Another Dreary Day

Dreary days make me tired. No, really, I droop around and yawn a lot and don't get much accomplished on dreary days. This squirrel found the little bit of cracked corn seed that I tossed on the patio when I filled the feeders yesterday. After the squirrel left a bunch of Sparrows crowded around and pecked away at the corn. There's still some of it there. I was sure that it'd be gone when I got up but it looked like nothing had found it in the night. The chipmunks are hibernating and evidently I don't have a rat this year so that's good.

I turned to the next lesson in the From Total Beginner to Full Sketchbook class and it's about the color wheel. She made one with colored pencils which I did too and then she started making patterns on a page of the sketchbook but she left out some important instructions. Like to lightly pencil four rectangles on the page before starting. I watched the next lesson where she erased one of the lines and that's the only time she mentioned it. I'm a little peeved at the lack of communication but I can't really complain because there's no one to complain to. The classes are recorded and I'm sure the artists are long gone when they get around to discounting the classes. I bought this one for 99 cents so I guess you get what you pay for. I'll keep going. Like I said yesterday, it's a good thing I can push "Pause" and catch up when I realize that she's leaped ahead. Maybe the editing is the problem. Oh well.

Before supper I knuckled down and drew a gratitude journal page for today. I wasn't happy with the day-long overcast but I was grateful that it didn't rain or snow or freezing rain even though I didn't go anywhere today. One more potato soup supper left!

I watched Jeopardy! (and didn't have a clue about the Final Jeopardy) and then Maine Cabin Masters while I knitted on the first mitten. I got through the thumb gusset, put the thumb stitches on waste yarn, and knitted a couple rounds of the hand before quitting for the night. Even adult-size mittens are small so they go fast.

My critique group Zoom was moved to the afternoon to accommodate cda's doc appointments. I got good comments and a few things to think about going forward. That was really the only thing I HAD to do today, everything else was at my whim. I love that about being retired. I got on USPS.com and put in the order to hold my mail when I'll be away over Christmas. And I have to think about what to pack. I think it says on my ticket confirmation that I have to pay for a checked bag so I'd better get my act together and prepay that because it's cheaper. I just checked the weather predicted for Lexington next week. It's supposed to be near 50 just about every day and going up. Crazy. I'm not sure I know what kind of clothes to pack for that but I'll figure it out.

--Barbara

A Foggy Day

What a crummy day! It was foggy when I got up, misty when I went out to refill the bird feeders, and it's foggier now. Ugh. I'm glad I only had to go out for a few minutes to fill the feeders because it was 40 degrees and damp out there. I snapped a picture of the first squirrel to arrive this morning and was highly entertained when it tried to shinny up the pole of the suet nuggets and slid right back down. It gave up and leaped up to the suet cakes like nothing had happened. You can see in the background that all of the pitiful layer of snow has melted away.

The Downy Woodpecker was back and so was the Sparrow. Today I managed to get a picture of them together. Today the Woodpecker didn't seem to mind the Sparrow as much as it did yesterday. It didn't try to shoo the other bird away, it just kept on eating and ignored the interloper.

 

I finished the Alpaca Warm One hat this morning. I mean, I only had three more rounds to knit and every round was shorter than the one before so this was no big undertaking. I got the tails woven in, turned up the brim, and it's done.

 

I was going to draw this afternoon but then I thought I'd try my hand at the first lesson of the other new Domestika course I bought last week. Or was it the week before? Oh well, anyway it's a conglomeration of watercolor, colored pencils, and markers. The class is supposed to be for beginners but she demonstrated the first three flowers and then said "finish up and let it dry" and went on to the next lesson where her paper had more flowers and lots of leaves that weren't demonstrated. Good thing I could hit "pause" on the iPad and catch up.

In the afternoon I also drew a gratitude page for yesterday. I meant to draw one for today but got caught up watching Finding Your Roots on PBS Passport tonight and ran out of time.

