Phew, back in sunny old England. Well, partly cloudy old England.

I never did find any shops selling fabric, which was a slight disappointment in an otherwise fabulous holiday. We went to a couple art stores, though, where I bought various pens (I left my waterproof drawing pen at work, I think — who only has one favourite drawing pen?) and the above notepads. Hooray recycled materials!
I had to stop myself from buying up the store’s entire stock of the Sodica notepads. The largest one is coloured paper, perhaps for a project in the planning stages. The two A4 are ruled — one with lines and the other with grid (I love graph paper). The smallest is a lined notebook. The orange thing is made (I think) of recycled rubber; it has pockets for business cards and notes and holds a notepad inside (with graph paper!).

I did a bit of drawing in Portugal, and the sketches above and below are my favourites. (Click the dog to see entire drawing.)

And one last thing — a funny bird we spotted outside the kitchen window a couple of times. It’s a Hoopoe — in the same order as Kingfishers, but not as cute and blue. An interesting change from river birds, though.



Great work! It is only on a rare occassion that something pleases me more than artwork by an England-dwelling American while visiting Portugal.
I wish I knew earlier that you were coming to Portugal! I could have given you the addresses of all my favorite shops… Do you know the Crafty Tour of Lisbon group on Flickr?
…and that bird’s name (in Portuguese, of course) is Poupa