I was happy to see a Downy Woodpecker come to the suet feeder this morning even though the temps were in the low single digits all day (at least it was sunny)...
This afternoon I met ACJ down at The Attic to write for a couple hours and she brought me a Christmas present--a jar of cherry jam from Door County and a pair of goldfish-in-a-bag earrings, you know, like you get at the fair. Fun! I got a little roofer wrap-up scene written and a few more chapters of read-through done.
On my way home I stopped for gas and bananas, and dropped off my old printer to the place where they recycle them (in the terrible cold? yep, can't let the gas get below half a tank in the frigid cold) so it was close to 4:00pm when I got back here. That gave me time to make one nose and embroider one face on the Christmas toy because it's just too hard to work with black once it's dark.
So I poked around to see what works in progress were laying around and I found one from 2016 that I decided to pick up. I found a pattern for an Advent calendar, um, swag. It's twelve mittens and twelve socks/stockings that you attach to a crocheted yarn chain and hang it up with candy or tiny gifts in each one for the 24 days of December before Christmas. I meant to make it for LC and OJ but ran out of steam. I have nine mittens and six stockings finished so I grabbed a crochet hook and got the next stocking almost done, it just needs the heel. Maybe one of these days I'll get it all done.
11 December--Barbara Malcolm, Spies Don't Retire.
“That wasn’t so hard,” said Sonia
as she and Harriet drove away from the first Art League gathering that she had
truly enjoyed since arriving.
“What?” Harriet’s head had been lolling against the
headrest. She had imbibed a bit too much
wine and her head was feeling more than a bit fuzzy.
“Being nice to the Czarina. I told George I would, so that his mission
would go more smoothly.”
“Mission?”
“Harriet, pay attention!” Sonia glanced over at her friend to see her
eyelids at half-mast and her jaw a bit slack.
“How much wine did you drink?”
Harriet turned to face her in super
slow motion. “Oh, I don’t know, three or
six glasses?”
Sonia laughed. “No wonder you can’t focus. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.”
“Mmmmm.” And Harriet was asleep.
It was a good thing the island was
so small. Sonia didn’t have too much trouble
rousing her friend when they got to the orange bungalow. Max was smoking on the patio when she pulled
in and helped get his tipsy wife out of the Rover. Sonia helped support Harriet into the house
and held her upright while Max stripped off her clothing. They eased her into bed and went back to the
patio. Max picked up his pack of
Nevadas, the god-awful cigarettes from Curacao.
“Smoke?”
Sonia shook her head. “I was determined to quit when we moved here;
one drag and I am sure I couldn’t quit again.”
She pushed the pack toward him. “You
go ahead, though. I rather enjoy
watching other people smoke.”
Max chuckled and shook one out of
the pack and lit it. “So how was the bun
fight?”
“It wasn’t a bun fight as you so
coarsely put it; it was an Art League meeting.”
“Were there any men there?”
She shook her head.
“Then it’s a bun fight.”
“Chauvinist.”
He shrugged that off and looked at
her expectantly. “Well?”
She picked up his lighter and began
twisting it in her fingers. “It was
fine. Christina James had her drawings
and paintings on display. She’s very
talented, way more than many of the artist wannabes on the island, including
moi.”
He blew a stream of smoke at
her. “That’s not what I meant. How did it go with the Czarina?”
A laugh sputtered from Sonia’s
lips. “How did you know I call her
that?”
“It stands to reason, doesn’t
it? She’s a Russian and you think she’s
an egotistical bitch; what else would you call her?”
“True.” She put down the lighter and clasped her
hands in front of her as if she were making a report in school. “Well, Harriet and I were looking at the art
and Irina came right over to us. I
introduced her to Harriet and she was very nice. We commented about Christina’s works and said
which ones we liked. And then Irina,
well, she actually compared them to my photos.
That astonished me.”
“Why?” He stubbed out his cigarette.
“Because she has spent every other
meeting letting everyone know how much of a hack she thinks I am. I straight out told her I didn’t think I was
an artist. That what I do is child’s
play and that any eight year old could do it and do it better. I think that was the key to her unbending.”
“How so?” He lit another cigarette, and Sonia had to
clamp her teeth to keep from saying, another—so soon?
“Well, after I said that, she
walked around the rest of the display with us and she was actually fairly nice.”
I couldn't believe that I went out to two grocery stores this morning in the bone-chilling cold to get all of the stuff I need for sloppy joes and a spiral-sliced ham (on sale at ALDI) and a bunch of other things for making party mix but I forgot the slivered almonds for English toffee and, of course, neither of the other grocery stores I stopped at this afternoon had them. What's up with that? I'll stop someplace else tomorrow on my way home from the Y so I've got all the ingredients for cooking up a storm this weekend. It was so cold today and a little windy but I had on layers of clothes and even wore a hat (having the dreaded hat hair) because, damn, it was cold. Tomorrow it's supposed to be 34 degrees and snow a couple inches. If it isn't one thing, it's another. C'est la vie.
--Barbara
1 comment:
OK -- here's my latest solution to the rat problem: Dig a trench around the house, fill it with water like a moat and that'll keep the rat out. No wait! The moat would freeze so forget that plan. Drat it! I love any kind of Advent Calendar and yours with mittens and stockings is too cute. Hope you finish it at some point in time. Can't decide whether to make the English Toffee this year. Some of it hung around forever last year. And don't ask me how to explain that because that stuff is so delicious.
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