A Bit of This and That -- the Usual Stuff

 The Hounds and I have been enjoying the autumn colors on our walks of late:

And we're enjoying seeing some of the Wintering Waterfowl arrive -- these are American Wigeons:

And we've just enjoying our daily strolls along the river:

I'm not sure how much longer these strolls will last, though, as it's getting colder out there, especially in the mornings, which is my favorite time to walk.  It may soon be time to hunker down, and come up with more and more creative things to do.

Speaking of creative things, remember my 34,340-stitch needlepoint version of the Good Omens Series 2 promo pic?  Well, I framed it!  All by myself!  Okay, with a little help from the friendly customer service person at framedestination.com, but still, this was quite an accomplishment, for I had never framed needlepoint before and it can be tricky.  Everything turned out beautifully, if I say so myself:

It's now hanging in the living room, and I am best pleased. 

As for other creative endeavors, I liked both the drawings we did during our Zoom sessions.  The first was a snake against a dramatically dark background, and I decided it needed to be drawn digitally using the Adobe Fresco program on my iPad.  Haven't done that in a while, and it turned out fine:

The second scene was Mount Fuji in autumn, for which I used watercolor:

Another thing I enjoyed this past week was storm cloud watching -- we have relentlessly sunny clear blue skies here a great deal of the time, and I get excited whenever good clouds arrive.  We had a couple of rainstorms this past week, and after the rain stopped, I went out for walks and drives to capture the clouds:

There were no more new birds to see on any of my adventures of late, but I did get some pics of our common birds.  This is a White-crowned Sparrow:

And here is a cooperative California Quail (they usually scurry off into the brush long before I can get a photo):

Here is a Spotted Towhee, which come here only in colder months of the year:

And I also spotted this female White-crowned Sparrow taking a bath in the one of the puddles left by the rainstorm:

But wait, there's more!  In home decorating news, I splurged on a new area rug for the living room:

You might notice something about the coffee table...yes, those are skeins of embroidery floss.  Yes, I'm starting another needlepoint...oh dear.  Check back in four or five months when I might be finished with it.

Truman approved of the new rug:

And so did Pippin:

Truman and Pippin also approved of the Hallowiener party we attended on this past Saturday, hosted by the wiener walking group we belong to.

The group organizers set up a nice fenced area for the wieners to romp around in, and meet and greet:

Truman and Pippin wore their matching Jedi hoodies:

I liked this sharkwiener costume:

I have no idea what these two are supposed to be, but the costumes were handmade and quite well done:

These two reminded me of Truman and his Seattle buddy Winston:

This person got mobbed when he offered some dog treats:

We had a little costume parade:

Good fun all round!

Okay, that's it for now.  Whew.  

Happy Celtic New Year!