Fewer Creatures Stirring

 

12/24/25 Shoppers heading for the Shoreline Costco exit.

Last year a friend had told me that the best day of the year to shop at Costco is Christmas Eve. As someone who avoids entering Costco anytime between Thanksgiving and New Year, I was skeptical. What about frantic, last-minute gift buyers and people prepping for the big Christmas day meal? It defied logic, but as I was getting low on basic supplies nearing Christmas Eve, I decided to give it a shot. She was right! It was the least crowded I had seen in years.

This year I made my last Costco shopping trip the week before Thanksgiving, then waited until Christmas Eve for my next trip. Although it seemed a bit more crowded than last year, I ran around (2,000 steps on my FitBit) getting all my usual staples in 20 minutes. More impressively, none of the checkout stations had lines!

That afternoon, I wondered if the same could be true at other venues that are mobbed the rest of the year. For science, I stopped at Macrina Bakery on my way back from a walk. The space where a couple of large tables usually are had been taken over with shelving to organize all the orders waiting for pickup. Even with that reduced seating, I got my favorite seat, and several other spots were available.

12/24/25 Macrina Bakery, Maple Leaf neighborhood

Huh! Next year, I’ll have to think of some other usually crowded spot to test.

Year-End Skyscapitos

 

12/22/25 sunrise, Maple Leaf neighborhood

After many consecutive days (weeks?) of gloomy, gray and wet sunrises, the dawn after the solstice brought a colorful one (at left). I think I missed the best of it by the time I got upstairs, but I was too delighted not to sketch its tail end. The other surprise was seeing how far south the sun rises this time of year (which is why I could see the colors so well). Yes, it happens every year, and yet it always surprises me!

There’s a chance for more, but looking at the weather forecast, these are likely the last skyscapitos of 2025. This is also a wrap for the Uglybook that I began on Nov. 10, 2022.

It’s the third white Uglybook I’ve filled. The others contain skyscapitos, but they also contain more randomness than this one does. When I bought the first three-pack, I was skeptical that I’d have enough uses for white Uglybooks; after all, I have plenty of high-quality sketchbooks containing white paper. I realized quickly, though, that the 80-pound paper is sufficient for the light washes I use with watercolor pencils in thumbnail-size sketches. More significantly, the inexpensive book invites small color captures of sky scenes that are changing by the second. It shouts, “Hey, we’re not making plein air paintings here! Just grab the color before it’s gone! Now!” Realizing that I did have a use for them, I eventually got a second three-pack. I’m glad I did; Uglybooks stopped making white books a long time ago, probably realizing that they didn’t need to compete in the traditional white sketchbook market.

12/12/25 sunset

Although book No. 3 contains a few random sketches, and some skyscapitos required different colored papers (like the dark blue one at right), for the most part, it’s a continuous chronology of sunrises and sunsets I’ve sketched the past three years. I appreciate that kind of continuity.

My life three years ago was very different from now. Back then, I sometimes sketched sunrises not with joyful anticipation but with dread of what the day might bring. Sometimes my sunset sketches were brief moments of respite after long days of pain and anxiety. Now I finish the book with peace and gratitude, looking forward to more skyscapitos in 2026.

Three years of sky color

The Nutcracker House

 

12/23/25 Sunset Hill neighborhood

Each holiday season for more than a decade, a family has been displaying stage design props from Maurice Sendak’s Nutcracker ballet in front of their Sunset Hill neighborhood house. This Seattle Times article explains how the owners started acquiring the pieces, one of which is 15 feet tall, after the ballet production retired in 2014. A team of neighbors and friends helps out each year.

Although I’ve known about “the Nutcracker house” for a long time, it was the Times’ recent article and learning about how much work it takes to put up the display that gave me the nudge to finally go and sketch it.

Meeting Mary Jean there around 4 p.m., I had just enough daylight to sketch a few characters with the house behind it (top of post). The 1936 house looks like a fairytale year-round!

MJ and I talked about how some characters are kind of creepy, like this nutcracker with the maniacal grin. I wonder if some kids found this ballet scary?

