Went up to Keene, NH, for the annual Pumpkin Festival and to participate in the 20th Worldwide Sketchcrawl. No one else responded to the post from the area, so I did a solo crawl.

We stopped in Massachusetts to get some gas, so I did a quick sketch of the area:























Then we dropped our bags at a friend's house and walked to the Pumpkin Festival.



































There were lots of people bringing their pumpkins in to be registered and added to the total.













According to the Keene Sentinel, the final count was only 22,568, well short of the record. But considering the gray skies and threat of rain, the turnout was pretty good. Here are a few photos I took of the event.

Just got back from a trip to Houston, Texas. We stayed at the wonderful Hotel Zaza and ate at some of the city's best restaurants (thank you to the Chronicle writers and editors for their great recommendations!) Next time, we're definitely going to rent a car, but I think we did a good job seeing much of the city considering we had only our complimentary hotel drivers (available for trips within a 5-mile-radius) plus public buses, Metro rail, and two feet for transport. We shopped at the Galleria, walked from Upper Kirby all the way to Rice Village, looked in at Lot 8, rode the light rail to Reliant Stadium, and sampled some great food at Goode Company. Yesterday, while we waited for Hugo's to open (note: Best. Brunch. Ever.), we had coffee/tea at a cute cafe called Brasil, at Westheimer & Dunlavy, in the Montrose section of the city. They filled the cups so full that much of our beverages spilled onto our saucers, which were lined with napkins. So I used the wet napkins as my waterbrush-cleaners as I was sketching this. Unfortunately I don't think my watercolor picked up the lovely scent of orange spice tea, though! ;-)

Went to the Stamford Museum & Nature Center yesterday with M's parents & sister's family.

Went to one of the last Mets games at Shea. They did win that night. Yes, the players look like giants on the field in this sketch -- realized that as I was drawing them, and then, well, kept making them giants anyhow.