Look! Up in the Sky!

It's an airplane flying way, way high scribing a contrail across the early morning blue.  It was 22 degrees when I went out at 7 o'clock to top up the birdbath.  Brr.  Not doing yoga on the patio anymore in 2017, that's for sure.  I try to get done yog-ing before Durwood gets up so I can do it alongside the table where I can look out the patio doors but don't always succeed.  This morning I did my yoga in the living room where I have a view of the cluttered bottom shelf of the TV armoire.  Inspiring.  

And the capricious wind has blown some leaves back onto the patio but I'm going to call the Public Works Dept. tomorrow asking them to come get my leaf piles and call to cancel the lawn guy until next year.  The raking and leaf blowing the neighbor and I did on Friday is good enough, not pristine like the guy kitty-corner across the street but he's made a religion of his lawn so he doesn't count. 



Did I show you the new patterns I got last week from 100 Acts of

Sewing?  I don't think so.  This is Dress No. 2 and Pants No. 2 which are really leggings.  I get a giggle out of the creative names she gives her patterns but I really like their simplicity and how they've made me brave enough to experiment with fabrics and fit and style.  I'll be taking them and the bolt of thrift store fabric I use to draw off patterns down to the dive shop tomorrow to set up a meeting table in the back room to trace and cut them.  It's so much easier to use an 8' long table than the 5'-er I have downstairs and I'm too darned old to crawl around on the floor to do it.

Another of my Joann finds was a skein of yarn that matches the owl hat I made for OJ.  The mittens I made to go along with it are way too big for him so I found a toddler size mitten pattern and cast it on this morning.  Got one cuff done and am halfway to putting the thumb stitches on a holder.  It shouldn't take long to knit a pair of mittens for those little but busy hands.  I figure if they fit right maybe he'll even leave them on when we're playing outside.  Probably not, but I can hope. 

I've been sticking very close to the WW plan the last couple weeks, avoiding ice cream drive-thrus and grocery store sweet roll cases.  I even bought some 1/2 cup plastic containers because I've discovered that if I portion things out I don't overserve myself so there's a stack of 1/2 c. servings of chocolate ice cream in the freezer that I eat with the tiniest demitasse spoon I own.  Today I was in the grocery store and thought maybe I could find a single cookie.   The bakery doesn't have a service case anymore and all the cookies come in dozens so I looked on the "reduced bakery" rack and found a single cookie.  I put it into my cart but decided that, while it was a single cookie, it was probably a bit off-plan, if you know what I mean.  I put it back.  Besides it was five bucks.  Even I think that's too much to pay for one chocolate chip cookie.

November 26--Alexandre Cabanel, Birth of Venus.  Julia looked at the canvas on the easel and back at Marshall.  "That's the way I look to you?"  He reddened and nodded.  "Yes."  She stared some more.  He had painted her nude.  She'd posed clothed.  He had give her red-gold wavy hair that reached to her waist.  Her hair was the same color but cut short and stick straight.  "Am I floating on an ocean?"  His fingers fiddled with a paintbrush, smearing blue paint all over his hands.  "Mm-hm."  "You know I can't swim, right?"  He ducked his head and smiled.  "Yeah, I do.  I could teach you if you'd like."  She turned back to the painting, hands on her hips.  "You see me like this?"  He nodded.  She didn't look at him but said, "Will you marry me?"  He let out his breath.  "I thought you'd never ask."

I was going to go downstairs this evening to cut out the puppets I want to make for LC and OJ for Christmas but at supper Durwood said he wanted to remind me that I'm on vacation, that I'm retired, that I don't have to get everything done all in one day.  I protested that I'd stayed in my jammies until after 1 o'clock before dressing to go pick up a few things at the grocery (but not a cookie) and exchange something at Goodwill.  He did allow as how he napped most of the morning so he didn't witness me relaxing.  But I think maybe I'll see if I can't get one OJ mitten done before bedtime.  Just to make Durwood happy, you understand, not because I think he's right or anything.  I can cut out puppets on Tuesday.
--Barbara