Happy New Year!

It better be. I don't think I could take another year like 2016.  I am for sure not breaking any bones in 2017, that's for damn sure.  Do you think you get more resilient as you get older or do you just forget stuff once you've gone through it and think you're good at walking on hot coals when all around you are losing their minds?

I took down the Nativity set last night.  Yeah, I know the 3 Kings haven't arrived yet but I'll be away next weekend on their due date and I kind of want to get all the decorations taken down and put away before I go.  I bought an extra package of tissue paper at the Dollar Tree so, instead of getting wrapped up in skanky old newspaper, each piece has a pristine white wrapping to spend the year in.  I took down all the Command Hooks that I hung the stockings on just before I went to bed and the Christmas tree gets taken down once I've posted this verbal ramble.

I did knit.  I knit quite a bit.  It's hard to see exactly how much because I also did quite a bit of un-knitting or tinking (k-n-i-t spelled backwards) because I can't reliably count to 8 and I decided that it'd be easier to follow the pattern on DPNs rather than Magic Loop because there are 15 groups of 8 in 120 stitches so 5 pattern repeats fit on each needle.  That means there's no pattern carryover when changing needles and for some unknown reason I couldn't wrap my head around how to arrange the stitches on the two sides of the long circular, Magic Loop needle to make that work.  Good thing I've always liked using DPNs.

Oh, I've been meaning to show you the feather I found on the front sidewalk last week.  Because of the downiness of the feather and the stripes I wonder if this isn't an owl feather.  I really hope it is.  I'm an admirer of owls.  It could be a hawk feather too since that Cooper's Hawk has been hanging around quite a bit lately.  I don't think it's a Bluejay's feather although they do hang around some of the time. It's probably against fifteen state and federal laws to possess an owl or hawk feather but how are you supposed to resist its fluffy stripey-ness when it's dropped right at your feet?

This morning I spent hours getting my 2017 Bullet Journal set up and organized.  You know how I love lists, well, a BuJo is first and foremost a book of to-do lists, but you can incorporate all sorts of other lists.  I put in a page right at the beginning where I'll list any books that pique my interest (I got a couple titles from GC I'm anxious to read; gotta check the library).  At the beginning of the month I made a Yoga tracker so I can mark when I do it and have a visible record, also I'll devote part of a page where I'll list the books I've read each month.  I'm curious to see just how many books I read or listen to in a year.  I'm going to take the book downstairs and sew on an elastic band to hold it shut and I want to figure out how to make a pocket to glue to the inside of the back cover to keep the post-its I use to mark certain pages.  (I have special ones that DD, SIL1, and GC sent me in a goodie box when I was stuck to the couch knitting my femur back together.)

January 1--Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Corner of the Studio.  It was cold in the studio.  With the walls and floor painted red-orange the temperature of the color should have kept it warm but MayEllen was just shy of freezing.  She kept her thick robe on as long as she could before Marco asked her to take it off so he could pose her on the draped platform.  He grouped all of the carved and plaster statues around her as if she were one of them.  They were all nude, as she was, and she thought the light bouncing off the garish walls made them all look fake and slightly alien.

Ah, art to write about.  That came so much quicker and easier than trying to drum up something to write about a stock photo of some person doing nothing in a blah background.  Okay, now I've got to haul the Nativity set downstairs and bring up the box for the ornaments.  Oh, and I need to bundle up and go out to fill the birdfeeders.  Maybe an owl and the hawk will come for a visit.
--Barbara