Weekly update - October 20, 23

I feel as though I really haven't had much to write about recently. I blame having all teens which means all potential blog fodder is really off limits. Because really, there is so much to write about but so little I can write about. 

• H. is always drawing and when you do something a lot, you get better and better. Lately she has been drawing leaves

Then added color.

• H. has also discovered YouTube how to draw videos which she loves. (The leaves are her own original art work.)
• I have a plan for my submission to the student art show at Fine Line next year using the naturally dyed skein of yarn. My grand plan requires a few watercolor pictures, so I decided I needed to go back to practicing. I drew some leaves, too.

I've decided I really dislike that blue green shade right smack dab in the middle. I may invest in a darker shade of green for my palate.

• I made a rookie mistake today. I planned on riding Major because it had been a while. Part of having a new horse means getting to know their idiosyncrasies. With Bristol, I knew after a longish break that she would be fast for one lap around the pasture and that would be it. So I hopped on Major without thinking much about it. He was... extremely energetic. We were doing okay until he did a quick jog in a direction I wasn't expecting and I didn't go with him. The ground was pretty soft at least. I did get back on, but there was a bit of lunging first. Note to self, just take the time to lunge the horse. 
• My horse class students will be getting a lead line ride on Vienna tomorrow. 
• J. and I spent the late afternoon, early evening acquiring a new piece of furniture and getting things moved around. There is a desk in our bedroom that was first for J. to work at during the lockdown, then became my desk. It worked, but never really added to the decor of the room. Plus, it felt a bit claustrophobic being tucked into a corner. I remembered to take a picture right before we started moving things. 

(That's a file cabinet, by the way. We had taken the drawers out before I thought to take a picture.) I found a $40 desk being sold not too far from our house and we picked it up today. Here's the after.

It's so much better, isn't it? We still need to move pictures around. And really don't look at the paint color. I despise it with every ounce of my being, we just haven't had a stretch of time to change it.

• If you are moving into a house and you think, we'll get things moved in and then paint, don't believe yourself. Instead, you'll live a very long time with paint colors you loathe and 1990's sponge painting on your walls. 
• If L.'s recovery from not feeling well this week is any indication, my choke berry tonic I made is extremely effective.
• I'm having a bit of FOMO this weekend. The enormous New York State Sheep and Wool Festival in Reinbeck, NY is this weekend. It's kind of THE place to be if you love all the sheep and wool things. 
• I'm back to reading fluffy mysteries. I'm currently over halfway through a book called Worn: A People's History of Clothing by Sofi Thanhauser. It's very good and if you have any interest in the production of the textiles which make our clothes, I recommend you read it. But I've had to take breaks because it's just so gosh darn depressing and there is nothing I can do about it except tell people to stop buying so many new clothes. So fluffy mysteries it is for a bit.
• My children really don't like the smell of the preservative that our dissection specimens come in. I can't say I blame them. I think we'll do just a couple of longer dissection days to cut down on the frequency of having to smell it.
• We hadn't started our frog dissection because the medium sized frog I had ordered hadn't arrived. I knew it was going to be back ordered, but it should have been here by now. So I called. It turns out that our frog is backordered until January now. And smaller frogs are backordered until March. Who would have thought there would be frog specimen shortages? I decided we'll just use the small frog I have this fall so we can keep moving ahead. 

And on that note, I'm going to end here and curl up with my mystery. Have a good weekend.