One Little Birdie

I went out after lunch today and filled the birdfeeders. Lots of birds and squirrels showed up. I saw two Bluejays tussling over the peanuts that I flung on the grass but a squirrel chased them away before I got a picture. I did manage to catch the Nuthatch on the suet pellets.

What I wrote today was lame, boring and lame, but I managed 1835 words of boring and lame, and hope that a few of those words turn out to be less boring and not so lame once I get more of the story written. I got smart and pulled out a little notebook to keep track of the characters' names from the start so I don't have to wonder what someone's name is when I get further into the story. Thanks for the handy little notebook and pen, SND!

The next bird in Draw Like an Artist was a Swan. I had less trouble drawing it than I thought I would. I can't say that I erased less because for the life of me I couldn't get the beak right. I must have erased and redrew it six times but I was finally satisfied that it looked okay. I was just glad that the swan was swimming and not standing, being as I am notoriously bad at drawing bird feet.

Then because it was Sunday and because I wanted to I pulled out 10-Steps: Nature to see what was next. It was a crab! I was very nervous that I wouldn't be able to draw it but I took my time and followed the examples with minimal erasing and managed this. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself.

It didn't rain today but it was still rather chilly and quite windy so I stayed indoors and wrote and drew. The guy across the street put up his Christmas lights and lit them. He could have waited to turn them on until after Thanksgiving. I probably should have washed dishes but instead I made a shopping list for the next bout of Investment Cooking. I'll do the shopping on Wednesday and probably start on Thursday. This time I picked out nine recipes and hope I'll have enough containers for it all. I'll manage. I knitted a couple more rows on the Simple Alpaca Shawl. Just four more rows, then the bind off, weaving in the tails, and blocking and it's done. Hooray!

I woke up this morning at 8:30 and realized that I forgot to set the clocks back last night before I went to bed so I did it this morning, turning 8:30 into 7:30 in the push of a button. Courtesy of that little time change it started getting dark at 4:00PM and it won't get any better until after December 21. The long dark night of winter has arrived.

--Barbara