A New Bottom

Hope comes out of the shed with her new bottom on. Here she is next to a Contessa 32. A boat that's 1 foot shorter but much slimmer and therefore faster (apparently). Vince would have liked a Contessa, but as lots of other people like them too they were out of our price range. I got to thinking of them as the VW campervans of the small boat world. Not in terms of performance, but in terms of cult status!

 A close up of her new copper coated bottom, disappointingly not very coppery!

 Copper bottom with a few patches still to finish up

 And chaos in the cockpit as we attempted to stash away lots of stuff that's been living in our house all winter. It was worse if anything down below, but if you've been reading this blog for a while you'll be bored of chaos down below pictures!

 I couldn't resist a few boat names....

 and look at this beauty, now that would be fun to live on! I wonder if the owners will be allowed to float about with it looking like a lifeboat still?

Doodling

I've been doodling and painting.
Sue Simpson does some very beautiful calligraphy and doodling. I've been inspired by her stuff for a while, and last week she did a 'how to' post. It's not as though I haven't done much doodling before, but I thought having a go at these might add a new dimension or a bit more zing to my doodles.
Here's one of her doodles and a link to her post

click on image to link to Sues doodling tips

Here is the doodle I did one evening, just from memory. It's on a thick folded piece of paper so it might be a birthday card for someone.

This is one I did a while ago, again insired by Sues stuff. It's a bit smudgy because it's before I'd realised that using waterproof pens is pretty important if you're going to colour it in with watercolour, doh, obvious in retrospect!

And here are a couple of little watercolours I've done in my diary. Of course I'm only showing you the best ones I've done, some are definitely not as good as these.

lovely old stone bird bath
(unfortunately not in my garden!)

a fiddle
(also not mine, tho I do have one that looks very like this!)

Wedding anniversary

Our 1st wedding anniversary cake

As a special treat we got ourselves some fish and chips from Moreton.

Blimey, we know how to have a good time!