My pareidolia leaf elf is gone, as is the bright cheer of my red maple. Actually, the day is more brown, green, and gray. Brown tree trunks and unfallen dead leaves, green evergreens and moss and lichens, and gray clouds. In the front there’s also a lot of blacktop. Even mid-day, without the lights turned on, my living room is dark.

Daylight lightbulbs help.

Although our yard maintenance guy tidied the yard as best he could, I cut back my butterfly bush and elderberry this week, and with all the leaves there is too much for the green bin. There’s a good sized pile of brush next to the bins.

I took my embroidery machine to the shop this week. I’ll get it back by the 15^th barring the unknown. I hope it needs only the cleaning and simple adjustments. I had a couple of things I wanted to do for Christmas. With this delay added to my ADD, I may not get them done.

Since I grew up in the snowy northern hemisphere it would seem strange to me to have Christmas in summer, but I think I’d manage to get more done for Christmas if it was the start of summer when I have more energy and enthusiasm, rather than the start of winter when I just want to hibernate.

I need to make some lists. Even if I do only a tenth if what’s on them, at least I’ll have some direction in which to focus. Right now I’m blowing every which way.

I finished the glue stitch for the woven part of my street scene. Next I’ll move on to sky, lawns and trees.

I also worked on my “what if” piece. I took out all the weaving I’d done and am trying to get it to line up with the weave of the cheesecloth base. I can see, looking at this photo, that I still have not quite lined it up. I think I need to draw lines on the cheesecloth. It shifts so easily and quickly. No wonder my original square is so badly unaligned!

Other than that I’ve been watching Frankie and Grace, or more often reading. Current book is The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. When I started I feared it was going to be tedious reading, but it has turned out to be quite good. The only part that is tedious is the frequent Latin. With the one character who speaks a kind of pseudo Latin it’s okay. No one understands him half the time. But everyone (educated) in the story understands Latin and it’s included as if the reader understands it, with only some of it followed up with something that explains it. Sometimes I sense I’m missing something important. But even if I had a Latin-English dictionary, I most likely would not be looking it up. This is on my Kindle, so I do look up some words. Half of them have not been found. And they’re not usually Latin, either. It’s challenging since I have a reasonably good vocabulary and so infrequently encounter words I don’t know.

The Name of the Rose is a Prime series, too.

Hmmm… while checking to see if I had Eco’s name correct, I saw that there is The Key to the Name of the Rose: Including Translations of All Non-English Passages available. It translates the Latin! Might be interesting. Should I . . .

. . . And then I got lost at Thriftbooks