Thursday Art Walk

 

Sketches Are Fun!

It was incredibly gorgeous yesterday. I'm talking 60℉ (15,6℃), sunny, breezy and gorgeous. I took a long walk downtown and wandered from shop to shop hoping to pick up a not-too-expensive sketchbook the size of a small hardcover or trade paperback. I wasn't successful with that, but on my way back I stopped at our local library, a massive granite building partly funded by Carnegie back in the day, and sat on a bench in the sun to sketch in the big sketchbook I brought with me.

Instead of continuing the Happiny saga, I ended up creating a character!

"Cooper"; graphite & Pigma pen, 2022

Cooper is a new character who doesn't quite have a story yet. I know some things about him - he's missing an eye and has various glass eyes he likes to wear with fun pupils or weird colors, he's unselfconscious about his scarring, he likes to wear incredibly fluffy jackets and faux fur, he's a mechanical engineer, and he dresses as a ridiculous copper-colored marabou velociraptor named Copper for fun.

I'm 99% certain he's gonna end up in one of my modern Steampunk-esque stories about sentient automatons from Wales. If I can figure out a way to simplify his characteristics, I'd also like to draw comics of him!

Now as for why I brought up the weather earlier... it was 16℉ (-8,9℃) and only got to about 24℉ (-4,5℃). Tomorrow we'll have snow (up to 18" or 45,72cm) and it will be maybe about half as warm as it got today. That's why I'm currently wearing an outfit made of wool and fleece and all of my blankets are on my bed lol. It's also why I am planning on taking all of tomorrow to make more art!

We'll see if I actually follow through, though, because I'm notoriously lazy as heck on snowy days!

Anyway, that's today's sketch/drawing. I think I'll work a little more on him later :)

Go Enjoy Something!

And Stay Safe.

FC

Talk About Tuesday

 

Yep. Still Tired lol.

Great news! I'm sleeping more than 2 hours a night again!

Bad news is, though, that even a full 8 hours a night isn't recharging me yet.

I'll be working on rectifying that by moving more tomorrow, since I think part of my tiredness is because I keep forgetting to exercise enough. I took a short walk yesterday (the uphill-both-ways one I do every week), but I couldn't go out much today because not only was it chilly, it's been raining off and on since the afternoon. Right now it's pouring and the wind is roaring.

My eyes constantly feel gritty, right now, which is a pain, but I've been through this before. I go through the eye-grime every time I start recovering from an insomniac bout. Best things for it are water, sleep, and face-washing. I'll be getting the first and last as soon as I post this blog, but the middle one will come when it comes, and no amount of relaxation techniques and soothing jazz will change that. It'll probably hit me around 2AM. That seems to be the magic hour for sleep lol.

I still haven't grabbed my red crochet thread, so I won't be able to finish the Secret Project for a while yet, but we'll get there.

I have ideas for Thursday - I might try to do more work on that silly Happiny idea from last week, or I might try to draw something else. Maybe a dinosaur. I have been thinking a lot about raptors this week lol.

Mostly I just keep getting distracted. I'm distracted a lot lately, mostly because I'm having SpeedyBrain, which is hard when I also have MolassesBrain at the same time. My thoughts are very very fast, but it's like having an auctioneer in my head. The thinky thinky goes fast, but the understandy goes very very slow. I'm fairly sure that's just because of the overabundance of coffee, so I'll try to have less caffeine tomorrow - easy since I plan to be using the treadmill and coffee + treadmill = disaster, so there will be less bean juice tomorrow than today lol.

Then again, I'm seeing that it'll be pretty nice out tomorrow. Still windy (the real feel will be about 10℉ lower than the ambient temperature), but sunny (in the afternoon). If I'm very sneaky I might be able to get all the way down to Main Street without too much trouble from the neighborhood dogs, and if it really is all that nice (I'm seeing temps of about 53℉/11,7℃!) I might find a spot downtown to sit in the sun with a sketchbook and a thermos of lemon tea.

We'll see how motivated I feel around noon.

Let's see, what else should I talk about...

• I saw a bald eagle on Sunday! It wheeled around the intersection I cross on my way downtown to the local bookstores and vanished behind some houses and trees. Very cool.
• My next door neighbors have somehow ended up with a rooster, which is fine - it's not a very loud boi. It was just driving me nuts trying to figure out where the rooster noises were actually coming from.
• The deer have been emptying my mom's bird feeders into their cute lil faces on a nightly basis and my mom is getting ready to sic the cat on them.
• The cat got a new heavy ceramic planter which my mother planted with cat grass. The cat thanked her by trying to dig in the damp soil, then smugly trotted away to use the freshly-cleaned litterbox, only to bound upstairs with inquiring noises as soon as my mother tried to replace the literally soiled table cloth with a new one. The cat then proceeded to sit in the very center of the table and refuse to move, which ended with my mother just draping the tablecloth over the cat, who happily sat there in her tablecloth tent for a good 10 minutes. During the smug tablecloth adventure, I punctured a piece of plastic wrap a bunch of times and covered the cat's ungrown grass with it, using some toothpicks to hold the plastic off of the dirt.
• My dad finally beat a hard level in Beat Saber. He's getting good at the base game, apparently, and he plays it before dinner.
• I tried faroh risotto tonight and it was very nice. 10/10 do recommend.

