Windy But Warm-ish

I didn't go anyplace today. It was dreary and windy, really windy, all day. The gusts got up to 40 mph every once in a while. That brought a whole dumpster full of trash blowing into the backyard (not really, but it seemed like it) and then by sundown it had all blown to the next yard. This is the patch of patio snow this morning and by the end of the day there was a sandwich-sized piece of it left. I think that there's more snow in the area of the patio but I can't see it from my chair and the plow drift and snowblower drift that line the bottom of the driveway are still going strong, smaller but still very much there. The next couple days are supposed to be cooler but then it's supposed to warm up into the 60s and maybe even the 70s. Woohoo!

Here's Mr. Cardinal after he cleared out the House Finches from the platform feeder. The Mrs. was sitting on a crook behind him but she must have been embarrassed by his behavior because she flew away without stopping for any seeds.

Today's Daily Practice was mushrooms. She gave us two pages of examples and then just painted mushrooms from her imagination. I have a hard time making them oddball colors so I just went my own way once I got started. That sole pink one with red dots in the middle is my only attempt at her aesthetic.

And for drawing practice I drew these three potted flowers from Draw 500 Fabulous Flowers. I really like drawing in ink and the kind of stylized shapes of them.

For some reason I decided to task myself with a complicated and frustrating knitting project. This is the beginning of a Rainbow Brioche Beanie. I'm very impressed with myself because I only had to start it twice this time. Last time I probably started and ripped out a half dozen times but I promise not to get too cocky. That way is sure disaster. I'll just go on slowly chanting "brioche knit, yarn forward, slip stitch yarn over" or "slip stitch yarn over, yarn forward, brioche purl" as I work my way around. It might be a little easier if I had a shorter, 16" circular needle in size 5 but I'm not such a fan of those shorter tips, they kind of make my hands ache, so I'll keep wrestling with the long cable and big loops of the Magic Loop method. This is the cast on, set up round, and 6 rounds of brioche. It took me a couple hours to accomplish. I'm happy with it.

I spent a lot of time this afternoon futzing around with my Amazon ads trying to figure out why I could only see the day's impressions. Turns out I had the Date Range set for "today." Once I changed it to show the last month, I could see all 70 of my impressions. Still no clicks so I still haven't had to pay anything but I hope that's coming. Clicks don't always mean sales either. I saw one example where the author had like 300k impressions, 150k clicks, and about 10k sales. It's a demoralizing metric but there are a lot of books out there, thousands more every day, so I'm trying my best. Fingers crossed.

--Barbara