Month: August 2021

Posted in Beads, Brady, Fiber, Photography

Stuck In Design Indecision

Posted on by debthumanblog

I joined Seamwork a few weeks back because I got a dandy deal and I liked a number of the patterns. One pattern is for a long, v-neck pullover dress. I’ll be modeling for the art department at New Mexico State University this semester and I’ll need some sort of cover-up for when I model nude. Yep. I’m a geriatric nude model. The dress pattern would make a perfect cover up. I’ve been toying with ideas. Do I want to do color blocking? If so, I need to start figuring out what kind of shibori pattern I want and start dyeing fabric. Or I could do batik. Or I could order one of the fabrics I designed in my Spoonflower shop https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman. Or I could sit here with indecision growing all around me.

I thought I had found my favorite shorts pattern, but I was wrong. It’s a pattern from several pounds ago. Seamwork has a shorts pattern that’s close to my favorite pattern. I have some old sheets that we no longer use that would be good for making a muslin. I got as far as printing out the pattern. I haven’t taped the pieces together. I haven’t measured me. I haven’t gotten out an old sheet. 

I signed up for a Seamwork class and made a disconcerting discovery. I don’t have a clothing style. I also don’t want to have a clothing style. I don’t like what’s on the market. I don’t like anything I’ve seen on Pinterest or Instagram. I’m overweight and clothes shown on the covers of sewing patterns or on Instagram and Pinterest are modeled by anorexic women. No idea what these clothes would look like on me. Patterns for “plus size” women usually look like a tent with an elastic waistband. Um, no. 

I’ve started getting jewelry ready to sell at the local farmers market. I’d planned on setting up in November when it’s cooler and everyone is looking for Christmas presents. Unfortunately, the self-centered, selfish people who refuse to get vaccinated or wear a mask have caused a surge of covid cases. There’s now a waiting list for an ICU bed in all of New Mexico. I don’t know if I’ll want to set up at the farmers market. Selling my art is nice. Dying because some people don’t take this virus seriously is not nice. My online store, Deb Thuman Art, http://www.DebThumanArt.com has a generous supply of jewelry and fiber art for sale. 

Having been cleared to have cataract surgery, I called the specialist in Albuquerque in early July and got an appointment for October 1. I’ll keep the appointment, but I can’t imagine elective surgery being scheduled before next summer. With the ICU beds filled, the hospitals full of covid cases, elective surgery can’t be done safely. Meanwhile, I’m having problems seeing especially seeing up close. I am beyond angry at the self-centered, selfish people who insist on not being vaccinated or wearing a mask.

Brady ate dental floss yesterday. Dental floss can be deadly. We gently squirted hydrogen peroxide down her throat to make her throw up. After she threw up, I had to take a stick and fish in her vomit until I found the dental floss. It was a terrifying hour before the crisis was over. 

She’s faster than a speeding shutter. She’s chomping on an unimaginative toy I made for her. She demolished a toy and I grabbed the squeaker before she could eat it. I put the squeaker into this toy, but the squeaker doesn’t squeak. It just clicks. This is good; that squeaker was obnoxious.

I’ve been doing a bit of photography. We’ve had a lot of rain for a desert in the past few weeks. The light when there’s a storm blowing in makes for interesting, albeit frustrating, photography. Do I keep the photo dark which reflects what I see? Do I tinker in editing to make everything artificially bright?  

I’ve been experimenting with evaluative and spot metering. After seeing the shots on my laptop, I decided that I’ll stick to evaluative metering. I seem to be getting better color that way.

Here’s the sunrise from the other day.

Morning moon.

Maybe next week I’ll be unstuck.

Posted in Beads, bipolar disorder, Brady, Depression, Fiber, PTSD

Of Frustrations and Images

Posted on by debthumanblog

Bipolar disorder sucks. Near as I can tell, I’m having a mixed episode – both manic and depressed simultaneously. My responses to things are enlarged. I’m depressed and am having problems shaking the depression. The PTSD, which is likely driving this mixed episode, has taken a miserable turn. While I still have flashbacks about growing up in a house run by a violent, drunken narcissist and her violent drunken husband, the flashbacks are no longer debilitating but they are still a nuisance. Now, I’m having flashbacks about working for the public defender department. There was a lot of trauma in that job. I moved from western New York to southern New Mexico by myself. Jim stayed in New York to sell the house. I didn’t know anyone in New Mexico. My supervisor refused to talk to me for two days when I arrived. That should have been a serious warning sign but I wanted that job so I stayed in New Mexico. Nine years later, I had to sue the department because of discrimination based on my age. I had a boss who was, to put it gently, a raving, screaming lunatic. I had 11 jobs in one year because he was trying to force me to quit.  I stuck around because I wasn’t going to let anyone screw me out of my pension. Just writing this has unearthed miserable memories. I retired when I got pushed once too often. Within two weeks of retiring, I no longer had back pain and I didn’t need medication to sleep. Within six months, I no longer needed medication to control my blood pressure. 

