After taping together 38 pages of a pattern and cutting out the pieces, I discovered I had printed out, taped and cut out the wrong pattern. I printed out the right pattern, but can’t make myself tape all the pages together and cut out more pattern pieces.
We’ve got some wild weather blowing in. Maybe. Sometimes, we get weird looking sky only to have clear blue a half hour later.
Having a coupon and about $43 in commissions, I decided to print out some fabric and proof some designs. 42 new designs are in my Spoonflower shop here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman
This piece will be a healing quilt. This is near Rushford Lake where so many hurtful memories reside. I buried the ghosts here. Several years back, I had a vision where I saw my spirit dance. My spirit was iridescent and dancing in the woods. I’ve got some chiffon that would be good for a dancing spirit applique. I’ll have to play with this a bit.
I need to make something to wear when I pose nude for the art department. Something that’s easy to slip on and off between sessions. I found a dress pattern that will work, and this is the fabric – one of my designs – for one dress. The other dress will be a batik of sorts. I’ve got some PDF linen/cotton blend that’s dying for some fancy dyeing.
Just created this design today. I think it’s going to make interesting fabric.
I’ve been sewing. My underwear is starting to get shabby, so I made some panties. This one is made from fabric I designed.
These are from commercial fabrics.
I’ll be modeling for the art department, and I need some sort of cover-up for when I model nude. I got a great deal for a Seamwork membership and I’ve downloaded the pattern for the Micha dress. Very simple, straight forward, and I can pull it on over my head. I’m working on deciding if I want to order fabric I designed for this dress or if I want to make the dress out of a linen blend fabric I have and dye the dress. If I dye the dress, I can play with shibori, batik, ombre, or plain, solid dye. Ombre might be fun. I had thought about doing color blocking, but decided against that. What I had in mind had seams on the diagonal – perfect for stretching in all the wrong directions. There will be photos once I finish the dress….which won’t be until I figure out what fabric I want.
I’ve been working on fabric designs. I saw an interesting geometric print in the current issue of Threads. I don’t want to make a copy of the design, but I do want to use the ideas in that design. So far, I haven’t come up with anything that is what I want although I did come up with some interesting designs.
I took Brady out last night and looked up. I saw a gorgeous sliver of a moon and what I think is Venus. I tried to get both into a photo, but that wasn’t successful. I did get one nice shot of just the moon. Ideally, I would have gotten out the 150-600mm lens and the tripod, but I knew I couldn’t get both objects into one shot with that lens. I kept the 18-400mm lens on the camera. I’ve been wanting to get a moon sliver shot. I’ve plenty of full moon shots, but this is the first sliver shot.
I played around with the moon shot to make fabric designs. Here’s the progression.
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.
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.
After five years of making dark quilts about suicide, isolation, sexual assault, and depression, I’m trying to find a happy design I can live with.
I model for the art department and I always pay attention to the critiques because I learn so much from them. One critique was for an assignment to use gray scale for a still life. That got me thinking. We ordinarily think of dark, smaller objects farther away, and lighter, larger objects closer. But what if that were reversed?
I sat down with my sketch book and tried to find something that appealed to me. I like this idea, but I don’t like this sketch. If I changed the shapes into people…..that could be an interesting social commentary.
Usually, the larger objects are in front to show they are closer, but what happens if I put the larger objects in the back? I like this idea as well. I don’t like the sketch.
Right idea, wrong shapes.
Still not right. I’m going to have to give this a rest for a while. Maybe I’m just not ready to leave darkness.
Meanwhile….the cactus are blooming.
The clumps are maybe 10 feet apart, but the colors are different.
I’ve been working on the depression quilt. I’ve quilted the middle, but haven’t decided how to quilt the border. I thought about meandering, but I want something different from the middle. I want to show depression surrounded by no depression. I want something more open, but I haven’t figured out what. I designed this quilt while I was having an all-encompassing depression that would not go away.
