Sunny But Colder & Windy

This is one of those transitional days when it's 10 degrees in the morning and it's 30 degrees now at 8:45pm but it's been really windy all day. I'm glad that I spent the day indoors. It wasn't as windy this morning and I was happy to see a Nuthatch on the suet pellets feeder. Naturally it was halfway on the back side so I didn't get the whole bird in the shot and when it moved to the front it didn't stay there long enough. Oh well. I'm always glad to see a Nuthatch. I like their trim shape and the way they're usually head down on the feeder.

Before I even got dressed I did Mark Making day 19's collage. This one is an actual thing--a pair of tulips that are recognizable as flowers. There's one more day of collage and then we move into drawing things like leaves and trees and owls, stuff like that. I'm sure they'll incorporate the marks that we've been making all month but at least it'll be something besides a sheet of paper with hash marks or circles or watercolor splotches.

I intended to spend most of today working to add conflict my manuscript for The Seaview2. And I did. I gave myself an hour off for lunch but most of the morning and all of the afternoon I
stood or sat here at the laptop searching for ways I could make things happen to Rose and Seaview. I managed to add one bigger scene where Calvin rears his ugly head but mostly I added Rose's thoughts and fears to scenes already written. I made it about two-thirds of the way through the manuscript, again referring back to the group moderator, LL's comments on the 207 page portion I submitted at the start of the sessions. The difficult thing is that I've shifted to the 1st person POV manuscript so a lot of her comments aren't valid for this version. Hopefully I'll get through the rest of the manuscript tomorrow and find more places to rain conflict down on poor Rose's head. I think I have more in the last half anyway so that'll be good. Then I'll start back at the beginning hoping to find more places.

I found lots of things to be grateful for today. Sunshine (I'm always grateful for that), the Nuthatch, working on writing, making a collage, getting a tube of watercolor in the mail that was almost but not quite frozen, and ordering Kindle versions of two of LL's novels. I really enjoy thinking of things to put on those pages and drawing the little pictures and coloring them. It was much easier today to think of things than it has been the last few days.

 

As I went into the living room to pull the drapes when it was getting dark I noticed pink stripes in the sky so I grabbed the camera and took a picture of the sunset. So pretty even with the neighbor's house there.

After supper I pulled out 20 Ways to Draw a Butterfly and scribbled a few of the cover figures onto a page just for fun. There's an owl, a butterfly, a bat, another butterfly, and a ladybug (maybe?), some kind of bug anyway.

Then I found a fireplace on Netflix and sat knitting on the Sockeye Salmon Hermione Sock while I watched birch logs burn. I missed the smell of burning wood and, of course, the warmth of the fire but it's a pretty good substitute for the real thing. It even crackles and pops. My only complaint is that it runs for a hour so I have to let it stop, find it again, and restart it. (Sockeye Salmon is the name of the yarn colorway, if you were wondering where the name came from.)

I got an email from Michaels saying that I have another voucher that's expiring soon so I'm going to have to go over there before March 2 and spend it. AND they've got a 25% off your entire purchase coupon good through President's Day. Guess I'm going on Monday. Because I'm dedicating tomorrow to writing too. I'm determined.

--Barbara