I was supposed to be in Chicago today, but got Covid instead. I get to stay here in isolation and then try to get a recovery certificate and make it to a flight on time on Friday: a tall order since Schipol has been a chaotic nightmare since there was a baggage workers strike on Saturday. Eric and the boys actually missed their flight yesterday even though they got there more than three hours early. They almost missed their rebooked one again today with four hours advance. It’s a mess. Hopefully it’ll even out by the end of the week so when I try to go from a 9:15am doctor’s appointment at A’dam Centraal to a 12:25pm flight without luggage to check, I’ll get there. We shall see.
On the bright side, this means I have all this time to myself with only the dogs requiring my attention. I spent several hours painting yesterday, more this morning, and then spent the afternoon drawing and carving a printing block. I only stopped because my eyes were toast after several hours of carving. Note to self: Always wear glasses while working…
It’s been years since I got out my print carving tools. It’s always interesting when you realize how a seemingly unrelated yet adjacent discipline has relevance in new work. Carving linoleum and engraving jewelry have a lot of overlap. Not so shocking, I know, but I hadn’t thought about it until I was moving the etching tools and the carving block the same way I did with gravers and silver. To be fair, I’m much better with soft linoleum than hard silver, but it gave me the idea I should go back to silver engraving. I did find that tiredness is no friend to this work, so I’ll finish it tomorrow. That leaves the whole evening entirely free. Last time I had this much time to myself I was quarantining from the kids after having returned from Houston. I almost don’t know what to do with it all… but nah. I’ll work.
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