The following sketches are from our trip to Costa Rica earlier this month. I brought with me a couple of small Moleskine cahier notebooks– one was my Spanish word book (where I copy all the words I know in Spanish), and the other was for sketching. I also brought along three blank postcards by Winsor & Newton. The small Moleskine notebooks are great for when you want a small purpose-dedicated notebook to use for special projects.
I used a permanent black pen (one of the sketchbook pages uses blue pen, but it wasn’t permanent enough) and Prismacolor watercolor pencils. I learned this technique at the art class in Yosemite last year.
This is the postcard I sent to Grandma:
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I’m knitting a sweater from Big Girl Knits called “Bombshell.” It’s a top-down, raglan sleeves (possibly no seams– I have to check), with lots of shaping and short rows to accommodate chests, hips, stomachs, etc. It’s coming along nicely, but I worry it may end up being too big, or I might run out of yarn. Eep. The yarn is superwash wool, and my swatch did shrink a bit in the wash, so I’m hoping that when the finished sweater goes through the wash, it will snug up perfectly. Of course the smart thing would have been to take the balls of yarn, convert them into hanks, wash the hanks in the laundry, and then knit the sweater (post-shrinkage). What can I say? I am not the smartest girl in the toolshed.
I’ve also made a little tatted motif (#11 of 25) to go on my tatting design notebook. This notebook is where I chart out motifs and designs to try out, or where I play around with freeform designs (like the one on the cover, which is simple, but freeform in that I didn’t really work from a pattern).
I’ve been working on another travel writing piece, this one for ToddlerTravelGuide, and it went live today: Kennedy Space Center with Toddlers.
The irony, of course, is that I don’t have a toddler, never have, and never will. Nonetheless, observant writers can, in fact, write for markets outside their realm of expertise. I will not pretend that this is as great a piece as the one on the same site for Disney World. That one is full of awesome, because it tells parents what they really want to know: where are the bathrooms with the shortest lines, and where can I take the kid so he or she won’t be so over-stimulated that they can’t nap?
Nonetheless, I tried in my own way to introduce families to the Kennedy Space Center in a way that will be fun for them visiting, and I was pretty careful about checking to make sure what I’d written and remembered were true. At one point, long after we had left, I couldn’t remember how many quiet benches there were. I pulled out my many photos and saw that there are, in fact, benches and picnic tables strewn throughout the complex.
The article is also useful for people who don’t have small kids to plan a weekend excursion to visit this spaceport.
LiveJournal has apparently done away with free basic accounts. Now if you want to create a free account, you have to have advertising.
I am soooo not down with that anymore. It’s kind of like, the “line” beyond which I can’t really go, in all countenance. Not even discussing the non-handling of the situation (which is, really, part and parcel with LJ history). It’s also not a viable strategy.
So, anyway. My question for all my LJ friends is this:
If I leave LiveJournal and close my account, will you still love me and follow my blog over on mortaine.com?
For those of you with Friends-only journals (or half-and-half FO and non), how much of your life will I miss?
Because right now, the only reason I still have an LJ is to keep up with friends I’ve made over there and read the Friends-only posts there. But really, if most of my friends have branched out and are willing to read my blog away from LJ (via RSS, the blog page, or by email– all three are available), I’ll do that.
Also, if anyone wants/needs an ad-free blog and wants some help/advice setting it up, feel free to ping me. There are other options.
We went to the Everglades yesterday. Took a lot of pictures of a lot of alligators! It was hot, but we had a good time and will probably go back at least once before our departure.
Here is a lovely serene view of the Everglades. Really, a classic picture with blue skies and green trees:
And here it is after I circle all of the visible alligators:
See why we didn’t go swimming?
