Not doing much

Decided tonight was the night to start a knitting project other than socks; got out the dark green alpaca I've had all ready with needles special-bought and the pattern ready to go, got started on the easiest part of a billed cap, the headband - got about four inches done and discovered I'd screwed it up - that's when I learned that alpaca tends to marry itself as you knit. I ended up just cutting the wonky part off to start anew with a new end...not tonight. Crud. Well, now I'll know to be more careful. It's a pretty simple cap, no lace or cables, so if I keep my head it shouldn't take too long to finish.

No drawings, but OTOH

I got out of the house today. Went to Spielbound and played Pandemic! with three very nice guys. Hope we can do some more board-gaming in the future. Speilbound is a non-profit gaming cafe.  A really cool place for Omaha. Or, anywhere, really.

I thought about taking a sketchbook and pen along but then decided naw, I'd rather just play games.

Drawing a day, Feb. 10th

Had mystery book club tonight, a perfect opportunity to try some character sketches. Boy, am I bad at it. You'd never recognize these lovely ladies from my drawing.

Drawing-a-Day, Feb. 9th

Having been put to shame by a dear friend who - unbeknownst to me - took me up on my suggestion for this ordeal, and who brought her EIGHT drawings to game day yesterday, I decided I had to get back in the saddle and try some more. I decided also that I need to scale back my ambitions lest the drawings eat up all my hours every day. Therefore, ta da:

It's a very old Persian (as in, before it became "Iran") copper bowl with lid. I noticed the intriguing way it peeps out from the shadows on my bookcase and decided maybe I could manage that. Simple shape, additionally-simplified surroundings, so there. In the middle I thought it was a waste of paper but somehow I did get it looking *just* good enough to post.

So I'm back in!

Well, that de-escalated quickly

Didn't take me long at all to run out of enthusiasm for a daily drawing, did it?

Well...

there could well be no drawing for today. I have had an extraordinarily arduous - for me - day. First I went out to dig the car out of the two feet of snow it's been buried in for three days. I got 90% done THEN decided it might be a good idea to start 'er up and run the heater to get rid of the ice covering all the windows - but the battery is dead. Completely dead. So I sat down in the garage and thought about it. I was already tired and sore. I'd have to call the emergency guys, wait for a truck to show up to jump-start the battery, wait awhile for the windows to melt, and THEN go to the grocery store.

I gauged my energy remaining. No. Way. So I decided to rest a bit, eat lunch, and take the bus to the store and the taxi home. Leave the car business until tomorrow. Getting to the bus stop was physically challenging (remember, it's me we're talking about - Ms. Sedentary of 2014). Snow was piled up four feet high no matter where I tried to walk, so my shoes got soaked. At the disembarking spot, same thing - though most of the way from there to the store (two blocks) was clear.

Anyway, I'm home, the groceries are put away, and I am really, really tired. Little to no interest in doing art now. *Maybe* later, but probably not. Ah well.

Drawing-a-day, Feb. 2

Signs of improvement over yesterdays' entry. For one thing, watercolor paper works so much better with watercolors, innit? This is a little better, too, because I remembered to erase as much of the preliminary pencilling as I could. It's far from perfect, but it's better.

Just two things hold me back from being a great artist: the inability to see what's really in front of me, and the inability to get what I see onto the paper. LOL

However, that's enough ado. Here's today's effort:

I think the real value of this exercise will turn out to be its keeping me humble. Oh, so humble.

Drawing-a-day, Feb. 1

I warned you. I said it'd be bad. Just sayin'.

NOW I remember there's a reason they say to use watercolor paper for watercolors. Duh.

Well, it's supposed to be a murder mystery book cover.

The best thing I can say for this is that it sets the bar for the rest of the month very low. Shouldn't be hard to show improvement over this thing.

Books read in January

In Jan. 2014, I started keeping track of what I read in a little notebook. I just entered the title and author of each, and I assigned a “grade” to each book. 

1 - didn’t finish

4 - very good, but probably won’t read it again.

5 - best ever (LotR, for example), will read again

Anyway, now that I’ve got the list, I’ll review each month’s books very briefly here.

January 2015: 12 books; of which at least four are re-reads. The doubtful ones are the Christies; if I’ve already read those it was decades ago and I had forgotten the plots etc. Completely.

5 - Exploring JRR Tolkien’s The Hobbit - Corey Olsen (“The Tolkien Professor” online): I’ve listened to all of Prof. Olsen’s Tolkien podcasts on iTunes and will probably listen again, eventually. He’s a Medieval Lit PhD who brings both his rigorous academic training and his passion for Tolkien to this book. It is very enjoyable for a Tolkien nerd like me, and will reward many re-readings in the future.

4 - The Mother Hunt - Rex Stout: I love Archie and Nero and I don’t think I need to give my rundown of the plot or anything for any of these; much more skilled Stout fans have great posts all over the internet.

4 − 13 at Dinner - Agatha Christie: see the previous comment re: Stout; the world doesn’t need my recap of the books. 

5 - As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust - Alan Bradley: the newest Flavia de Luce mystery from Bradley and like all the rest, *superb*. I adore Flavia and I was worried that transplanting her to Canada (to her late mother’s boarding school alma mater) would ruin it - particularly since I am completely mesmerized by Dogger and he of course got left behind to care for her father and sisters and the crumbling family manse. But I needn’t have feared - Flavia is more than equal to anything the world seems bent on throwing at her! And in this one we get more information about her mother’s mysterious past. Going to stop now; Spoilers!

4 - The Secret Rooms - Catherine Bailey: This is a non-fiction work about England’s biggest, one of its oldest, ducal estates, and the mysteries held therein. The blurb and jacket are a bit misleading, as they hint that it’s a ghost story. It’s not - it’s a deep dark family secret story, that is nonetheless fascinating (except I skipped the extensive descriptions of WW I battles and equally tedious marathon about a certain mother’s wartime machinations on behalf of her son - these simply didn’t interest me, it’s not the author’s fault). But the revelations had my jaw dropping several times. Also, as a glimpse of just what kind of life the aristocracy led before WW I, it was a real eye-opener. It’s unbelievable, the wealth, and the arrogance that equaled it. I for one am right glad the system pretty much crashed after WW I. Never will I look at Lord Peter Wimsey’s brother the Duke of Denver the same way again. 

5 - Death on the Nile: It’s Christie, in Egypt. What more do I need to say?

5 - Unbound - Jim C. Hines: this is the third book in the Magic ex Libris series, and I gobbled it up like popcorn. That’s not to say it’s light & airy; Jim doesn’t back down from confronting the implications of  the tropes he’s dealing with - just one example - Isaac’s friend the dryad warrior Lena Greenwood’s origins as basically  a character created for the benefit of horny male readers. The Magic ex Libris books combine several of my favorites - books, libraries, strong smart talented women, and every damn hobgoblin (including I think hobgoblins themselves) you can think of. A rip-snorting read. There’s another to come and I can’t wait to see how Libriomancer Isaac Vainio emerges from that one.

4 - Over My Dead Body - Rex Stout

5 - Help the Poor Struggler - Martha Grimes: this is a Richard Jury book and I am hopelessly enslaved to Grimes’s characters, regardless of whatever unevenness of plot, circumstance, attitudes, anything. I’ve got the whole series and I’ll be going back to them every so often until the day I die.

5 - The Deer Leap - Martha Grimes - see previous.

5 - The Five Bells and Bladebone - Martha Grimes - see 2 previous.

5 - Mrs. McGinty’s Dead - Agatha Christie: Probably read this years ago and forgot it. It’s a nice Poirot with him deliciously out of his comfort zone, staying in an ill-run, ill-heated, chaotic country B & B whose mistress hasn’t the slightest understanding or talent of cooking. The mystery’s pretty good, too.

So that was my reading for January. I’ve got The Shining Girls on my nightstand because we’re discussing it in the mystery club Feb. 10^th.

Fool, rushing in

(a watercolor I made up long, long ago)

It's the depths of winter (even though it's been pretty mild here so far), and I'm cabin-crazy. My urge is to bury myself in blankets, fortified with hot chocolate and a six-foot stack of mind candy in the form of books, and British TV mysteries, and just not be seen outdoors at all until April. It wears on the mood, it does.

