All posts by Sylvia

Crafting

Another 100 Painting project.

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I’m going to do it again — 100 tiny paintings in a year. I might make them a little bigger, 3-1/2 inches by 3 inches instead of 3-1/2 by 2-1/2 inches . I’ll start next week and have set the timing for every third day for the next 52 weeks.

I’ll make storage books like the ones I made for the last set, but I’ll make them all at the same time. This time I’ll make the pockets out of transparency film. I still have the roll that came from an old photocopier that used rolls of paper or transparencies for copies. That was in the mid ‘80’s or as my youngest granddaughter used to say “the olden days.”

I’m also in the process of getting my craft room back in order. The Boomerang Child is spending a lot more time with the Not-Wife who is undergoing chemo for cancer. I moved the bed and dresser out of my room and am getting it set back up. One of my craft room tables is in my studio, but I think I will swap it with a different table.

Once I get the room set back up, I can bring back some of the supplies I have at the makerspace and devote the studio to painting and class development. so watch this space for pictures of paintings and projects. Once I’m re-organized, I’ll have more to post about.

Crafting

I’m working on a project – part 1

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I”m working on the first of two shadowbox mashups. The first one is Alice in OZ. It’s images cut from cardstock from two paper sets – The Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland. It features Alice and other cutouts from one paper set mixed in with images from thee Wizard of Oz set.

First layer of Alice in Oz
Image of another attempt
Alice in Oz – yet another version

The layers are attached to transparency film so I can rearrange them to get the effect I want. Each film layer is attached at the corners with foam tape to provide depth to the finished project. The images are attached to the film with tape as well so i can re-arrange each element to get a balanced image.

The background of this one is a cropped image of the wizard in a balloon leaving Oz. The good witch, the lion, and poppies appear in different layers. The other characters are from the Alice paper set. There may be a scarecrow added in the next arrangement. A picture of the finished shadowbox will be published later.

The Dorothy in Wonderland shadowbox will have Dorothy and other characters from the Oz paper set intermixed with characters and images from the Wonderland set. I used these papers before to create tunnel books that were for sale at a craft show.

About me

Wow.

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I recently read an article on a site called Bored Panda about a woman who spent $500 on groceries for seven people. I don’t know how long she expects that to last. However, there was very little that was what most people consider healthy. At this point in time, my assumption is that the healthy food has increased too much in price. She did mention a garden which is supplementing what they eat.

All kinds of people are making comments about her choices. From my perspective, her grocery haul was not very nutritious, but I can’t judge her. She has to buy what the family will eat. She works full time, and presumably her husband also works full time. They have parents living with them as well as three growing boys. She has to make choices. The article mentions that some foods were left off the list because it wasn’t time to replace them.

I recently spent $200 at the grocery store. I was replacing items from my Covid stash which I have maintained since 2020. I’ve spent similar the last couple of months. It’s my fall-back stash. Usually it’s just for me, but my unemployed son is now occupying space and eating my food. Most of my stash is ingredients but I have a few canned soups and foods like canned hash and chili. My freezer is full with the meats I get from the mark-down bin, as well as 99 cent frozen veggies.

I make a lot soups and stews and dishes that can be eaten over a period of days. It goes back to the days when even though I was working, I could pay rent, electricity, and bus fare, but not buy enough food for a week and what I did buy got stretched to two or more.

Many of my co-workers thought I was on a diet because lunch consisted of a container of cut carrots and celery with a little blue cheese or ranch dressing. Little did they know I couldn’t afford lunches out and I wasn’t going to bring beans and rice five days in a row. My apartment included a washer and dryer so money for laundry wasn’t an issue although there have been times in the past when clothes were washed in the bathtub and hung on hangers on the shower bar.

Right now, I consider myself well-off, not like the folks with lots of money, more like someone who can put some money in savings, buy craft supplies, and pay what’s needed to maintain my house and car. So that’s why I say I’m well off. I can buy extras. It won’t last. I live on savings, retirement, and Social Security. Eventually it will all run out. That’s what the food stash is for.

Crafting

Oh Goody!

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I broke my car again. Saturday was a wet snowy afternoon. I was on my way to take my grandson home and for whatever reason decided to go through town instead of on the highway. Big mistake.

I was within a mile of the house when the car in front of me hit an icy patch and skewed sideways. Even though I was going slowly, my car also started sliding and braking was ineffectual. BANG! I slid into the driver’s side door.

