Watercolour Adventure (Goal 54)

So this has kinda been my motto as of late. Physics, kung fu, painting, calligraphy... 

You always start off suckin' at it, but that's ok!

Who doesn't love a good photo-enriched blog post? Painting was a really fun thing for me as a child, and I'd gotten out of the habit. Goal 54 on my big old to-do list was to complete 5 watercolour paintings. I ended up doing more because it got more fun as I improved, and I wasn't sure what my definition of 'a painting' should be.

Commence photo dump!

Starting off copying my old nature reference books.Obviously some attempts turned out better than others, but this was my main learning stage!

Calligraphy experiments and some watercolour cards I'm pretty proud of.

Nice simple cherry blossoms and a slightly mixed-media crow and magpie for Mr Limpet's birthday.

Look on YouTube for a watercolour galaxy tutorial. Trust me, they're so easy and look awesome.

I hope you've enjoyed looking through my watercolour adventure. It's been a very enjoyable process, and I've liked having a little sketchbook to do quick doodley paintings when I feel like a bit of alone time. During a stretch of insomnia the doodley paintings also helped me forget I was meant to be sleeping, which helped me chill out enough to sleep.

Limpet x

P.S. Recently, goal 43 has also been reached, which was to move out with just my boyfriend. It's glorious, it really is. Things stay clean and, as if by magic, everything stays where I last put it down! Maybe more on that in a later post, because I had a lot of fun organising my book shelves in particular. They're pretty now.

Goal 66: Get my ears pierced!

It's done! At 21 years of age I have gotten my ears pierced for the first time ever!

I've been wanting to do it for a while and one Saturday after kung fu we decided to all go into town, so I thought I may as well get them done while the others do their shopping. The mister held my hand and we all went for ice cream afterwards while I felt very proud of myself.

I got 4 done at once, two ear lobes and two helix piercings in my right ear. Initially it was just going to be the two cartilage ones but then I saw all the cool earrings that existed in the world and wanted part of that.

Look how tiny my ears are! I have basically no ear lobes at all.

My internal monologue went something like this:

"10 year olds can do this. How bad can it be?
Oh that's actually quite a big needle.
It can't be worse than giving blood.
The needle's getting closer.
Oh god that thunk was the sound of puncturing cartilage.
Ow. Actually that wasn't so bad.
I'm really glad I'm not squeamish."

After that the metal bit gets pulled through the hole and there's a bit of internal screaming at that point. But since I had the cartilage done first I couldn't feel much after the initial pain. The cartilage stung constantly for about a day and it took a few days before I was able to sleep on my left side which just had the lobe in.

I am so excited for 10 weeks to go by so I can change the jewellery, assuming they heal fine. I'll be sure to post pictures of my newly decked out ears when that happens. Roll on February the 4th!

Limpet x

Goal 9: Go Back to University

Today's the day! Today I go back to university! It's been a very long 9 months and I feel like a completely different person. I've had so much life experience since then, and illnesses both physical and mental have matured me a lot as a person. I haven't become cynical, of course not, but I know what the real world is like now. Things are serious, and I'm ready to do what it takes to get my degree and my dream physicist career afterwards.

Love yourself, you can do it! Don't give up!

Limpet x

Goal 36: Go Fossil Hunting

It was the best Sunday, and exactly the kind of thing I wanted to get from my Big Old To-Do List. I had an amazing time doing something I wouldn't have usually done and it made me a very happy little limpet.

And of course, there were a lot of limpets on the beach.

As promised last week, here's a photo dump of the fossil hunting part of my day.

Goal 63: Bind a Book

In a rather fetching yellow and with added origami paper for extra oriental effect: my first bound book! 

This will contain nature sketches and such.

My Reading List

You may have noticed a new little page labelled "Reading List" pop up on the side of this blog recently. As the name suggests, this is all the books I've read/want to read within the time frame of my Big Old To-Do List, which I haven't actually decided yet. I'll be updating it regularly when I get more books and finish them, but as any reader knows it's tricky to keep on top of the ever-growing pile!

