WOYWW 713 – out of chaos comes order?

Happy WOYWW!

and Yikes. Crazy computer things last weekend but luckily I had a plan! I decided, based on a few inputs, including our own Caro and a couple of ladies in my mixed media art group, to embark on a collage project. It is an art form that I haven’t done much of, but would like to get better at. And lord knows I have what is technically referred to as a shit-ton of collage papers. I literally dragged even bin and box and file that I had stuffed loose gel prints or pages torn from magazines or stashes or dyed papers and set out to sort them into divisions that I felt might make sense. There is a LOT.

This is actually a large round spare table that I dragged into the small open area in my art space to be able to have enough room to put all those bins and boxes on one level. Again I say YIKES.

My desk is actually quite tidy, as I also dragged out the fodder keeper I made and a wire-bound art journal I have had for ages, which was always intended for this collage project. I’ve just kept putting it off.

I need to replenish my keeper with more bits! It’s looking a bit sparse in some places.

I will share my progress. This week I have two Drs. appointments, both in response to those not-great test results I may have mentioned. A change of medication is required, and sharpish. Ugh.

Lastly, Cat. She keeps finding new places to hang out. This past week she seemed to make an old chair in the bedroom her home. To be fair, she likes the back of the chair, which is right by a window, best, but that window has obscured glass in the bottom pane so she eventually decides to sleep on the seat.

She hasn’t completely abandoned me – when Dear Son shuts her out of his “office” to make phone calls or play games or program, she will sometimes find me to cuddle up to. I’m told she is unusual, and that most cats are not as cuddly as her. No idea as she is pretty much the only cat I have even spent any time with. Cat lovers and owners, you tell me. Is she deviating from the norm? Darling Daughter is already stressing about when Son+Cat might move on, and is asking about getting her own cat. Yikes for a third time! Thinking we love this cat but unwilling to risk the uncertainty of another that might be quite standoffish and…cat-like!

I was later last week due to some scheduling issues around home (electrician, cleaner, various calls and appointments) and then the computer over the weekend, but hoping this week, with Wednesday fully clear, I can get around early and fully. I’ll be hopping by yours soon…

WOYWW 712 – dried up paint, resurrected?

A strange one, something on my desk with an actual purpose, progress but not project!

Happy WOYWW.

So I had this drawer full of small bottles of paint. Lumiere metalics and something called Sorbets. Thing is, I am pretty sure I got them at a WOYWW crop from the sale table, a good six or so years ago. I might have used them very occasionally, but I lean more towards inks that paints, except when gel printing.

What I have been doing is trying to soften these up. Adding a little bit of water, shaking them around, stirring with a thin knitting needle, and unclogging the tiny tips. I found it quite easy to pop off the tip and put it in a small jar filled with hot soapy water, I let it soak, give it a good shake every so often, and hopefully in the ens I will have clean tips to put back in the bottles!

If I do manage to bring them back to life I vow to use them up posthaste (post haste? post-haste? LOL!) I mean why hoard them? Use ’em or lose ’em, clearly.

Cat is sticking with me, although Son will be home by the time this goes live, and if history repeats itself Cat will cling to him and steadfastly ignore me till he goes again. Ah well. She loves to lay on the sofa beside me and as she is white and sheds a LOT I think I need to give up black clothes for now. Her other spot is on a towel-covered pillow on top of a box. This usually sits in Son’s office (my ex-sewing/ironing room) but I moved it to MY office/craft room at the beginning of his trip. She is looking quite intently at very small gap under the table, where she can hear a bird in the chimney.

So there we go. A bit of a change-up from the usual catastrophe of a space. I have had not great blood test results, after having to cancel last month’s test due to catching Covid, so suspet a change in medication will be required. Not a welcome change, but required. Might slow me down a bit.

Hope you have a lovely desk-hop. I know I will…

WOYWW 711 – chaos reigns once again

Happy WOYWW. Here is the mess all over my desk – does it make you feel smug because yours is tidy? Like we are kindred spirits cause yours is the same? Does it horrify you to the point you have to click away, and FAST? Hang in there for the cat photos, if cats are your thing LOL!

