hand eye crafts

Aside from the many dollars involved, I think my anticipation of the Tooth Stuff is more fraught than it should be.  I'm imagining a couple of (a few?) days of discomfort, where I'm just bundled up on the couch with an icepack and my painkillers.   Surely eating/chewing will be out of the question, so I've bought lots (LOTS) of ice cream for milkshakes.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, soups and yogurt and mashed potatoes and applesauce, but let's not kid ourselves here.  Milkshakes.  

Mine, at least. 1.  "Interstates," or "the interstate."   2.  "Tractor-trailers." 3.  Growing up, I called all carbonated beverages "Cokes."  Now, I pretty much call each one by its actual name. The prompt for the first collage was "bone," and for the second, "fear."  I've never been a fan of clowns, which is why that guy in the second one is hidden, but not hidden enough that you can't tell what he is.  

 The long, public roads that are main arteries between states and cities --- what do you call them? What about the vehicles that move on them;  the ones with 18 wheels? What do you call carbonated beverages? What do you think my one-word prompt was for this collage? This one?

 Have you been to  Temu ?  The website where you can "shop like a billionaire"?  Fair warning: if you go, you might never leave. Since the site and my collaging opened up to me at roughly the same time, I've shopped for supplies there.  Mostly, I've bought stickers.  Some paper, but that's it.  Another tip:  always check for the size of your item.  As in, realize you're getting 1 1/2" x 3" pieces as opposed to 12" x 12".  This is one of the cutest stickers I've gotten: It's only about 1" x 1 1/2," but I know it'll fit in some little nook somewhere. Back to the dentist today to get "fitted" for an Essix.  It's basically a retainer/mouthguard that will have a "tooth" in the place of the one that's getting pulled.  I sleep with a mouthguard now, so I don't think I'll have trouble getting used to it.  It's all beginning to overwhelm me.

 Ever have a day where you were just weepy?  Like, random things make you tear up, or outright bawl? Welcome to my Monday.

I suppose it's what little sisters do;  I'm copying my  twinnie  by using prompts for collages.  She has a formal source for hers.  Me, I came up with a bunch of words, wrote each on a little piece of paper, and am drawing them out of a bowl one by one. Here are two from "Reach": The three from "Purple": Today I've finished one using "Hunt."   As far as knitting --- this is what I'm working on: I made one years ago, and literally wore it out.  The new one will be solid purple and purple tweed.

 Hannah gave me a copy of a book she had two of and I have been making use of it, as you might imagine.  There are several pages like this: They are a solid pattern, which I had assumed peeled off in strips around the center, or the center itself peeled out to produce a "frame." Well, it turns out that, at least in three pages, the alphabet was hiding: I wonder what the other "solid" pages have it store?

So it's a Friday night, and you're in the mood to get all gussied up.  Even if you are sticker paper dolls.

Take the day's rain and its impact on my sinuses add to that the tension headache from having to go to the oral surgeon yesterday  and the general grind in my head from what's going on in my mouth and with my jaw. What do you come up with?

 Tap embodies my feelings about the visit to the oral surgeon today, learning it's going to cost over $5000 to pull my tooth and put it the "base" for an implant.

  The way a cartoonist might render the wind or A dismayed ice cream cone or Kodama or Maybe it's just a leaf with holes;   honestly,  get a hold of yourself Kim.

No one ever, ever said I wasn't my father's girl.

 When Hannah (whose birthday it is today --- Happy Day, Bean!) found Chopper the Kitten, there was much discussion among many people about her (the kitten's --- Hannah's pretty well settled) eventual home.  A co-worker said she'd take her, the vet said she'd take her, I said I'd take her. There was a small problem with everyone's good intentions, though, and I knew it.  If Hannah spent more than 36 hours with the kitten, she'd be completely unwilling to let her go.  This I knew, having known Hannah for, now, 31 years.  If she was going take on the responsibility of bottle-feeding, she was not going to let go easily.  Which is one of the reasons I offered to take the kitten;  Hannah would know where she was, how she was being treated, and that she could see her at any time. BUUUUUT, it turns out Hannah was not the only one forming an attachment.  Nellie has been watching over the kitten, too.  Cleaning her, making sure she eats, etc.  So now, moving Chopper w

 My son would like to show you that being a librarian isn't all shushing people and shelving returns. You're welcome.

 When one enters "stickers" into a retail website's search function, many types of products will be shown to one.  Some will be relevant to one's needs, others will not.  Those which do not will mostly be ignored.   Mostly.

 It's a long story, so I shan't bore you.  Let's just say my one tooth crown needs reshaping, one cavity needs filling and a broken tooth needs. . . We'll see "when we get in there." Kim is being rained on, y'all. Let's see if this can cheer us up.  Hannah gave me the Grogu*, I put him next to Master Yoda, and it looks very much like the elder is rather tickled by the younger's predicament. *I don't like the name, but I realize it's incorrect to call him "Baby Yoda."  I'm trying to stay ahead of the critics.

There's still not much week-to-week progress on my cross-stitch. But there's another horse jaw, so there is that. (In the jaw category, " Moose Jaw" is on of my favorite place names.) One of the reasons cross-stitching progress has been so scant is that I was reading this I've never seen a Lincoln book like this.  The text is press accounts of his political career.  Just fascinating. I'm also reading a book about the Donner Party.  And, you might not believe it from me, but queued up next is a novel.  You read that right: a novel.  Who saw that coming, huh?

