Tag: colors

Posted in color

That’s a lot of crayons!

Posted on by William Douthwaite

As I wandered through Staples the other day, a box of crayons caught my eye. It was a box of ninety-six Crayola crayons! Ninety-six? Are you kidding? I thought the ultimate was a box of 64. The small print reads, “96 Different Colors.” Nice.

But wait. There’s more. I turned the corner and saw another display with a box of one hundred and twenty crayons! “120 Different Colors”! Wow. That’s almost double what I thought was the ultimate box of crayons.

But wait. There’s more. I saw

  • A box of 24 Metallic Crayons
  • A box of 24 Pearl Crayons
  • A box of 24 Glitter Crayons
  • A box of 24 “Colors of Kindness”
  • A box of 24 “Colors of the World”
  • A box of 24 “Ultra-clean Washable Crayons”
  • A box of 8 Neon Crayons
  • A box of 24 Bold and Bright Construction Paper Crayons

I almost had to sit down. I don’t even know what some of these are. But I want to find out. I want to buy a box of each. I think I need about $50 for the whole set. I just want to see what all these different colors are called and what they look like on paper.

So I Googled “Crayola Crayons.” There are more!

  • Confetti Crayons
  • Pastel Crayons
  • An Ultimate 152 Crayon Collection
  • BJ’s Wholesale Club sells a bucket of 200 crayons!
  • Cosmic Crayons
  • Swirl Crayons
  • Mythical Creatures Crayons
  • Uni-Crayons

I may have a new hobby here: collecting Crayola crayons.

Posted in Life

A fiery evening sky

Posted on by William Douthwaite

At certain times of the year, as the sun sets, it almost looks like the sky is on fire.

I usually have my phone in my pocket while I am driving. But on this occasion I placed it on the center console so I could plug it in to charge it. So when I turned onto this road and saw the fiery sky, I could quickly get a picture.

A photo can’t capture the palette of colors on the horizon. Who knew there could be so many oranges, reds, and yellows? If kept driving west, would I eventually reach a blazing fire lighting up the sky? Would I reach an active volcano, glowing with molten lava? Is someone smelting steel in a giant blast furnace off in the distance?

It’s a good thing I got the picture when I did. Those colors only last a moment. By the time I crossed the intersection, they had faded. The clouds had moved. The moment was gone forever, except in my mind and in my phone.

New crayons are essential at the beginning of an elementary school year. A box of twenty-four is all you really need. There’s a box of forty-eight that doubles down on all the different colors. But the best is the box of sixty-four. The assortment of oranges, yellows, and reds challenges all you thought you knew about color. Who knew that orange-red was different than red-orange? With hues like tangerine, pumpkin, and carrot in your hand, your sunset sky might look just like this one!

Posted in Moments of grace

Sunrise and sunset: best times of the day

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Morning
Evening

Now that I’m taking our dog out for a daily morning and evening walk, I’m not only getting a lot more steps in but I’ve discovered my love of sunrises and sunsets.

I love the walks that begin in the pre-dawn darkness and end in light. I also love the walks that I start before sunset and end in darkness. For some reason, I enjoy the transition from one state to another. As the sky brightens, I anticipate a new day. In the same way, as the night approaches, I’m acutely aware of the blessings I’ve experienced.

For instance, my early morning thoughts were all about going to church today. I was looking forward to special Christmas music today, and imagined what carols we might sing. In the evening, I thought about all the people I talked with today. I hadn’t spoken with some for over a year. It was so nice to catch up with each others’ lives.

It’s not always easy to time my walks for these moments. My dog Winston isn’t a morning person, and if I want to walk before dawn, I have to wake him up and lift him out of his cage to get him out the door. In the afternoon, he’s ready for his second meal of the day long before sunset, so I have to resist the “please feed me” look on his face about 4 pm.