Yikes. OK well, to be fair, I did tidy up a bit, more like cleared a space than an actual clear up. I had seen a few videos on YouTube by Diana at Crooked Little Studio where she has a trio of papers placed with tape hinges around her gel plate and she prints here there and everywhere by flipping them in turn onto the plate. I really wanted to give it a go but my own efforts were very bad. Wrong colour choice I think. I shall draw a veil over all but the first couple.

I will try again.

What else? Nothing really, just that Cat is once again warming up to me. Nothing like being the only human in the house for an extended period of time to make a cat want cuddles from you Will she forget me as soon as Son returns? Of course she will! But for now…

I did well last week, getting round to see all of you. With luck it is a trend that will continue! Have a lovely day of desk hopping.

WOYWW 710 – Start as you mean to go on?

Happy Happy WOYWW! PLeased to say I have tested NEGATIVE and while thusfar I still have a very much reduced sense of smell (and along with that, taste) I am feeling much better. Not managed the treadmill yet but will hope to get back to that very very soon. Phew. Also hoping I will be on top of my visits. I missed an entire week and that is not something I take lightly.

So, on to the desk.

Well, well! That looks like I want it to! I thought I would share a few of the housekeeping tasks I did in preparation for the New Year of Crafting. You may recall I have tiny little pots that hold various adhesives, tip down, always at the ready. I refreshed them, as the washi tape decor was looking pretty tatty after a year.

I could use a few more, but we need to lunch at the local garden centre that has these little pots on the condiments table. I have my Art Glitter Glue, my slightly thinned matte medium, and my Tacky glue. All my most used liquid adhesives.

As for the matte medium, you may also recall I bought a massive tub of heavy duty medium and thin it with boiled and cooled water to get the right consistency. I fill my small pot for daily use, and my little bottle for spot adhesion.

The last thing is another small jar that houses all my tools, the ones I am always hunting for and can never find!

It also sits at the side of my desk, along with my Traveller’s Notebook of monthly journals, as mentioned yesterday. Still going good with the daily journaling. Nothing sure arty, but aiming to establish a habit.

Dear Son is off visiting a friend for a few days, but Cat is still in residence. She has decided that she quite likes my dinner chair as a comfy place to sit. Typical.

I am hoping I will have more time to play with my Scan&Cut soon, and also do a couple of colour challenges from the PMAS FB group. I’m enjoying those, and the results are getting used for my Monthly notebooks for my daily journaling. I don’t have a lot of other projects in my head, I’m sadly still a bit Covid-brain-y, but things will surely shake free at some point. Right?

Happy WOYWW and with luck I will be popping round to see you today!

WOYWW 709 – I just can’t not…

Happy first WOYWW of 2023. Not even gotten to last week’s desks cause my first Covid positive was that morning and I felt like death warmed up for sure. Still not feeling top drawer but slowly moving about now. I have a very chesty cough, still testing positive and my sense of taste and smell is very clearly messed up. Ugh. It is every bit as bad as I feared it would be and is lasting longer than I had hoped.

I have spent virtually zero time on any arty pursuits and as my desk is still in the very sorry state it was last week there is no point in sharing. I am hoping I will manage to tidy it up a bit. A little a day and I might manage a clean one by next week.

One thing I have done is journal for the last few days. I vowed to give daily journaling a bash this year and so far (a whole three days!) I did manage to scrawl some thoughts on a page.

My first arty order of business is to add JANUARY to this cover in some way. I have ideas, just no energy. It’s all I can do to keep up with some of the household tasks so my poor Hubster isn’t dong it all for another week. Any energy I have has to be focused in that direction. Luckily I have this one and another one done, and a third in progress. I wonder if my resolve will hold?

Just adding the odd cat photo. Dear Son snapped this one within a few days of his arrival and that darn cat has not come to sit with me since. She only did, I’m sure, cause DS was sitting on the other side of her here. Luckily she doe not seem to have caught Covid from us, or if she did, wasn’t sick with it. Phew.