Also it's hard on the health. This is my most inert, junk-food-crazed time of the year. And the least social. Really, why DID I not get into the Hibernate line B.B. (Before Birth)???

Anyway, in a desperate attempt to not devolve into a puddle of primordial ooze here, I'm going to give a "Month of Drawings" a try. (If you google that you might find something, but I just made it up right here so whatever you come across has nothing to do with me.) I'm going to spend February trying to do a drawing a day, and post it here. Fair warning: they're likely to be drek, but I am going to go at each one with the best of my abilities. Not just scribble something to fill out the day's check box. And I will go further: I'm going to draw actual people, places or things, not *pictures* of people, places or things. That will probably mean I'm going to have to go out of the house sometimes. *shudder* It'll be good for me. I might expand the OK subjects into mere designs for things, too, like designs for end papers of books, or placemats or something. I have two more days to prepare myself for the ordeal. So do you. Good luck to both of us!

A passing thought

The BBC must be one of the yarn world's biggest assets.

Found an illustrator whose work I LOVE

Vince McIndoe's his name, and I love his almost-retro style!

Makes me want a whole library of novels with these pieces as cover art.

Life in the slow lane

is just fine with me.  Dominating my thoughts this past week have been the horrible events in Paris, though the response around the world is very heartening. I only hope leaders don't just use these despicable murders as further excuses to deprive the people of our liberties. Time will tell - but one can hope that even the most venal, conscienceless pol will look at the millions flooding the streets in support of "Je suis Charlie" and take pause at what might oppose them if they are not wise.

Anyway, aside from following that unfolding story, I've not done much this week. Got Season 8 of Doctor Who and marathon-watched it all in two nights; I think I love Peter Capaldi's Doctor. I've never been very fond of Clara, but I do like the prickly interplay of those two characters. I do wish Pink hadn't left the scene - maybe they'll bring him back, somehow.

I've read two books this week: the newest Flavia de Luce, As Chimneysweeps Come to Dust (LOVED it - like all Flavia fans, I think, I was a bit nervous about her decamping to the Canadian girls's school but oh my it turned out quite well). Keep 'em coming, Mr. Bradley!  The second book is non-fiction, The Secret Rooms, by Catherine Bailey. It's kind of advertised as a possible ghost story, in a real ancient family ducal seat in Britain, but it's really the story of that ducal family's history and in particular the generations just before, during, and after WW I.  I really enjoyed it until she got to the part where she was detailing - and I mean *detailing* WW I battles and the behind the scenes machinations of a particular mother - I skipped a LOT of pages there. In the end it's a fascinating look at how those people really lived before it all fell apart after WW I - mind-boggling wealth and arrogance OMG it's GOOD that it fell apart (and I am again reminded it was GOOD that the American colonies scraped Britain off their shoes like horseshit).  Ms. Bailey (except for the boring war details) is a good history writer for popular readers and I will be watching for more from her.

I got hung up knitting Sock 7 - discovered I need to tink like, 7 rows so I can start decreasing for the toe sooner, but tinking is SO fiddly and tedious. So I picked up the CoBaSi sock (Sock 8) again and got a little further on it. It's certainly not perfect (you can't see the other side) but I really don't care - I am needing socks, and I'm not out to show off my knitting expertise (since I don't have any). I try to learn more with each sock, though.

This is reminding me of a soccer jersey, and it's odd because that pleases me, even though I have zero interest in any kind of sports. Psychology, go figure it out. I can't.

Happy New Year!

I opened last year by putting this picture:

as my laptop desktop image. Eight days later I was in the hospital (just for 26 hours, but my they were an exciting 36 hours - those that I remembered)! I thought maybe I'd tempted fate. Then I remembered I don't believe there is such a thing, LOL. But that image and challenge just embodied my feelings at the time - I was ready for 2014 to be amazing! In many ways, it was.

And here we are, in 2015. This time, I've put this:

as my desktop. It was taken in Paris, I don't know where, exactly. But isn't it lovely? I can lose myself in that picture. Go drifting down a willow-shaded stream hazy in the summer sun, to the background of bumblebees humming and birdsong. That's kind of where I am right now. If it changesI can always change the desktop.

Best of 2015 to all!