My grandmother always had very little money. She sewed her clothes because when she was growing up, home sewing was far more economical than buying ready to wear. My grandmother was good at spelling and won every spelling bee. For one spelling bee, the prize was a length of pink gingham fabric. My grandmother took the fabric home. She spread out newspaper and drafted a pattern. She made a dress from the gingham, and entered the dress in the Erie County Fair. She won first prize – $3. At the time, that was a week’s wages for a woman.
She never threw away leftover fabric. Instead, she rolled the leftovers into a fat roll and tied the roll shut with a scrap of fabric. Ribbon was precious, and she never used a ribbon for fabric rolls. She used to save the cardboard that trim was wrapped around. The cardboard was used as a template for quilt pieces.
We’ve had rain in the desert and there’s enough humidity to trigger desert sage blooms. I played around with aperture. I did a bit with my macro lens as well.
No idea what I was trying to get here, but I like the effect.
I think there’s a drop of nectar at the end of the pistol.
I may try to design fabric with this one.
This isn’t an easy bush to photograph. If I get back far enough to shoot the entire bush, there’s an ugly background. If I use my macro lens, it’s hard to have a subject. The flowers are in bunches and, short of plucking a flower, there’s no way to get a single flower.
In other earth-shattering news…… I had an odd feeling that I needed to check the credit card statement. I check the statements before I pay the bill, but I rarely check the charges in the middle of the billing cycle. Turns out someone has been using my credit card to pay for meals, Starbucks, Lyft and who knows what else for the last month. Jim called the bank, our card was immediately cancelled, and they will send us new cards. Eventually. First, we were told that it would take 8-10 business days to get the cards. We objected to that and the cards, which we haven’t gotten, have been expedited. Meanwhile, Consumer Cellular billed my credit card for the regular monthly bill. I’ve been paying Consumer Cellular like this for about 2 years. Because this is a recurring charge, the bank allowed the charge.
I would dearly love to sit down with this thief after I’ve been off my meds for about a week. Bipolar disorder does come in handy from time to time.
To avoid having this misery happen again, I’m looking into VPN. There are several apps, and I’ve no idea how to tell what I need. Actually, I know what I need. I need to have a 12-year-old kid on retainer to help me with these technical things.
I’ve been manipulating photos and designing fabric.
First, start with a photo. This is part of the mat outside the sliding glass door.
Next, play around.
The editing program I use is PhotoScape X. Much of the program is free. For a one-time payment of $40, the entire program is unlocked.
Once I’m finished playing with the photo, I upload to Spoonflower and play around until I get a design that repeats in a pleasing way. I have to proof my designs before I can sell them, and I’m about ready to have another 42 designs proofed. After that, the designs go into my Spoonflower shop here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman
I’m having a rough day. There’s no particular reason for it; it’s just part of being bipolar. I have limited energy, but I seem to be manic. Bipolar disorder doesn’t have to make sense, but I have to live with bipolar disorder. Meds help dull the extremes, but they don’t cure bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder is always with me. Sometimes just under the surface. Sometimes exploding through the surface.
Brady, the Australian labradoodle puppy I have, did something remarkable today. She could smell my distress and instinctively leaned up against me – something psychiatric service dogs are trained to do. Of course a couple hours later, she decorated the kitchen floor with poop and pee. It’s not easy being a puppy. Not easy being the puppy’s human, either.
Good thing Brady didn’t like the doggy wading pool Jim found in the garbage. The pool grew legs the other day. Now, there’s a security camera covering the back of the house.
The sciatica is still hanging around. I’m able to walk farther, but farther is a relative term. It means I can walk out the back door with Brady, so 10 feet to her potty spot, and then come back in the house. I need to exercise. Brady gets separation anxiety whenever I leave the kitchen. She’s not ready yet to have the run of the house so I have to keep her in the kitchen. I’m sure the healing process has stretched out because of how inactive I’ve been.
