and also gradually making progress on various other fronts, remembering that it isn't insurmountable (even if it takes the rest of my life).
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~ baby bear's blue ink ~
The carved trapezoidal tiger block makes really attractive prints... and there are now 14 of them curing while pinned to the indoor drying rack, to stay out of the way until they get attached to the popover dress. The turquoise ink was too light, and the blue barely showed against the black fabric, so some of each mixed together was just right. ~ baby bear's blue ink ~
My usual method of inking the block then turning it face down onto the fabric and hammering didn't work really well for some reason (maybe the ink I have is too old so not as "juicy"?), so instead I left the block inked and face upward, then carefully laid the individual fabric pieces in place and rubbed them with the baren. Got really clear images as seen in the photo. While this would not work well for yardage, for these individual patches it worked a charm.
Then, oddest of all, when I was cleaning off the block after printing, the entire carved linoleum peeled clean away from the substrate. The jute backing stayed attached to the lino, and there is a layer of very slightly sticky adhesive on the chipboard! In all my years of block printing this has never happened to me before, and there is almost no mention of this problem online, other than "don't soak lino blocks in water" which I was not doing!? I will need to figure out a solution, either to reglue, or to cut a new backing block from something...
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"V-SEAT" replacement saddle for bike arrived today. After a fair amount of rude words and some WD-40 I was able to loosen the bolt that holds the seat to the seatpost, and it was not too difficult to remove the old one and attach the new. I do Very Much like how much more room I have between the saddle and the handlebars.
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Twenty-one days of good luck, found two dimes and a penny in the street while I was riding my bike early today...
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Another bit of today's organising was to look through my sewing pattern box, to think about what gets used vs what is just stored there because of "someday might be useful/wanted... There is at least one older pattern totally missing, at least seven or eight that have never been made up, and four of my TNT patterns that will ideally be transferred to Costco cardboard whenever I get some more.
The shirt pattern was missing any of the pattern pieces from the one time when it was modified to have a proper shirt cuff, so all of that information will need to be reconstructed. Fortunately I was able to find the excellent online tutorial that I followed when creating the tower sleeve placket. As it seemed like having it in hand when sewing another one would be useful, and as the computer is not anywhere near the sewing zone, my first thought was to carefully take notes and sketches of each of the very clear images. Then my pal Karen told me that using Ctrl-P would bring up an interface that would allow printing the blog post as if it were a document! Old dog new tricks... how in all these years did I never know this!! Now I have some Useful Pages that need a notebook to live in...
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in yard and garden news - since the potato experiment seemed to be ending, I tipped out the pot and found a number of smallish new potatoes under the plants, which turned out to be almost a pound. It wasn't a difficult project, other than making sure to keep it watered. They will make a tasty side dish. Also managed to do a bit more pruning just before wheelie bin day. Pruned a lot of watersprout growth from the apple tree, and cut back the worst of the grapevine, and removed the young grape bunches to prevent wasp incursion later in the summer. Thinking it might not be too late to try for putting up a jar of canned grape leaves for pantry storage. Hmmm...
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took a look at the items currently stored up for the Advent swap; things made bit by bit over the previous months, and surprisingly if only another twelve whatevers are found or made, there will be sixty-two items in the storage box (ie enough for two whole advent swap sets) It was so much fun last year when several folks decided to share additional sets so we could send gift swaps to friends who for various reasons couldn't join but who could still get to enjoy a month of dopamine joy...
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August SMART goals (x=extra)
| # | THINGS MADE | THINGS FIXED | THINGS GONE |
| 1 | - | - | greenwaste bin |
| 2 | - | - | recycle bin |
| 3 | - | - | - |
| 4 | - | - | - |
| 5 | - | - | - |
| 6 | x | x | x |
| 7 | x | x | x |
| 8 | x | x | x |
| 9 | x | x | x |
| 10 | x | x | x |
| 11 | x | x | x |
today's gratitudes -
- managed to remove old bike seat and attach new one
- printed many tiger patches
- learned that Control-P exists
- current AQI is acceptable here, the sky is the correct color
Time of Isolation - Day 1838
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