Made out like a bandit, I did

Had a lovely lunch with my two sisters-in-law, where we (traditionally) exchange gifts - by this time we are all giving each other the same things (meaning there are three sets of the identical objects being traded) because we know the others like them, so that's kind of hilarious. It's the lunch that's important - no, I'm wrong - it's the *company* at the lunch that's important.

Had a lovely Christmas Day dinner at my one sis-in-law's home, with her son's family and the other sis-in-law and *her* grown kids. Lots of good food (lasagne! Another delectable family tradition), lame jokes, banter, and watching the ten year old and the two year old zoom around.

And I was *buried* in gifts from my son & his family! They just kept showing up on my doorstep, day after day! And what gifts!!! The Firefly board game! (swoon)  The Pandemic board game! (squeeeee!) The Tolkien Professor, Corey Olsen's "Exploring JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit" (I debated how to treat the font in that title. If I remember I'll look it up in my handy grammar and punctuation book and let you know how I did)!

[And now I'm wondering: Is italicizing and underlining *grammar*? Or punctuation? Is there a third rail in English usage? Something else to look up. Post a comment if you know. I check comments daily because I've got the comment filtering setting On.] [No one ever comments, but I live in hope.]

Short catch-up post

My energy level has improved considerably since that last post. Since then I've gotten cookies baked, presents store-bought or handmade wrapped and in some cases mailed, a lovely luncheon enjoyed, and lots of reading done. I finished Bill Bryson's One Summer: America 1927, and enjoyed it a lot (despite one friend's scathing critique of Bryson's research quality), and Alan Cumming's autobiographical book Not My Father's Son (this last was a cheat on my TBR pile; I sat down the minute I got it home and read it all in one sitting - now I go back to the TBR pile in proper order).  I'm working on Asia's Cauldron: the South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific by Robert D. Kaplan. For bed-time reading right now I'm working on Christie's An Overdose of Death.

I started Yet Another pair of socks, to alternate with the sock I've *almost* got done. I got tired of that one, and this pair excites me because 1) I'm again making it up as I go along - no pattern - and 2) I'm using two colors! Whee! Wide dark green and natural white stripes in a knit 2, purl 2 rib (except for the sole, which will be smooooth stockinette). It's also the first time I've used the CoBaSiyarn (cotton, bamboo, and silk) so I'm interesting to find out how long-lasting it is in a sock.

And so goes my tha-rilling life.

Low-karma week

Having a hard time doing any of the many things I have on my To Do list this week. Don't know if the grey, clammy weather has anything to do with it, but that's not going to get better; looks like we have maybe 5 straight days of grey cold rainy crap coming up, segueing partway through into grey cold snowy crap. Oh joy.

Oh well, my library book pile is up to 9 volumes now. I could always hide in bed for days at a time.

This week's Project

This was what my dining room windows looked like yesterday morning:

This is what the dining room looked like last night:

And this is what it looks like now:

I made some shelves! I'll remove the clamps tonight (I glued a board to the foot of each side plank for stability). They're not finished or painted, because I'm not sure where they will ultimately end up. The main two things were: get rid of those god-awful sheer curtains at the windows, and get a shelving unit up to put the little houseplant babies on. And open the wall up to be lighter. It faces east, over the neighbor's driveway to the side of his house, and it's entirely canopied by huge oak trees from his yard, so it tends to be dark in the dining room. 

I made up the shelves as I went along. As always with anything I build, it's pretty half-assed. But if it works, I'm happy. 

Ridiculously chuffed

Since last May, I've been trying to change my diet and activity habits to reduce some bad-trending numbers in my health assessment. Cholesterol and blood sugars, mostly. Yesterday I had a fasting blood draw to check the cholesterol levels. Today I got the results: My good cholesterol (HDL) dropped 2 points, 51 to 49 (both within 1 point of the "50 or higher" desired level). My total cholesterol dropped 41 points. My Triglycerides dropped 46 points. My bad cholesterol (LDL) dropped 29 points. The cholesterol/HDL ratio dropped from 5.3 to 4.6. The Total, Triglycerides, Bad, and ratio are all still higher than desirable. But if I lower them as much in the next 6 months as I have in the past 6 months, they'll all be down in the Normal range.