Brady is now five months old and she either has the doggy version of the terrible twos or the doggy version of oppositional defiant disorder. At least she seems to understand that she needs to pee and poop outside rather than on the kitchen floor. Now that I’ve given up on trying to confine Brady to the kitchen, she and the cats are having peace talks. The talks aren’t going well. I’m staying out of the discussion. 

I’ve gotten some new, exciting beads and haven’t been able to work with them. The one time Brady snuck into the sewing room where I make clothes, quilts and jewelry, she picked up a discarded scrap of fabric and proceeded to chew on it. It’s not that she could hurt the scrap, it’s that the scrap could get stuck in her throat. Although I’m home all day, creating has to wait until the weekend when Jim can occupy Brady.

Three years ago, we flew to Buffalo, NY. In part to see a quilt show, in part to see friends, in part to give me the opportunity to bury the ghosts. We went to Rushford Lake where so much misery happened to me. I found a nice spot and buried the ghosts. Several years back, I took an acting class taught be someone who understood visions and intuition. During one class, I saw my spirit dancing in the woods. My spirit was an iridescent figure. I’ve been wanting to turn that vision into a quilt. I will be having Spoonflower print up one of the photos from that trip. Now to figure out how to make an iridescent figure and to show the figure dancing. I’ve got some chiffon that might work. I’ll have to play around with this idea some more. 

When things got unbearable, I’d take a walk. Here’s where my walk would start.

Here’s where I buried the ghosts.

My birthday is Sunday and major life events happen around my birthday. I started college the week after my 25th birthday and started law school on my 38th birthday. For the first time in I forget how long, I can eat whatever I want and drink whatever I want on my birthday. For a few years, I would either have a crown pop off or a tooth break. We’ll be going to Starbucks for my free birthday drink. I’m going to be baking a pineapple upside down cake and making croissants for my birthday. I’m also planning on going to Walgreens to get a flu shot. If I get my flu shot around the time of my birthday each year, I don’t have to worry about forgetting to get the shot.

I’m linking with Nina Marie here: http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com

My store, Deb Thuman Art, is here: http://www.DebThumanArt.com

My Spoonflower shop is here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman

Posted in anxiety, bipolar disorder, Fiber, Mental Illness, Photography, Quilts

Printers, Frustration, Cactus Flowers Brady & Sewing

Posted on by debthumanblog

The cacti are blooming. 

Brady barks non-stop if I put her in her crate and leave the room. So I took her into the bathroom with me so I could take a shower. While she had fun trying to drink water from the shower spray, she didn’t like it when I gave her a little squirt. She tried to wipe off the water with her paws.

Jim cut a piece of foam and I made a pillow cover so Brady has a lovely, new bed….that she refuses to lie on. The cover is made from heavy duty upholstery fabric. I pre-washed the fabric in hot water and put it in the dryer. If it’s going to shrink, I want it to shrink before I sew. The pillow cover has to be machine washable. 

I went through computer hell yesterday. First, I tried to hook up a Brother printer. Per the box, it works with Mac. Except it doesn’t. Turns out, Brother hasn’t bothered to keep up with Mac OS updates and the only Macs that it will work on are at least three updates ago. Next, I tried hooking up a Canon that’s supposed to work with Mac. Except it doesn’t. Jim is dealing with the university book store to see if it will work with a cable or in the alternative, what do they have that works with the latest OS update for Mac. All I need is a printer that prints color as well as B&W, and will scan a document. I don’t need, and am not going to pay $200+ for options I’ll never use.  So far, I’ve brought home two overpriced doorstops. 

I don’t handle frustration well and was screaming (literally) at the inscrutable instructions. Would it kill manufacturers to put some words with those schematic drawings? Canon claims to have 24/7 customer service. It doesn’t. It claims to have a chat function. It doesn’t. I don’t know how to handle situations like this. I don’t want to be screaming at instructions. I did take three klonopin, but it didn’t help. I’m at the point where if I have to try to hook up yet another printer and can’t, I’ll gladly scream (literally) at a customer service rep. If a company puts out useless products, the customer service people deserve what they get. I’ll be discussing calming techniques with my psychologist. 

I had never tried binder clips, but after having miserable experience after miserable experience sewing binding on quilts, I bought binder clips. I like them. Not only do that make binding a quilt a stress-free event, they also work better than pins at holding two pieces of heavy fabric together.

After having FMQ misery, I wrote to Superior Thread and asked for help. I bought the needles recommended on the website – 90/14 topstitch. That sort of helped, but the real solution was to use a different quilting foot. Pfaff makes a sensor automatic quilting foot and a spring quilting foot. Superior threads work best with the spring quilting foot.  

I am linking with Nina Marie here: http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com

My store, Deb Thuman Art is here: http://www.DebThumanArt.com

My Spoonflower shop is here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman