cuteness personified

If I get a tortoise to use in teaching and live sketching demos, can I write it off my taxes?

Death Star

Thursday afternoon

Thursday afternoon I take the girls to piano. The light for sketching while I wait is better this month than last. And too, the page in this sketchbook are smaller, so it takes less time to fill them. grin

stepping forward

So the latest sketchbook came to me as a gift. It is small for what I usually carry, made at some mission in Nepal. The cover is hand embroidered and the paper is made from scrap cotton. Not surprisingly then, the paper sucks up water like nobody's business. It will be fun to experiment on.

Aren't salamander feet cool looking?

Sigh

The rain arrives

I can't tell if it is the weather, or a cold, something I ate, or just plain stress. Today is the forth day in a row that I've woken up with a headache of some sort. Dull throbbing. Sinus migraine. A hot steel rod running from my forehead through the base of my skull - fine as long as I don't turn my head suddenly and the temperature doesn't change. Like it tends to in January.
The rain has finally started. Yes, everything is cold and damp and I have trouble feeling my hands and feet.. but it is the first rain since October. My garden looks happier already. Peas, lettuce, broccoli, rhubarb, asparagus, artichokes, and runner beans. The garlic limps along. I have yet to find the strawberries beneath the weeds. I trimmed back the raspberry bushes like the book from the library instructed. I hope I didn't kill them.
Two of the cats are asleep on a towel on the back porch. The wind isn't whipping about like it does sometimes so their corner is dry. They don't want to come in. I will have to assume they are happy too.

illustrating poetry

Nothing says extinction like a grinning skull.