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!