Whoosh!

While I was doing yoga this morning the Red-bellied Woodpecker landed on the suet cakes and I was in a standing pose so I could take a couple seconds to grab the camera and take a shot. I took two and the second one shows it flying away. A nice action shot but I'm showing you the stationary one. It's nicely in focus.

I bundled up and went out to fill the bird feeders this afternoon. As usual, I spilled a little birdseed and cracked corn when I filled the round feeder and this squirrel was the first to visit. I like the way it looks perched on its haunches holding a black sunflower seed in its front paws nibbling away. This is the same squirrel that leaps up from the ground to grab the suet cakes feeder and hang there gnawing at the suet.

Today's flower was Tulip. She painted the flowers as if they'd been dropped on the paper every which way. I used almost every green paint I had, except for the really dark green, and a lot of bright, tulip-y colors for the flower petals.

Happily the OtterBox case for my new phone came a day early so I quickly snugged it into its new home and attached a PopSocket to the back for ease of carrying and mounting in the car. I was feeling nervous about carrying the phone around without a case around it. It's thin and shiny and could be slippery. I'm glad to have the case. I love my original PopSocket, the one with the stars on it, so I used a new base and just switched out the socket. The new one says, "Just One More Chapter." I couldn't resist it. I might put that one on there some day. But not today.

After Writers Guild tonight I wove in the remaining tails on Alpaca Mitten #3 and then cast on Alpaca Mitten #4. I only knitted three rounds of the cuff but it's a start.

That dumb charlie horse is still hurting my right calf. I don't know what to do to make it better. I try stretching it out when I'm doing yoga. It's a little better but it isn't getting better fast enough for me. It sucks getting old especially when stuff like this happens for no good reason. If I'd been dancing all night or doing some strenuous exercise to earn this pain, okay, but not for no reason.

--Barbara

Busy

Today was a busy day. Actually this morning was unusually busy. I had three things--boom, boom, boom--on my calendar. Very unusual but I was on time for each one which might be something of a miracle. And I even made time to do yoga before getting dressed and I was still on time for BT's visitation. Not the best way to start a Monday but necessary.

This squirrel dispensed with leaping from the birdbath to the feeder roof. It just jumped up from the ground, turned in midair, and clamped its paws onto the feeder. Very acrobatic.

The flower today was Hyacinth. I painted it twice. I like the flower head of the first one and the stem and leaves of the second one. This is the first one.

My second thing to do this morning was a writing critique Zoom with LL and cda. When I got home from lunch (the third thing), LL had emailed me her comments on my submission so I spent a happy hour going over them and transferring most of her suggestions to my manuscript. I have about 70 more pages to be critiqued before I run out of pages to send. I think LL will be getting close to that point too. I suspect cda has a lot more pages to be critiqued. We'll get to them.

I drew a gratitude journal page tonight after supper. I wasn't sure I'd finish the Alpaca Mitten #3 so I put it on still in progress. The big grateful of the day was selling three books at lunch. Three! I controlled myself and didn't do a happy dance in the restaurant parking lot.

Alpaca Mitten #3 is finished except for needing to weave in a few ends. I finished one ball of yarn just before ending the thumb gusset so there are two ends there and then another end is right there at the start of the thumb. I wove in the top end and the top of the thumb end but I just tucked the unwoven ends under the mitten and took its picture. I'll sit down to do the weaving tomorrow before starting on Alpaca Mitten #4, the final avocado one. I made the cuff and hand longer on this mitten. It fits better.

I got to see grown people who I knew as kids at the visitation this morning. It's very strange to realize that they're no longer the children I remember even though I recognize that DS and DD have grown up. It was nice to have a short visit and catch up on their lives.

--Barbara

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

Brrrr!

Man, it was cold today. It was sunny and clear and very, very cold. When I got into the car after the Market around 1 o'clock the car thermometer said 14 degrees. So much of the water in the birdbath was frozen that almost the whole basin was iced up. There was just a little bit of clear water right around the heater which was mostly exposed so I went out in my winter coat and filled it up as best as I could. Almost as soon as I filled it, it started to refreeze and there's still an icicle on the right side where the wind makes the water drip over the edge.