We seem to be surrounded by randy quail. So far, I’ve counted four batches of day-old baby quail. When I shoot quail, I have to do it through the sliding glass door. As long as the quail aren’t aware of me, they don’t run off. While I would have liked to have my 150-600mm lens on the camera, what was on the camera was my 18-400mm lens. Taking the time to change lenses would have meant missing the shots. I played around with cropping the shot when I was editing. The John Prine fuzz on the baby quail’s head cracks me up.
The original shot. While this is the quail version of Where’s Waldo, it’s easy to see how tiny day-old quail are.
The first crop. Quail are easier to find, but they look bigger than they are in real life.
The second crop. Almost there. There’s more detail, but the edit didn’t seem right.
The third crop.
My Spoonflower order is now about 40 miles away and I likely won’t get my package until Monday. Sigh. I really want to start making undies although my time in the sewing room is limited to when Jim is home. There are too many places in the sewing room where Brady can get into trouble. I’d go into the sewing room, which is off the kitchen, and close the door, but Brady has severe separation anxiety. I’m trying to help her with that, but I don’t seem to have made much progress.
Brady likes to hide out in the pet carrier in the kitchen. I think it’s because it’s dark inside the carrier and she feels safe in her den. She’s not fond of the crate we have for her. I decided to make the crate more den like. I took a sheet, crudely attached the sheet to the crate, and created a darkened den. I put Brady’s toys in her new den. She refuses to go inside the den.
I’ve been playing around with designs that might make interesting fabric. Here’s the latest:
I’ve used up all my spoons, and It’s only 11:30 AM
Spoons are a way of explaining energy or lack of energy. If energy is represented by 12 spoons, after all 12 spoons are used, there’s no energy left. No energy to walk around. No energy to cook. No energy to make art. No energy left for anything other than shuffling into the bedroom and taking a nap.
The sciatic problem is becoming less and less each day. With that comes the ability to walk more and more without my walker. That’s the problem. I feel better, so I walk without my walker longer than I should. That’s how I used up all my spoons this morning. The worst was me walking Brady and discovering I was out of spoons. I wasn’t near a door when the spoons were all used up. I leaned against the car, called to Jim to take Brady, then gingerly made my way into the house.
My feet hurt because they are swollen, they are swollen because I’m not active, I’m not active because I have no spoons left. This sucks.
I was hoping to get outside and photograph the yuccas blooming, but that’s no longer possible today because I have no spoons left. I’d have to push the walker up hill. Through sand. While trying to find a large enough distance between cacti that can accommodate the walker. All while trying to keep my camera from knocking against the walker. I’m missing spring.
I got down on the floor yesterday so I could photograph Brady on her level. I shot in RAW only because I had the camera set on RAW when I saw we had day-old baby quail and I wanted to be ready to photograph them. I set the camera to rapid burst. 92 photos, and some were even decent.
Spoons are a way of explaining energy or lack of energy. If energy is represented by 12 spoons, after all 12 spoons are used, there’s no energy left. No energy to walk around. No energy to cook. No energy to make art. No energy left for anything other than shuffling into the bedroom and taking a nap.
The sciatic problem is becoming less and less each day. With that comes the ability to walk more and more without my walker. That’s the problem. I feel better, so I walk without my walker longer than I should. That’s how I used up all my spoons this morning. The worst was me walking Brady and discovering I was out of spoons. I wasn’t near a door when the spoons were all used up. I leaned against the car, called to Jim to take Brady, then gingerly made my way into the house.
My feet hurt because they are swollen, they are swollen because I’m not active, I’m not active because I have no spoons left. This sucks.
I was hoping to get outside and photograph the yuccas blooming, but that’s no longer possible today because I have no spoons left. I’d have to push the walker up hill. Through sand. While trying to find a large enough distance between cacti that can accommodate the walker. All while trying to keep my camera from knocking against the walker. I’m missing spring.
