For The Third Day

In a row, the House Finches came to the feeder. I guess if I fill them with fresh seed they will come. I'm sorry to keep showing you pictures of the same birds but I'm so impressed that they've appeared in the cold and wind of the last three days that I'm posting the evidence.

A Chickadee popped in too. It's a trick to be fast enough to get the camera up and ready in time to take a Chickadee picture. They're fast to come and fast to go with very little time between.

It was so cold and windy today (sunny too) but I managed to haul myself to the grocery during the football game as planned. The store wasn't empty but it wasn't as busy as on a regular weekend day so my new N95 mask and I felt like it was a good plan. There was only one item that they were out of so I had to stop at another grocery on the way home to pick up the Golden Mushroom soup for the Salisbury Steak. I don't know why one grocery is always out of it and the other always has it in stock. I bought 3 cans to have it on hand for the next two times it's cooking week. Cooking starts tomorrow!

Today's drawing was this one-point perspective picture of a room. I don't remember how it figures into the D chapter but it was kind of fun to draw. Lots of ruler work instead of trying to draw all those straight lines free hand.

The painting lesson today was mostly watching a couple short videos and then searching out photographs from albums that show color combinations that I like. I found a few  photos from island vacations, one underwater, some from Seattle, and one from The Clearing. I narrowed them down to four pictures that I glued into my sketchbook. Tomorrow I'll get out my big set of paints and pick out or mix up colors that go with the photos. I think this exercise has something to do with color theory but I'm not sure. All I have to show is yesterday's color blobs that I used a pencil to turn into critters and people. Trying to exercise my imagination.

This pair of squirrels faced off over control of the last few peanuts. Just before I snapped this photo one of them had been on the top of the crook and the other perched on the edge of the birdbath. They were grunting at each other loud enough that I could hear it in the house and the one on the right gave in and ran off leaving the other one to claim the last few nuts. One of them sits on the birdbath dropping nuts and shells into the water which is messy and annoying since the shells freeze onto the edges and I can't fish them out.

As I feared I didn't have enough yarn to complete the shawl pattern. I got halfway across and realized that if I finished the row I was on I wouldn't have enough to bind off so I backed up stitch by stitch and found a stretchy bind off in a book and did that. See that curlicue of yarn on the right? That's how much yarn I had left when I finished binding off. Whew. I may have to find other yarn to knit that shawl again so that I can knit the whole pattern. Maybe. Next I'll soak the shawl and pin it out to dry so that the curling edges are straight. I think I might wish that I had some blocking wires for this one.

Today I looked in the toss box and admired the plethora of spatulas that I chucked in there yesterday.

The prompt today asked what the longest word you know is. That's easy: antidisestablishmentarianism, 28 letters strong. Is it longer than supercalifragilisticexpialidocious? Nope, that's 34 letters, so I guess that's the longest word I know. Both are equally useless in everyday speech.

Tomorrow is the first day of the next bout of Investment Cooking. I'll be making Chicken Breasts Pierre twice because I like it so much I want to eat it twice a week. I might also make a batch of Lentils and Rice. That recipe only serves 4, or 5 if I stretch it, and I'm not sure how it would survive freezing but it was so good when I made it last month that I want to have it again.

--Barbara