Back when I was watching car chases on YouTube ( way  back then), K9 officers were often part of the police response.  Sometimes, more than one dog would be on scene, and that made me wonder, do the police dogs know one another?   As in, do they hang out together back at the station, or when they see each other on duty, is it like, "Bane, dude! How's it going?  How's the family?"  "Wassup, Odin?  Family's good, thanks for asking." My mind goes weird places sometimes.  I know.

 I met her today. I couldn't get a good picture of her until she took a nap.  On Hannah. She hissed when we first met, but we got to friends. In my head, I've been calling her "Raisin" for some reason.  She is not a "Raisin."  I'll have to get to work on another nickname. Hannah has christened her " Chopper."

 Just like you can color your own yarn (thank you, Kool-Aid), you can stain your own craft paper.  You are "supposed" to use either coffee or black tea.  I don't drink either, so improvisation it was. Sadly, Black Cherry Berry produces only a slightly dark, and not "aged" hue, so I thought  Turned out to be a good call. Yes, it meant sacrificing DP, but you're supposed to suffer for your art.

 A couple of things tonight.  First, another example of how my collages lean toward the simple:  This is also still untitled, and I like it very much. Second, a post from Michael Stipe from last weekend:  Briton --- who, when he was working at the theater, sold Stipe a ticket to a movie --- particularly appreciated the shout-out to librarians.

 (The impulse is to talk about current breaking news, but I suspect most of you can correctly guess my reaction to it.  So we'll move on.) What I have discovered about myself as a collager is that I prefer simplicity.  Yes, I can get into covering an area with ephemera (a word collaging has added to my vocabulary), but I'm liking this:  I put a sticker of a cat and a sticker of a frame on a piece of paper, and the more I looked at it, the done-er I was. This is not what I had in mind for this picture of a leaf.  Yet, when I ran over the veins with a green marker, I didn't want to go ahead with my idea.  I'm amazed at how 3D this looks.  Very cool. Oh, and I'm still knitting.  Remember the Wingspan wrap?  I had come to the end of the second ball of the purple yarn, went to get the third to finish things off, and couldn't find it.  Where did I put that yarn?  I still  can't find it.  So I cast on for a sweater.  As one does.

 Thanks to My Twin's praise for my gazing horse collage, I've decided to be brave and show some more. "It Evens Out" "Spoils" "The Means and The End" "Don't Make Any Fuss" This one is untitled as of now, and some parts of it please me. I like the little cut-out I had that mirrors the woman on the background paper.  If you look at it closely, she (the little one) has a basket of cherries, hence the cherry "stuff."  The butterflies became 3D entirely by accident, as the first one I put in place folded up on me.  It's a nice effect, though. Speaking of cut-outs, does anyone know what this is?  It's an old ("vintage," if you will) something, but I can't figure it out.

 This is the latest collage.  I finished it about 45 minutes ago. It's called "She Caught His Gaze." And, since it's Tiny Needle Tuesday: I didn't work on it very much since I last posted it.  As in, last night it struck me that today was TNT, so I put in a few more rows.  Which were miscounted.  So I had to pull them out and start again.  Deadlines --- am I right?

 The instructions here are clear, and fully understood, yet they perplex me all the same. Besides, me, for myself, I have to tear a little bit to even get scissors in place.  See?  Perplexed.

I mentioned Mrs. Hearn, my third grade teacher, a couple of posts ago.  She gave me a way to spell "arithmetic," she had sons who would come to visit her every now and then, and looking back, I feel so  bad for all the giggling they had to endure when they did.  (They were awfully cute, though.) One day, Mrs. Hearn apparently heard someone talking about cooties.  Whomever it was probably accused a classmate of having them or something.  Mrs. Hearn immediately told all of us to listen to her, and, with an extremely, seriously matter-of-fact tone, she said that "cooties" was not a word she wished to hear again.  Did we know what "cooties" were, even?  The answer I heard her give was "headlights."  That made absolutely no sense to me, because headlights are on cars, and we didn't have cars, and maybe there was a grown-up use of the word that we weren't in on.  Honestly, "headlights" stayed with me much longer than it should have. H

Is my TV half-broken or half-functioning? ETA: Thank goodness Henrik is sitting on that side of the desk during the Intermission Report.

 This is kinda my workspace.  Well, my den workspace.  I've another in the kitchen, but it is not photo-worthy just now.  I'm not too sure this one is, to be honest. X-acto knife and cutting board, for trimming collage things.  Bread machine cookbook, because I'm beginning to get in the baking mood.  Yarns used to make a soon-to-be big brother some toys.  Pens and scissors.  Pet comb in case anyone comes near enough for me to use it.  Lotion, which I must always, always have close.  Assorted collaging papers.  Nail polish.  Washi tape. Let me tell you about the washi tape holder.  I made another trip to a thrift store to find something to keep the tape on/in, and after almost giving up, I saw a tall candle holder.  It had a removable glass part that held the candle itself, and it dawned on me that taking the glass piece out and turning the legs part upside down would give me three tall storage spindles.  Yay me!  And yay  Twinnie  for starting my tape collection!