Look What I Did

I put up the Christmas tree today. I dialed up a fireplace on Netflix, told Alexa to play Nat King Cole's Christmas songs, and got the thing done. I didn't do such a great job because after I had put everything away I saw that I had completely missed putting ornaments on two of the branches so I did a little rearranging but I think it looks fine. I will confess that if I didn't have grandchildren and if DD wasn't coming up for the holiday I wouldn't have put it up.

Then instead of the nativity set I put out the Three Kings that Mom made at ceramics in the 60's. I know that they aren't great art but I've always loved them and she put my name on the box so that when we sorted out her stuff after she died the Kings came to me. I never light the candles because she thought that green candles looked the best in them and I don't know if I would be able to find more green tapers. I put the Charlie Brown tree in the bathroom, as usual, and the carved Santa and scuba Santa and treasure chest salt and pepper shakers out on the desk. The jingle bell wreath is on the front door and I think I'm done decorating.

I snapped a last picture of the three flowers on the Christmas cactus and it's a good thing I did because less than an hour later one of the blossoms dropped off. Now there are only two left and the two remaining buds dropped off today too.

This squirrel was doing his best to hoover up any fallen birdseed this morning. I thought about going out to fill the peanut wreath but it was chilly and windy today so I stayed indoors and did other things.

Like writing! My knitting friend KW told me about an interview with Louise Penny on CBS last week so I looked it up and watched it this morning. I was heartened to hear that her first drafts are crap. Her words. So that led me back to the keyboard where I wrote another almost 1700 words for the day. If an author I admire says she writes crap before rewriting, I can write crap too. She also admitted that she puts herself and most of the people around her in her books which made me feel better about my writing too because I do pretty much the same thing. Whew.

The first thing I drew today was this smaller ballerina out of How to Draw People. I had such an easy time drawing this little lady that it made me wonder why I have so much trouble drawing things when I'm not copying them.

Although this Honey Creeper bird from Draw Like an Artist kind of disproves that. I don't think that my birds are getting any better the longer I draw out of this book. I try and try but still all of the bird feet are, well, crap.

There. That's my day in a nutshell. I knitted a few rows on the Limited Edition Wingspan this evening but it doesn't look like I did much. It's hard to see unless you're looking for it but the second triangle is at a slight angle from the first one and I keep stopping to admire it. Slows down the work.

--Barbara