I got down on the floor yesterday so I could photograph Brady on her level. I shot in RAW only because I had the camera set on RAW when I saw we had day-old baby quail and I wanted to be ready to photograph them. I set the camera to rapid burst. 92 photos, and some were even decent.
Spoons are a way of explaining energy or lack of energy. If energy is represented by 12 spoons, after all 12 spoons are used, there’s no energy left. No energy to walk around. No energy to cook. No energy to make art. No energy left for anything other than shuffling into the bedroom and taking a nap.
The sciatic problem is becoming less and less each day. With that comes the ability to walk more and more without my walker. That’s the problem. I feel better, so I walk without my walker longer than I should. That’s how I used up all my spoons this morning. The worst was me walking Brady and discovering I was out of spoons. I wasn’t near a door when the spoons were all used up. I leaned against the car, called to Jim to take Brady, then gingerly made my way into the house.
My feet hurt because they are swollen, they are swollen because I’m not active, I’m not active because I have no spoons left. This sucks.
I was hoping to get outside and photograph the yuccas blooming, but that’s no longer possible today because I have no spoons left. I’d have to push the walker up hill. Through sand. While trying to find a large enough distance between cacti that can accommodate the walker. All while trying to keep my camera from knocking against the walker. I’m missing spring.
I got down on the floor yesterday so I could photograph Brady on her level. I shot in RAW only because I had the camera set on RAW when I saw we had day-old baby quail and I wanted to be ready to photograph them. I set the camera to rapid burst. 92 photos, and some were even decent.
Spoons are a way of explaining energy or lack of energy. If energy is represented by 12 spoons, after all 12 spoons are used, there’s no energy left. No energy to walk around. No energy to cook. No energy to make art. No energy left for anything other than shuffling into the bedroom and taking a nap.
The sciatic problem is becoming less and less each day. With that comes the ability to walk more and more without my walker. That’s the problem. I feel better, so I walk without my walker longer than I should. That’s how I used up all my spoons this morning. The worst was me walking Brady and discovering I was out of spoons. I wasn’t near a door when the spoons were all used up. I leaned against the car, called to Jim to take Brady, then gingerly made my way into the house.
My feet hurt because they are swollen, they are swollen because I’m not active, I’m not active because I have no spoons left. This sucks.
I was hoping to get outside and photograph the yuccas blooming, but that’s no longer possible today because I have no spoons left. I’d have to push the walker up hill. Through sand. While trying to find a large enough distance between cacti that can accommodate the walker. All while trying to keep my camera from knocking against the walker. I’m missing spring.
I got down on the floor yesterday so I could photograph Brady on her level. I shot in RAW only because I had the camera set on RAW when I saw we had day-old baby quail and I wanted to be ready to photograph them. I set the camera to rapid burst. 92 photos, and some were even decent.
Spoons are a way of explaining energy or lack of energy. If energy is represented by 12 spoons, after all 12 spoons are used, there’s no energy left. No energy to walk around. No energy to cook. No energy to make art. No energy left for anything other than shuffling into the bedroom and taking a nap.
The sciatic problem is becoming less and less each day. With that comes the ability to walk more and more without my walker. That’s the problem. I feel better, so I walk without my walker longer than I should. That’s how I used up all my spoons this morning. The worst was me walking Brady and discovering I was out of spoons. I wasn’t near a door when the spoons were all used up. I leaned against the car, called to Jim to take Brady, then gingerly made my way into the house.
My feet hurt because they are swollen, they are swollen because I’m not active, I’m not active because I have no spoons left. This sucks.
I was hoping to get outside and photograph the yuccas blooming, but that’s no longer possible today because I have no spoons left. I’d have to push the walker up hill. Through sand. While trying to find a large enough distance between cacti that can accommodate the walker. All while trying to keep my camera from knocking against the walker. I’m missing spring.
