Happy New Year, everyone! May 2011 be a year of peace and growth, of joy, love, and laughter.
December 2010 Archives
I know I should drink more water... don't know that drawing the bottle counts, but it's a start.
New socks - and I'm pleased that I'll be able to find them among the other black socks in the wash.
One Gerbera daisy in a tall vase.
Six years ago today, I started drawing every day to see what I could learn - about drawing, and about sitting still to look at the things around me. After 28 days, I began posting the daily drawings here, and I've been doing that ever since. Odd to realize that more than a tenth of my life has been chronicled this way, in gestures and small moments. I'm grateful to be part of a larger community - grateful for those who visit quietly and those who comment, for those I know well in my daily life and for those I've gotten to know online. Thank you all.
Nearly spent the day in my pyjamas - did spend the day reading and chatting with family, blissfully not accomplishing much of anything. Read the manual for my new Dremel tool. Reread a mystery novel. Watched an old movie after supper. Good rest.
We had flurries all day, and small gusts of wind. With even a little snow, our yard begins to look crisp and slightly magical - a transformation from the damp browns and muddy golds of late fall.
Looking forward with joy to Christmas morning.
Formerly full of wrapping paper...
The cover cloth is beginning to fray and the covers are pulling away from the spine on my copy of The Provincial Lady. Good to be re-reading it - a comfortable conversation.
A lemon makes me think of light, which in turn, makes me think about the solstice, full moon, and last night's lunar eclipse.
Here's our favorite holiday treat. We make it every year to give to friends, and to share at home. (Vacation came earlier this year, so we're already thinking about a second batch.)
English Toffee
3 cups granulated sugar
3/4 cup cold water
1 1/2 lbs. butter (6 sticks)
3 T. white Karo syrup
1 1/2 cups toasted almonds, slightly cracked
1/2 cup toasted almonds, chopped fine
1 large package semi-sweet chocolate bits
Place sugar, water, butter, and syrup in a large frying pan. Cook, stirring constantly, until mixture reaches the hard crack stage (290°) and has a deep golden color. Quickly add slightly cracked toasted almonds and spread out on a well greased cookie sheet. While mixture is still hot, sprinkle semi-sweet chocolate bits over entire area and frost as you would frost a cake. Sprinkle finely chopped almonds over chocolate and allow to cool gradually. Break into bite-sized pieces and store in a tin.
The sky was nearly white today, brightly overcast, with flurries of snow falling on winter branches.
Beads, tied with a ribbon.
And now it is almost the weekend, and winter vacation begins...
We have almost turned the corner of winter - five more days of shortening light and then daytime will begin increasing again.
Someone else has a cold.
The furnace just kicked on, and otherwise the house is quiet. Street noises are muffled in the few inches of snow on the ground. I'm glad to be indoors on a cold night.
Nuts in the shell are a social activity as well as a snack. (I also don't eat quite as many when I have to open each one, so they go further.)
I'd love to have a story about this bell - where it came from, who used it, how I came to have it - but I don't know, or I've forgotten. An old brass bell without a story, then.
Snow in the air, but not staying on the ground.
Rising into view, as we begin to decorate the house for Christmas.
As the snow puffed around outside without settling onto anything, we read and listened to music.
Glass bottle - may once have held ink.
Shadow of my right hand, holding a pen.
Sunday evening... relaxing and listening to music.
Container of Watkin's Menthol Camphor Ointment - better known in the household as "Grandma's Grease." Good to rub on your back and neck when you have a cold. (Gotten out last week, when one of the kids didn't feel well, and it hasn't made its way back to the bathroom shelf yet.)
Found a watersoluble graphite pencil at the art store after work today. So this is done with that pencil, then waterbrush, and then a little wash for color.
From one of the alstroemeria in today's grocery store bunch of flowers. (The last bunch lasted nearly three weeks...)
'Tis the season.