While watching TV I cast on and knitted the cuff of the first Alpaca Mitten. That yellow marker is where the thumb gusset will be. I wound up two skeins into yarn cakes so I'll have plenty of yarn to make a pair or maybe even two pairs.

That was it for my day. I'm still eating Ike's Potato Soup for supper. I think I have two more servings left before I have to figure out something else to eat. Good thing I stocked up on Lean Cuisines.

--Barbara

Getting Warmer

Against all imagining it got warmer overnight rising up from 19 degrees yesterday afternoon to 32 degrees at 7 o'clock this morning. Through the day it warmed up all the way to 34 degrees. You can see that the birdbath glacier was receding by the time I went out to fill it up this morning and it was all thawed by lunchtime. But it started snow flurrying after dark so all the snow that melted today is being replaced. I don't think we're supposed to get an appreciable amount of snow but they were also talking about freezing rain or rain falling on frozen pavement. Not good.

The Christmas cactus flowers on the back side of the plant are now blooming. There's one bud that's not opening yet but the other two are in full flower. This is a banner year for this plant. Now if I could only figure out what I did different that made it bloom so much this year so I can do it again next year I'd be happy.

The Downy Woodpecker swooped in for a suet cakes snack and I'm sure it had a much easier time of it since it was warmer so the cake had to thaw a little bit. I was amused watching it because a Sparrow would land on the suet cake and the Woodpecker would lean toward it and try to shoo it away. It had to do that a few times before the Sparrows left it alone to eat in peace.

And I decided to have a do-over with one of the Art of Sketching videos to see if repetition helped. It did a little but I still can't manage to draw without copying his sketches. I despair of finishing the rest of the videos in this class. Actually I'm intimidated by them. I keep looking at the titles and thinking, no I can't do that.

I spent a lot of the afternoon reading, rereading, and making comments on the submissions for Monday's critique group Zoom. It was a pleasure to read such good writing. I mostly have nit-picky punctuation and grammar comments and then finish up with a few comments about the way the stories are progressing. It's fun.

I paid the property taxes today. Well, I mailed the check. It's always a bit of a wrench to write that big check and send it off but it didn't go up TOO much from last year so I'm content. And I didn't have to raid my savings account to pay it. Whew.

I spent the evening watching White Christmas on Amazon Prime. I do enjoy it. I tried to watch It Happened on 5th Avenue on the recommendation of KW but it wasn't free to watch and I wasn't in the mood to pay to rent it. Maybe I'll see if the library has it.

While I watched the movie and a 2-part Midsommer Murders, I knitted on the avocado Alpaca Warm One hat. I'm three rounds from being finished so I didn't take its picture. I'll do that tomorrow night when I've finished it.

--Barbara

Blue Sky

It was a bright, sunny day today with very little wind so even though it was about 15 degrees when I went to the grocery just before lunch it was pretty bearable. The Sparrows and a couple Mourning Doves spent the morning pecking away at the fallen seed and cracked corn. I love the sound their wings make when they all fly off together.

 

I don't know what made me look up at the tree on the side of the parking lot behind the house but I saw a lump that I hadn't noticed before. I squinted up at it and realized that it was a Red-tailed Hawk fluffed up and surveying the area. I took a picture expecting it to be too blurry to share but I cropped it down and you can still make out the bird in the tree. It's right in the center of the picture where the two slanted thick branches meet.

Not having had much luck drawing lately I cracked open Half Hour of Pencil Power and drew this Baby Godzilla. It turned out pretty well because he broke down the drawing into manageable steps and didn't tell me to draw things on my own. I'm fine with step-by-step drawings but tell me to draw my own character and then make it move and I'm lost.

At Friday Night Knitting I knitted around and around on the Alpaca Warm One hat. I've got seven more rounds to knit before starting the crown decreases. Then I can go downstairs, wind up some more of this avocado green yarn and knit a pair of mittens to go with the hat(s). There will be two avocado alpaca hats, so one mitten each?

