Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 33

December 10: a wreath ... and a little music

Today's Advent calendar picture is a wreath:



And the state of the overall calendar is...



Now for something completely different and unexpected.

The wonderful poet Virginia Molhere tweeted a video of a musician playing a bagpipe he'd made with a rubber glove ( viewable here .) I said it would be fun to try to make one, and she found this Youtube video (by someone else, for a much more basic rubber-glove bagpipe) that gives a method.

I tried it (tweet w/19-second video here ), and while it's not what y...

December 9: snowman

Here is what the driveway looked like at noon, when I cleared it:



By 4 pm it had mainly melted, but dusk was approaching, so today's drawing is a very basic snowman:



It's kind of fun dealing with the weather--it makes it more of a game. I'm thinking maybe I won't try to refresh the numbers of the still-to-be-filled in boxes from now on--that way I can put a new picture in whatever box is still free.

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December 8: a sled

Here is the image for today!



And the picture under the cut doesn't quite get the entire calendar, but you can see that one row is filling up.

( the Advent calendar today )

Today there have been snow flurries, so a sled is good.

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December 7 addendum--the whole calendar to date

So today, in addition to redrawing the frame, I revitalized the images, too. Here's what the whole calendar looks like as of today






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December 7: hairy woodpecker

Here is today's Advent calendar offering! It rained again yesterday, so I had to touch up the frame again--and this time I'm touching up the images too, because I think we're going to have a few days without rain, so I might as well make the whole thing look bright.



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rain!

So yesterday I created the driveway advent calendar and filled in days 1–5. Last night it rained, of course! So today I did what I'd resolved to do in that event: touch up the frame (all the squares), and then just continue going forward.

So here's what the frame looks like now--you can see how the images I drew yesterday have blurred:



And here's December 6's offering: a candy cane




... Even though I promised myself I wouldn't touch up the others, I just might, depending on how work and other oblig...

Driveway Advent calendar

I had this idea last year, but only too late in the season to do it. This year I promised myself I'd do it... and then again forgot until today! But it's not too late to start.

First I drew the blank calendar:



And then I filled in days one through five!

December 1: hot chocolate with whipped cream on top:



December 2: candle



December 3: knitted mittens



December 4: snowflake



December 5: black-capped chickadee



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La Rana Sabanera: Dendropsophus molitor

When we visited Bogotá in 2018, Wakanomori noticed that the manhole covers had frogs on them:



I always meant to find out the story behind the frog--was it a particular frog? Why a frog? But I never did.

Then the other day, Juegasiempre (also known as DjLu), one of the graffiti artists/muralistas whose work we became acquainted with on that trip, posted this beautiful frog on Twitter: la rana sabenera, Dendropsophus molitor. (Wikipedia tells me in English it's called the green dotted tree frog.) H...

world language; your story my story; guanacos

In order to be a volunteer tutor for refugees and immigrants learning English, I had to do some minimal training (I'm not teaching; I'm only supplemental help), and part of that involved watching some videos on language acquisition. The video below on world languages was something extra you could watch. I knew most of the stuff in it already, but I liked the presentation, the varying examples used, and the inclusion of information about signing languages. Take a look if you feel like it--it's 11...

"Who Is the Best Hero?" --new little book by the ninja girl

You'll remember that the ninja girl did a book on glass footwear. That was purely for her own fun. This one, "Who Is the Best Hero?" was to help the Japanese elementary school students she teaches learn adjectives in English.

It is hijōni kawaii, or as we say in English, exceptionally cute. And she gave me permission to share. Behold!

The cover page, with four little animal friends contemplating the important question, Who is the best hero?



The first spread: the little mouse votes for Turbo Tiger,...