One day of seasonable weather, and now we’re heading back into the deep freeze. Propane prices have skyrocketed, so we’ve got the thermostat turned down and are keeping the wood stove going good. I just can’t believe the price of propane; a month ago 300 gallons cost us $430, now 100 gallons is going to be $520, and with this weather, that’ll last a couple of weeks.

I’ve been doing a lot of drawing during the day, since my drawing table is in a south facing room, and I can soak up the sun in there. I’m hooked on a new author, Laurie R. King, and her Mary Russell series (been listening to the audiobooks while drawing). She writes a bit like Elizabeth Peters with the Amelia Peabody series, although her books are darker, especially the one describing the WWI period. Here’s the latest progress on my elk drawing:

I’ve still been working on murrini tests, but nothing spectacular so far. Maybe once I get them into beads where they’re really hit with a lot of fluctuations in heat/propane/oxy they’ll look more interesting. Here’s what I mean, the first picture is just a test of the murrini,

but here’s what it looks like worked on a bead,

I really like the way it spread in the encased murrini (the left one).

I’ve got some nice beads that I’ve got to get listed,

And here’s a couple funny Internet pics,

Well, we had our January thaw, so now it’s back to the deep freeze, sigh. It’s 34° right now, downright balmy, but by tomorrow night it’s going to be -15°. I WANT SPRING!!!!!!

One of the few things I like about winter (other than my nice warm electric blanket and wood stove) is that I’m pretty much confined to the house, so I do get stuff done. I did a couple more murrini pulls (no photos yet, but they weren’t all that exciting), and I’ve gotten quite a bit more done on my elk drawing. Working with watercolors is much, much faster, I’ve found, than working with colored pencils. Colored pencils are laid down layer after layer after layer to get the coloring to look realistic, but it’s kind of like quilting, keeping the hands busy while focusing the mind on something else, like an audiobook. Here’s the progress so far,