I won’t bore you with the details. My car is in the shop for the next few weeks. I have a loaner to use until the car is repaired. No one was hurt as far as I know. And I did use my handy duct tape as a bandage to hold the bumper on until I could take the car in.

The good news is that I’m almost finished with my Alice in Oz shadowbox.

The next one will be Dorothy in Wonderland.

My own damned opinion.

Okay.

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Pinterest just showed me a spatula/spoonish-shaped thing for applying butt cream on a baby. My jaw fell open. Are parents these day too paranoid to touch baby butts that need cleaning? Or are they leaving diapers for longer periods of time because of cost, so that diaper rash is more common?

I admit my baby caring days are very last century with cloth diapers, diaper pails, and such. I used the disposable diapers on trips or outings, but for the most part, cloth diapers were my normal go-to. But that was just me.

I also had a neighbor that objected to my youngest’s daily summer air nap. I used to put him in a small crib in the carport on nice days, totally without clothing. I’d be there on a lounger reading a book and my neighbor who was way younger than me, would come over and complain that my baby was naked. Every single time!

I finally asked her why she was looking. It was because she could see his “private parts.” So I asked her again why she was looking. She had no good answer. She never complained again. I still don’t know why a naked baby in a carport 30 feet from her house triggered her.

I did find out later that she was from the Wisconsin version of Pennsyltucky, so that might have been the reason. There are a lot of small towns up north that are just like the insular towns in other rural areas of the country.

But back to the butt spatula/spoon thing — they come in colors and multiple sizes. There’s what looks like a suction cup on the handle end so the thing stands upright on a flat surface. You can buy sets. It’s the future of baby care where infants are handled by machines and left in “pods” until they’re large enough to be put in creches with other pod children wearing headsets wired to their brains for “education.”

The way things are going with the current government, this might happen. 1984, Brave New World, and The Handmaids Tale were not meant to be blueprints for the future. But here we are.

Painting & Drawing, Watercolor painting

I finished my 100 paintings before my end date.

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Some are better than others mostly due to my physical and mental states changing during the year. Sometimes I was unable to paint what I had envisioned. Or my hands could not coordinate with my eyes, so what I painted didn’t look like the image I was using as a reference. I actually painted more than a hundred but some were torn up and tossed. Others were used to test colors.

Paintings 1 through 15

Some of the earlier paintings are based on images from an old daily calendar that had around 300 images of artworks by various artists. A few were based on local photos like the hydrant and the pizza oven above.

Paintings 16 through 31

There are a lot of cat paintings because I’m the cat lady of the family. Some plants, lots of wonky houses make up the rest. I started adding people toward the end. Maybe for the next paintings, I could do more people.

Paintings 32 through 47
Paintings 48 through 63
Paintings 64 through 79
Paintings 80 through 95
Paintings 96 through 101

I haven’t decided what my next project will be. I was thinking larger paintings – maybe one a month. Or mixed media collages. I’ve given myself a week to figure it out. I may schedule a show at the makerspace for September. I do have a lot of watercolors and mixed media pieces I could display.

Mostly me, Stuff

House of depression.

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I need to start making lists again so I can accomplish more than just sitting around listening to podcasts and sci-fi stories on YouTube. I’m barely accomplishing the daily minimum of washing dishes and making my bed. I’m sleeping more than usual.

I haven’t been working on my paintings although I don’t have that many more to do to reach 100. I haven’t been using my studio lately except to hang my coat which makes it a very expensive coat room. So what’s my excuse? I actually have anti-depressants, but I think I need to get a different prescription. They do become ineffective after a couple of years.

The other thing I need to do is to get the Boomerang Child out of my space. He needs to find work and get out of my space. I’d sell my house to get rid of him, but I can’t afford an apartment in this city. Well, not a two bedroom which is what I would need for my crafting, weaving, and bookbinding.

The Boomerang Child needs therapy, medication and a job. Especially a job. He spends most of his time upstairs sleeping with the lights on and the tv going. He’s made himself a little space in the garage where he can sit out of the weather and smoke. He gets money by donating plasma twice a week so he can afford cigarettes.

He’s not really looking for a job. He used to be a cook, but almost everyone in the food business in town has been burned by him not showing up because he feels bad or got stupid drunk.

He seems to have given up drinking which is a good thing. I no longer find beer cans in the recycle bin. The Not-Wife cut off his phone again. So even if there’s a job offer out there, he won’t get it. Their relationship is more toxic than my former marriage to his drunken sperm donor.

