Spring Bulbs

I can't get enough of looking at the bulbs flowering across the front of the house. It hasn't been that long ago that there was two feet of snow covering this part of the yard but the daffodils and hyacinths are resilient and refuse to be cowed by a heap of frozen water. I'm convinced part of the sap in their leaves is antifreeze.

 

I have a book fair tomorrow from 11am to 3:30pm so I packed my books and stuff, and then loaded it all into the car. Tomorrow's fair is called Authors Among Us and features local authors. There'll be a room of about 40 of us with all sorts of genres and subjects spread out for people to see and buy. Fingers crossed I sell a few books.

 

I knitted some more rounds on Scrap Hat #1 after supper. I love this kind of project--big needles and big yarn (or four strands of medium yarn held together). Looking at this hat I'm not sure it'll be adult sized so for the next one I'll go up a needle size and add more yarn strands. I've got some super bulky yarn I can start with. Maybe I'll carry one strand of sock yarn along with it just for fun.

 

With the book fair tomorrow and then OJ's birthday supper in the evening, I had to spend some time today working on my critique of cda's manuscript for Monday. Somehow this week I'm not as caught up with critiques as I've been in the last weeks. Tuesday will be the day to get them all done before Wednesday's meeting. That's the second-to-last meeting. These five weeks are flying by.

 

Speaking of OJ, he'll be 10 on Monday. I can't believe he's so old. Double digits already. He and LC had their piano recital this afternoon. They each did very well. They just marched up to the front and played their pieces like champs. One of OJ's friends came with her grandpa and he looked really familiar. Turns out he's the brother of an old diving buddy of ours. Small world. After the recital he took the kids to a trampoline gym for an afternoon of bouncing. Good for getting wriggles out.

I didn't draw today. I got up late, did yoga, and took a shower and that took up most of the morning. I haven't had much oomph this last week. Maybe I'll perk up next week. That'd be good.

--Barbara 

 

Let's Try This Again

Yesterday I got notice of a couple new Book Funnel promos and one of them sounded just made for Horizon, my book about a woman in her mid-50s who's trying to escape other peoples' expectations by re-imagining her life. She takes up watercolor, changes her hair and wardrobe which annoys her kids and best friend, and is pursued by an ardent suitor. It's my title that's hardest to sell so I thought a giveaway in exchange for a newsletter signup sounded like a good idea. The promo starts May 1 so we'll see how it goes.

 

The old-fashioned daffodils have finally opened. They're the all yellow ones with the yellow trumpet shaped centers like used to grow in Grandma's yard. When I took this picture, the flowers were surrounded by a whole bunch of tiny bees. I guess either they've got nectar or they're a stopping spot for bees visiting the neighboring hyacinths.

 

Speaking of bees, I drew two of them this afternoon while talking on the phone to a knitting pal. He was going on about airplanes and hangars so I could draw and listen at the same time.

 

At Friday Night Knitting, I cast on a Scrap Hat. I read a blog post the other day about a webinar about knitting things with leftover yarn scraps. There's a big tote downstairs with lots of scraps of yarn in it so I went down and dug around, found some yarn, and got busy. Using big size US13 needles, I cast on 40 stitches and in three hours got this much hat done. I'm carrying four worsted strands together to make super bulky. I've got to knit four more plain rounds and then start the crown decreases. I like it. And I've got a whole bag of yarn scraps to play with. I foresee lots of these hats in my future.

 

It was a gorgeous day today. The temperature got up to 71 and it was sunny with a little breeze. It was so nice I took a little walk. I need to do that more because I'm in terrible shape. We had another thunderstorm tonight with gusty winds, lightning, and rain. And it's supposed to storm again in about a half hour. Also tomorrow the temperature's supposed to top out at 45 degrees. Mother Nature, please make up your mind!

--Barbara 

P.S. I had a 3-hour knitting Zoom and I didn't get kicked off or freeze! 

Little Beer Making

I went down to Zambaldi Beer to visit DS this morning because he said he was brewing and that means he has time for a visit. Usually he's making hundreds of gallons of beer in a giant vat with a lot of grain and water. Today he was making a small batch of specialty beer with smoked malt. He said that everybody doesn't like smoked beer, that it's an acquired taste, so he's just making a little bit. Like 50 gallons instead of 650. In this picture he's getting ready to set up the "small" system while the grain grinds and the water heats.

 

It was raining AGAIN when I got up this morning. We've had such a rainy April and it's only half over. There's flooding in the area and probably more to come. The East River overflowed its banks and a lot of streets are flooded. Luckily not around me.

