Woke up to Christmas hatching out in the living room. My brother decided it was time to try and see how the furries will deal with trees and decorations.
Our John Deere Santa hanging on the room divider, with mermaid tail looking for a home.
Nutcracker trying to hide the stationary bike.
Dragon coming along.
Challenging piano solosNice easy carols, easy font to read. Fun, quick to master.
More challenging less known carols like the Wookiee one.
All 7 pages of When Christmas Comes Around (Polar Express)Probably the most challenging to me sounds the easiest, Linus and Lucy. And one I want to sing with (and my hands take all my concentration for now) Oh Holy Night.
For next year, I hope I start Christmas music before Halloween. I’d like to be more proficient by this point. And I hope I know those last few songs with very little brush up time.
Oh, in case you need to see how gentle goals help:
I started back to piano last October. The goal: sit and play as long as it’s fun, then move on to something else. At first, I’d only play a song, or five minutes. Today I’ve clocked an hour and a half! And it’s still fun! And I’m not hurting as much as I used to.
Ties waiting for their turn in the light.
The two frogged and reworked. Still not striping up like I’d like.
And a new writing goal: 500 words a day starting today. And work 4 scenes a day on Folie à Plusieurs. But TrackBear is being a BEAR! So I need to find another way to keep track. I did get 637 words in a zoom sprint with Yvensong.
At the beginning of this month I had plans. I wanted to develop characters for my NaNoWriMo novel and maybe find a bit of plot to get me started.
Somehow life happened and I only felt one character standing up for himself. And at that he seems quite miserable.
I felt like a police sketch artist reading the random characteristics. But I finally had a sketch. Today I reviewed by using some colored pencils.
Yeah, he’s to be a minor antagonist. A wannabe cowboy/mountain man afraid of bridges and heights. Swollen feet fight cowboy boots. Straw hats allow sun as he never feels the sun enough in his life. He’s manic about being outside in the sun. His club foot gives him a limp. His name is Ervin Norbert Dorris.
I wanted to get involved with Inktober but day 1 for me will be when I introduce Viktor Tobias Olson. He has a mustache to start all kinds of trouble. But he’ll show up in a day or so with other Inky props.
Well, I reported the finished projects last week, so today I’ll share new projects and progress of others.
My new flower balloon is grounded. The dark drill eyestrain is done.
The yoga socks on the Hiya-Hiya Flyers are coming along. The more I work with these skinny, sharp needles, the more I like them. I just need my stronger glasses to ensure nice stitches.
My experimental yoga socks will teach me, soon, how to leave out a heel. But will I have enough yarn for the ankle? Playing yarn chicken.
The watermelon socks have progressed to the arch.
The slipper socks are coming along.
I’m sight-reading through this book. I’m about halfway through, song titles starting with “I” as in “I’ll Be There”. This is fun. Some songs surprise me. Eleanor Rigby was fun to sing and play. As I play I’m finding the ones that challenge me while being doable. Then I will systematically print them. Then I can learn them well enough to sing.
Having not found a website to track my November novel, I’ve started to prepare anyway. My friend and I got together today to start finding characters. We’ve done it often this way. In person when we could, but now on Zoom.
We take each characteristic, randomly select a trait, and move on to the next.
It’s always a surprise how quickly the new character becomes nearly flesh and blood. As my first character came through, Ervin Norbert Dorris (the name randomly generated in WriteItNow 6.03c) seems a dirty troll under his homemade bridge with an attitude like Dexter. Well, the antagonist showed up first. That’s different.
My friend found a rather strong pretty punk character I think will be quite fun.
How do you start a book? For us the characters seem to people a world. Hopefully, all that prep gives us a start.
I found a 4 pager that is fun to pianoize. I know I could play it easily when I was a young teen. See the star stickers? Yeah, I thought I was too old for cutesy stickers. Yet, my prof in college often gave us adult students stickers or happy faces. Oh, the old, boring age of adolescents! I should probably do a vlog ‘concert’ to see if I’ve improved since my last ‘warts and all’ vlog
This piece of fun for my recorder, uke, and violin. The challenge for my piano is to teach myself to improvise more. And the vocal range is easy.