Missing the first WOYWW of 2023 just felt like a bad sign, so I will link up today and hope to manage visits over the week, but I wanted to wish you all the happiest and healthiest year in 2023. Already looking forward to a better Christmas this year…

WOYWW 708 – the last one of the year…

Happy last WOYWW of 2022! Blimey. Roll on 2023…

I wish I could say I was starting the year with a tidy space. Well, maybe by the 1st it will be but it very much is NOT at the moment. Providing for the family without the help of my Covid-infected Hubster is a challenge. He has been a stellar patient, but now getting bored and hoping for a negative test very soon. Edited to add: Yeah. Nah. Positive for Covid. Bah! Because of my condition and meds I am eligible for the anti-virals, so just waiting on the NHS to contact me….

Oh yeah, the desk. I can’t even begin to explain the half-finished or completed projects on show here.

With Dear Son having taken over my sewing room, the ironing board and my sewing machine have relocated to my craft room. It is very crowded in here.

The sewing machine is on top of my largest self-healing mat because DS took it off the table he is using for his monitors and put it upright at an angle with a corner curled over. It’s take a couple of weeks with the machine on it to get to back to flat (sigh)

The other areas of the room are as bad. My pile of stuff to the side of my desk (mostly gel print-related) with my bookbinding cradle is totally obscured. You can see my traveller’s notebook cover for 2023 journaling. there at the top. I have two monthly inserts completed and will do a couple more if I ever get time at my desk this week.

and all the random things shoved into my spray-box on the other side … all chaos. Pillow is meant for the cat, but she is still not willing to risk coming into my office very often. Probably a good thing, actually.

Really I need a few hours of clear time to make some headway and get back to a stable state!

I will share another cat photo. The Hubster caught this shot on his way to dinner the other night – she still loves that perch at the top of the stairs but at night, the motion sensitive lights are a fab toy for her.

What a goofball! She’s got that 1000-yard stare down pat…

So I wish my desk was inspiring for the last one of the year but honestly that’s just how it goes. No point in promising to “do better in 2023” cause in all the WOYWWs I have done since… 2009? the % that have been tidy is well and truly overwhelmed by the messy ones. And my room is never the beautiful mess that makes you go YUM, it is always the vaguely chaotic mess of a whirling dervish-like mind. And it is always going to be that way.

Buckle up and enjoy the ride, cause I’m afraid it is more of the same in 2023!!

Happy post-Christmas, pre-New Year WOYWW!!

WOYWW 707 – Pre-Christmas chaos…

…but you won’t know it from here! Just a few festive photos, and a lovely shot of my oh so tidy desk. The lights outside are a job for The Hubster and Darling Daughter. They revel in it each year.

I am usually the one who sets up the tree, with DD and Dear Son adding the special ornaments that are their ones. It is a struggle to get them to help with the breaking up Christmas part before 12th night. Sharing the overall shot again…

and a few favourite ornaments, some new, some all time faves:

Christmas Pickle!

Knitted star

sweet bunny

Colin the Catterpillar

this year’s heart

And of course there has to be a shot of Cat. She has been remarkable well behaved around the tree, but then we don’t let her in that room alone LOL!

In addition to her skating show, DD is helping out with the production by Angel Exit Theatre at Throngrove. Looks like a lot of fun, if you are in Dorset tomorrow….

What is perhaps less fun is my desk, which is not seeing any action this week, I’m afraid. Pretty static from last week. There might be a bit of something tomorrow and/or Friday, but no promises!

To all my WOYWW mates, wishing you the very happiest of Christmases, with friends and family all around (or via Zoom) with good food, warm houses and lots and lots of holiday songs, festive films, and a few mince pies around a roaring fire.

WOYWW 706 – a tree, a cat and a bit of fun!

Happy WOYWW to all!

The big day creeps ever closer and I feel quite unprepared for it. My desk is nothing to write home about:

but the tree is up and very sparkly!

All those low hanging ornament might be a mistake…sleeping and stalking is what Cat does best!

