Good Fortune. Year of the Dragon.

 This idea has been in my head for months. Once I realized this year was Year of the Dragon, I got to work.

This is Good Fortune. Year of the Dragon. Gouache on 8x10 canvas board.

Creating family heirlooms

 My Czech grandfather gave me some crocheted doilies years ago before he passed. I have them all around my home proudly displayed. They aren't worth much, but to me they are a treasure because I know they are handmade. By whom, I do not know, but I will assume it's someone in our family. 

Lately I've been seeing videos on social media of people taking old handmade tablecloths and repurposing them into clothing. While that might seem really cool if you're wanting to be trendy in fashion, I personally am quite put off by it. I understand the level of effort it took for someone to make that piece, and to hack it up into a shirt that might someday not be trendy is a waste. I'm all about up cycling, but I also think there's a line that can be crossed with it. 

Now that I'm off that soap box, the idea of family heirlooms being passed down inspired me to crochet a table runner for my how lineage. So of course I ran down to my closed yarn store-which happens to specialize in crochet over knitting! Green Trees Crochet has yarn made especially for crocheters. The staff is super friendly too. I bought a whole skein of Clea in the color Aquarium and decided to pick out the pattern later (isn't that how we always do it?).  After searching Ravelry and Etsy, I came back to a free pattern offered on the Circulo website called the Blanc Table Runner which features the Clea yarn I purchased. 

The actual results were a little different from the pattern. I might crochet loosely as my finished product came out with less motifs than the pattern said to make with just one skein. It still turned out magnificent and I know have this on my vintage dresser.

Cats (and a dog) portraits

 A neighbor of mine loves cats, so I jumped on the opportunity to paint them. She has 3 Maine Coons (which are very cool cats), a Sphinx (!), and a black cat. 

Turns out I really enjoy the company of cats, and painting them as well.

A long time friend of mine lost her Cane Corso recently. His name was Enzo, and he was a behemoth of a dog. He was just seven years old, which seems young for a dog to move to the rainbow bridge. To send my condolences, I sketched Enzo on blue paper in pastels. This was my first time really using pastels, and being that Enzo had a blue-gray coat, I thought this was perfect. RIP Enzo.