8r4d Monday afternoon the smoke has cleared and JB and Sadie needed a run, so I clocked day 13 of my #running streak.

8r4d According to the sacred violinist’s lore one must change one’s strings with care and regularity. Prolific players may need to change their strings every six to nine months. Moderate players like me should change their strings every twelve to eighteen months. Occasional players may wish to only replace strings every couple years or as required, because it’s not cheap nor trivial either. I last replaced my strings about five years ago… or in a timeframe clearly in breach of the sacred advice of internet #violin experts. Probably should have got on that sooner, huh?

8r4d Another day, another sky full of #firesmoke but RM messaged mid-afternoon and figured we were sitting at about the clearest it was gonna be for a day or so and would I like to get my daily #running done? So I drove to the south side and we tried out a 9k from the starbucks in the smoky air with some thunder cracking off just outside the city. Some trails, some suburbs, some asphalt, some sun…all good.

squwetchy I did some unplanned meditative painting last night before bed. Just put on an audiobook, watered down some blue paint, and starting with a wash and some selective lifting just let my imagination go wild. I have been a little bit fascinated with the idea of ethereal forests emerging from the soft wet-on-wet blur of layering washes of tree silhouettes and this is a good example of how that can blossom into something interesting by simply adding carefully layered tree textures over and over into a still-damp paper. The trees sort of soften into each other as you work and then you go back over them to build up colour value later by layer. I was just mucking around here mostly but even as I worked I kind of regretted not going about it in a more planned way because the result was actually materializing for me. Sadly, my iphone is a little weak in photographing such nuance and it keeps trying to amplify the textures and grain of the paper, inflating the contrast that is not there as strongly when you are looking at this in real life. There photo does not do it justice.

squwetchy Oh sure, you say, after all those pretty flower pictures now you go and post some depressing #dystopian #watercolour scene from a Fallout game or something, but see the thing is this was inspired, colours and all, by a photograph I took this morning of the creek valley filtered through the haze of all that forest #firesmoke, so… put that in your pipe and… well.

8r4d I was kinda hopeful that I would need my #firesmoke hashtag for a few weeks yet, but yet again the pall of burning forests in the north squashed my relatively wee & insignificant #running plans. I was all set to crank out a 12-15k long run this morning (because of scheduling issues for tomorrow) but woke up to a haze and all sorts of cancelled races. I scaled back and just added to my gauntlet in north riverbend instead of a longer adventure.

pixelazy The only filter I used on these plum tree blossoms was the smoke of a million burning dreams. #firesmoke

pixelazy We checked out the #northernlights from a suburban field this evening. Not as spectacular as a drive to country, but worth a quick look…

pixelazy The temperatures climbed up into the high 20s this afternoon which was nice enough to sit in the backyard and #spider watch. #insect #macro

8r4d Day 10 of my month of #running streak was pretty mundane compared to our adventure yesterday, with just a few more clicks of gauntlet running around the hood. Fortunately the sun was shining. Unfortunately the summer heat has come with it. Great for the flowers and sunbathers, bad news for long runs.

pixelazy Just a nifty #sunset on the way home from a run.

8r4d Fred was hanging out in a park near the river valley on the north side of town. #buggyland