The gratitude journal for today only has three entries but the bottom one, the Zoom one, encompasses two meetings today so it really is four things. I realized that I reversed the color on the hawk. His breast should be white and his back and wing brown. Oh well, I was just glad that what I drew is hawk-like.

I treated myself to a stack of Lean Cuisines for suppers when the potato soup runs out. I have one week's worth of meals left in the freezer and want to save those for the week when I get back from Kentucky just before New Year's.

I ordered my new business cards and bookmarks printed this afternoon. And I remembered to pick shipping that will have them arrive after I get home. Don't want them coming when I'm away.

--Barbara

No, I Didn't Go Out

Now that I think of it I actually did and in my yoga pants, hoodie, and Crocs to pour hot water on the birdbath to fill it up so the heater worked better. Not really very smart but I was only out for a minute so it wasn't so bad. It was a balmy -2 degrees.

An hour later the hot water had cooled to the point that the water farthest from the heater had started refreezing. When it's this cold I'm lucky to keep half of the water liquid.

The first little brave bird to arrive this morning was a Sparrow. It huddled there pecking at the seed and trying to stay as fluffed up as possible. Soon it was joined by the rest of the flock and they were much more active than the scout was.

Later in the day a Downy Woodpecker landed on the suet cakes and had to work hard to get anything from those frozen solid cakes of fat and seeds. To be honest I was surprised to see any birds today but I guess everybody's gotta eat.

I spent most of the day working on the Kindle edit of the third Seaview Series manuscript so it wasn't until just before I came back here that I pulled out my sketchbook and drew these two flowers. They remind me of pansies but angular, not soft.

Then I drew a gratitude journal page for today. I was grateful for the sunny day even though it was so blamed cold. I'll need to go to the grocery tomorrow for bananas and grapes and a few other things so I'll be braving the cold but it's supposed to rocket up to 19 degrees tomorrow. Still cold but not bitter cold.

I had an hour's meeting with KM my online assistant. We went over her suggested new designs for my business card and bookmark, the changes she made to my author Facebook page, and discussed changing my Instagram page a little. She's very good at knowing what looks good and ways to promote my brand. My brand, to me that sounds like I'm really full of myself but what else can I call making my name stand out? She's going to find out what I have to do to get my books distributed by a company not Amazon. That will reduce my royalties from Amazon but may give me more scope for advertising and getting into bookstores and making a bigger presence online. At least that's the hope. And she's going to make a graphic I can post advertising my audiobooks. I'd really like to sell a few of those.

Like I said I spent hours finishing the manuscript edit and making the corrections and changes on here so that the manuscript is as good as I can make it for now. I'll keep working to make it better and keep submitting pieces to my critique group. They're a big help.

--Barbara

A Dusting of Snow

That's what we woke up to. There was just a light layer of snow on the ground. This little Sparrow was scavenging through the flakes to find fallen seeds. It wasn't too cold, about 34 this morning so the birdbath was all water.

 

I spent a lot of the morning reading the manuscript on the Kindle and making notes. I'm happy to say that I managed to turn a few pages without needing to stop and make a note a couple times. I did find a big timeline error that I hurried back here to check on the laptop version of the manuscript where I can ask it to "find" a word and then go from there. I had Rose talking about the women at the Chamber of Commerce meeting before she went. Oops. Fixed.

 

There are a couple more Christmas cactus buds either blooming or getting ready to bloom. This is the most flowers I've ever had on this plant in all the years I've had it. I'm not the best plant carer, I forget to water it and then I drown it, but it's patient with my erratic habits and is rewarding me with flowers. 

By mid-afternoon there was ice creeping into the birdbath water. They're telling us that it's
supposed to get down to zero overnight and be all of nine degrees for a high tomorrow. I think I might delay my trip to the grocery for bananas for a day. Right now it's ten degrees and blowing pretty hard. Feels like temperature is minus six. Brrr.

