I’m so tired of physical setbacks. I broke my foot in December. Foot surgery in February. Six weeks in a wheelchair. Four weeks pushing a walker. Physical therapy. Going to the gym to build up muscle and to regain strength. Fell off my tricycle, bruised my tailbone, bruised my abdomen, major scrap on my shin for which I should have gone to the Emergency Room, and I’m regressing. I feel like curling up in a ball and sleeping for a month or so.
I noticed I’ve got some blooming cactus in the back yard, so I grabbed my camera.
We’re in a multi-year drought and we’ve lost cactus.
There was more to photograph, but I am limited on how much walking I can do, and I had reached my limit. Which is one of the reasons I’m frustrated and bummed out.
It’s easy to get side tracked if you’re an artist. It’s especially easy if one of your media is photography. I was about to make myself some oatmeal for breakfast and I looked out the window. Fog on the mountain! Fog is rare in the desert. I grabbed the camera. Clad in PJs and slippers, I went into the back yard and started photographing.
Fog eating the Robledo Mountains.
Fog eating the Dona Ana Mountains.
We don’t often get rain, and it has rained hard the last couple of days.
Raindrops on Desert Sage.
Some photos aren’t meant to be pretty. I used the one below will be used for designing fabric and put nine new designs in my Spoonflower shop.
I’m still struggling to get myself put back together. After the phone pole jumping out in front of my electric tricycle and causing several booboos, owies, a bruised tailbone and a sprained thumb, I lost two weeks at the gym. Now, I have to backtrack a bit to get to where I was before I fell off my tricycle. I’m planing on getting back into the gym on Monday. This inability to do the things I want to do is frustrating, anxiety causing, and a PITA.
I am working my way back to healthy by going to the gym and working out, doing exercises at home, and riding a bike. I am prone to vertigo so a two-wheel bike is a horrible option. So I got a tricycle. An electric tricycle with pedal assist. I got an expensive helmet and flashing lights so people would see me when I’m riding my tricycle. I took my trike for a ride. Everything was going great until a telephone pole jumped out in front of me. When I hit the pole, I rammed the handlebars into my abdomen and slammed my tailbone against the seat. I put a serious scrap on my shin. Although I was bleeding, my sock never ripped. This getting in shape business is tough work. The shin is healing, the bruises are starting to disappear, and my tailbone hurts. Fortunately, my helmet had a great warranty. Because I fell, I got a new helmet for free.
I got the little person sewn down. I was doing hand quilting along the bars, but if it hurts to sit, I’m not going to get much done. I do want to translate this into a painting.
I’ve added some jewelry to my online store, Deb Thuman Art. I’ve got a pile of jewelry that I made and I need to get it all in my store. If I put three items into my store each day, in about a month, I’ll be up to date. Maybe. Provided I don’t make anything new.
These are all in my store here: http://www.DebThumanArt.com. There’s a necklace to match the blue/green earrings.
The photos are a tad odd because I had to crop them like crazy to use them in my store. Now when I put them in a blog post, the background gets a little weird. It’s always something.
We lost power for a couple hours because we had a rollicking thunderstorm with pouring rain. This made for some rain photos.
I went to the farmers market Saturday morning. During the market, terrorists paraded up and down the street. Idiots conned into believing Israel is the enemy chanted globalize the infatada. Let’s look at history. In 2005, Israel pulled out of Gaza. In 2006, the people of Gaza voted to have Hamas run their government. Israel offered Hamas 95% of what Hamas asked for – a result any intelligent negotiator would consider a major win and accept – Hamas refused the offer. On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched an unprovoked attack on Israel. Israel fought back. Per the head of Hamas, the point of the attack was to kill Jews and obliterate Israel.
Students for Justice in Palestine sounds innocent enough. It’s not. It’s a terrorist organization. Their express purpose, according to the people who run the organization, is to kill Jews and obliterate Israel. Yet these people are on college campuses all across the US. Would any college allow an organization whose express purpose is to kill Blacks and obliterate (choose any country in Africa)? Nope.
And so the idiots and terrorists marched down the street. I stood there screaming: Am Yisrael chai! (the people of Israel live) while pumping my fist in the air. I said that the next time I come to the market I’m bring a Super Soaker to fire at these jerks. I was told just don’t do it in front of the market management. As much as I’d love super soaking these people, I think that could be construed as a battery – an illegal act.
Perhaps instead, I’ll just stand I the middle of the street and block the parade. That’s not a crime. I’ll forgo the Super Soaker. Brandishing said Super Soaker can be considered an assault. It will be just me, my walker and my service dog.
I hate buying what I can make, so soap is hardening on the patio. Jim has an allergy to fragrances, so I have to keep smelly stuff away from him. I use melt and pour goat milk soap, add almond oil, and tea tree oil. Yes, I’m 72. Yes, I STILL have an acne problem. I need to use soap with tea tree oil in order to stop acne before it starts. I use a moisturizer with retinol – a substance used to treat acne. If I use a regular moisturizer for a few days, I break out.
The acne was supposed to stop after I finished going through puberty. It didn’t. It was supposed to stop if I took oral contraceptives. It didn’t. It was supposed to stop after I went through menopause. It didn’t. It was supposed to stop after my face stopped producing more oil than an oil well. It didn’t. Maybe it will stop after I’m dead. I want to go to medical school when I’m dead and the med students might be in for a surprise if my corpse keeps on making pimples.
Hearts.
Pigs.
Fish.
After the soap hardens, I’ll put it in a plastic bag to keep under the sink until I need to use the soap.
I’ve been working out at the gym at least once a week. Stop laughing. That’s better than the once a month I had been pushing myself to go to the gym. I feel stronger after each workout although I’m still limited to how long I can stand or walk before I’m in pain. I’ve been doing exercises that help with the hip pain. I’ve been riding my exercise bike.
