I Painted Flowers

And I didn't do too badly. First I painted a carnation. That's the one that turned out the best, I think. I'll paint that one again.

Then I tackled asters. Those I had more trouble with. I have to watch the video again to see if I can't move my brush the way she did. The bristles on her brush stayed together when she moved it over the paper, my bristles spread apart. I'll paint those again hoping for a better outcome.

A couple Goldfinches visited today, one with all yellow and black feathers and the other one with splotches of winter avocado yet. Naturally I got a picture of the one with the splotches.

The Downy Woodpecker came again today too. He didn't pose quite as nicely today as he did yesterday but I still took his picture. If you look at the grass behind him you can see that the snow is mostly melted. There's still plenty snow in the front yard where the shadow of the tree across the street filters the sun so the snow melts more slowly.

I didn't have any trouble filling up my Gratitude Journal page today. I did it early because I was hostess of my monthly knitting group tonight. My Jamaican Cream of Pumpkin soup was a hit, KE brought BBQ meatballs, DM brought veggies and dip, and CS brought banana bread pudding. Everything was tasty and we all ate too much. And we knitted for a couple hours.

I went down to Zambaldi Beer to get beverages to serve tonight and one of the patrons teased about "DS's mom going home with her beer." I told him that I was the hostess of knitting tonight so I needed good beer to serve. He asked if we could drink beer and knit. I told him that we all had easy things to knit on drinking nights. Everybody laughed.

What I knitted on was my Cashmere Sophie Scarf. I haven't knitted on it since last Friday, mostly because I've been busy working on writing things in the daytime. I'm in no hurry.

It was a good thing that I re-listened to the audiobook corrections this afternoon because I found one that wasn't corrected. Oops! So I contacted the narrator, she fixed it, I listened again to make sure it was right, then I approved the production, so now it goes through Audible/ACX Quality Assurance which takes about 10 days. Then it'll be available on Audible, Amazon, and iTunes. Exciting!

One of the writers from the last critique session asked if I'd be a beta reader of his manuscript and I said yes. What that means is I read and comment on the whole 263 pages--and he needs it by April 28. Holy Moses that's a lot of reading in a short time. I got the first 8 chapters (80 pages worth) done today. If I can keep doing that over the next week I should be done long before he needs it and still have time to critique the submissions of the new group.

--Barbara