I attempted the next video sketching lesson. He said to make emojis, so I did. Then he said to make myself a character. I did that. Then he said to make my character move around. I attempted that and gave up. The middle one is supposed to be brushing her teeth. I don't know what that creature is doing but it looks awful to me. And the last one on the bottom looks like it's having a seizure. No, this is not my forte.

Late this afternoon I carried the presents downstairs, got out the wrapping bin, and got to work. It didn't take too long to wrap all of the presents. I don't put bows on them so I can stack them in a box to carry them upstairs and over to the gift-ees. I used the same paper on all of them. Not feeling very creative in the wrapping department this year, plus I really like the red paper.

I drew a gratitude journal page for today. My favorite part was the mug of hot chocolate I made when I got home from the school run. I get there very early so I get a good parking place and don't run the car so it gets chilly. I put on mittens and a hat and stay bearable.

This evening I finished the brim of the Alpaca Warm One hat. It's meant to be folded up so there's a double layer over the ears. Next I knit knit knit around and around for 22 rounds before starting the crown decreases.

On my way home from the school run I stopped at Home Town Cafe. One of the women who buys my books at the market said she mentioned that I'd written Better Than Mom's using Home Town Cafe as my inspiration and they were interested. So I stopped and talked to the manager. No, not interested at all. Oh well, can't win 'em all.

--Barbara

A Brace of Squirrels

Today was Squirrel Day at the feeders. Two or three of them were out there anytime I looked out the patio door. One would be on the suet nuggets and another one on the suet cakes. In this shot one is on the nuggets and another is on the cob corn. For a while two of them were tag teaming the cob corn. One would hang there with its white belly showing picking off a kernel and then it'd drop to the ground and the other one would climb up the crook and do the same thing. Entertaining. (P.S. A "brace," in this context, means a pair.)

Yesterday I finished knitting the Majolica Washcloth out of scraps of dishcloth cotton in cool colors. I haven't woven in the ends yet so I tucked them under. I'll get to that one of these days.

I took another stab at the next Art of Sketching lesson video this afternoon. I did a little better today than I did yesterday and got through the whole lesson. Naturally it's on two pages and I can only post one of them so I'll post the second one that isn't a repeat of yesterday's post. I can't explain the long arms on that one character in the middle next to the pig. I just tried to draw what he drew and that's what I got.

And in the morning I drew a gratitude journal page for yesterday. I was going to draw one for today but I was stumped for anything to be grateful for. Isn't that a pity?

After a lot of poking at things on the WW app I figured out how to "create" a recipe. You used to be able to do that on their website but a few months back they eliminated most if not all of those things on the site, so now I have to re-figure out how to do it every time I want to WW-ize a recipe. I put in the potato soup recipe because I have a couple big bowls, and I mean BIG bowls, of it that I don't want to go to waste. And I fried up the rest of the thick-cut bacon and tossed that in instead of just using it as a garnish. I figure I've got a week's worth of suppers left. Yum.

I finished the other Christmas knitting project this afternoon while listening to an audiobook. Now all I have to do is wrap everything. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow or Thursday, or tomorrow AND Thursday, and just get it over with.

I've got an eye doctor appointment tomorrow and a virtual assistant Zoom appointment on Thursday. Today was my only day this week without something to do so I did a bunch of nothing. Although I did go downstairs and sewed up the shoulder of one of LC's sweaters that started coming apart so I did do something, just not a lot of it.

Oh! Every day I check my "Reports" page on Kindle Direct Publishing to see if I've sold anything. So far this month my royalties have only been a few cents from Kindle Unlimited page reads. People who have KU can borrow ebooks and the author gets credit for each page read. But today three paperback book sales appeared on the "Reports" page! Hooray! Maybe people who took bookmarks at the market last Saturday bought books. My virtual assistant is redesigning my bookmarks and business card to better showcase my brand (which sounds very hoity-toity, don't you think?). I'm sure that making them look more professional will make a better impression on people and maybe help sell more books. I'm willing to give it a try.

--Barbara