I was really anxious about this blood test. I have been working hard but I was thinking, please please oh PLEASE, let me lower the bad ones by 5 points! Just 5 points! On my more optimistic days I thought maybe I could make that 10 points.  So today's results have got me OVER THE MOON! OVER THE MOON CARL!!! (I don't watch The Walking Dead so I really don't have the ticket to use that meme but I felt like it, so there.)

What have I done to get here? Changed my diet, mostly. I mean, that's almost entirely it. I have reduced my beef consumption, bacon consumption and cheese consumption by like, 85 - 90%. What meat I do use, is more of an accent or a garnish. I have fish (cod, pollack, frozen; tuna, salmon, canned), chicken, rarely pork. Once in a great while I go crazy and go to Village Inn and have Pigs in Blankets LOL. Woo hoo do I know how to live, or what??? I've increased the proportion of fresh or frozen or canned vegetables and fruits I eat per day. Like, I've doubled that. I've reduced by about half the amount of bread I eat (which really kills me, but since I make my own, eating less of it per day means I have to bake less often, so there's that). I TRY to either ignore dessert cravings or have a pear or apple or some canned fruit - that's really hard as I have a giant sweet tooth.

In fact, I buy almost no processed foods, I make most of my meals from scratch using fresh, frozen or canned straight stuff. I like my cooking better than Corporate America's. And with my adjusted plate I know I'm eating a well balanced diet. My problem is, I eat too much of that wonderfully healthy food. And my main problem is after dinner - after nightfall. When I'm sitting here watching a DVD or Netflix, knitting, or playing solitaire...it's almost irresistible to go out there and graze. And I'm an experienced cook & baker so it doesn't take long to create something Bad in a very short time (cookie dough, anyone?). I've been working on that for some time now, and I have to say I have failed often enough to start considering the drastic measure of installing a chain gate with a sign: No Admittance After 8 p.m.). I have the hardware. It could be up in like, 20 minutes. But the idea is so humiliating that maybe, just maybe, I can threaten myself with it into behaving myself, late-night-snack-wise.

So keeping with the diet methods I've had is the first component of my plan going forward.

The second part is staying out of the damned kitchen after 8 p.m.

The third part is exercise. That, I told my health coach, is the Piece of the Puzzle I haven't been Pounding in Place. (That was earlier today on our monthly phone visit, right after I'd eyeballed these wonderful new numbers. I was a little giddy.) So we arrived at a goal - a realistic and achievable goal - for my exercise from today on: one hour aerobic per week, and 3 times per week strength training. I mean really, that's pretty minimal. I should have no trouble doing that. Yet it's BEEN my goal for like 6 months. I haven't DONE it yet. So now I'm hoping my curiosity will be an additional incentive: My health numbers have improved so much, just changing my diet, how much better will they get if I add in the exercise?

Oh, I haven't yet mentioned my BMI. It's horrible. It's in the LOOKOUT YOU'RE GOING TO DIE OF FAT range. It's identical to what it was in May (this was not a surprise). I'll be very interested to see if staying out of the kitchen after dark and exercising every day will have a beneficial effect on my weight, too. Whaddya wanna bet? Likewise, the blood glucose levels, which didn't get measured in yesterday's test. They were "borderline" last time; I am even more concerned about those than I was about cholesterol, I mean I am flat-out fucking terrified of diabetes.  But I am confident that if I follow this plan of mine, my blood glucose levels will revert to normal, too.

Stay tuned.

I mean to behave.

House plant update.

Ageratum doesn't transplant well. It dies. Ah well, worth a try. The thin-leafed deep raspberry-colored plant is also struggling. I don't know if any of the slips from that plant will make it. But, the Swedish ivy, geraniums, and bi-colored (white and jade green) vine are doing well. The begonias look a little tough, but they're going for it. I can trim out the dead bits once they're established for sure.

I moved some of all of them (except the dead ones) up to the sewing room window. They seem happy. I put a bicolor in the bathroom, but the light there is limited so I may move it.

I'm going to go looking for string-of-pearls and Philodendron, and maybe one other houseplant, in a couple of weeks. This is an oxygen-enhancing effort, as well as a home-enhancing effort. It's been a long time since I had plants. Didn't want them. Now I do. And so it goes.