I think that about covers my news this week, guys. I'll do my best to post a drawing on Thursday!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Thursday Art Walk

 

In Which I Meme'd

I had a very silly idea today. It's based off of this video, and I want to draw more parts to it. Yes, it took me several hours to draw this, and for someone still learning how to use a USB tablet, I'm pretty darn proud of it!

"What Do You Have In Your Hand?!"; digital; 2022

Can you guess what that Happiny has in its lil hand?

I can see some things I need to fix (blush on the cheeks, better shading, smoothing out the lines, add a background) but as a first draft, that's not bad!

As for my missing Tuesday blog, lemme be real for a second:

I've been fighting an insomnia cycle for the last couple weeks. I have not been able to sleep and what sleep I've had has been plagued with bizarre and uncomfortable dreams. Nothing bad, per-se, but definitely not anything you want when you need the zzz's. So Tuesday wound up being a day where I tried to nap. I also tried napping yesterday (which was far more successful). I'm far less exhausted today, and I can't wait to try more art and writing tomorrow.

I might pop out in the early afternoon for a shuffle around the neighborhood, too, before it drops back into arctic temps, since it should be in the 40s (~4 - 6℃) for a couple of hours!

Apologies again for fluffing on Tuesday's blog, and hopefully next time I'm in Walmart I can snag some more red thread to to finish the Mystery Project on Monday!

for now, though, I hope you're all doing well and enjoying yourselves!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Fiber Monday: With Love

 

Happy Valentine's Day!

I know I haven't posted in quite a while, but I'll try to explain more tomorrow :)

For today, please enjoy this heart I crocheted from Mari-Liis Lille aka Lilleliis!

It's not huge, but it's squishy and cute!

Today was a busy and romantic day for me, and I hope the rest of you also got to enjoy yourselves with your loved ones! I am exhausted and very proud that I managed to make that in only a couple of hours. If I'd thought about it more while I was making it, I could've given it some eyes and a cute lil smile, but I'm satisfied to just have a cute little heart pillow. It felt so nice to be back at making things!

Feel free to go make something from Mari-Liis Lille's patterns (she has in-depth PDFs of her patterns for sale, too!) because this one was super easy to read & understand, and I think I'd like to scroll through some other patterns of hers too!

For now, though, I think I'll crawl back into my pajamas, add another blanket to the fort (the Real-Feel out there is about -5℉/-20,6℃ I think) and call it an early night, filled with love and pastrami and joy.

Happy Valentine's everyone!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Talk About Tuesday

 

In Which I Am Still Alive

Guess who hasn't had the energy to blog in a few days lol. While yes, I did get my shot last week and yes, my previous doses were 24-hour affairs... this time it took until *today* for me to feel better. And I got my shot last Wednesday. Nearly a week of soreness and weird sleep. I don't know why this booster was so much rougher than my previous doses, but it's nice to have the full range of motion back in my shoulder. Even yesterday, it was hard to shift my shoulder, so crochet was basically out of the question.

This was also the first time I ended up with lymph node swelling.

And to top it all off, we had a blizzard. I get very hibernatory when we get blizzards lol.

I also started rearranging my room, which if you know me is QUITE the chore lol. I haven't finished, but boy do I have a lot of cardboard to get rid of now lol. There'll be more after tomorrow.

Yesterday I was still sore and tired and I couldn't focus. Today I'm just tired, but I had a headache when I woke up and couldn't shake it until dinner tonight. I actually worried I'd miss another blog, and I know this one's going up late again.

I think the weather's getting to me. It's hard to leave the house once it snows. The city takes days to clear the sidewalks out here and the ice is very slippery. I know there are cleats, but those are for walking from your house to the mailbox, not walking a mile round trip every few days. I always wear them down to rusty nubs by the end of winter. Being stuck inside isn't all that good for human beings. 

Aaaaaanywho, I have been staying up too late lately and waking up either super early or super late, so my sleep schedule needs a refresh. My intention over the next week is to:

• Post Art on Thursday
• Post Crochet on Monday
• Blather at you all on Tuesday

And if I hit all three of those goals, I'll be doing well.

Now I'm gonna go see if there's any good teal hair dyes out there for brunettes...

Go Enjoy Something!

FC