how I passed the morning

I’m down in the furnace workshop again, forming a fragile alliance with this tall wooden barstool, through something I’m thinking of as yoga as I’m doing it, but now that I’m writing about it I realize is just stretching. I think the key is never to sit on it. I’ve just gone from a physically demanding job to a more officey job, helping fill orders for a small business, and instead of my body hurting less it just hurts the same amount but in new ways. And so, my workshop’s standing-height bench with round wood stool, already torturous to sit on for any amount of time, has become untenable. These are things I can’t possibly have thought about this much when I was younger.

Been home just over a week from some fairly unchill travels, smattered with type two fun, my preferred variety, and I’m working on some updates to my travel kit. I only just became aware of the Art Toolkit mini palettes, which maybe everyone already knows about, but I saw one on the #heronebag subreddit in the week before I left and couldn’t believe they’d never showed up in all my searching.

I spent ten days living out of my backpack and painting and thinking about how I’d like to update my setup so I could order all the parts when I got home. It’s taken me most of the morning filling the pans, and I took some photos on the Light III, still new to me, so I could mess around with the camera a bit.

I preordered myself the Light phone III for Christmas last year but, I think because of tariff-related delays, it didn’t arrive until late September. I was actually glad, I wanted some extra time to enjoy the Light II before I passed it on, although I was excited for the upgrade.

I was really missing having a camera; I only ever had flip phones, but I loved the grainy little photos. My new Light phone is is bigger, and I preferred the smaller size, grey exterior, and e-ink screen of the Light II, but the size increase is negligible when you think of the difference as an extremely tiny camera. Now I can leave the film camera at home if I want to, which I seldom do, but still.

And actually I brought my Holga 150 on this last trip but I was so excited to try out the Light III’s camera that I never used it, so I’d call that a success.

I watched the video on Art Toolkit’s website about how to fill the pans and immediately knew I would not be able to hold the tiny little squares pinched between thumb and forefinger like that — which is madness by the way.

I recommend using the back of a fridge magnet to hold them, which is what I did, and it was still pretty fiddly, but solidly type one fun, and how I passed the morning, with breaks for instant oatmeal and genmaicha.

My ultralight travel kit is one of my dearest and longest-standing endeavors, maybe you are starting to sense this, reader. I’ve been refining my kit the last few years, and like basically doing explorer cosplay, and squeezing a few solo days in wherever I can between the endless rounds of visiting, but now I have a span of time in my sights, just over the horizon I think, where I can finally do some more serious solo travel, like I’ve wanted to for ages. And so, I am striving to make everything smaller.

I’ve been traveling with a Cotman mini palette for the past couple years, actually the same palette I learned watercolor on. The twelve half pans have been refilled here and there, and the white removed for a dab of lamp black. Almost my entire travel journal has been done from this palette, and almost every time I use it I end up wishing I had one of the nine additional colors I use at home.

Like sorry but I need green gold, I need opera pink, I need buff titanium. I kept telling myself I didn’t but I do.

I got the pocket size palette — which is about as big as a credit card by the way and not a whole lot thicker — and a couple of Rosemary & Co travel brushes, the kind whose handles double as caps, so I can stop panicking about ruining the tips in my bag. All twenty-one of my paints fit with one pan left over, so I added a second lemon yellow, one clean pan and one for mixing, which delights me and makes the entire palette feel extra extravagant, which it is.

Nothing to do now except watch paint dry. I’m dying to test it out but I need to google “what time trick or treat start??” and slip into some pointy teeth. I thought I heard a knock at the door, but it was only the cat opening the kitchen cupboards.

I love how the new palette is coming together, how it’s like a wallet photo of my home palette at this moment in time, the same way the Cotman palette is a snapshot of a time before, and those times away from home. I doubt I’m through with the limited palette, but more is more, reader, and right now I want more.

Smaller, but more.