Life's a Stitch

Before winter is official

One last painting of fall. I know the leaves are long gone, but I didn't want to wait until next year to post this.


Watercolour 11x14, matted to 16x20.

Painting pictures of paradise

The world seems to be tightening up again. It's the impending doom feeling of March of 2020. Travel quarantines are being reinstated and I read this morning that Pfizer is considering recommending a fourth vaccine dose in order to fight the Omicron invasion. Our Canadian news included a recommendation from the public health authority in Thunder Bay, Ontario discouraging non-essential travel to neighbouring US states Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan as their covid infection rates are ten times higher than in their Canadian region.

Makes me ever more appreciative of the opportunity we had to travel to Kauai. The weather was beautiful, company good and the time relaxing, just what you hope for in a vacation. I miss my sunrise walks accompanied by crowing roosters and the song of meadowlarks. The local albatrosses (yes, that’s the proper plural of albatross) arrived to their protected nesting sites in a regular neighbourhood. The residents know them by name and look forward to their return. One of them developed this website: the Albatross of Kauai. Did you know: when they take their first flight, in their first year of life, the albatross doesn't touch ground again for 3-4 years? They fly over ocean waters, eating from the sea and sleeping on the water.

As she posed so well for this picture, I'll be painting her soon.

We made time for geocaching, which I combined with painting. The diffuse light, coming through the stand of ironwood trees made for some interesting shadows that pointed right to the geocache location.

The plumeria were mostly winter bare, but I had pictures from another trip, so I combined what I saw with the previous photo. What better place to paint a Hawaiian memory of another time.