Radio days (are here again)

Now that we have moved into our new apartment, we have added a new habit to our everyday life. We bought a radio. Yeah, I know what you are thinking - what kind of a home doesn´t have a radio? We had one a few years back, and when it broke down we thought we could do without. "We can always listen over the internet", we said, but we very seldom did. It´s just not the same. The habit of listening to the radio just disappeared. Music, yes, on CDs and vinyl, but the morning news and non-stop pop was no longer around.

Now that we have this little beauty of a sound machine in the kitchen, there are radio waves in the air all the time. I can´t believe we thought we would do just fine without a radio. My reborn morning habit of listening to the news while eating breakfast is something I don´t want to be without again, and cleaning the apartment or cooking without the babbling voices of Swedish Radio P3 makes it all so much duller.

Radio has a great advantage over TV and internet - it lets you do what you want while listening. It doesn´t occupy your hands, eyes or behind. I.e. it is what you could call a drawing-encouraging media. Radio is good for you.

The drawing is 20 x 13 cm, Lamy Safari and Noodler´s Lexington grey and watercolors on a sketchbook page.

Finally some colors!

I sat down for a while this evening to try to capture some branches of this flowering maple outside our kitchen window. At least we think it´s a maple. The view is brand new, we moved in here less than a month ago, and we haven´t seen any leaves on this tree yet. (And we are not thoroughly at home with botany...)

It is exciting to follow the development of the much too early spring here, from our windows above the treetops. We have a splendid view over the neighborhood, and see the light-green shades changing from day to day. A tiny blue tit likes to visit the tree in the afternoons, I may have to try to capture that little fellow on paper too...

I haven´t felt like using watercolors for a long time now, not since we started out on this moving adventure. Too much chaos around me seems to take the energy off painting. I wrote about that over at The Drawing Club the other day, so I won´t repeat it here. Energy is back, though, and so are the colors in my drawings. Feels good.

Both images are about 13 x 20 cm, on a sketchbook page. The top one is an attempt to paint without drawing first, the other has a very simple pencil drawing underneath the colors. The leaves are drawn with a Lamy Safari and Noodler´s ink before coloring.

Getting back to normal

We are finally done with the move, and after two weeks of packing, carrying, piling, throwing stuff away, carrying some more, unpacking and fixing things, we almost feel like we have a home again. And then it took us more than a week after all this to get back online - turns out an internet connection is harder to move than a ton of cardboard boxes and furniture...

Some of our stuff, mostly furniture, kitchen gear and books, have been stored for over a year while our landlord was renovating the block and we were moving around for a bit. Getting these items back two weeks ago was a blast. Some of the stuff was carried off directly to the dustheap ("what were we thinking when we stored that one??"), but opening the boxes I felt like a kid at Christmas. I had no idea what I was going to find in them, having completely forgotten about what we put in them for storage.

The return of my grandmother´s old secretaire (drawn above) felt almost like the return of a trusted old friend. It´s like a big warm heart in our livingroom. We still have some stuff to sort out and put away, some boxes to unpack and so on, but we are slowly getting back to normal. We have a home again.

Anyway, I am back online, and this blog will be updated more frequently again. And thank you, I was overwhelmed by all your nice comments and good wishes on my last post - it was much appreciated.