changeover to winter

I really love our street, and the dawn light in the morning is fantastic — if you can get over the fact that it's dawn and you're leaving for work. I can generally keep up the pretense that it's an enjoyable autumn until Hallowe'en, but after that it's the runup to Christmas, which means snow, which means winter, which means cold. This morning, coincidentally enough, was also the first day this season that it was below freezing when I walked out the door.

And it was snowing yesterday — not much, and very wet; most of it melted practically before it hit the ground, but it was definitely snow. And last night, after all of the trick-or-treaters were gone, we realised that we had no food in the house and went online to check the grocery store's hours — and they had already switched their flyers into Christmas mode. So the changeover happens fast.

Of course, I didn't really wait for it. This is what I did on Saturday:








The majority of the cards (third picture) are standard Gocco screen prints, from my own freehand drawing. I knew they would work (even though they're a new design), so I spent most of my time experimenting with incorporating some Chinese brush doodling (yes, that is absolutely the correct term) and cut paper into my work. I'm very bad at the latter, though — as you can see by the last picture — and I need to figure out how to stop the very fibrous paper from catching on the cutter. So the cut paper may need to percolate for another year while I work on my technique.

I'm very pleased with the Chinese brush, however. It's nice to know that I've retained something from grade school (because it's certainly not the language — sorry, mum!).