I uncapped the bottle of ink. I reached for a Q-tip, Alternator Crimson, found my hand first and a black red pool spread across my workspace. My workspace was in the living room. On our coffee table.
I went to my wife and asked for towels, rags she was standing in front of the bin where we kept them. I strode back into the living room and mopped up the mess. And I was happy. Because the pool of ink was in a giant John Pike watercolor pallet, or palete, or whichever spelling it has. All the ink spread over the surface that, sure as they said, just sat there until I took towels and mopped it up. This counts as the best thing that happened today. I had bought a supply of ½ inch (woo hoo! a reason to use the ½ on my typewriter!) ½ inch stickers. Put one on the top of each jar and sample vials and then dipped into then with the q-tips and colored the tops. Now I no longer need to lift the individual containers to check on the names to figure out what I need. Now I just need to sort through the six types of blue. That is a lot more fun. A lot.
And let us hear it for John Pike and his great honking big holder of theing designed for painting. A palette. I have to look it up. Just like discrete or discreet. Except I know that I use discrete. I guess I need to use palettes more often and write about them more. I don’t want to confuse it with someones tasting abilities. So a bunch of cheers for John Pike and his palettes!
I think tomorrow I will get out my palette and watercolors and see about the collection of watercolors left by the previous owner. There are some honking big piles of pigment ready to be used. This is one great thing about watercolors, you let it dry and with water and patience you have it ready to use again.
Yes, this sounds like a plan for tomorrow. By the way, or PS for now, Austin Kleon wrote about what to write about when you are out of ides. “The Best Thing (cheerful retrospection)” is one of his blog posts. If you run in to problems with ideas, start by writing about the best thing that happened. Note this is not about something that happened. You can get stuck in something nasty. Ask yourself what is the best thing? Which I did and here we are. I spilled ink. Onto a safe surface while I was watching TV. Yes, it worked.
–MichaelRpdx :: rkmm/48
