Busy in the Kitchen

The print-room in C's work have bound 3 photo-calendars that C made. Well, so far they've bound the one that headed off to Australia - the other two will be going in on Monday. So I wanted to send in some biscuits as a thank-you, and also my Secret Santa likes cookies...this morning I made a big double batch of peanut-butter cookies and some Baklava for our weekend treat. I also made a big pot of lamb curry, a beef and Guinness stew to have when an Italian friend visits on Tuesday, and a beef and vegetable casserole. I don't anticipate having a lot of cooking to do this week!
I was out in the garden - I've been seeing this fading beauty of a poppy out of the corner of my eye, but in the bright sunshine this morning it was worth going over for a second look, and then getting the camera. I was tidying up my memory cards from the camera, copying everything over to the PC - quite startled to see how few pictures I took in November. I suppose we didn't have the weather.



A book to read: Bright Earth:The Invention of Colour by Philip Ball. I read it some years back, and for the last while it's been on my bedside waiting to read again. He starts with the early cave-painters, through the Greeks with their basic colour palette and right up to the modern day. It's seeing all the rich nativity blues and reds at the moment that has reminded me of it; as the most expensive pigments in the Middle Ages, they were used sparingly, and only when painting special characters. He writes about the early age of synthetic colours, when nobody realised how fugitive some colours were, so that artists would be surprised to see what their paintings now look like. Certainly I remember that when I worked in the fine-art supplies field, permanence was still the Holy Grail for some colours. I remember too that artist's quality ultramarine was unavailable for some time, because it used Lapis Lazuli, and it was, back then, in short supply because of the war (with the Russians) in Afghanistan, where most of it came from.