For the last time: Bothell Country Village

8/3/18 Keepsake Cottage Fabrics at Bothell Country Village

(I’m just back from nearly three weeks in Portugal, including the Urban Sketchers symposium in Porto. Though I don’t express it often, experiencing the thrill of sketching with 800 people in a foreign land doesn’t take away from the joy I feel each time I meet with my local tribe. Chatting with sketchers worldwide reminds me that not everyone is fortunate enough to have a local group to sketch with regularly, and I am always grateful for the friendship and shared passion I enjoy here with my homies.)

A few months ago, if you had asked if I could ever tire of sunshine, I would have vehemently answered, No way! But having been spoiled by sketching under the Mediterranean sun for most of July and hearing complaints from local friends about the heatwave we missed here at home, I woke this morning to drizzle and overcast sky and said aloud: Hallelujah! I’m home!

We were saddened to hear the news several months ago that Bothell Country Village, a Bothell landmark since 1981, would be closing next year. USk Seattle has met at the colorful and charming shopping center several times, but upon hearing the news, we vowed to sketch there again for possibly the last time. Somehow I had managed to miss those previous outings, so I was especially eager to have the opportunity to sketch there.

Keepsake Cottage Fabrics is one of 40 local businesses that will be displaced next spring when the Village closes. Normally I would be annoyed to be wearing a raincoat and socks in August (one of my core values is to be sockless from May through September) and even more annoyed that the shadows were difficult to see under a cloudy sky. But this morning I was OK with both. Practicing the graphite techniques I learned in Eduardo Bajzek’s symposium workshop, I had a hard time resisting spots of color to depict the bolts of fabrics on the shop’s long porch (or for that matter, resisting all the colorful signs and decorations throughout the Village). But I was OK with that, too. A gray medium for a gray morning on my first outing back at home seemed right somehow – and felt great.

Good to be sketching with my homies again -- and by the time we had our throwdown, the sun came out!