The Inertia before the Ertia

I - keep - trying - to - get - motivated. 

Since I actually opened my Etsy shop, I've hardly done any crafting/arting. I mostly sit and read or waste time on the web. Lots of time, because my old netbook is soooo slow.

I did make some holiday earrings, but so far only two pairs.

Etsy

Etsy

I've got all this other Christmasy material sitting there unused at the moment.

And people keep dumping giving me tins to transform and make into tiny little worlds.

21-tin tower

I have ideas, but I'm lacking the mojovation, the muse magic, the fire in the belly that has nothing to do with sriracha. My brushes and glue pots are dry.

I've been through these cycles before. I think right now I'm taking advantage of the calm before the storm. Our big move back to the UK is still months away, but early next year we'll need to start sorting and cleaning and deciding what to take and what to throw away, and trying to sell everything else. It's daunting and exciting, leaving behind our home here, where I see my mother and sister frequently,

Hand-painted collage I did a few years ago with an old photo of my mom, who grew up on a ranch

but knowing we'll become reacquainted with our beautiful and talented granddaughters.

"Grandma Val - in a mermaid dress!" drawn by Amelie (she wrote her name backwards)

Living in a lazy limbo, I've been perusing Instagram. Without a smartphone, it's a pain to try to add photos of my own (which I wrote about here, near the end), but I'm enjoying lurking and liking. Once we get moved, I'm going to get a smartphone, and a super-duper state-of-the-art laptop, and maybe a kitten (thanks to Bella and Francis making me want a cat again after 25 cat-free years)!

Val

Red and Pink and Orange

My favorite colors on the color wheel are the reds. They sing to me in a way that blue and yellow never do. I always pick the red playing piece when I play a board game, and my favorite flavors come in red, too - cherry, strawberry, merlot.

I bought a new, red handbag, which I'll show you properly one day. Here I am carrying it and surrounded by red before going out to dinner for my birthday.

Guess how old I am - it's scary! Or maybe I got the math wrong.

Laughing away the years!

I've always loved pink and orange, too - red's kissing cousins. Since October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and I just had my mammo-cram the other day, I got some small pink gifts at the imaging clinic. Whheeeeee! Who doesn't want a pink plastic coin purse and a pink whistle and a pink emery board?

Now that summer's over, my bowling ball - the Pinkster - is seeing some action.

My scores are looking pretty good, too. And my favorite snack at the bowling alley is Cheetos, which brings me to orange.

October IS orange, don't you think? The leaves, the pumpkins, the O at the beginning of both words. Look at your calendar - I bet they used orange for October.

I created a Halloween brooch that has orange in it, along with black and purple. The sticky-out beads remind me of spider legs, and the twisted wires are like cobwebs - although the description I used on Etsy was a little more gruesome.

No matter the month or the color, Visible Monday is on every week, so I'll be heading over to link the pink, and the red, and the orange.

Val

Dilemma Horns

 Oh, what to do, what to do?

You know I've been working on a long-term, temporary job. It's not exciting, but it is a job. It's helping to ensure that I will be able to own a car in retirement - at least for a year or two. After losing a good job last year, any extra money now translates to our level of future comfort.

Besides my temporary work, I've done some freelance editing on the side. Not a lot, but I need time to develop it. I'd also like the time to work on my crafts and set up an Etsy shop (more on that in a minute). Both those strands would be under my control, would not require going to an office, and would be possible to do even in my late 60s or early 70s, if necessary.

So... there's a permanent job available at the place I'm working. It would be full-time, as now, but would obviously pay better and include benefits. It would mean continuing to go in to an office five days a week. Now, I have to mention that the office is over-heated. Seriously, the thermostats in the office read between 76 and 78 degrees! Who does that? I'm menopausal, I have a fan running all day, and it's just too hot.

That may sound minor, but it's a comfort factor. Also, sitting at a computer all day takes its toll on my back, hips and waistline (my home office is set up so I can either stand or sit).

Do I play it safe and apply for a predictable income? Or do I try again to establish my own business(es) and continue to pay for health insurance on my own? It's a tough one.

