My wife does Olympic weightlifting. It’s a terribly boring sport to watch until the person you are waiting to lift does their lift. Then it’s exciting for about 30 seconds. Then it’s boring again. There was a meet at the Bay State Games last weekend, and I went. I didn’t know it was going to be held in a hockey arena. It was cold cold cold. My toes were purple by the time we left. I did get to watch the judo matches which were also being held on the other side of the hockey arena. Those were pretty exciting, but impossible to sketch.

So I sketched the crowd and the lifters while they were still, which was not often. I took a handful of pencils with me and forgot to take a sharpener. Luckily, everything in my pencil case was sharp and ready to go.