Up High

I stopped over at Zambaldi to visit DS this morning and found him high up on the ladder pouring hops pellets into a fermenting tank. There is no freaking way I would climb a 12-foot ladder much less carry something up there to pour into a tiny hole in a stainless steel tank. He's also making a honey peach beer for summer and has to pour fifteen 40lb. bags of peach puree into a different tank through that little hole in the top. Eesh. Makes my skin crawl just thinking of all those trips up and down the ladder. That's real dedication.

The bleeding hearts are really blooming now. See all of the arches of little pink heart-shaped flowers? And there's lots more to come.

The next figure in the 15-Minute Artist was a Maple Leaf. Not such a big deal except that instead of drawing lines the directions said to make dots. It's called stippling and it took forever to fill in the leaf shape. I drew it first with pencil lines and then dotted my way over them before erasing the pencil and then I spent an hour filling in the space with tiny dots. I thought about digging out a pen with a bigger end but just kept on stippling until it was filled in. Interesting technique.

Next in 10-Step: Nature was a Peacock Butterfly which was really fun to draw and color in. I could see making lots of different butterfly designs some rainy afternoon.

Knitting the Simple Alpaca Shawl has turned into a bit of a slog so
I went downstairs for some thick yarn that I used to cast on a hat for charity. I needed a palate cleanser and something with big yarn and big needles does the trick for me.

Today's toss was a trio of mismatched silver forks. They don't match my silverware and they don't match each other. I bought them at a thrift store when we were using stainless flatware just to have a little silver in our lives but now that I'm using Grandma's silver I decided to get rid of them. They don't stack nice in the flatware tray.

I had to call The Clearing today to clear up a billing question and got an excellent packing tip. I'll be in the loft of the Professor's Quarters. It's an enclosed room and the stairs up to it are a lot more ladder than staircase so I was concerned about hauling a suitcase up there. The tip is to pack in two smaller cases rather than one large one. I can do that. In fact I may pack in two backpacks to make it extra easy and safe to traverse the stairs. Three more days to live through and then I GO!

--Barbara