I’m enjoying my music.
And there are times I feel my inner child do this:
So close to being done. Hopefully in time…
Almost to the heel. Hopefully, these will be way too big for me and fit one of the males in my life.
This shows the freezing fog of the past week is cleared. See that beautiful blue sky. It’s not gotten too much above 32 this week. Pretty. But the weather changing is still causing arthritic pains for we old folks.
Sadly, my NaNoWriMo stalled. Holding the laptop hurts, my eyes couldn’t focus, yeah, the changing barometric pressure affects a lot for me. So I changed goals from 50k, to 25k, and finally to 10k. Today I have 9,642, so I think I’ll meet that goal tomorrow.
Shadow Foxing is the title. Not about the furry animals, by the way. Character types.
So nothing is near finished–except the dragon. But happy progress is happening.
We’re making progress, despite the loss of male bits yesterday. Sammie was very scared and disoriented when he first got home. It was like he didn’t know any of us or where he was. By evening he seemed to feel more at home.
By the way, it was so nice of the spay/neuter team to come out to our everything desert on their weekend to take such good care of our puppies and kitties.
Today we had a couple lap sessions and recliner time. He initiated. I was elated.
Sammie seems a little more tired today, but very loving.
Because of him, and aches and pains due to weather changes, I’ve gotten very little done today.
NaNoWriMo isn’t going well either. I reduced my word count goal to 25k.
Even piano was a short session.😥
The only thing that might show progress:
Mostly working on the sky it is easier to reach. Hopefully, I can start working on the dragon soon. The lighting show how sparkling the gems can be.
I hope you had a happy, safe, thoughtful Veterans’ Day. Thanks for your service folks.
Just the neck and head of the dragon left. I have to work upside down to reach the top without hurting.
Watermelon socks finished! Yay!
He, finally, jumps into my chair seeking pets and love. He tolerates lap time. He’s very food oriented. A little treat gained the pets. Bigger reward, lap time. He’ll roll the ball back to me and gives high fives. (Oh, that book is my character development fav. And yes, my stationary bike is right in the way to force me to hop on and go!
My ‘practice’ journals and hobby journals are helping my progress. I’m finding myself wanting to play longer and more often on my instruments. Even the violin. I’m still trying to figure out tightening and loosening and rosining the bow.
Now NaNoWriMo. I’m three days behind. I hope to catch up but I am enjoying the story.
Finally finished with the heels’ decreases. In about three inches the socks will fly in the mail.
Just a few strays and I’ll be halfway through. I usually take 3-5 pictures. The first pic with back light, circle/magnifying light, piano light, overhead light. Each light gives a different feeling. But it seems my favorite is with just the overhead. It seems to make the ‘diamonds’ sparkle. The only trouble is you can see the glare of the protective cellophane. At my next sitting, I’ll turn it upside down and work up (down?).
Journaling my many hobbies has helped a lot in a lot of ways. But some things are hard to quantify. Or know of ways to talk about. Outside of pictures my yarn crafts just grow or are frogged back. The diamond painting doesn’t reflect well in journals either.
Then there’s the boring things like stationary bike time/distances which doesn’t change much. Duolingo has its own goals and rewards so I don’t journal. Although… Maybe it’s time to take notes and keep track of new vocabulary?
The piano journal is helping a lot! If I read the notes from my last run of a piece I see the problem spots. If it’s a big problem I start there then play the song. I’m beginning to love my piano time. That’s worthy of a FINALLY!
Oh, and my violin journal is freaking out with successes. No, I’m not ready for Carnegy, but full tunes. Not feeling like hiding the instrument in the closet is PROGRESS!
That’s probably enough for now.
Oh, NaNo is started but I need to get another 800 words before bed. I have no title or know where it’s heading. Best get busy!
Working on my series: Haven.
Doodler (zendoodle.com)
Music major: voice and piano
Mom of four great adults
Reiki II practitioner
I have been on disability/retired for 10 years now from depression, anxiety and fibromyalgia.
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