-daughter

-dog owner

-singer

-PvP Priest healer

-Fencer

...

This list is endless.

But there's one specifically I am touching on today.

I am Not the Best Painter.

I know, I know. I talk about knitting religiously, so you're wondering, why painting?

Well, there's two bits to this story folks. Let's start with the why of the painting.

Last weekend was our Ren Faire here in Wichita. (Sorry, no pictures because I had no clue where my camera went.) We make it to Sunday night, and enter clean up mode. Someone boxes in our car with the trash carts, and some items got put in front of the car we didn't notice. Long story short, we ran over a Caligraphy box when we went to leave.

We demolished the box, broke one vial of ink, had our spirits completely crushed (as if we didn't feel bad enough for it, we basically got our noises rubbed in it), I woke up Bob that night and said "Hey, I want to replace the box, but I think it would be nice to buy an unfished one, stain it and finish it. What do you think?" The response was "I think it's a really good idea, honey, now go back to bed."

Supportive huh? *grin*

Now, the other side of this story is the side of why I was possessed to do this. My mother, Gods know we don't see eye to eye on much...er, well, anything, but she's incredibly talented. (Even if she doesn't think so.) My mother's been painting since before my sister and I were a thought, and she's excellent at it. She does some wonderful folk art work. Not only can she paint, but in her hobby spectrum, she can make stained glass stepping stones, scrapbook, knit a bit, and crochet.

I figure with her help, I would at least know how to do this, right?

I've never painted. Not like mom. I used to draw a lot, but I focused on other things in school, so I never really developed that artsy crafty side. After telling her the story of running over the box, she felt I'd have no problem with this.

Most nerve wracking project...ever! It's up there with my October gloves!

I got a crash course in painting what I wanted...and I still didn't really do it right. She forgot to tell me to sand the box after I stained it. But I mixed up a stain color. Sort of learned how to make a rose, and here's what it's looking like so far.

Yup, I know. It's not centered, and certainly not the best, or finshed. I have some corner pieces that are brass to put on the top and bottom and I'm going to give it a gloss finish, but hopefully, they like it and understand we were pretty mortified.

Speaking of being mortified, I'm currently undergoing retraining of my dog, on many different levels. Walking and biking, almost daily...and let me tell you, after today, it's getting stepped up a notch.

The herder in my dog came out today, as she spent 10 minutes trying to "Herd" the horse. Scariest 10 minutes of my life. The routine has been started. Walk/bike a day, and right afterwards, into retraining of the basic commands. Eventually, into some "fun" stuff to add to tricks, and hopefully, never again a repeat of today.

I should hopefully have a mitten done by the end of today, and might even start on the second October mitten. I got quite a bit done today at Knit in Public (Again, sorry for no pictures...yet.)

I'm looking forward to that, and another bike ride with Bailey again tonight.

Although it's not exactly what I wanted, we're moving into a rental on Tuesday until the house closes. (The adjuster's measured the roof wrong. Go go insurance company. Ugh.) Should only be for a month, but the idea of saving money at my folk's house is out the window because it's severely affecting my work productivity.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that things will start moving quicker so we can get moved in and a fence up before the ground freezes. Got to keep positive.