 

A Robin stopped for a drink this afternoon. I was fooled for a minute thinking it was a Catbird but then I realized it had an orange-red breast which meant it was a Robin. I don't usually see them getting a drink so this one must have been extra thirsty.

 

Then a Goldfinch stopped to pose for a minute or two. Just long enough for me to snap two pictures before it flew away like it had an appointment elsewhere. It made me happy to see it all yellow instead of its winter avocado yellow green.

 

I was making my lunch when I glanced out the patio door and saw a blue haze under the lilac bush. Grabbing the camera I went out to see that the tiny blue squills under there are blooming. Years and years and years ago I got these from my brother's mother-in-law. She said they'd spread all over. Well, they haven't. There are maybe a few more than when I planted them but not many and for sure not spread all over.

 

And there are buds on the lilac. Leaf buds, not flower buds, but I'll take any buds right now.

 

The rhubarb is continuing to grow. Grandma Angermeier would be so happy that the plant from her farm in Evansville, IN is still growing strong 63 years after we moved up to Green Bay, WI and planted a clump from her garden. Pretty soon I'll be able to chop off some stalks and cook up rhubarb sauce to put on my breakfast yogurt. I can't wait.

 

Today's drawing is a Daffodil. I was flipping through the book and this page fell open so I took it as a sign and got busy drawing. It turned out pretty well, I think. 

 

 

I worked on editing this week's Novel Intensive submission using the comments from the other members and the leader. Then I cut and pasted Week 4's submission and got that sent out. Tonight I had a Marketing Zoom with some writing friends and I'm happy to say that I did not get kicked off and didn't even get a "your internet connection is unstable" warning. Yay! Tomorrow I have a 2-hour writing Zoom and a 3-hour knitting Zoom. That will be the real test.

--Barbara 

Chubby & Furry

Today's squirrel on the suet nuggets was a beefy one. It spread out, almost covering the feeder, and was very intent. It didn't look around or shift positions, it just ate. And ate.

 

I got all excited when I saw the black and white head of a bird on the suet nuggets. I took the picture, thinking it was a Downy Woodpecker. I was disappointed when I realized that it was a Chickadee. And it even moved enough that it's blurry. Thanks a lot, bird.

 

This clump of daffodils is screening one of the mouse bait boxes. There are four of them around the foundation of my house and every three months a pest nerd comes to refill the bait to keep the little rodents at bay. Pest nerds is what they call themselves. Really. It's all over their advertising and handouts.

 

The drawing of the day is a Platypus. My colored pencils weren't as dark as the picture in the book. She said she used alcohol markers to color her examples but those markers really bleed through paper. They even bleed through thick watercolor paper so I'm not going to use them in my plain paper sketchbook. I think it turned out very platypus-like.

 

I had a two-hour Zoom this morning of the Novel Intensive critique group and I didn't get kicked off the internet once. Toward the end, I got a message that my internet was unstable, but it evidently wasn't unstable enough to drop. Hopefully this is the start of better things. I got some good comments and some good critiques. Stuff I have to think about.

For the last few weeks I haven't gotten many clicks on my Amazon ads so this afternoon I did a little research and found new keywords for my three Seaview Series books. I don't want to change too many at once so that the algorithm isn't overwhelmed but I want more traction. Maybe I need to make new ads. Also I tried, for the umpteenth time, to take Christmas at Seaview off Extended Distribution and this time it worked. I don't know what was different but it saved the change. Hallelujah. That has been sooooo frustrating.

--Barbara 

April Showers, er, Downpours

My daffodils are bearing up pretty well under the rain onslaught. It's raining again tonight but without the hail and wind gusts. Once again I tried to take a close up picture of one of the daffodils. I got most of it anyway.

 

And the cluster of hyacinths are blooming too. The white ones are so... white and clean looking. The purple florets make a high contrast with the bright green leaves. These were Dad's favorite spring flowers.

 

This squirrel had so much fun on the suet nuggets. It twisted around a lot. First head up, then head down, then sideways so it got the best angle on the yummy nuggets. I saw crumbs falling to the ground so there'll be something for the ground feeders to enjoy too.

 

Today's drawings are called Nature's Delights. That makes sense to me except for the straw hat. Although I suppose straw is from nature so it kinda fits. I wish I'd drawn each of them a little bigger, though. They're all kinda puny.

 

I was surprised that the clump of daffodils that bloomed today weren't the old-fashioned trumpet kind but another fancy one. There's one more clump that hasn't opened yet. Maybe those are the regular kind?

