Jill Re-Searching: What now?

Just because I didn't post yesterday doesn't mean I've been sitting around doing nothing ever since Ulla left! We're putting together our final selections for the bathroom remodel - this means re-visiting most of the supply houses and keeping a running list of decisions yet to be made - like new door handles (check). We expect to have a "firm" price by next week and to have everything decided before we leave at the end of the month.

Samuel Barber's Vanessa was our final opera of the season, preceded by an educational program when students from FSU Conservatory read excepts from Issac Dinesan - pseudonym for Danish author Karen Blixen's - Seven Gothic Tales, which are considered to have been the inspiration for Vanessa's story. (Quote "What is man, when you come to think upon him, but a minutely set, ingenious machine for turning, with infinite artfulness, the red wine of Shiraz into urine?" (from 'The Dreamers' in Seven Gothic Tales, 1934) A somewhat different experience from last week's opera (Verdi's Othello), but still most enjoyable. And there were "Surtitles" on a screen above the stage even though the opera was sung in English - very necessary for our enjoyment.

This morning was my watercolor class. I'd taken last week's teaching points about drawing a thumbnail sketch for composition purposes to mean that we were supposed to work on the composition of the painting and finish it. Apparently that was not intended and the instructor was surprised when she saw that I and several others had attempted to finish the piece. Mine received a"very nice" comment in the "Crit" (instructor's critique of our efforts, one by one, for purposes of learning how to see and how to improve) - and somewhat to my surprise when the instructor finished the demo painting I saw that it had a path not unlike mine, and the ocean in the distance where I had mountains! I still had - and have - more to do on the painting, but here's the demo and my version at the beginning of class, and at the end.