Oh, my little pew. I love this piece so much. We have to move it behind the sofa every Christmas as the Christmas tree goes here. This year, when we were moving it back, Don said that he thinks this piece of McCoy is his favorite. He loves the shape and the bird. I have a not-quite-duplicate of this piece upstairs. The tail broke off and my efforts to repair it failed. I use it to hold jewelry, most of which I never wear. McCoy Pottery uses a lot of birds and I’m lucky to have several pieces with them.

It is rather deadly out there temperature-wise. Wind chills are well below zero and there is a lot of wind. You know that high winds make me edgy, so I suspect I’ll have my earbuds in today while I listen to classical music.

Another sketch, done rather quickly. I like it, but the vintage dollhouse is much wider than that so I expect I’ll try again soon. Nevertheless, it’s fun and I like the way my parents’ snake plant turned out. It is always a good thing to really look at something you see every day and often, barely register. I love this little setup in the kitchen and I actually do appreciate it every day, but to stop and try to record it in some way? That is the challenge. Since our house is FULL of stuff, I will have lots of subjects for sketching. In fact, I just thought of one!

So much of my time lately has been spent with pens and markers and paper. I love my planners, as you know. I use a specific pen for the planner and I sometimes add a sticker or two. Or I might take a Tombow marker and embellish something on the page. I’ve also been purchasing a few inexpensive fountain pens and I love writing with them in the planners I have, as well as using different pens/ink colors for my morning pages. I remember writing with a student type of fountain pen in junior high and high school. They were very common back then and almost universally used by students. That changed when Bic pens became popular and then it was gel pens, etc. and fountain pens fell out of favor. But not with everyone. I bought a fountain pen in the midst of lockdown; it was very inexpensive, as I just wanted to try one and I had been following a lot of people on Instagram who used them – but it didn’t take at the time. Recently, I gave it another try and I sort of fell in love with fountain pens. Of course, there are people out there who use them for journaling and writing and have big collections – all of which I find fascinating, because there’s nothing I love more than seeing a collection. But I only need/want a few and I think I’m all set. Writing by hand is such a tactile experience and every fountain pen is different. Somehow, for me, the experience of writing this way is much more visceral.

I have requested – no, insisted – that Don make an apple pie today. The warmth of the oven will be welcome and the scent of a baking pie is just what we need on this Frigid Friday.

Stay safe.

Happy Friday.