The Serein Room

I made a second smaller granny hen yesterday just so I could compare and see which kind of yarn I liked better. Still not sure. I can imagine these in all kinds of wonderful color combinations.


The White Sycamore. This is right beside the powerline and last winter someone from the electric company drew some marks on it with orange paint. I suppose that means they will be cutting it down. It is VERY tall and it might possibly touch the power lines if it was to fall in that direction. I feel an affection for the tree and will be sad if that happens. One year we had a very violent windstorm and it stripped most of the darker off-white bark off and it became a shining white. That bright white is starting to fade a bit now as it ages.

Heading soon to Pittsburgh to get Hazel. Looks to be a nice day weatherwise. Mid 50s by noon and cloudy, with no precipitation.

Feeding Time. Just now finished dabbing some acrylic markers on this one when I got home from the trip to see Candy's brother in law Pat in Olean. Pat was glad to hear about the idea of using his own photos and markers to overpaint the photos. He'd tried Bob Ross painting but was frustrated and had given up. He had problems controlling the brush (the Bob Ross way) and liked the idea of using markers instead. It made me feel good that I could promote an alternative method.

A cold day today. There was freezing rain encasing the tops of the trees as we crossed the mountain just before we got to Olean but the roads were good. It's a 2 and a half hour trip but beautiful scenery most the time. Allegheny National Forest and the Allegheny River. I was remembering how Dad always used to take us on a Kinzua Dam trip every year after John got hurt just as a way to have a nice drive. Though I think we probably went by way of Tionesta rather than Titusville like Candy went today. Another regular trip was to Cooks Forest every summer.

I'm planning a trip to Pittsburgh to pick up Hazel on Wednesday morning. I'm going to drive myself this time. Usually Jules drives and we go on the weekend or in the evening. Possibly Dave might want to drive, if he doesn't decide to go fishing instead. That's what he was talking about before. I hate interstate driving and big city driving, especially Pittsburgh with its hills and roads like spaghetti. I'll be working on braving myself up.

I had a long crazy dream last night about taking a refrigerator to Pittsburgh on my electric bike. Dave had bought the fridge but it didn't work and he wanted me to return it. Somehow he was able to fold the fridge into a a little package the size of a book and I put it in the basket that was behind my seat on the bike. I also took Chloe with me. She was a little girl and sat in the basket too. We had to go through town where there was a big crowd of people blocking the main street. Traffic was directed to go around but I thought that since I had a bike I would be able to thread through the people. And I did. We continued our trip to Pittsburgh. There was a steep snow covered mountain that I needed to go up and the tires were slipping so I was pushing the bike up. As we were nearing the top I saw that there was an avalanche of snow falling off the top of the mountain and going down the other side. There was a hole through the mountain and I could see the snow fall into a big lake. I could hear it too - it made a big kerspush sound. There was snow and tires and people who were injured floating in the lake. A bunch of people were on the shore with doctors and nurses helping them. The hole I was looking through to the other side of the mountain was weird in that it was about 2 feet in diameter (like a window) and the other side of the mountain was only a few feet away. A person on the other side said that they needed people who knew how to remove stitches. I knew that I could do this but I didn't want to so I said that I didn't know how. I didn't want to go any farther on this trip. I turned the bike around and we sped down the hill home. I knew Dave could take the fridge back later himself.

I think I was able to remember so many details because when I woke up I got my phone and dictated all this stuff into an email that I sent to myself. I didn't have time to write it down at the time but just by dictating I was able to remember better. Dave just now asked me who I was talking to this morning. I told him I was telling this dream to my phone.

Granny Chicken. I had to finish this before I could settle down and get on with the cooking and cleaning that needs done... 

The Entity. Acrylic markers and black pen. I can imagine doing the next art-a-day with only thin line black ball point pen and no extra colors just to see what that would be like. I took a bunch of pictures of the chickens this morning when I was feeding them. Maybe one of those pics will look interesting with this treatment.

I have lots to do today with house cleaning for Sunday dinner later. I should have done some of that yesterday but I didn't. What did I do yesterday? Went shopping at walmart. Doing that usually feels like I've already done enough for the day. Took a nap. Walked to the creek with Dave and the dogs. Worked on the above painting and crocheted. It's become time consuming to prepare meals for the dogs now. Since Andy was sick with a delicate stomach I've been making up meals for the dogs with rice and hard-boiled eggs and a small bit of kibble. We have so many eggs. We usually get 3 or 4 a day and that's too many for me and Dave so I thought why not use eggs for protein for the dogs?

Tomorrow I'm going with Candy to visit her brother-in-law up in Olean. He's a quadriplegic but has some use of his hands and takes wonderful photos. I hear he's taken up painting. Candy suggested I take some of my art to show him. This over-painting of photos technique might be of interest to him.

Froggy finger puppet. He turned out a bit wonky. The pattern just had a single line for the mouth but I gave it an open mouth with a tongue. The pattern came from the finger puppet book I got recently. Lately I've been visiting reddit and checking out their crochet subreddits and finding all kinds of neat stuff that people have done, along with tips and tricks. Inspiring. I found a pattern for a chicken made from 2 granny squares that I want to make next.

Last night I had a prickly place on my neck. I thought that somehow the necklaces that I always wear must have been pinching me and didn't worry about it. Then this morning I see I had a tick drilling into me there. I got it off before it started to fill up. It seemed to be dead. Damn ticks.

A busy day today. OA, shopping, house cleaning and some cooking. Tomorrow we're going to have Sunday dinner here after having gone a month without. We had to cancel because of weather one weekend and then because of sickness another time.

I didn't realize that yesterday was the actual equinox. I usually think of it as always being on the 21st. Yay! Spring is officially here.