By 4:30, it was dark, and that’s when the illuminated characters really came to life (see my Instagram post for a short video of the scene). Although it got more and more difficult to see, we both kept going until, as MJ said, she couldn’t tell which colors were which anymore. It pushed my nocturne sketching to a new level of darkness! It was also the most fun sketching I did this holiday season. 

Merry Christmas!

Scowling Mouse King (the one on the left)

15-foot-tall Nutcracker

Carolers

12/11/25 Carolers from Fairview Elementary

 

12/4/25 Holiday Harmony Pop

Holiday music has been the focus of Happy Hour at Aegis this month. The best carolers were the first graders from neighboring Fairview School (the group was larger than I sketched above, but their performance was short). As you might imagine, they were a squirmy bunch, but their festive hats (many too large for their small heads!) and earnest performance made them a joy to watch. A few older kids also read the poem “The Night Before Christmas” impressively. Looking around at the residents, I could see that almost everyone was engaged and enjoying their performance, especially Greg.

An adult group, a quartet called Holiday Harmony Pop, sang festive favorites wearing fun head gear. I sketched them twice: My usual way and then as blind contours. Can you guess which is which? 😉

Three Pups, Three Materials

 

12/19/25 Jaxon (Pentel Pocket)

12/19/25 Roxy (Holbein) (all drawings on Lenox Cotton)

12/21/25 Sammy (Derwent Drawing)

I made these pup portraits as a gift for a friend. Although they won’t look very cohesive displayed together, I felt like making each dog with a different material. Jaxon was made with my favorite Pentel Pocket brush pen. I used Derwent Drawing pencils on Sammy because I’m currently having a lovefest with that set. Holbein is not a pencil I ever think to reach for, but since I had them out for the opacity comparison I did recently, I used them on Roxy. I could hardly remember the last time I used them to sketch anything.

I don’t know what it is about Holbein: They blend beautifully; they are deliciously soft; they feel as close to graphite as any colored pencil can (which is a good thing). Yet I’ve never purchased more than the 50 colors I originally bought. Exorbitant price notwithstanding, I have never felt compelled to. I want to love them, and yet I don’t. Especially now that Derwent Drawing comes in a full palette.

Chilly: Caran d’Ache Alpine Frost Bicolors

 

Chilly!

Multi-colored lights? Decorated cookies? Greeting cards exchanged with friends? What’s the holiday thing you look forward to most? Me? It’s the Caran d’Ache winter-themed bicolors set, of course!

Caran d’Ache has thrown me for a loop at least a couple of times with this limited-edition series. The most exciting release was certainly the first one in 2019, which fulfilled a long-standing wish for bicolor pencils with water-soluble cores – it seemed an ideal, compact solution for urban sketching. Although it wasn’t winter-themed, its release right before the holidays made it obvious that it was intended as a gifty item.

Two years later, Cd’A released the Wonder Forest set, again, just in time for the holidays and clearly winter themed. This set remains my favorite of the series, both for its bright red tin and the selection of colors included. Its release set off new expectations: Now that there were two such sets, would there be more? Would a new one each holiday season be too much to hope for?

No, it would not! Only one year later, the gold-tinned Color Treasure set was released. Now things were really getting exciting: Surely we could reasonably expect another set the following holiday season!

Sadly, the 2023 holiday season came and went, with no bicolors to be seen. Last year, however, brought a different surprise – and not a good one. In August, timed for back-to-school, it seems, the Claim Your Style set appeared – not in a tin to match its predecessors but in a flimsy cardboard box.

I had hoped that was an anomaly and that this winter would bring us a nice tin again. Alas, those days seem to be over. Caran d’Ache’s 2025 holiday theme, Alpine Frost, is an attractive, albeit seasonably chilly, collection of gifty items again. Of course, I was thrilled to see that the collection included a bicolors set – but contained in cardboard again.

Cardboard box

Slide-out drawer reveals the bicolor pencils (a second layer is concealed below the first).

Compared to last year’s flimsy back-to-school edition, Alpine Frost’s box is sturdier, and the slide-out drawer gives it a nice presentation. Still, as a limited-edition “collectible,” a metal tin like the previous silver, red and gold editions would have expressed quality, lasting durability, and the esthetics of a cohesive series – a series that would inspire completionism and FOMO! For heaven’s sake, Cd’A marketing people: Are you all asleep? (Yes, I used to work in marketing; so shoot me.)

