Halfway There!

 WHOO HOO!!!!  I have passed the halfway point on the Good Omens needlepoint project!!!

End of Week 7, with 17,170+ stitches completed out of 34, 340.  Whew.  I'll tell you, some of those areas drove me to near despair, with so many different colors that it took me two hours sometimes to do 100 stitches.  Luckily, I hit a section that was easier, with fewer colors (the figures' backs) that went much faster.  So overall, I'm doing well.  Except for the two places where I had to unpick about 15 stitches...once when I got off by one hole, and once when I accidentally grabbed color #3031 instead of #3032.  Sigh.

In other creative efforts, I hated the drawing for Wednesday's sketch group meeting, so you're never going to see that here.  However, the Friday one was most enjoyable:

In fact, I liked looking at this English country cottage so much that this painting is now framed and on the living room wall.

Meanwhile, in the very important dachshund world, Truman and Pippin met up at a park with the Tri-City Wiener Walkers:

Pippin greeted Finn, and then he greeted Madison.

It was a fine group all round and we enjoyed an hour long stroll.  Truman did not get his picture taken, because he is antisocial.  Oh, well.

As for walking myself, I'm back on track with another virtual challenge!  This one is 50 miles on a trail in Iceland that weaves in and out of some fabulous volcanic scenery, with a few spectacular waterfalls thrown in.  From day 1, my miles went up from a non-challenge average of 1.8 per day to around 5 miles per day.  Whee!

Part of my walking efforts took me to non-virtual Bateman Island:

I got in a little birding while there.  This is a Bewick's Wren:

And this is a Song Sparrow:

These are not birds.  They are enormous spiders which have webs all over a grove of locust trees.  Hundreds and hundreds of webs throughout the entire grove, at all heights.  Suffice to say that I did not go birding in there.

I did look at birds from the beach that has a lovely view of the Columbia River.

WAY out there I could see Great Egrets, American White Pelicans, and a Great Blue Heron, but they were all too far for photos.

One bird that was not too far was a Caspian Tern which was zooming around, diving for fish.  It's very hard to track flying terns, but after a few dozen failed attempts, I managed to get one decent shot:

So that was fun.

And that's it for this week's report, other than two photos of Pippin and Truman on the sofa, which I'm adding just because I can:

May you all have a good week, and stay safe out there!

In Which I Don't Do Much (Again!)

More nothing to report!  Perhaps this blog ought to go biweekly?

Well, okay, a few little things happened.

My medal for finishing the virtual England walk arrived:

I'm waiting to start the next challenge until a friend can join in the fun -- we're planning to have a race around 50 virtual miles of Iceland.  Hope to get going this week, and I need to get going, because the silly medals and the app that counts my steps do seem to be motivational.  During a one-month period when I was doing the walks, I averaged 4.3 miles per day.  But during the past week's lull, when I had no virtual challenges, that dropped to 1.8.  Yikes!  

In artistic endeavors, there was only one Zoom sketch session last week, and I felt utterly uninspired by the photo, but did my best anyway:

As for the never-ending needlepoint project of the Good Omens photo:

I finished pages 1 - 3 of the pattern!!!!!  That's 15,300 stitches in just six weeks!  Whee!

Of course, there's still a lot of blank canvas there...for pages 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9 of the pattern...sigh.

Still, it's encouraging to make progress, and see the figures emerge.  And when I finish the next line across, I'll be halfway there, so that's a good goal.  Right on schedule, too, at my initial estimate of 3-1/2 months to work this piece.  Stay tuned!

That's all to report -- maybe this coming week I'll be off to virtual Iceland.  

May you have lovely travels of your own, whether real or imaginary!

In Which I Stretch Out the Usual Stuff with Extra Photos

 Since I haven't much to report upon lately other than "walked a lot" and "stitched needlepoint a lot", this past week I decided that clearly more photos were needed, so I snapped some while on one of my walks.  It's not really all that exciting, but it's better than nothing!

You've all seen pics from my typical walks along the Columbia River trail, and from the nature reserves, so for a change, I chose this walk instead:

The route ran from the Washington State University branch campus up through the research district, then over to the river and back to the campus.  This is part of the campus near the starting point:

This is the campus "garden".  It consists of several large chunks of basalt and a whole lot of sagebrush.

Here we see the main road through the large research area, which includes Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Batelle NW, the US Dept of Energy, and lots more fun science/technology stuff:

At the end of the district you will find the conning tower from the USS Triton -- a nuclear powered sub that was the first to circumnavigate the world completely submerged.

This is pretty much the halfway point of the walk, and there's a small public space with benches which makes for a lovely resting spot.

After a brief rest, I headed back along the river.

