Winter Scene Painting

I did not have time to grout the gazing ball as I had hoped.  More on that in a minute.  Since I did not have a lot of time to spend on things I worked on a painting.  Regular readers might recall that the last time I posted a photo of a picture that I had painted it was only my fifth painting ever.  It is one of those Catch 22 situations.  I don't paint very often, and when I do the painting isn't very good.  Since my painting is not very good, I feel discouraged and don't paint.  (It would also help if I could draw, but that is another story.)  Anyway, the only cure for bad paintings are to paint until you get better at it.  So this is painting number six.

This painting is what I think is called a memory painting.  It is a picture of the road that goes by my cabin.  I have not been there on a snowy day in a long time.  I did not paint from a photo of it.  It is just a picture of the road where it goes over the stream and up around the bend.  It does not actually look much like it.  Needless to say, there are a lot more trees up there than I put in the painting.  At this point I wish I had put in more background trees.  Oh well, next painting.  It still has that folk art feel to it, but I think things are improving.

I did not grout the gazing ball because I had a lot of other things that needed to my attention.  I hate to take on a project like that when I am feeling rushed.  I was also still a bit annoyed with my shopping experience for grout.   It was a frustrating day. I went to the hardware store that focuses more on home improvement projects because they carry smaller size bags of grout.  They have the size I need, and it was only $3.28.  But, that grout size says on the front that it is Part C of a grout product.  It says that it must be mixed with Part AB, and that you cannot use water.  There is no Part AB on the shelves.  After a futile search, I finally track down a store employee that says that there is no more Part AB and that they are no longer allowed to sell such small lots of grout.  I suspect that I know what Part AB is, and think that I might be able to use a mortar ad mix, but I can't say for certain.  I give up on that product because I don't know for sure that it will work, and I don't want to make a mess of my project if it does not work.  I had to purchase a bag of grout for $10.98 cents.  It is a lot more grout than I need, but what are you going to do?  I guess I'll be throwing out some grout.

I had to run some more errands, and that took me over by the hardware store that is geared towards builders and contractors.  I decided to stop by and check out their grout selections hoping that I could find a size that would save some money.  If I could save some money, I planned to return the other product.  Well, this store now stocks some grout in small containers.  However, the containers were so small that I would have to purchase two of them to make sure that I had enough grout to complete the project.  The containers cost $5.98 each.  That made it more expensive to purchase the two small containers than it did the large one.  So, it cost more to not throw away the extra grout.  I stuck with my original purchase.  The extra stop at the second hardware store made me feel that I would be rushing to get the project done if I started at that time. 

Hopefully, I will have the ball grouted this afternoon.  It is turning out to be one of those days that I call, "But wait there's more."  I have been trying to get to the point of grouting the ball since 8:30 am.  There is so much that needs to be done before I can get to working on the grout.  If not tomorrow, it will definitely be Friday.  Check back for photos of the gazing ball on the Sunday blog post.