The Sparrows and the Mourning Doves were busy under the feeders pecking away to find any fallen morsels. I was surprised to see so many birds on such a cold day. My next door neighbor put her Christmas tree out at the curb and I'm tempted to go drag it over here so the birds have a place to perch out of the wind but there's no snow to bury the trunk in to help it stand up so I won't. The wind would just keep knocking it over and I don't want to have to go out every day to stand it back up. Besides the honeysuckle that I used to lean it up against is long gone so I'd have nothing to hold it up.

I tackled the first day of a 31-day watercolor daily floral practice this afternoon. I've seen these flowers dried in arrangements and never really thought of them as flower flowers. They were fun to paint even though I put them too far apart and had to tuck an extra one in so that there wasn't a big space in the middle of the paper.

After supper I knitted on Alpaca Mitten #3. I've got about four more rounds until I hit the 4" mark but I'm going to add a little more, maybe half an inch, to the hand before starting the top decreases. I'm not tired of making mittens yet which is a good thing since I've got to make one more to have two pairs to go with the two avocado alpaca hats.

And I made myself sit down and draw a gratitude journal page today. I said on the first that I wanted to get back into the habit of daily journal pages and then I skipped two days. Today I'm on it.

There weren't a lot of people at the Market on Military today. Even the cheese guy next to us had a slow day. I almost sold a book to a lady who decided at the last second that she'd come back "next time" with cash instead of paying with a credit card. *sigh* I was resigned to not selling anything today when a guy stopped at each of our displays and ended up buying a copy of Island Dreams. Turns out he's been scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and bought it for the diving chapters. I don't care what his reason was, I was just happy to sell a book. At least it paid for my day in the booth. And my clothes smell like french fries from the snack bar at the market. Guess I'm doing dryel cleaning tomorrow.

I got a charlie horse in my right calf last night that didn't keep me up all night but still feels like someone whacked me in the calf with a baseball bat. I don't recommend it. I was just walking to my car from the restaurant last night when it seized up and wouldn't let go. What causes that? That kind of stuff makes me crazy. I feel like I'm slowly falling apart. Gah!

--Barbara

Not the Most Graceful

I had to take a picture of this squirrel this morning. It tried very hard to climb the crooks but so far the Slinkys are staying in place and are in the way. Then it leaped from the birdbath glacier to the top of this suet cakes feeder but its feet must have been wet because it slipped right off and fell to the ground. This time it barely managed to hold on as it swung upside down and almost fell again but didn't. I really got a chuckle out of it.

It's plenty cold out there. The birdbath never thawed out and the wind blew the water enough that it made an icicle in the afternoon. I think it got up to 19 degrees today but the "feels like" was about -7 when I went out to go to supper. Brrr. I'm glad I didn't have to walk far from the car to the restaurant.

 

I got my new phone today! It wasn't supposed to arrive until the 7th or 9th, the same dates that the case is supposed to come but it came today. I am very proud that I figured out how to move the SIM card and clone my old phone onto my new one with minimal errors and backtracking. One thing that puzzled me was the first time I had them do the transfer not all of my photos made it but when I hooked them up (wirelessly) again, they did. I'm glad that they did. Whew. There are some photos I don't want to lose.

 

I don't know if this is better than yesterday's effort or not. She never did put a face on her people but I couldn't just leave us blank with just our little eyes bugging out so I used a black colored pencil and sketched in noses, cheeks, and mouths. Not bad but not great. I'm marginally pleased with the way this turned out.

 

After supper tonight at 1919, the restaurant in the Lambeau Field atrium, we went over to LC's house for presents. She liked the card of 20 pairs of little earrings I gave her along with the card good for lunch and a birthday shop. Then I traded Christmas gifts with DIL1's parents. They gave me these cool red oven mitts. Very fun.

 

Time to hit the hay. I've got the Market on Military tomorrow so I've got my alarm set for 7 so I have time to peel my eyes open before time to dress and go. G'night.

--Barbara

Creeping Ice

When I got up this morning and opened the drapes I saw that the birdbath needed topping up because the whole left side of it was iced up. So I filled the thing expecting that it'd stay liquid. Not so fast. Less than an hour later I noticed that the ice was creeping over the water that I'd just poured in. Even though it was sunny most of the day it never got very warm and the sun never touched the birdbath anyway. It's supposed to get colder over the next couple days. Yippee.