The trail takes one past a manufacturing plant (seen in the distance) which makes ingredients such as emulsifiers that are used in food production.

Here's a spot called the Arid Lands Preserve (part of the WSU campus) where more sagebrush has been kindly left alone for, as the sign that you can't see well in this photo claims, "the enjoyment of all."  Hm.

Wasn't that a thrilling look at some of the fine scenery that I typically get to see on my walks around Richland?  Whee!

As for my virtual walk along Hadrian's Wall, I had to make a push during the last week to finish, because the forecast warned that wildfire smoke and temps above 100 were in the near future.  I had been averaging four miles a day, but upped it to over five during that final week's effort:

I managed to beat the heat and smoke with about four hours to spare.  Whew!  All told, for this challenge I walked 92 miles in 23 days.  

I've been stuck at home for several days now due to that smoke and heat, which started to clear yesterday.  The walks shall resume as soon as I figure out where to virtually walk next.

As for the art practice sessions, our first pic was this bonsai, which had rather intestinal looking roots:

I didn't care for either the pot or the background, so opted to zoom in on one section, which I rendered just in pencil:

I found the pic for our next session far more inspiring -- this doorway at Tintagel:

I loved the view of the cliffs and water, which made for a fun challenge.  I used pencil and watercolor for this one:

Now for a Pippin update:  he is back to normal activity, and going on longer walks.  But I'm being careful about restricting his opportunities to jump up and down off the furniture, which is not good for dachshund backs.  He can handle short steps, though, which are all over the house:

He also enjoys hanging out in the many dog beds scattered about the place:

Such a sweetie!

Finally, the weekly update on the Good Omens needlepoint project.  

I've gone over the one-third mark!   Whoo hoo!!!  It's been five weeks since I started, and I've now completed 12,000 of the 34,340 stitches in this piece.  It's exciting to see the figures' heads begin to appear!

So I'll keep plugging away at that, and will go for more walks, and that's about it for the news from this corner of the world.

Have a wonderful week out there!

Even Shorter Than Last Week

 I really haven't been doing anything other than stitching on the needlepoint, doing the two weekly Zoom art sessions, and walking, walking, walking.  Sorry there isn't more to post about!

I finally got the medal for the very first virtual walk challenge completed -- London:

It features several spiffy charms:

As for art, we chose a complex scene of a tree rooted on a rock with mountains behind and a complex sky, which I did in ink and watercolor:

Our second picture was from a village in Italy featuring homes with conical roofs, which I did using only watercolor:

The needlepoint project, I'm sure you recall, is of this Good Omens Series 2 promo photo:

I've now been working on it for one month, and am getting closer to the tops of their heads -- yay!  

I've finished 10,333 stitches.  There are now 24,007 left to go.  So that's probably another 2-3 months of work, if I keep stitching as steadily as I have been.  I sure do know how to keep myself entertained.

As for walking, I've completed 70 miles of the 91-mile virtual walk from the west coast of England to the east, along Hadrian's Wall.  Yesterday was a record-setter:  it was beautiful weather for once (low to mid 60s!) in the morning, so I went for a six-mile walk along the riverfront.  That's the longest I've gone in one walk, and I took just two short rests along the way.  

That's all for this report.  I hope you are all doing fun things out there, too!

A Relatively Short Post

 Apparently I didn't do very much last week that was worthy of photos. Sorry.

Mostly I walked a lot more, averaging four miles a day, and mostly I walked between 6:30 and 8:00am to beat the heat.  It's all part of the Pacer Virtual Walk Challenges thing, which continues to keep me motivated.  And ooh, look -- they sent me another spiffy medal for my recently completed 37.2 mile virtual stroll around Paris:

Pretty fancy!

The current virtual challenge is 91 miles across England along Hadrian's Wall, going from west to east.  I'm at the 39 mile mark.  I had a shorter day yesterday due to wildfire smoke haze making the air unhealthy, and did not get my usual 3-4 miles in.  I did get two miles done by dancing around the living room periodically throughout the day, though.

Besides that, there was just the usual stuff -- two Zoom drawing/painting sessions, and work on the needlepoint project.  Here is the first Zoom painting -- and yes, the photo really did have that wild sky:

The second one was easier -- a close-up of a Great Blue Heron foot:

As for the needlepoint project, which you recall is of the Good Omens Series 2 promo photo:

I've made it to the bottom of the umbrella after three weeks.  Whee!

I've done around 7,400 stitches, with 28, 900 or so left to go...on track to be just shy of one-third done by the end of one month, assuming I can keep up the 5-6 hours per day of work on it.  

May your week be full and formative, and free of wildfire smoke!