I got down on the floor yesterday so I could photograph Brady on her level. I shot in RAW only because I had the camera set on RAW when I saw we had day-old baby quail and I wanted to be ready to photograph them. I set the camera to rapid burst. 92 photos, and some were even decent.
Spoons are a way of explaining energy or lack of energy. If energy is represented by 12 spoons, after all 12 spoons are used, there’s no energy left. No energy to walk around. No energy to cook. No energy to make art. No energy left for anything other than shuffling into the bedroom and taking a nap.
The sciatic problem is becoming less and less each day. With that comes the ability to walk more and more without my walker. That’s the problem. I feel better, so I walk without my walker longer than I should. That’s how I used up all my spoons this morning. The worst was me walking Brady and discovering I was out of spoons. I wasn’t near a door when the spoons were all used up. I leaned against the car, called to Jim to take Brady, then gingerly made my way into the house.
My feet hurt because they are swollen, they are swollen because I’m not active, I’m not active because I have no spoons left. This sucks.
I was hoping to get outside and photograph the yuccas blooming, but that’s no longer possible today because I have no spoons left. I’d have to push the walker up hill. Through sand. While trying to find a large enough distance between cacti that can accommodate the walker. All while trying to keep my camera from knocking against the walker. I’m missing spring.
I got down on the floor yesterday so I could photograph Brady on her level. I shot in RAW only because I had the camera set on RAW when I saw we had day-old baby quail and I wanted to be ready to photograph them. I set the camera to rapid burst. 92 photos, and some were even decent.
Jim is making dog treats from a recipe I found. Oat flour (or ground up oatmeal – which is what oat flour is), banana and peanut butter. They’re baking at the moment. Brady adores peanut butter.
I intended to shoot several necklaces so I could list the necklaces in my store, Deb Thuman Art http://www.DebThumanArt.com. I shot just one necklace before my lower back started to hurt. I’m getting better, but I’m still having to push a walker to get around. Yesterday, I intended to do some cleaning in the sewing room so I’d have a larger space in which to work. I picked up something that was too heavy and I hurt my lower back. Having a neuropathy flare up rounds out the physical miseries.
I can’t photograph yucca blooms because I can’t push a walker uphill through sand. I can’t sew because I can’t remove the clutter from the room. I can’t walk Brady because I can’t walk far without my walker. Brady doesn’t understand why she can’t run and play if I’m holding her leash.
Brady is going through a growth spurt. Suddenly, her legs are too long for her body. She’s also faster than the speeding shutter.
My brain is dark. After my only ketamine treatment, my brain felt full and bright. Now, two and a half months later, my brain is dark again. So. Do I ask for another ketamine treatment? Do I ask to be a participant in a clinical trial for LSD or MDMA? Or do I just go forward and hope for the best? I don’t remember what happy feels like. I’ve been depressed for more than 60 years. Which is depressing. I’m not suicidal. I’m not happy. Right now, I feel like my life is all broken pieces. Pick up a piece, have pain, drop a piece.
Spoonflower had a sale, I had Spoon Dollars – commission on fabric designs that have been sold – and I needed underwear. Soon, five 1-yard pieces of fabric I designed will arrive at my door. Yes, I will post photos of the finished underwear. No, I will not be modeling the underwear. You’re welcome.
I suppose there was a time when I wasn’t mentally ill, but I have no memory of that time. I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out where I am in relation to center. Above center is manic. Below center is depressed. Depression has levels. Depressed, suicidal, below suicidal where I’d have to feel better in order to kill myself.
I’ve been wanting a service dog. I searched the internet for service dogs. The one-size-fits-no one pre-trained service dogs aren’t trained for bipolar disorder. Eventually, someone took pity on me and recommended a trainer in Alamogordo (about an hour north of where I live). The trainer comes to your home and trains both you and the dog simultaneously. Brady’s puppy training starts tomorrow.