The squirrels have been very diligent emptying the suet nuggets feeder. This big fat one clung to the mesh feeder and did its best to nibble away at the dregs repelling all comers.

I was lucky enough to catch the Red-bellied Woodpecker when it found a seed in the round feeder and was just about to fly away. I like that I can see its beak open with the seed in there.

Well, I got brave this afternoon and sketched my favorite picture of Durwood and me, outlined it in black, and started painting it. I added the eyes because it was looking a little creepy with empty faces looking out at me. Tomorrow's video is the second half of the lesson. Maybe she'll show me how to give us faces.

And once again, after supper I worked on Alpaca Mitten #3. I finished the thumb gusset, put the stitches on waste yarn, cast on one stitch, and started knitting around and around the hand. The pattern says to knit the hand to 4" but I might add on a half-inch just for comfort's sake. The last pair feels a little short.

I called the sleep apnea appliance dentist's office this morning, they had gotten my info from the sleep clinic, and I could get an appointment for a consultation tomorrow morning. !!!! So I'll go see what PK can tell me about that. I chose this dentist because he was a customer when I worked at the dive shop. They were very clear that they needed to be paid up front since insurance doesn't cover it and when I looked at my dental insurance app I got the message about my phone being too old for the update so it's a good thing I ordered a new phone that will be delivered next week.

Tomorrow is LC's 11th birthday. I can't believe that she'll be that old. It seems like only yesterday that she was just a bitty thing teaching herself how to read. I guess not. Get with the program, Meemaw.

--Barbara

I'm Starting the Year Clean

NoIt only did I fold the basket of clean laundry today, I also have clean sheets, put fresh towels out, and took a shower. My cleaner came yesterday so it's very clean here. That's the way to start the new year, I figure.

I even managed to draw a gratitude journal page this evening but I forgot to put my shower on there. Oh well, no one wants to see me in the shower anyway. I have to get back into the habit of drawing one of these every day.

The next video lesson was to draw people from a photograph. I got cold feet and shifted to a Creativebug class about drawing that I felt I could do (since I've already done it). But I did cave in and checked my digital photos file on here to find a few pix of me and Durwood that I could try my hand at tomorrow. Really. I'm going to give it a shot.

I realized just before I closed the drapes to shut out the dark that I hadn't taken any pictures of the fat squirrels or the squabbling Sparrows or even the dusting of snow, so I shoved the camera out the patio door and took this picture. There was more snow this morning but it must have gotten just above freezing this afternoon because most of it melted. Sorry for the dreary picture but as you can see it hasn't been cold enough to build a birdbath glacier. I suspect that's about to change.

After supper I watched some comedy special on Netflix and then shifted to an episode of Somebody Feed Phil when he visited Seoul. I'd have tried just about everything he ate except for the really spicy stuff--and maybe the still-wriggling octopus tentacles. Although I like octopus so I'd probably give it a go. (Thanks for turning me on to that show, CS!) While I watched those I finished the cuff of Alpaca Mitten #3, knitted three rounds even, and then started the thumb gusset which I am halfway through.

This afternoon I took down all of the Christmas decorations I'd put up. It took me about ten minutes, seven minutes to fold up and box the Charlie Brown tree and three minutes to unplug the lighted present/box and remove the two jingle bell wreaths. I carried it all downstairs and put it away and pulled out a white and silver door decoration wreath that looks like winter to me to put on the front door instead. On the back door I replaced Durwood's dream catcher that used to be in his van.

In the morning I called Aunt B and my brother AJ out in Washington state. He didn't call back until the afternoon and we had a lovely chat. They're going to be in town in about 2 weeks and we're planning to get together for a little visit. I'm looking forward to it.

Did I tell you I won a bonus Group Coaching Session from Ad School? They sent out a survey in December asking for feedback so I dutifully filled it in and sent it back. I got an email last week that I'd won. And I'm the only winner! Now I have to figure out which coaching session I want to attend. It's going to take some thought.

I sent my submission to my critique group yesterday. It's about time to get back to working on writing.

--Barbara