Less than three weeks to go until the winter solstice, the shortest, darkest day of the year. That’s the first hump to get through the winter, then three weeks later, the days start getting warmer (statistically). Once we get past that, I can start feeling like the worst is over and I can start planning my gardens. I’m going to get some moving around of my bird feeders. I read an article that feeders should be closer than three feet or more than 30 feet away from windows to prevent birds from crashing into them. And of course, right now all of my feeders are inside that danger zone.

After finishing my bird drawing, I was wandering around feeling lost because I just couldn’t settle on a new drawing. I decided to get my embroidery machine out and try working on that, but couldn’t find the power cord for it!! I cleaned out the half of the foyer closet where I keep my boxes of thread, not there. Cleaned and went through the boxes of fabric and misc. on top of the bookshelves in the middle bedroom. Not there. So after wasting two days (well, guess not wasted since I cleaned or organized) I decided to go onto Amazon and see if I could get a replacement cord. Had to check the embroidery machine to get the model number, and guess what I found under it. The power cord.

Work in progress, A Confusion of Stripes, (I got inspired after watching some National Geographic shows about zebra migrations). This one is larger than my normal size, about 9x11 inches.

We had a surprise at our bird feeder the other day,

I think they’re cute, but I’m not enthused about having them around, since they’re so destructive, so we had Suka chase him up a tree a couple of times. He got the hint and moved on to more peaceful feeders.

Speaking of Suka, this dog has a huge personality! When I get Lukas up to shower him, Suka has to find his toy and claim his spot on the bed. Such a silly puppy!

I must have been especially uninspired August of 2013. I just finished photographing the last of the beads from that month, and there are quite a few ‘blah’ beads. My bag of rejects is going to be growing as I winnow through them.

I’ve gotten a few new funny photos off the web, here’s a couple,