Lights All Askew in the Heavens

Plans for travel to Australia keep on keeping on. A couple of weeks ago, my cohorts and I purchased plane tickets, and last week, we made reservations for hostels in which we'll stay between and around field outings. Both of those steps, one would think, would feel like concrete confirmations of the trip. But somehow it still didn't feel quite real--

--Until my trip journal arrived in the mail!

Isn't it a gorgeous thing? It's actually bigger than the 8"x10" described by its highly-skilled maker, Benjamin Castro (in reality it's closer to 9"x12"). I gasped when I picked it up for the first time, letting my brain accept the realization that it is not going to easily slide into my little flash day pack at all (much less with my gouache travel box). I set it on the bathroom scale and the needle hovered at around five pounds.

It is tremendously exciting, though, that the items responsible for that weight are some 250 lovely, quality pieces of watercolor paper, ready to be scrawled and painted and drawn and reflected all over.

It's an almost-irresistible temptation to start filling it up now. But I think I'll sublimate the urge into building a little travel bag that will hold both it and my plein-air kit.