Happy New Year.

As usual, let’s start the year with a resolution. I feel that this year should be about the self-care and self-love and being very gentle with myself. I’ve been pushing myself too much, with giving to my family, trying to achieve something with my art business, trying to do the art challenges, learning new things, looking to accomplish more… and more… and to tell the truth: I am tired. I worry too much, I sleep badly, I stress about not making the challenges, not getting enough attention from my followers, not reaching my business goals, not writing my blog every day. I neglect myself by not resting enough, not meditating enough, not exercising enough, not pausing enough, not making art that has meaning to me.

So, this year I will try to make things better for myself and do less of what stresses me and more of what has deeper meaning and nourishes my soul. Starting with this blog, I am not going to post every day. I will try to do weekly posts and if I do not manage that, I will do monthly. Daily did not work for three years now, so I better let go of it.

I set myself monthly goals, but not for more than two months ahead. If I do not reach them, I will just move them to the next month. This month the goal is to transform this blog into a web site. Apparently it’s possible, I just need to learn how. Because, right now I am struggling with even simple image insertion in this new editor. Maybe the editor is not even new, just I did not come here for a very long time 🙂

Things have been ok last year. We did not get ill with the virus. We built the garden, which was a huge undertaking for me, both financially and emotionally. I advanced my skills with learning about pattern design. That was big too. I struggled with Lola’s health and it seems that I finally won there too: since November she is eating raw. I stopped all supplements and all carbs (grains, fruits, vegetables). Her last bad diarrhoea was in October. She is eating only raw meat and fish, raw organ meat and occasional bone. She is improving. I am calming down. Let’s hope that’s a win. So, 2020 is done and all is ok.

End of 2020 Mother got a moderately worrying health issue, so this year we are starting with worry about that. She will need a surgery, which involves general anaesthesia and she is extremely worried about that. I worry too. Many things could go wrong, but let’s hope they will not. So, that’s a big one to deal with in January too.

I enrolled in Life Book this year after three years of pause. I felt it’s time to get back to it and work thorough the self-care lessons I will find there. I am not expecting to do them all, just what inspires me. This time, I have an old book from my childhood that I will alter for Life Book. I am looking forward to it. It’s been a long time since I painted mixed media.

Last month of 2020 was dedicated to #carvedecember challenge and that one I did, all 31 days and I recorded a video of all of them. I quite enjoyed it and managed quite well time wise. I will try to post a video flip through here. I know it never worked before, but let’s see, maybe it changed 🙂

So I was kind of lazy these days and did not write anything. Nobody got sick and even our gardener appeared to say that he will start the works on 17 August. So there was no bad and scary reason for not posting 🙂 I was just very very busy at work and around house, so there was simply no time. Lola had her lab check on Friday and all is good.

I was further using my watercolor painting to make patterns. These three are made of two flowers from that painting, I just added a glow filter around them. I am quite happy with how they turned out.

We are travelling today again to Slovenia. The weather is nice and hot, so the summer is finally here. Sad to think that it’s already August, so it will not last, but at least we did get some hot this year.

I am continuing with turning my watercolor painting into a repeat pattern. This is element number 3 added. I really like how it turned out 🙂

There is a lot to do this week, at work. Also we are preparing for the garden rebuilding, doing last minute planning and shopping for materials. Actually I will be really happy when August is over, I hope all works will be finished by then. But let’s not plan too far ahead, they haven’t even started, LOL!

Well, if it’s not Lola, it’s something else. Lola was fine thankfully, but I got a pinched nerve in my shoulder and for two days could not move my little finger and also did not sleep almost at all for two nights. Since I had a lot of time and could not do anything, I downloaded an app called Procreate Pocket, which is kind of Procreate for iPhone, because I do not have an iPad. So I played a bit with it once the pain got bearable and made a wonky mandala (first photo), Then once I could hold a mouse I tried to see how it works with exporting it from Procreate to Photoshop, and I can report a success. Made just a very simple pattern because the drawing does not deserve better, but it’s good to know that there is that option. Today I continued to extract elements from a watercolor painting, the job I started before the shoulder hit me. The idea was to extract element by element and then recombine them into a seamless pattern. The last photo is two flowers combined into a pattern. Tomorrow I continue.

New patter from a watercolor painting I did two years ago. The colors make me happy. The weather has improved today and the sun came out. I hope we will have a beautiful day, despite it being Monday… I feel unsettled and worried… There is a full list of chores to attend to, so I better start working on crossing them out. It may help me focus and feel better…

Did I really miss more than one month of blogging? It certainly did not feel that long. The main reason was Lola was sick. She’s got a bad case of gastritis caused most probably by multiple food intolerances. It was bad, stressful, sad and horrible. It sucked all my energy, ruined my sleep and wrecked my creativity. All I could do was watch her and wait for any sign that would tell me something was wrong again. Because I overthink and overworry and overpanick. It’s not only that the dog is unwell, but I add to the burden triple-fold by expecting and imagining bad things happening. Anyway…

I did some art and created some patterns, but I am so far behind in all my challenges. I realised I really don’t care. Because no matter how important art is for me, it is not the most important thing obviously. So, here are three patterns I made in last three days. There was more certainly, but now I lack the energy to search for photos. So some stuff will not get posted to this blog. It does not matter.

The weather has been terrible. It’s raining almost every day and we are dressed like in late autumn, all with socks and padded jackets and rain coats. Gloomy skies just add to my tiredness and lack of motivation. So yeah… it’s Sunday, it’s dark and raining, the day has just started and I wish I could go back to bed and wake up in some better time.

I am continuing my pattern making with this card which I posted a few days ago. We had a great time in Slovenia, the weather was just perfect and we did a lot of work in the garden, picked up many strawberries and played ball for minutes and minutes. Lola gets really excited about having such a huge garden to run around and she is so happy there, so we do many short running arounds during the day because we have to be mindful of the heat and the fact that she is unfortunately prone to getting a heat stroke due to breathing difficulties. And no, she does not know when it’s time to stop and she would run until she falls down, which, of course, I prevent in time. 🙂

We came back on Sunday in the horrible weather in Hungary. We got stuck in the traffic jam on the highway on our way back. Stupid me, forgetting that driving on Sunday afternoon is a big no-no. Frankly I was not expecting so many people already driving around due to pandemics and what not. Obviously, I was wrong.

So, now we are back home, today we used a couple of hours when the rain stopped to go to the local building material shop and buy tiles for the garden, It was a success, so I can finally provide the data to the gardener and finalize the deal with him. Obviously, they will not be able to start in August as planned, because I think everything is delayed due to bad weather. Anyway… I hope the tiles will not stay in front of the house until next year. Gasp!

12/61. It’s Saturday and I am going to meet a friend. There is still a lot of work in the garden but we managed to clean the majority of the tall grass and to free our raspberries, blackberries and blueberries. Strawberries need more work. It’s going to be another hot day… better enjoy it while we can because already tomorrow the weather will spoil again.