A diary of gratitude

What are your daily habits?

For 323 days now

Book 3!

I started this last year. It was recommended as a way of bringing more positive thoughts to my mind. I have done it for 323 days now and there’s no sign of me stopping. I’m most of the way through my third sketchbook. I draw a sketch for each of three gratitudes and a short description of what I’m grateful for.

The idea is you don’t write big gratitudes, but little ones so you don’t feel put off by not having a big enough thing to write about. So on one day I wrote that the traffic lights were on green and I got to the doctors in time. For that I drew the traffic lights. Another could be that the cat came up and was very loving. I drew a curled up cat. Finally I wanted something else to write, and the plants in the garden were lovely so I wrote that and drew some flowers.

I have continued to do this each day, sometimes I forget, but it’s a good habit for me to keep to and it has helped me to keep things together. So if I’ve forgotten I will catch it up. It’s become that important to me. It’s going to mean a lot of gratitude sketchbooks though if I carry on!

Earthquake, what Earthquake?

Richter scale

/ˈrɪktə/

noun

GEOLOGY

  1. a numerical scale for expressing the magnitude of an earthquake on the basis of seismograph oscillations. The more destructive earthquakes typically have magnitudes between about 5.5 and 8.9; it is a logarithmic scale and a difference of one represents an approximate thirtyfold difference in magnitude.

Last night around 8pm there was a small earthquake near Tean in Staffordshire. It registered 3.3 on the richter scale, and houses near to it felt a jolt and their windows rattled.

My friend just asked if we felt anything? No, we didn’t feel a thing. We probably get more shaking from traffic driving past our house. Apparently the UK gets about a thousand earthquake s or tremors a year, and most are only 1 or 2 on the richter scale (or 30 or 900? times smaller). So although 3.3 is high in the UK it’s not bad. I think we may have had a 5 a few years ago.

I couldn’t find an image to use so I drew a ‘geological’ abstract instead, trying to draw something like a fracture or fault moving in the rocks below us….

Butterfly?

I just drew this… I saw a red admiral butterfly outside and wanted to take a photo of it, but it flew off. I decided to draw something against a dark background to make it stand out more. This was drawn in the Artrage app I use, it gives nice metallic effects, hence the abstract look of this butterfly.

My cat print!

My friend always sends me a photo of cards or things we send him so we know he’s got them. But I was surprised when this popped onto my screen. My hubby had sent a card of a black cat that I had printed last year. I had been experimenting with lino cutting and I had forgotten that I had made them. It’s a surprise and nice to see one of the again!