Creative

  • Art,  Creative,  New Mexico,  Travel & Places

    Art with Hummingbirds

    While in New Mexico I had hopes to spend more time working on some sketchbook art, primarily my perpetual nature journal that I started in early September last year. I’m several months behind because I sunk into a pit of not doing anything in May so I’ve been continuously working to get back on top of things. A perpetual nature journal is one that has some flexibility but ideally you are using one page or set of pages to chronicle something in nature for a certain time period on every year until that page is full. Mine is set up weekly, though the weeks will slide a bit as they…

  • Creative,  Reading

    Second Quarter Reading Wrap-Up 2022

    As per usual, I hit a reading slump around May which lasted through most of June. I didn’t finish a book for about six weeks but I am slowly climbing out of that hole. I will likely have another slump, based on years of noticing my pattern, sometime later this summer. Which is why I do a lot of reading at the beginning to the year to counterbalance it all. I’m currently at 35/45 for my Goodreads challenge and I suspect I will end up around the 60 book mark again this year when all is said and done. Audiobooks are still carrying a heavy weight in the count but…

  • Creative,  Reading

    First Quarter Reading Wrap-Up 2022

    A few years ago I regularly did Monthly Book Reports but that fell by the wayside. It’s hard to believe it has been so long but I think I’m going to bring them back in the form of quarterly updates with my favorites from the previous three months. For the first quarter of the year I’ve read 19 books. Some were great, others I muddled through, and I abandoned one or two. It has been good to see so many people talk about abandoning books that you can’t get into because I was a former “finisher” and it is something I still cling to and am working on. Sure, it…

  • Art,  Creative

    Postcard Art | 1

    Winter means that my studio is too chilly for me to work in usually, and so I have been making do with watercolors inside the house. I keep several sketchbooks and now some watercolor postcard paper on my desk and have been working away these last few weeks on small art pieces that I am mailing out to folks. I’m trying to do monthly themes, January’s was orchids, as you can see. February is currently abstract and I think March will be native plants or spring. All of these are taken but when I have others in the future I will share them here and if you want a little…

  • Creative,  Reading

    Top 5 Books I Read in 2021

    Last year I read 60+ books (not counting the ones I read with Forest) and I keep tabs of it over on Goodreads. Feel free to friend me over there if you’d like! By far the heavy lifting of my reading last year was audiobooks and I have significantly replaced podcast listening with audiobooks over the last two years. If you keep your audiobooks to 10 hours and under and listen at 1.5-2x speeds then you can easily read an audiobook every few days or so. I listen while I work most often but I have tasks that don’t allow me to focus on two things at once so I…

  • Creative

    Winning at Writing

    On a whim at the end of October I decided to actually participate in Nanowrimo. Back in the mid 2000s I gave it a half-hearted go and quit pretty early, enough that I didn’t even have any of it documented in my Nano account. I hadn’t logged in there in years and saw the last time I gave it a real whirl was in 2011, when I was writing my FT hiking memoir. I made it to something like 26K words, I believe, at that time. I accidentally deleted that after I logged in and tried to set up my new book. Oh well. The only way I was going…

  • Creative,  Crochet

    Forest’s Rainbow Afghan

    Saturday evening I finally finished Forest’s rainbow afghan that he requested last fall. His original request was for a rainbow blanket with red and blue on the ends. My original thought was to use the yarn I already had but then thinking about having to switch yarn every couple of rows didn’t sound appealing. Forest and I ended up finding and agreeing on the self striping Lion Brand Mandala Yarn in Gnome, Cupid, and Spirit colorways. And I LOVE IT! Honestly, I want it for myself which means I’m going to borrow it as much as possible! Hah! I started on it sometime last November but royally screwed up the…

  • Creative,  Reading

    Best Books of 2019

    Overall I read 139 books this year. That includes books I read with Forest—because even though they are kid books, I’m still reading! That doesn’t include books on our own shelves at home or books I’ve re-read again and again with him, mostly just library books throughout this year. I started logging his books last year so I could easily figure out what we’re reading but also books he likes and we might want to revisit later. He often finds books we’ve checked out before and grabs them again so he has a good memory for that anyway. As for “my” books, I read 45 books out of a goal…

  • Creative,  Reading

    Adventure Reads Part II

    One post over the years that seems to have done well was my Adventure Reads post. So, I thought that it was high time to have an Adventures Reads Part II. Thirst: 2600 Miles to Home by Heather ‘Anish’ Anderson I’ve never had a burning desire to hike the PCT. The CDT was always what I wanted to hike next in the compendium of ultimate long distance trails. Even reading Wild didn’t really cement the desire to hike the PCT into my brain like it did to so many people who wanted to traipse in Cheryl’s footsteps. But Thirst fleshed out more of the details of the PCT for me,…

  • Creative,  Crochet

    Amma Granny Square Top — Completed!

    I finished up the top early Sunday morning as Forest and I were chilling in the west end Best Western in Galveston while Chris was out getting some fishing done at San Luis Pass. I’d worked on some of the finishing touches a few days before but only had to finish the sleeves and bottom edging. Yesterday I washed it out in the sink with some special yarn soap I’ve had for years and out came a lot of dirt and dingyness from being stored for eons—this was my grandmother’s yarn. I’d washed out a lot of the yarn in containers when I got them after she moved into the…