Dear Son and I have been playing with various generative AI tools. Midjourney is my favourite, but you need Discord and a paid plan to really get the best out of it. Luckily DS has both. Stable Diffusion is pretty good but the images (at least using the web demo, not tried downloading and runing it on a server) is less…mind-blowing. It did make a nice image fro the text prompt Frida Kahlo funko pop rose crown. There is always one odd thing happening in most I’ve seen, generally the AI seems to struggle with fingers for example. Frida kinda looks like her undies are in a puddle around her ankles! She is missing a hand and the other hand has a very strange reptilian look to it. But overall it’s not awful.

This week Stable Diffusion debuted an avatar builder called Different Dimension ME but it’s been broken from mid-Day one. Or at least everyone I shared it with has been unable to get a result. Here are mine – I managed to sneak in and play for an hour or so before too many people were aware of it.

Edited to add: as of this morning it seems to be working again!

An old photo, with a shadow on half my face. I think that is what made my lips look so WEIRD. Anyway, the left is a more Anime style, the right more…realistic comic maybe? Who knows, but it was a bit of fun for sure.

That’s all for this pre-pre-Christmas post. I am off to a holiday lunch with my knitting mates – just a few of us clinically extremely vulnerable but vaccinated up to 6 times ladies – and gift exchange for the November birthday group (weirdly, all but one!) so another not-on-the-day visits. But I will be round soon, hopefully on Thursday at the latest.

Have a lovely day and Happy WOYWW once again!

WOYWW 705 – late, but not never…

Happy WOYWW to all! I was on a roll, then I fell off and rolled down the hill instead. Life has just been far too crazy of late. My desk is in a state, no clean shots here, and it’s a mish mash of holiday goodies.

There are some cards, some orbs. and lots and lots of clutter. I really need a good tidy for sure. I’ve been playing with variations on the card design and trying to sort out if I like one well enough to make a lot of the same.

One of the things that I have been playing with is my new Scan&Cut. I never thought I would give up my Cricut with Scal, but The Hubster convinced me to branch out – my Darling Daughter keeps watching videos on sticker businesses so we can play with this together. I had a go at scanning and cutting some free-to-use images and I have to say it worked like a charm.

Until I stuck a label sheet on to the mat. I did my due diligence, I checked the Quick Guide , and used the standard mat. That label paper stuck so firmly to it it all ripped away when I tried to pick it up to reposition. Eek. The customer service chat-bot said soak it. One of the YouTube videos said warm (not hot) water with a drop of dish soap. In the end I not have a very clean and completely UNsticky mat. DOH!

I do have cat photos. as promised last week. this is where she sits, surveying her domain. The little white pods are motion sensitive light and the pile in front of her all need new batteries.

Oops, spotted! Isn’t she lovely?

So that’s it for me. The Hubster and Darling Daughter are off for a jaunt, another skate show in Windsor, so Dear Son and me + Cat will amuse ourselves as best we can. I imagine will be desk hopping then wrapping gifts and tidying up for a dinner party on Friday night. Such fun!

Happy WOYWW and yes, it is beginning to look a lot like Christmas, isn’t it? The tree will have to wait for at leat one more week….

WOYWW 704

Happy WOYWW! My desk is not awful, as I have tidied up a bit from the making of my White On White colour challenge piece and moved on to make a bunch of cards from the 12 x 12 sheet.

I’ll walk thru the card tomorrow. I thought I would share the scan of the paper – I haven’t tried doing it before, but I wonder if I can print the scan and perhaps add some touches of gold to it then use THAT for making more cards. I really like it so I might give it a go.

What else? I was also working on a long piece of packaging paper, but with no real firm idea what I want to do with it. I feel like it’s best use, when done (and it’s not QUITE there yet) is for covering something. Maybe some boxes? Not sure. It has been draped over the paint cart for a few days while I worked on the W-on-W challenge, but now I need to finish it and decide what to do with it!!

It is def. my usual chaotic style.

The Cat. Her most favourite spot, other than on the cushion in my sewing room while he in on his computer, is at the top of the stairs. Like Yertle the Turtle, she is the ruler of all she surveys…or thinks she is anyway!

Photo? Not this week….

Happy WOYWW to all – we are putting up the tree this coming weekend…how about you?