On My Table: Beginning of July 2026

June turned into July quickly this year, and I am just a few days away from flying to France! My palette needs to be washed and refilled, and the pencil case still is not closing - so some curation needs to happen (or a larger case would be found - I will let you know!) My plan is to share what colors and tools will go with me to Toulouse, and then what I ended up using or not using. 

Another Vase I made!

This is a present for a friend who is not online as much and is not reading this blog, so I am posting it before it is actually gifted to the recipient. I've been trying to nail the shape of a vase where the top half is larger than the bottom part, but I am still far from my goal. However, this one was a step forward, and I enjoyed making a new texture on the surface and experimenting with the way glazes pulled in the holes. (Spoiler - yellow did not pull as much as I hoped! Possibly because I dropped the whole vase in a bucket with glaze, which caused the layer to be too thick, and I sponged some of the extra glaze off - and, probably, overdid it).

Alstroemerias: Part 2

Here is a second batch of alstroemerias from my sketchbook (first one is here). By the end of the life of this bouquet, I tried to hang it upside down to dry flowers and preserve beautiful colors and shapes, but they fell off within a few breaths. 

Getting Ready For Urban Sketchers Symposium: Part 1

I am two weeks away from being in Toulouse, France (I hope the weather will get a little better), and am in full swing of making lists for my personal sketching adventure as well as for the workshops and a demo that I will be leading. Not much is packed yet, but everyone I asked about what to bring to the Urban Sketchers Symposium said stickers. So I ordered some - they are not here yet, but here are images of what to expect:

Alstroemerias and Reproof for Dynamic Pricing

My local farmer's market used to have a large flower stand, which I quietly (or not so quietly) did not like much. Mostly because there were no prices anywhere, so one had to ask about pricing for every single flower, and I witnessed how the number was going up or down based on who was asking. I am not in favor of dynamic pricing and do not hide it. End of reproof.

But now that the flower stand is gone, and I missed them because even if buying there was not something I frequented, looking at flowers is always a part of my "why" for going to the market :) And then one of the local farms started bringing some flowers - these alstroemerias survived on my table for almost 3 weeks - so this post will have two parts - this is part one.