The colors of sunrise and sunset aren’t visible any other time of the day. The mornings are filled with pinks, while oranges show up in the evening. Sometimes I try and take a picture of the dawn and dusk skies. The photos never seem to capture the hues that my eyes see on my morning and evening walks. It’s as if God is saying, “You can experience these colors, but you can’t capture them. Enjoy!”

In both the early morning and early evening, few cars drive by on our walks through the neighborhood. Many are still waking up to get ready for work of school. Later, they are gathering for supper. So we own the empty streets, walking right down the center, only listening for the newspaper delivery cars driving by.

Timing is everything. Right now, as the winter solstice approaches, sunrise is late while sunsets comes early. Summer is a different story. But don’t worry. I’ll be chasing them both.

Posted in Life

“I was almost there”

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Photo by FLY:D on Unsplash

The water felt wonderful as I stepped in. It felt as nice as I thought it would as I pushed off and glided through the water just a few inches from the bottom of the pool. Ribbons of sunlight made their way to the bottom of the pool as I blew out bubbles and sank closer to the hard pool surface below. I felt so relaxed as I floated along.

Just when I thought I had reached the far wall of the pool, I reached out and touched…nothing. The wall wasn’t there. So I reached out and brought my arms to my side, pushing myself forward into the blurry blue beyond. As I gently cut through the water, bursts of green and violet appeared as though someone were rinsing out a paintbrush. I drifted through clouds of color, no longer able to see the sunlight above or the bottom below.

Suddenly, it was as if a rainbow had exploded in the water. Colors were everywhere. I swam toward the teal, then the oranges, the indigo, and then the bright blue. I felt like I was trapped in a kaleidoscope, tumbling through every color and shape I ever knew. Up and down meant nothing. I reached towards the red, backed into the yellow, spun through the green, crawled along the blues.

I wanted to stay here forever. I felt something pulling at me, pulling backwards, pulling me away from this buffet of color. I tried to push the hands away. My lungs suddenly filled with air. I saw the sky, clouds, faces above me. “Are you OK?”

Reluctantly, I said, “Yes, I feel fine.” I laid there and said, “Am I OK?”

“We think you were down there for an hour. If the pool guy hadn’t seen you down there, you’d be…gone.”

I smiled. “No. I was almost there.”

Posted in Stories

The wrong color

Posted on by William Douthwaite

A watermelon that has a red rind, green inside with white seeds to spit out.

A white Oreo cookie with dark chocolate cream filling.

Coffee that is light, and the half-and-half is a deep ebony hue.

White chocolate ice cream with dark vanilla sauce drizzled on top.

Black popcorn.

A green hotdog.

A light hamburger with a very dark bun.

Dark brown whipped cream.

Blue gold.

A stoplight where green means stop, red means go.

A black sun.

A green carrot.

Black instead of the “whites of your eyes.”

Recipes that call for egg blacks.

A blue tomato.

Orange lettuce.

A white clerical shirt with a black insert.

Yellow blueberries.

A whole mouth of black teeth.

A green orange.

Posted in joy, Life, listening

A spontaneous smile

Posted on by William Douthwaite

jennifer-pallian-173714
Yeah, these guys make me smile, too. Photo by Jennifer Pallian on Unsplash

It was right in the middle of a song on Sunday morning. The praise team was smaller than usual, just a couple of voices, but they produced a moment that still echoes in my mind. I don’t remember what the song was, but at one moment, when the two voices –one male, one female — harmonized, it lifted my heart, brought a spontaneous smile to my face, and made me stop and marvel at the beauty of that moment.

Eight days later, I am still thinking about that moment. There was another such moment this morning when, as turned the corner on my way to work and the pre-sunrise colors in the sky took my breath away and made me smile. In the dim morning light, my phone’s camera just wouldn’t capture the colors to preserve that moment, so I can’t even share it with you. Or when I got back home tonight and my two-year-old grandson saw me and shouted, “You came back!” How could I not smile at that?

I am grateful that God sprinkles these little moments into my day from time to time. Sometimes you smile because you have to. Or because you don’t want to cry. But sometimes you just can’t help it.