Day 43, Monday, October 7, 2019

Here are the drawings I did yesterday.  I found these sheep quite a challenge to draw.  They move around a lot and they have quite a different shape from other animals I have drawn. There are none of the usual landmarks to use when drawing an animal, as their boney bits don’t show at all. Even their faces are soft with few angle changes to define their shape. I did really enjoy the afternoon with them and by the end of the afternoon I felt I was starting to figure out how to approach drawing them.

I asked our host, Peter, about the history of the  house so he takes us on a tour.  This is the old living quarters, where his wive’s two aunties lived.  They didn’t have much money so they never renovated, like so many of the other houses in the neighbourhood. The door leads to two bedrooms and the stairs to the attic.  These rooms are not being used now. The date 1705 is carved in the ceiling beam, but Peter tells us that the cottage is actually 400 years old and was originally a fisherman’s cottage.  He says this is a typical farmhouse.  I never got a chance to ask him if the original fisherman’s  house was always this big, or was it added on to over the years? I would love to be able to poke about in this attic!  There are spinning wheels, a sewing machine, old chests and trunks, baskets, containers of all sorts, and lots of boxes filled with who knows what? The entry area between our apartment (which used to be a stable), and the living quarters has this big metal door behind the stool.  Upstairs is another  enormous attic that runs the length of the building.
Here there are even more interesting things: old fishing nets, more chests and trunks, old baskets and wooden buckets and vats, and all sorts of interesting things that have probably been there many years.  Now I look at all the houses we drive by and wonder what is up in those attics!  I wonder what treasures might be hidden away in all these old houses?This is only some of the huge woodpile Peter has cut and stacked, ready for the winter.  We think that the air quality here must be very poor in the winter with all the wood burning that takes place.  Most of the houses around here have enormous piles of stacked wood just like this. I went out to pick a few apples to cook for dessert and noticed a pear tree. Most of the pears had fallen and weren’t good to eat but this one pear had landed on a branch and was sitting balanced there, just out of my reach!. One more view out a pretty window.  Bob went for another bike ride this afternoon and I did a bit of blogging and relaxing.  We are both finding it a nice change staying in the country.  It is so quiet and peaceful.  We have enjoyed our time in the cities, but this is a relaxing break from that routine.