Isn't It Romantic?

Last night Ptichka unlocked the front door and opened it. "I'm home," she sang and then the power went out. The lights came back on briefly and then we were plunged back into darkness. The risotto I was making for dinner was still crunchy so I covered it and moved it off the burner. Since we couldn't eat I (very wisely) suggested drinking the champagne I had bought. Ptichka and I spent the next little while looking for a lighter to light some candles. There was one under the chair in the bedroom for some reason. As I began amassing candles in the living room (just look at our very cluttered coffee table), Ptichka went back out to get the mail. With Ptichka outside I could only think that this is how all good slasher movies start: a power outage during a date. Ptichka, on the other hand, was thinking that this is how something else starts. ;-)


We sat and drank and talked about our days and exchanged gifts. She gave me a new set of dishes (I'll take pictures to post as soon as the light's good, probably this weekend) and a workshop of my choosing at the Japanese Paper Place Warehouse. Now comes the tough part: making a decision. Right now, I think that I'm going to take the Beeswax, Konnyaku, and Washi workshop (It's at the end of April). I'm also thinking about the encaustic monoprint workshop but I'm a bit hesitant. I've already missed the hard-cover bookbinding workshop. Maybe next year? What do you think?

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I decided that I needed to doodle more. This is the doodling I did during The Daily Show. The paint's there for an underpainting experiment, the hearts are an old design, and "Pant Wetting" and "Brechtian" are from Jon Stewart's continuum of comedy. His audience didn't get the Brechtian joke, which is too bad, because Ptichka and I thought that it was hysterical. Probably because it was a joke that used some obscure bit of knowledge that we had picked up (I did marry a German major, after all) in our previous lives. I drew all the botanicals during the show.

It was incredibly freeing: to just draw and not think. I also think that with some refining the droopy bell-shaped flowers will make a nice hand-carved stamp. I am going to have to make this a daily habit.