Friday, February 24, 2023

Sunshine & Red Birds

As dreary as it was yesterday, all overcast and blustery, today was all sunshine and mostly calm winds, a real refreshing change even though the temperature went from the high twenties to a high of nineteen today. When I went out to tackle the plow drift at the end of the driveways it was a balmy ten degrees. Brr. 

 

But the birds were out in force this morning. First a pair of House Finches were on the platform feeder pecking at the safflower seeds.



Then a male Cardinal came and shooed them away. He's such a bully.


While he was there the female Cardinal was on the ground under the round feeder where the Sparrows toss the seed that they don't want.



I took another run at yesterday's Daily Practice still life. I'm happier with the way the cherries turned out but wish that the background was a color rather than just the white of the paper. Looks unfinished to me.


Instead of the next big Intermediate Watercolor challenge (which looks to me like a real challenge) I taped a couple postcards to a board and painted the clementine and lemon from the other day. They both turned out okay. Here's the clementine, I like the way it looks a little better than the lemon.



This afternoon I finished knitting the thumb of the first of O's fingerless mitts and then cast on the second mitt at Friday Night Knitting. I got the cuff knitted and the hand and thumb gusset. Next the thumb stitches go on a holder while I knit the rest of the hand and the top ribbing, then the thumb ribbing and it's done.


Also this afternoon I started reading Better Than Mom's aloud to myself. I'm about 50 pages in and have already found a couple booboos to fix and a whole lot of contractions to add. Reading it aloud is a revelation. I've never done that before and I'm finding lots of things to ponder. I'm determined to get it done, formatted, covered, and published yet this winter so I can concentrate on writing the sequel to The Seaview which is proving to be more of a challenge than I anticipated.

And we're supposed to get a couple more inches of snow overnight. Just what we need. Yippee!

--Barbara

1 comment:

Aunt Barb said...

The sunshine on the snow is so pretty. Like the sky is always so blue after a hurricane. Like a reward for surviving whatever came before. Still sounds very cold though.