Stole Dune from my parents and I've been a sci-fi lover ever since.

Goal 33: Get a pet snake

If you're scared of snakes, just skip this one and go to the next, ok? But remember people are allowed to like different things. 

First some background. A friend of mine got a ball python called Noodle, and my boyfriend and I met him when we went to visit. I'd never considered snakes as a pet before, I thought they'd hate it and would much rather be in the wild. And besides, you can't play with a snake or cuddle up with it. I was very wrong. Noodle was strangely cute, with his little puppy-dog mouth and his tentative way of exploring your clothes. He curled up in my hood and sniffed my ear with his tongue, and seemed very happy indeed to be slithering around all these warm trees. I've been wanting a pet for so long, but I don't have the time or money yet for a dog or anything else, especially with renting houses and landlords being funny about fur.

So we talked about it a lot, did a huge amount of research, and then bought this little fellow home:

This is Cuddles the ball python!

Goal 1: Well-paid Summer Job

My well-paying summer job this year was at a bank in the big town centre. I was basically the person who stands at the entrance and says "Hello good morning how can I help you?" really fast before they've walked past me. Just directing people and showing them how to use the machines really. It's very boring work, and it's horrible standing in one spot all day everyday. However, it's 9-5 and they pay me £9.84 an hour to do it so it's nothing to be sniffed at. Even when I have to spend 20 minutes explaining an overdraft to someone that doesn't understand negative numbers.

Today is my last day at the bank (writing this in my lunch break); I've spent 3 months here now as it's a temporary position. I've also kept up my pub job, just working 3 or 4 evenings a week there. I won't lie, it's been a real challenge working from 9am til midnight on those days, but it's what I needed to get my finances back on track. Now I can just work at the pub and start catching up on university work before I go back in September.

Goal 40: Watch a Meteor Shower

On the 11th of August, I went on a spontaneous shooting star hunt with friends to try and see the Perseid meteor shower. It happens every year between July and August, but this year was supposed to be an extra good one. It's caused by our planet crossing the orbital path of Comet Swift-Tuttle. The rubble and dust from the comet crash into our upper atmosphere and set alight as we pass through, creating shooting stars.

While the meteors shoot around all over the place, they all come from the same point in the sky. This is called the radiant of the meteor shower. With the Perseids, it's up and left a bit of the Perseus constellation (seen as three bright vertical stars) and underneath Cassiopeia (W shape of stars.) Thanks to this I now recognise the Perseus constellation too, which goes a way towards goal number 46 on the big list.

I was planning on using the 60 second exposure setting on my camera to photograph the sky, but this is the best I got! I don't have a fancy camera or anything, just a little digital one. Each star in the image here is only a few pixels, and I had to turn the brightness and contrast way up to see anything at all. 

My Big Old To-Do List

Before reading this post, have a look at my Big Old To-Do List (which probably needs a better name.) Writing lists I find fun initially, and then they make me guilty when I don't do everything on them. My problem is I set myself time limits that I don't often stick to and then think there's no point because it's so overdue. This one's different though. 

Keep on trekking on, friends!

This is a to-do list with a really big time frame, like a couple of years. This means I can use it to set goals and improve my lifestyle and try out new things. And when I'm a bit lost for what to do, I can have a look at it and work towards one of my goals. Some things on it are easy, and some will be tricky, but I can add more to it and update it as time goes on. It might turn out that not drinking tea for a month is a pointless goal, for example, because tea is really good.

Also, things that are season dependent like watching meteor showers or breeding snakes you might miss the first time round. Whereas with a to-do list that spans more than one year, you've always got another chance to try again if you miss it.

Crossing them off as I go, and keeping track with this blog, I'll hopefully begin to get my life in order. My Little Limpet Life™.