Once I found a trainer, I needed to find a dog. I tried looking in the local animal shelter. Every dog in there was 2 years old. Yeah, sure. Every dog was part pit bull. I’ve seen how vicious pit bulls can be and they aren’t appropriate for service dogs. Eventually, I decided on a labradoodle. The first labradoodles were bred to be a service dog for a woman who was visually impaired and whose husband was allergic to dogs. I contacted a breeder about three hours north of where I live. That breeder refused to sell a puppy to anyone who had never had a puppy. That’s like saying you can’t eat broccoli because you’ve never eaten broccoli. Eventually, I found a breeder near Pueblo, Colorado. Quite a few of her puppies have gone on to be service dogs.
This is Brady.
She is now 9 weeks old and we got her this past Saturday. It was a 9-hour drive home and I’m surprised how well behaved she was. I had gotten her a Snuggle Puppy and I made the heart beat. It’s supposed to mimic the mother’s heart.
For a few days, she was calm. That changed yesterday. She discovered her legs are made of springs. She decided to pee all over the kitchen floor. I can’t put down piddle pads because Brady thinks they are chew toys. Today, she seems more calm.
Jim brought home a tennis ball for her. She likes bounding and prancing after it as it bounces across the room.
Nap time.
At the moment, I have a sciatica attack down my left leg. It’s getting better, but I’m still pushing a walker around. Between the walker and a new puppy, I haven’t been able to do much creatively. Bleah.
I’ve no idea what I did, but I now have sciatica. Again. Bleah! And so I’m pushing around a walker and discovering how many places I can’t go in my home. The door to the walk-in closet is too narrow to accommodate my walker. So is the door to the pantry and the door to the guest bathroom. As long as I don’t want to eat or wear clothes, everything is wonderful.
I have missed about half the blooming season for claret cup cacti. The ocotillo are blooming and the blooms last only a few days. The red yucca are starting to bloom. Yesterday, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I grabbed my camera and pushed my walker out the front door. Shooting from a sitting position is interesting. There are 4 hours a day considered “golden hours.” Two hours after sunrise and two hours before sunset. Yes, that’s nice light. It’s important to know how to shoot is less than perfect light. Cloud cover. Fog. Middle of the day. That’s why I take advantage of the rare cloudy day and even rarer fog. Now, I’m learning how to shoot sitting down.
Red yucca buds and blooms.
Blooming ocotillo.
I need to make curtains for the bedroom, bathroom and laundry room. Before we moved to New Mexico, Jim worked for Gunlocke in New York’s Southern Tier. Gunlocke makes high end furniture. If a customer wanted furniture upholstered in something other than stock fabric, the leftover custom fabric is kept for a certain length of time and then put in the company store. Employees could buy fabric for $1 a yard. Some of the fabric Jim bought retailed for $70 a yard. That was 22 years ago. Before we moved, Jim bought as much upholstery fabric as possible. If it fit in the truck, he bought it. He’d buy fabric a couple times a week. I still have some of that fabric. We went through my upholstery fabric stash and I found some cream colored fabric for the bedroom and some teal fabric for the bathroom and laundry room. Why upholstery fabric? Because it’s necessary to block the sun in the summer or the house will be unbearably hot. Upholstery fabric means I can have fabric heavy enough to block the sun and I won’t have to make lining for the curtains.
I’ve developed an allergy to the laundry detergent I was using. Jim brought home a large container of Ecos. It’s a laundry detergent that doesn’t have coloring or scent. It’s a great choice if one has an allergy to laundry detergent. Now, I have to wash all of my clothes and all of the bedding. This wouldn’t be so bad if I could get a basket of laundry outside and hang clothes on the line. It’s tough to push a walker loaded with a laundry basket and almost as tough getting over the step by the sliding glass door. I’m washing, Jim is hanging.
Next, I noticed I’m having a rash where I was putting the electrodes for my TENS unit. The TENS unit is one of the ways I kill the pain from peripheral neuropathy. The rash is on the top of my foot which eliminates a number of places I could put the electrodes. I’m having a neuropathy flare up. Bleah.
