Today T and I had big plans for TAD. It started with me making these:

Then we went outside and I made a surprise thing while T did all this:

I added some red to the spill of yellow, then played with it in photoshop. It has all the colors of springtime, just waiting under the snow.

 

My thing for today is the beautiful Arabic word "Habiib", which means "Beloved", and starts with the sixth letter of the Arabic alphabet. I wrote it on some nice paper, then backed that paper with some *really* nice paper. The gold doesn't shine as much in the scan as in real life.

S made some drawings for an idea he's working on.

V wrote a bunch, and was responsible for some very excellent ginger and honey tea.

Today was mostly about dealing with snow and resting my twisted ankle, but we still managed to make stuff. The weirdest thing we made was pantyhose filled with snow-melting salts, to lay along the ice-damn at the edge of our newly shoveled roof. Weird-looking, but hopefully effective! I'll get a pitcure tomorrow and see if I can edit this.

V made wonderful noodle and seafood soup for dinner, but we ate it all before I could take a picture.

S made this little comic:

E made this little steam-punk Lego:

T made his pirate ship box more colorful:

I had to find just the right angle to document the holes in my purple wool sweater, which I intend to creativley mend for tomorrow's TAD. Meanwhile, a 'before' pic:

 

Today was full of sun! Also pain! I twisted my ankle yesterday. Owie. What I mostly made today was invisible repairs to a 170-year-old candlewick embroidered coverlet, so there's not really a picture. Here's a close-up of a part of it, though:

V made crepes. The first one he insists was Crepe Fail!, but the rest were Crepes of Win!

S drew this cool little guy:

T made a picture-story with some stickers:

I did also take this picture of the icicles on our roof. I like how the sun makes a lower case 'i'. I is for Icicle :)

Over dinner, the boys would *not* stop talking about zombies and brains and othe rnasty boy stuff. So I drew a cute little bunny, holding a daisy. What could they say to that? Apparently something, because I then felt the need to draw a cute little kitten with a ball of yarn. Cuuuuuute little kitten! With a ball of yarn! But no, there was some comment about it's crazed look and a desire to kill us all. So they drove me to it. A unicorn, under a rainbow, with happy singing birds! So there!

Apparently the horn looked deadly. So I challenged them to each draw the cutest, sweetest, most innocent thing they could think of.

V drew a baby. Verrry cute baby! Verrry pinchable!

E drew a fluffy kitty of love.

S drew a tiny baby dragon, curled up asleep around it's tiny hord.

T drew three little peas. I think T won :)

Also, we made donuts! With maple butter!

 

Ok, so here's the deal. My husband and son(s) are doing Thing-A-Day with me, but they didn't get their accounts set up in time. Therefore, you're going to get more than you bargained for from me!!

Today V made bread. Having a wood pellet stove going, with a perfect warm place for dough to rise, is a Good Thing. So was the bread.

S is set on drawing his way through the month. Today it's been eyes. This is his favorite.

I had to shovel rather a lot of snow today. E and T helped by playing outside and keeping me company. They also dug various snow caves, and T made this snow angel.

I took a picture to record the depth of the snow. The chainlink fence on the rigth of the path is standard height, about 4'5". I had to lift the snow higher than my own chest to get it clear of the path. But I do like the picture.

The snow is not very packy at all, so I had to content myself with drawing on the snowbank instead of sculpting.

 

I'm doing a thing where I photograph everything we own. Weird, I know, but an aquaintance of mine and I were talking recently, and she told me about the loss of her parent's home to a fire 5 years ago. Everything gone, to the ground, and the insurance wanted to know which books they had and how many towels and what size pots and pans. It made me think. It's also making me clean. Really, really deeply clean. Like, go through the kitchen drawers, take everything out, wash the drawer, put in new paper, sort everything into keep/donate/trash, and put back only the 'keep' things. Today I filled a box for Big Brothers/Big Sisters, just by going through my shirts and jeans. Even though it often doesn't even show that I've spent the whole day cleaning, it feels lighter, and I've got a growing record, room by room, of everything we have *right now*.

Is February First! Thing-A-Day! I'm spending today cleaning and preparing and thinking.

I have such a lot of things I want to do! Oddly, first up is to find a creative way to mend my purple wool sweater. It's got a handful of quarter-sized holes, and otherwise perfectly sound, warm, and looks great. What shall I do? Felting? Crochet fill? Applique? Oh, the choices!

I think every artist/craftsperson/quilter has one (at least one) piece that they had a realy hard time letting go. For me it's this quilt, made in 2001 for the Amherst Family Center raffle. It was an original design, and I absolutly loved it. If I could have any of my quilts back, this is the one. It was raffled off, raising $700+ for the Center, and that's all I know about it. Someday, when my To Do list is shorter, I'll put "Remake the Crossed Branches quilt" on there.