 

I got to do the after school run today so I spent a little time with LC and OJ. I love seeing them hurry to the car to see me and share a little bit about their days. OJ had his nose in a book the whole ride so I didn't hear much from him but LC had some tales to tell.

The Customer Service guy from Spectrum called again this afternoon wanting to know how things were going. I told him fine but I wasn't on Zoom today. The next time will be tomorrow morning. God, I hope it doesn't drop me again. I'm getting kind of gun shy about it.

--Barbara 

 

Well, Hail!

It was a gorgeous warm and sunny day today. Got up over 70 and was a little humid. I opened the windows to let real springtime air in. Now we're paying for it. It's pouring rain and a half-hour ago it was storming like crazy with thunder, lightning, wind, rain, and hail. Not tiny hail either, good size hail that made loud noise when it hit the aluminum trash cans on the patio. I waited until the worst of it passed to open the patio door to take a picture.

 

The squirrels were active today. They found that I'd refilled the cob corn feeders so they were dangling there having a nibble. They must have dropped some because one spent quite a bit of time on the ground under the feeders cleaning up the dropped kernels.

 

This morning I went out to see that the oldest daffodils had opened overnight. I had forgotten that they're the double kind of daffodils with a ruffly center instead of the traditional trumpet, but I have some of those too. They'll open later. I hate to think what the pounding rain and hail will do to them but I guess that's spring for you.

 

A few of the squills managed to survive the rabbit assault. They're so tiny, just barely the size of a pinkie nail, they must be easy to miss.

 

And the hyacinths are in various stages of opening all over in the front flower bed. There're white ones and purple ones. I don't think I have any pink ones but they all smell great. I tried to get a closeup of the biggest purple one but it's too close to the ground for me to crouch down enough. I kept getting blurry shots of the bricks or one floret so I gave up.

 

Today's creature drawing is Salmon. I will confess that my salmon is portly compared to the sleek fish in the example. I tried to draw it right, I really did, but now when I want to draw something long and thin, I get something short and round. Oh well. At least it looks like a fish.

 

I spent some time editing my already edited chapters trying to beef up the sensory details. It's not an easy task since I'm at the stage where I'm happy with what I've written so it's difficult to add things. I'll keep trying. I rely on the other members of the Novel Intensive critique group for help in that regard.

I got my taxes back today. I'm getting money back so that's good, although I wish I could figure out a way not to have the government play with my money for a year. I just don't trust them these days.

And guess what. I got kicked off Zoom this morning. Again. When I called Spectrum they said that there was an outage in the area, so it wasn't just me, but that is so frustrating. The Customer Service guy called me when I was driving across town after picking up the taxes and he said they're working on my problem. When I drove down Fisk St. near my house, there was a Spectrum bucket truck working on a pole just a block from me, so maybe my neighborhood's the problem.

Tonight was the Scout cake bake. Here's what OJ and DS made--a galaxy mirror glaze cake complete with stars. Isn't it amazing? 

--Barbara 

A Furry Visitor

I glanced out the patio door this morning while I was eating my Cheerios and saw this bunny investigate under the step and then sit there looking around. I don't know if there was anything interesting under the step or in the yard but it stayed there a good long time before hippity-hopping away. When I opened the shade over my bed this morning there was a hen turkey walking around down the block. I kept watching to see if it would come visit but it didn't. Oh well.

 

I spent most of the day at Townline Pub & Grill at a vendor show. Traffic was pretty light but I sold nine books and gave away one. Two women bought all three of The Seaview Series books for a little discount so I threw in the Christmas novella too. They also bought Better Than Mom's so I thought they deserved a thank you. It was rainy most of the day so perhaps people stayed home but I did alright.

 

Today's drawing creature is a Pelican. It turned out well and even the coloring turned out well. I was so tired from the day at the show (it's hard to be "on" for 5 hours) that I picked a little bird, something simple, to draw.

 

It was raining and I looked out to see this squirrel hanging onto the suet nuggets feeder and having a high old time. It kept looking around like it either expected applause or to be chased away.

 

It was supposed to get up to 70 degrees today but I doubt it did. Let me check on my phone... it says it did but since I was inside most of the day I didn't notice. And 70 in the rain isn't the thrill it would be if it was sunny. My tax accountant called me this afternoon needing more expenses to balance out my writing profits so I took a quick canter through my file of receipts and added up a bunch of things. I was very pleased with myself that I kept such good records. Whew. Taxes are a pain.

--Barbara