Soon, I’ll be riding an electric tricycle. Because I’m prone to vertigo, it’s not safe for me to ride a two-wheel bike. I live at the top of a hill and just the thought of having to pedal manually up that hill after a workout is enough to keep me off of a bike. This bike has a pedal assist. I’ll have to pedal up the hill, but the motor will make that much easier for me. In theory, the tricycle will go 16 mph on a flat surface. I’ve no intention of discovering if that’s true. At least not right away. Jim hit a snag putting my bike together and he has to call the company on Monday for advice. I eventually will have one of those big flags for the back of the bike. I want to be visible. I think I still have some flaming orange dye so I can dye a tee shirt and be more visible.
Along with being more stable than a two-wheeler just because there are three wheels, this bike has a lower center of gravity to add even more stability. There’s a basket for the back of the bike. I’m looking forward to doing some exploring with this bike. Of course I’ll need to have something pithy embroidered on the front of a tee shirt now that I’ll be a bad-ass bike rider. Perhaps a flaming skull.
I’ve discovered my health insurance gives people an incentive to be healthy. I got $25 for my annual checkup and $25 for having a mammogram. I don’t get actual money, but I can trade the “money” for gift cards. I chose a Barnes and Nobel gift card. I can get “money” for working out. I can get a whole lot of reading done this way.
I’ve got the strips of fabric sewn together. Using a one-way fabric was interesting. I had to make sure all the eyes were going in the same direction.
I’ve drafted the little person. Now to figure out where the little person should be.
Next, I’m auditioning thread.
I think this one is going to be both hand and machine quilted. I’m thinking about how I can quilt barbed wire between the bars. I’ll outline the little person and the bars by hand.
I hit a sale at Superior Threads and my latest batch of thread arrived in the mail today.
Some of the thread is designed for hand quilting. Some will be for the embroidery machine. Some will be for the sewing room.
I’m having a peripheral neuropathy flareup. One of the sure antidotes to the pain is to make art. I had a major depressive episode Monday, and saw the beginnings of a quilt in my head. Or maybe it’s the beginnings of a painting. I’m not entirely sure. I thought about how bipolar disorder, or any DSM-V label, separates the person with the illness from the rest of the world. Like the time I listened to a woman clearly old enough to know better talk trash about someone who had bipolar disorder. When I told her I have bipolar disorder, she literally backed away from me. Gotta watch out for those mental illness cooties.
I dug out my box of fabric and started auditioning fabric for this quilt.
This usually takes a long time. Today was not usually. Today, the fabrics jumped out of the box and insisted on being put together. I was careful about values. How many times have quilters gotten out fabrics and then realized every fabric was a medium value. The red is medium bordering on dark, but I didn’t find a fabric I liked better.
Start here:
End here.
I”ve been playing around with moon shots lately. We’ve had partially cloudy skies and I wanted to get some of the cloud feeling into the shot. The shot, without any editing, is the top photo. I shoot in RAW rather than JPEG. Current thinking is that because modern sensors are so much more sensitive, there’s no need for RAW. RAW files are huge and take up a whole lot of room on the hard drive or the external storage. I don’t use the cloud. I don’t trust the security and someone dumping child pornography into your cloud account can net you many years in a federal prison. Worse, because cloud users don’t own the cloud, the feds don’t need users’ permission to run barefoot through all the person has stored. Because the user doesn’t own the cloud, the user’s standing to contest the warrant or warrentless search is likely nil. Translation: if the feds find child pornography in your area of the cloud, you’re screwed.
The RAW advantage is the sensor records far more detail than JPEG. That advantage is critical when doing nature photography and you have only what nature has given you to work with. When I adjusted the exposure, the background was revealed. The photo is a whole lot more intriguing than the sky was when I took the original shot.
I’ve been playing around with photos in editing with the intention of using the final photo to design fabric. Lately, my Spoonflower shop has gotten a lot of traffic and I’ve had some sales. You can find my designs here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman
Independence Day. In the movie, when the mother ship explodes, Will Smith says: Elvis has left the building.
Independence Day. The Bill of Rights has left the building. We have a concentration camp in the Everglades. It’s not there because of the alligators. It’s there so We The People can’t see what’s happening to the people illegally seized and incarcerated there.
We have a president who claims to love Jews. I never believed that for a minute. That’s the same president who said there are good nazis. Okay, there are good nazis – and every one of them is dead. Now, the same president claims some bankers are shylocks. Shylock is the name of the money lender in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. The character is a Jew who wants a pound of flesh if he isn’t repaid the money he lent.
We have a suspension of due process. We have idiots in charge of the Department of Justice and Health and Human Services. We have a psychopath in the White House.
We have a congress that passed a horrible bill designed by a psychopath and voted on by degenerate politicians who would rather bow to a dictator than do what’s morally right.
Nobody living can ever stop me as I go walking the freedom highway Nobody living can make me turn back This land was made for you and me. Woody Guthrie
Pete Seeger was hauled in front of the House Unamerican Activities Committee for singing that song. During the same time, I had a music teacher who taught us a folk song. I lived in a republican town. Mother Theresa couldn’t get elected if she ran as a democrat. The teacher taught us This Land Is Your Land and told us it was written by a famous folk singer. She put her job on the line when she did that.
But this land is still troubled by men who have to hate. They twist away our freedom and twist away our fate. Law is their weapon and treason is their cry. You can stop them if you try. Phil Ochs, Power and The Glory.
This verse was left off for the commercial recording. Ochs wanted to make a patriotic song and thought that verse was inappropriate. Wrong Phil. It’s damned appropriate. It’s the First Amendment in action. We must speak out. We must stop them.
If we don’t stop them, the constitution and the Bill of Rights will leave the building.
Deb's Art 