Two Woodpeckers At Once

This morning I was looking out the patio door and saw a Cardinal land on the platform feeder. I always notice his bright red color.

Just as I snapped his photo another red showed up. It was the Red-bellied Woodpecker landing on the suet cakes, chasing away the encroaching Sparrows and pecking away at the frozen-hard suet. Then like a black and white dart a Downy Woodpecker landed on the Slinky next to the suet cakes. She waited her turn. So I got both Woodpeckers in one frame. Cool!

I tried my hand at the next flower in the Daily Practice. It's supposed to be lavender but I think it looks more like wisteria. This is not my best effort. I pressed too hard on the brush when I painted the stems and had too much paint on the brush painting the flowers. Plus I managed to drag my sleeve through the wet purple paint on the palette, and it's the kind of paint that stains. I scrubbed at the paint and got it mostly off but there's still a little purple on my gray sleeve. Fortunately this is not a cashmere sweater, it's a hoodie.

DD and family gave me a brush washer for Christmas that I assembled and tried out today. You fill the tank/bottle with water and invert it on the top of the box. Water flows from the bottle down a little channel to the pool where you wash off the paint, and then you push the green button and the dirty water drains down into the bottom of the washer. It's very clever and quite handy. It lives on my kitchen table now.

I realized I haven't drawn anything for weeks so I turned to a page in Draw 500 Fabulous Flowers and quickly drew these flowers, whatever they are supposed to be.

I waited until the game was about half over before going to the grocery for bananas and a few other items. It was the last game of the season. They lost, but only by a couple points. Still it's a loss so everyone will be talking about the game at lunch tomorrow. When I got home I took the sweater that I wore yesterday and another sweater that needed cleaning downstairs and Dryel-ed them. Now the red sweater doesn't smell like french fry grease and the black sweater doesn't have an odd white spot where I usually manage to drip food.

I spent a little time rereading the latest manuscript. I'm pretty happy with the beginning so I didn't make too many changes but as I get deeper into it that may change. I've got a critique zoom tomorrow morning so I'll get comments on the next 20 pages. I'm about 2/3 of the way through getting comments. It's such a big help getting other eyes on it.

And I knitted up to the top decrease rows on Alpaca Mitten #3 after supper. Just six more rounds and it'll be time to knit the thumb, then start on Mitten #4. After that I'll dig around in the alpaca & llama yarn bin and find something else to knit with some of it. Probably another hat. I'm determined to knit from stash again this year, only buying yarn when I absolutely have to.

I found out this evening that an old neighbor passed away last week and the funeral is tomorrow. Fortunately I can make the early visitation and not have to miss it because of prior commitments. I had forgotten that he and I shared a birthday; he was just a year older than me. Sad.

--Barbara