Maria contacted me after a post I did featuring her watercolor video and asked if I wanted to try one of her magnetic palettes. YES please!
It arrived last week with a variety of different metal pans. The case is very slim and will be perfect for my permanent stay-in-the-purse palette that I carry everywhere. I also got a miniature moleskine watercolor sketchbook that is just like the larger version I already have.
Next time I’m in a logjam on the 405 I’ll have something to entertain me.
In other news I had a whole-house fan installed this past week. Who knew I could have a cyclone of cold air every night by flipping a switch and opening a few windows? Not me! They’re perfect for our cool summer nights. Here is it the hottest month of the year in LA and I had to put a light sweater on last night in the house. Energy efficient to operate and very inexpensive to purchase & install, I wish I had done this a decade ago!
How you?
I love your sketch, Mary Ann! I’m so glad you like your palette, have fun! My first grade teacher always said, “a creative person is never bored”… a few small art supplies sure help. 🙂
All my best,
Maria
I have one of Maria’s palettes too… love, love LOVE! I keep in my purse all the time ’cause it’s teeny-tiny.
Much to my husband’s chagrin… my credit cards still work!
We have one of those house fans too, they are awesome. Ours is too loud to run at night though 🙁
Love this portable palette!! Hope school is treating you well xx
Gabrielle
Cool night air rushing in, now that is superbly sweet. Love your new handy, dandy paint box. I can see you happily painting away in traffic while those around are stressin and fussin. It’s a good picture and makes me smile. It’s like fall here today and I am lovin’ it, hot and sticky is back in the forcast come tuesday so I am relishing this brief retreat in 70’s. AC has been off since Friday. Have a lovely day Miss Mary Ann!!!!!
Be careful of magnetic kit making your credit/debit cards useless…does something to the magnetic strip. Get one of those metal wallets for your cards, the ones that prevent scammers from reading your cards with some sort of device right thru your purse.
How nice of Maria to send you the little paint kit. I love that it’s so thin.
Before we got air conditioning when I was a child, we had one of these fans. With our high humidity, it was good but not like the more expensive a/c.
http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/video/0,,20305509,00.html shows how it works.
Woo. Moss Cottage Upgrade! Never heard of a whole-house fan before. Interesting. And magnetic paint pan box… genius.
I just happened to stumble upon Maria two weekends ago in Seattle when she was leading an outdoor painting class for the Seattle Art Museum. I was enthralled with her nifty, compact watercolor system that she designed. It was very clever and looked like it had great quality.
Ms. Mary Ann! How are you my dear!
I have a TON of questions regarding your whole house fan! I want to get one and my partner Ed is a bit skeptical about them. We have a friend in Sacramento that had one some years ago it was large, ugly and loud. I told him they have probably improved since then and we should look into it. Could i contact you with a few questions???
Cheers!
Marcia G., I enjoyed your story about your attic fan. Very sweet memory…..I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s. To save money we weren’t allowed to sleep with a fan running. My dad was supporting 7 people on one income. But we slept with our windows wide open in a single story house. Times are sure different.
I’m in the same part of california and it is so nice outside right now. I can imagine having a fan bringing that air thoughtout the house would feel wonderful. We had an exterminator spray the perimeter of the house yesterday for black widows Too afraid of inhaling the poisons so we’re keeping the windows closed. I’m enjoying your nice breeze vicariously with my imagination, though. :^)
Always get happy when you have a new post. Love your journal art so much.
Awesome kit! BTW, I love your handwriting!
Robin – They are called whole-house fans. Mine is installed in the attic in the middle of the house in the ceiling. On the ceiling you see square white shutters about 24 inches diameter or so. I flip a switch and it roars to life, the shutters open, and the cool air gets sucked inside. I chose the kind that IS NOT quiet because I have loud neighbors who are outside a lot at night in the summer. This muffles them very well.
MAM, when I was a child growing up in the 1950s in Jackson, MS we had an attic fan that ran almost 100% of the time at our house in the summer. Very few homes had air conditioning then. The attic fan pulled air throughout our house with windows strategically opened so there was a “breeze” that could be felt flowing through our house. Mind you, it was very, very HOT outside since Jackson is in the deep south. And it was pretty warm inside, but that fan made it bearable. Especially if you had the good sense to find something quiet to do in the hottest time of the afternoon.
Another neat thing was the fan lulled us off to sleep every night with a whahm, whahm, whahm sound as the belt pulled the blades round and round, high up in an opening to our attic. My younger sister and I counted on that sound to mask all outside night sounds and looked forward to its rhythmic pulsing to put us into dreamland. My mom could be relied on to wake up around 3 a.m. — shivering and complaining of being too cold. She would get up and turn the fan off!! I can still remember the eerie quiet that would descend upon the house and the deathly stillness as the air stopped flowing in our windows. We’d BEG her to please turn it back on and pull up her sheet, but usually she won and we fell back asleep anyhow, listening to crickets and other night creatures in the flower beds right outside our windows.
That attic fan was how we survived summer in the deep south. And yes, I have happy memories of life in those days — even when mama would turn off the fan. 🙂 Thanks for sharing about getting your fan. It brought back happy memories to me that I haven’t thought about in a long time.
Wow! I would die of happiness for a little cool air (since I’ll bet I’m pretty near your neck of the woods). Got any details you can share about this? I’ve never heard of such a thing – other than our basic ceiling fans!
Love the new paint palette. 🙂
Gorgeous weather this weekend in KC, cool and no humidity; so we walked around a nearby botanical garden and will sleep with the windows open tonight. Will work in my own garden tomorrow!
Very neat little painting kit! Your whole house fan sounds great – you’ve gotta stay cool. 🙂 Fall is here in NW Montana – the days are sparkling bright with highs in the 60s and lows in the 40s and 30s, the Rocky Mountain maples are turning salmon and gold and ground-covers in the woods are turning color, too. Best time of the year!