Monday, April 3, 2023

57 and Sunny

That was today! I had the patio door open all afternoon letting in real fresh air. It was amazing. Most of the patio snow melted and a lot of the front yard, piled up snow melted too. It's supposed to be stormy tomorrow and it's voting day and there's a Writer's Guild meeting, which means I have to go out. Thanks, Mother Nature.


I looked out at the retaining wall and saw peeks of green so I took the camera out and found a whole row of day lily sprouts. I'm so happy to see them.



Mr. & Mrs. Cardinal stopped at the feeder together this morning. He spent a lot of time chasing away other birds. She spent the time eating seeds. He's good looking but kind of a jerk.

 

We did two paintings today. First was a butterfly done in acrylic gouache which is a thick kind of watercolor that isn't transparent. I like that she doesn't do a copy of the inspiration photo but kind of paints the intention or feeling of the thing. I'd be in a world of hurt if I had to make the painting look like the photo. I have enough trouble just making it look something like whatever it is.



Then we painted an abstract using the same paints just so that they didn't go to waste. I meant to just paint colored blobs but it turned into a kind of abstract landscape. I like it.


Most of the afternoon I spent going through the next 50-ish pages of manuscript shifting the POV. I spent enough time squinting at the computer screen that my neck aches. But 100 pages into this rewrite I have hopes that the story isn't quite as craptastic as I feared.


After my neck gave out I pulled out my sketchbook and Draw 500 Flowers where I found a couple more cacti to draw. Like I said before, I really like drawing them.



Tonight I put the thumb stitches on a holder and started work on the mitten hand. I'm about halfway but just realized that if I don't slow down I won't have any mitten to knit on at Friday Night Knitting. I want to make my mitten last.


The coolest thing happened at the end of today's St. Agnes Class of '65 lunch. As we were leaving ES asked if I had copies of my books with me. Of course I said yes, she followed me to my car, and bought one of each! I was thrilled. Thanks, ES!

--Barbara

1 comment:

Aunt Barb said...

Your high temp is close to what our low was a week or so ago when we were just freezing!! Nice you could enjoy the fresh air with your patio doors open. We were walking around shivering!!