARGH!

But after taking a bit of a break, I decided to just plow on through and finish it, and last week, after a mere four months of effort, I succeeded!  Whew.  

THIRTY-FIVE THOUSAND STITCHES.  DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE!!!

So that was gratifying.

No plans for this coming week yet, other than to try to do better drawings at the Zoom sessions, keep an eye out for more plants, and hunker down in the wind (supposed to get gusts up to 50 today--whoa!).

Stay safe out there, and have a great week!