I ordered proofs of designs from Spoonflower yesterday. After the proofs arrive, I’ll put 40+ fabric designs into my Spoonflower shop here https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman The fabric the proofs are on is used as the backing for quilts.
Yesterday, I played around with editing and came up with some fabric designs.
This is what happened when I played around with the red yucca flower photo above.
I love working with a positive and negative print. I need to play around more with that.
I don’t know what I did, but I woke up a week and a half ago in pain. I’ve done something to my left leg. I’ve seen my chiropractor three times and I’m working on trigger release points (to release the muscle) and seated exercise routines. I can’t stand without my walker for very long. I also can’t walk more than a few steps without my walker. When we had the house built, I thought having a whirlpool tub in the bathroom was decadent luxury. It didn’t take long to realize that tub wasn’t a luxury; it was a necessity. There’s a built in bench in the shower. When we had the house built, I thought that bench would allow me to shave my legs without doing the pelican dance. Now, sitting on that bench is the only way I can take a shower. I’d like to be working with a massage therapist, but we’ve still got restrictions here and the massage therapist I had been going to is temporarily closed. Temporary may morph into permanently closed. The pandemic has been rough on people who are self-employed.
Meanwhile….I pick up the puppy in three weeks. I need to be without pain when that happens.
Because I can’t walk without my walker and taking my walker for a walk in the desert isn’t practical, I’ve been working on abstract photos to be turned into fabric designs.
If this design goes into my Spoonflower shop, you’ll be able have matching yoga pants, sports bra and wallpaper.
I’m considering ordering fabric with the last two designs.
My bead order arrived and I’m working on necklaces. It ain’t called art therapy for nothing. One of the surest ways to relieve peripheral neuropathy is to make art.
I had fun using lots of Swarovski crystals for this one.
Mostly glass beads along with wooden beads and some agate.
Why are you seeing a gap between the last bead and the clasp? Two reasons. Although I use very strong stringing material, if there’s too much tension on the stringing material, it will snap. A little extra wire shows there’s no undue tension. The other reason is I have to get fingers and pliers between the clasp and the bead.
I got a call from the labradoodle breeder this week. I started picking last for this litter. The litter contains six females and two males. I want a female. I’ve talked with people who train police dogs to sniff out drugs, and was told that it’s easier to train a female and females tend to be calmer than males. This week, I learned I’m now picking fifth so there will absolutely be a female puppy when it’s my turn to pick. I’ve ordered books on training puppies and training service dogs. I will be working with a trainer, but he’s currently got a waiting list for puppy training. I will need to start housebreaking and training to walk on a leash immediately.
I had ordered a print of one of my designs and a collection of 42 of my designs from Spoonflower.
Ketamine Brain.
It will be a wall hanging when it’s finished. I still haven ‘t figured out how I want to quilt it. I had thought about using holographic gold thread or using a metallic thread. I’ve started the quilting on Depression, and I’ve got three quilts I need to make binding for. Designs that I print for my quilts are never put in my Spoonflower shop.
I refuse to waste fabric, so I use the design proofs for quilt backing.
I’ve been experimenting with assorted photography techniques. When photographing flowers, it’s best to get the camera on the level of the flower. That’s not always easy. There’s only so far down I can squat, and Jim has filled the yard with cacti. Someone on the Digital Photography School Facebook page suggested getting the camera, rather than me, down to the level of the flower and use live view to see how the composition looks. That’s what I did with our lone iris bloom. Jim dug up some of the rhizomes and planted then in assorted places in the yard.
Next, I experimented with photographing water droplets on leaves.
My store, Deb Thuman Art is here:.http://www.DebThumanArt.com If you want to see more than just a few of the items in my store, you need to click on “shop” at the top left of the home page.
Deb's Art 