Lavender Scent in Summer Air

My brother and I spent the late afternoon with our excellent second cousin, Randy, discussing our relatives and the upcoming Redd reunion in New Harmony, Utah. It was a lovely, wide-ranging conversation over families, Mormon history, art and other topics. We looked at many of his scanned photos of our ancestors and collateral relatives. On the way home, my brother thought to visit a Salt Lake City park on the site of the First Encampment the emigrants under Brigham Young made after they entered Salt Lake Valley. Our great-great-grandfather was a member of this group. We found that the names of these people were carved on stones through the First Encampment Park (link). Lavender was blooming near the plaque which explained this, and filled the air with heavy scent when we pushed it aside. It was a beautiful summer evening which had just turned dark. My brother decided to look for the name of  Solomon Chamberlain; (link) I didn't see how we could find it in the dark, but we had only located a handful of engraved rocks before we found his. So here it is, a flash picture of a rock. I was very happy to see it.

Albrecht Durer pencils the lower tier of colors

This is the lower tier of the 60 color set I blogged about yesterday. I am particularly pleased by the selection of greens and off-greens.

Perfect afternoon in the shade

This afternoon on the shady terrace was perfect for making color charts with a new set of 60 Albrecht Durer Watercolour Pencils
I got from Amazon. It was interesting to see how tricky it was to make matching squares to fill with each color, pressing hard and stroking the paper softly with each color. This is the top of the set--I'll put up the lower tier tomorrow. I was delighted with the strength of the colored leads and also the soft buttery feel of the application of colors. Only one color and the black was a little crumbly. I suppose these slight differences in handling are due to the pigments. I haven't tried wetting them yet, but I have seen lots of demonstrations of their use by Cathy/Kate Johnson who is a big fan. Today I read a book about doing something creative every day for a year. To judge by my neglect of my blog, might not be for me. But tempting, nonetheless.