Oh well, new year, old crap.

Stuff

Great! Just great!

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I got an email from the water utility Friday, saying I’ve been using 92 gallons an hour for the last week. I can’t wait to see that bill. We tried turning off the water. It seemed to work. I sent an email back to the utility. Monday I got a new email saying it was flowing at 59 gallons an hour. Back to the basement.

I tried clamping off the outlet hose and made my own water park in the basement, complete with fountain. D’uh! So I fiddled with the controller until I got the water stopped. However, that stopped the water from flowing into sinks and things. Fortunately, I was able to get a plumber out in an hour. I now have water, just not soft water.

I can deal with that for the short-term. My next project is to drain the water heater, but that can wait until I get the new softener — next year, which is like tomorrow. What a great start to the year.

Hopefully, 2026 will be survivable. Happy New Year!

About me

Something came up.

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Has someone ever apologized to you in a way that made you feel worse? You know the one — “I’m sorry you feel that what I did…” I hate those non-apologies.

When issues are brought up, instead of apologizing for the hurt and changing the behavior that was pointed out, the offender puts the burden of the apology upon the person who brought it up.

I will go into semantics here: “I’m sorry for my actions” is different from “I’m sorry that you felt my actions were ______” — one puts the burden of apology on the apologizer’s shoulders and the other shunts blame onto the person you are apologizing to. 

“I’m sorry that you felt my actions were ______” is not a true apology. And sometimes this nuance is lost on folks. It’s natural to be defensive because the action was not meant to be offensive and you don’t want to be seen as a bad person. But here’s the thing— seeing the incident as coloring your whole person and then defending yourself is not the correct action.

You are entitled to your opinions and reaction, but often times the reaction seems to be on the side of ignoring what the other party said and continuing to do the action the same way. The inability to see how your actions may have hurt others and the refusal to change or adapt your approach to make less pain for others is the real problem.

I’ve done this and then felt bad about how I said things as apologies. Sometimes I am able to re-do the apology by saying, “that came out wrong.” But many times, the person is so hurt by my failure to take responsibility, that it’s the end of a friendship or working relationship.

This came up because I was cleaning out files and found some conversations and documents from an incident that happened a few years ago.

A member of an organization I was a member of, decided that my bookkeeping should be audited because when I took over treasurer duties, I corrected the way the books were done. Previous treasurers who had no training or experience with bookkeeping software, were keeping the records from the date of the board meeting to the day of the next meeting.

I had two previous jobs where I was allowed budgets for payroll and book repair. I had to track expenditures and file reports. I was also treasurer for a social organization. In all these situations, I kept meticulous records.

So the first thing I did when I became Treasurer for the other organization was to go through the software and set up the account from the first of the month to that last day. One of the members set up an audit with an accounting firm. The organization paid the bill, but the member was not happy that the accountant only recommended that the utilities be separated out for better tracking.

That’s where the “apology” came in. The person pulled a similar apology for something they did at a different time and as far as I know, they are no longer a member of the organization.

Mostly me, Stuff

What am I doing?

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Well, the first thing was waiting for files to transfer to my backup drive from my laptop since I stupidly got rid of the working drive and kept the dead one.

The next thing was to trip over the cat and spill juice into said laptop and kill it. I swear I’m not brain dead, but it’s certainly starting to seem that way. Most files were in various clouds and a couple of external drives, so now I’m double-checking to see what’s missing.

Some files and programs are from a previous laptop that died midway through setting up the maker-space’s library. I pulled that hard drive, bought a housing for it and use that one for storage as well as a 2-terabyte portable storage device.

I use the portable drive to store files and programs to run on an inexpensive laptop I bought to keep at the maker-space to teach members to use software for our Cricut cutting machine and for use with other CNC tools such as the laser cutter, the big vinyl cutter, and the embroidery machine.

Right now, that’s my only computer until I save up for a better one. I still have my iPads, although the older one is used more for watching YouTube videos and is kept in my studio. There’re no programs of value on it except Pinterest, Slack, Zoom, Chrome, YouTube, and my maker-space email.

I’m still doing my watercolor project. I finally got caught up. I was a bit behind – by about six paintings, I think. I’m also making mini blank notebooks. They are tiny, suitable for a pocket or purse, and great as a small gift for a child. I’m doing some watercolor abstracts to be trimmed down as covers for the mini books.