Sims Cabin View

It was very cold and any sketching involved trips back to the cabin to get circulation back into the fingers.

Mt. Bonaparte - Sketchers on the Roof

The Sims Cabin

It's a five and a half hour drive to the Northeast part Washington where Scott's cabin sits on a ridge high above the valley floor that Highway 20 wanders through (connecting Republic to Tonasket). Our mission this weekend was to roof the new shed/restroom building, a task none of us has any experience doing.....The final product was acceptable (just don't look too close).

We found lots of tracks near the cabin - bear, deer, cow and SUV....but only came across a few deer using Scott's property as a refuge during hunting season. It was bitterly cold at night and mornings, snow is coming and soon this area will be completely snowbound for the winter.

What ever the hardships, the view and serenity is so completely relaxing.

Meeting Alton Brown

Food Network celebrity Alton Brown came to Seattle to promote his new book 'Good Eats The Early Years' and by buying the book, I got two tickets to see him talk about it and get it signed by the author.

Mr. Brown didn't disappoint, his hour of discourse and Q & A was hugely entertaining (comedy club funny...) and no one seem to mind the wait to meet the author and get their book signed. Brown has lost fifty pounds over the last six months and an upcoming show will deal with that change.

It takes something special for me to miss Friday Night Basketball, yet, this was an worthy reason to miss one of my favorite activities.

The sketch above includes an onion and four of my favorite things in the kitchen, a mortar and pestle, hot sauce, wasabi and my Henckels chef's knife.

Weird fact - we share the same birthday (July 30th) For a Foodie - this was a good day.........

Wild River - October Seattle Urban Sketch Crawl

This month's sketch crawl took place at Seattle Center. This sketch was done looking at Paul Allen's EMP (with the Fun Forest ride Wild River in the foreground). No rain today.....

McCoy's Firehouse Pub

This pub was a firehouse and is decorated with all sorts of fire equipment from the past, some antique, some recent. Tamra and I stopped here during the October Art Walk and enjoyed a libation and some nourishment before heading back out to the galleries and studios.

Pioneer Square Pergola and Totem Pole

Took the bus into Seattle early to sketch before the Art Walk. It is my goal to loosen up a lot with my sketches - for one thing, it's getting colder! Who wants to stand there that long?

- In 1889 local businessmen returned to Seattle from a trip to Alaska with a Tlingit totem pole and gave the Puget Sound it's first landmark. In 1909 an iron pergola was built as a shelter over an underground restroom, known as "the finest underground restroom in the United States" (so we got that going for us...). The Pergola and the totem pole still stand, along with a bust of Chief Seattle. This tiny park is at the heart of Seattle's historical district. - Enjoying Seattle's Parks by Brandt Morgan

Bart Smith's Times Article - A journey of thousands of steps

This Seattle Times article is about a good friend's college roommate and his quest to hike all of the National Scenic Trails in the US. Bart has gone on to become an accomplished photographer with at least one published coffee table book to his credit.

Bart's website is eye candy and worth the visit.