The set includes nine bicolor pencils (18 colors) and a small brush.

The other quality that’s lost with cardboard is the implied travel potential. Say you have a friend who has sighed longingly with the desire to be a travel sketcher “someday.” If you gave them a sturdy, metal tin filled with a compact set of water-soluble pencils, you are telling them that you believe in their dream. The set encourages being popped impulsively into a bag for the next weekend getaway. Cardboard? Hmmm, its corners might get munched in a backpack, or it might not recover from a drop in wet sand.

As usual with the bicolors, no color numbers or names are indicated on the barrels.

My much greater quibble, however, is with Alpine Frost’s color selection. First, I’ll acknowledge that it’s a delicate, visually appealing palette for a winter-themed set. The barrels look beautiful together – if the pencils were tableware for a casual holiday open house serving eggnog and bite-sized Costco quiches. But as my swatches below will show, half the colors are too pale to use in a water-dissolved state; they become invisible washes. All the previous sets included enough of a color range that each could possibly stand alone for casual sketching. Not so for Alpine Frost (another reason it’s not a practical gift for that travel sketcher wannabe). These tints leave me cold, and most of the other colors have already appeared in previous bicolors sets.

Swatches made in Hahnamuhle student-grade watercolor sketchbook. A small dot below the color number indicates that it's the color's first appearance in bicolor form.

Although I typically don’t swatch water-soluble colored pencils on black paper because I know their washed states will mostly disappear, a reader requested it, so I made swatches below. For geeky kicks, I included swatches of white in Supracolor and Museum Aquarelle, too. The water-soluble cores in Caran d’Ache bicolors are the same as Prismalo; these swatches show the relative opacity of the three Caran d’Ache pencil lines.

Swatches made in Stillman & Birn Nova sketchbook

By the way, you may be wondering how acquisition of this set fits in with my commitment to downsizing. When I began the process last year, I considered carefully how to manage all my pencil collections and micro-collections. For example, within the vast category of vintage colored pencils, I was fairly indiscriminate early on (as many collectors are when they begin), specialized later, and eventually pared down to the micro-collections I most enjoy.

I gave the same thought to my various collections of contemporary products that were limited in production or otherwise “special.” FOMO can be a powerful driver, and I know I’m susceptible to it, regardless of my downsizing status. I try to be vigilant by asking myself before every purchase: Will this really bring me joy? Or am I on FOMO autopilot?

The Caran d’Ache bicolors sets used to bring me great joy, both in terms of my lifelong fondness for bicolors and their potential for urban sketching. But after two years of disappointments, this might be the last I buy.

The holidays are the right time for a family portrait.

A Trip to Winslow

 

12/18/25 Light rail and ferry riders

Once my life settled again after I knew Greg was safe and well taken care of, one of my priorities was to get back in touch with people. I have certain friends whom I have stayed in contact with through holiday cards or occasional emails, but it had been years and sometimes decades since I had last seen them, even though they lived locally. If there is one lesson I have learned over the past several difficult years, it is that life is short and unpredictable. If I want to see people, I can’t wait for “someday” when I’m – what, “less busy”? When would that ever be? It must be now.

One of those people was my fourth grade teacher at John Muir Elementary. Amazingly, I have kept in touch with Nan ever since. Truthfully, though, I must thank my mom for doing the heavy lifting. Always a prolific letter writer, my mother and Nan had made a connection and corresponded regularly all through my busy early adult life. I was more sporadic with my communication, but our connection was never lost.

I had seen Nan in person a couple of times as an adult – first at my wedding in 1989, and then again about 20 years ago. She lived on the peninsula – only a ferry ride and a drive away. On Thursday we got together on Bainbridge Island about halfway between us. We spent a lovely few hours catching up and becoming reacquainted in a way that we never had time for during our working (and, for her, child-rearing) years. We vowed to get together again soon.

These sketches I made around my ferry rides are not about that lifelong friendship directly, but I thought about her as I made them, both coming and going. I know they will always remind me of her and the day we reconnected over a leisurely lunch.