I hope to get Etsy set up in June, after beautiful granddaughter has visited (we pick her up at the airport tomorrow!). Here's my most recent creation - a Day of the Dead shrine, which will be part of a series.

I think I'm done, but then again, I think it needs a little more gaud (you know, to be more gaudy).

He who lives with hope, dies happy.

Go on, my wise friends - hit me with your opinions on the job dilemma, and also let me know what you think about the little shrine.

Oh, and here's me on Mother's Day (with my niece) wearing a recently thrifted dress. It buttons down the front, but it's too tight on the hips so I wear it as a duster.

I had just dropped a bunch of cookies in the whipped cream - yum!


I'm linking up my creamy cookie faux pas with Visible Monday!

Val

T3 - Plaid and Paisley

I'm struggling a bit to come up with something for Thoughtful Third Thursday. It's all about books, and although I've been reading almost constantly, I've only finished a couple of books in the past month. I ditched two books before I even got halfway through. Funny, they were both set in Washington State - my old stomping grounds. They were recommended by a colleague with whom I share lots of book and movie recommendations, but we don't actually have the same taste at all. Except I turned him and his wife on to Donna Tartt and Kate Atkinson, and they turned me on to Tana French and Gillian Flynn. Other than that we haven't been having much luck. I'll tell you more about the rejected books at the end of the post, for anyone who's interested in my sweeping and subjective opinion.

Right now I'm reading Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn. It's the second in her series of Jackson Brodie crime novels, and it's pretty good. I'm not a huge crime fiction fan, but I generally like her writing, although not always. She tends to throw in lots of characters and their musings and history while they're doing other things. It's easy to lose track sometimes.

The book is set in Edinburgh, so I decided to go with tartan for an outfit. Here's a quote from the book:

"The hotel was surprisingly cheap and unsurprisingly awful. Anything that could be decorated with tartan was, even the ceiling had been papered in a funereal Black Watch. On the walls were hung framed prints of Old Edinburgh and heraldic clan insignia mounted on wooden shields."

I mixed the tartan with paisley - another Scottish association. The design is Indian, but when it became popular in Great Britain quite a lot of paisley patterns were produced at mills in Paisley, Scotland.

The style of the book is kind of sardonic, wry, and self-deprecating. There's a bit too much death and blood for my taste, but I do like Jackson. The BBC has made a series of three Jackson Brodie books, and the character is played by Jason Isaacs - aka Lucius Malfoy of Harry Potter fame.

My shirt is a Michael Kors men's shirt, the scarf is Ray Strauss, which I bought from Bella at The Citizen Rosebud on Etsy. The yellow jeans are thrifted Shylo, and the suede leopard sneakers are Born.

Now, about the other books.

I started reading The Orchardist by Amanda Coplin, and I didn't like it at all. The style was very aloof and pseudo-poetic in a spare kind of way. Lots of sentences seemed very clunky and immature, and I just didn't get into the characters. Glad it was only a library book.

I read two books by Jonathan Evison, well, one and a bit. The first one I loved - The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving. It was a funny, sweet, heart-wrenching tale about a man's life being put back together (in spite of himself) after a tragedy. I definitely recommend this book, as well as another Evison book, All About Lulu. But the one I didn't finish is West of Here. I think it's more of a man's book, long descriptions about wild scenery and men moving through it. And mud. Just not enough human interaction to hold my attention.

Come on over to My Closet Catalogue or A Bibliophile's Style and see the other visual book reports!

Update April 30 - now linking up to 52 Pick-me-up for Yellow Fever.

Val

I think I blue it

Here's the outfit.

 

Simple, functional office wear. Lightweight cotton jacket – Marketplace: Handwork of India; top – JCP; gray slacks – Lee; jewelry – Etsy.

 

Here are the shoes.

I (heart) Comfort, cloth, formerly black.

 

Here's the story.

I forgot I had these shoes. I bought them eight years ago when we first moved here and I started my office job. I needed to get some new clothes, cheap and quick, so I bought these in black.

When I found them again a couple of weeks ago I was thinking how I'd like to have a pair of blue shoes, suede or otherwise. Then the shoe fairy threw these in my face as if to say, "Use your imagination, sweetheart. You won't miss them if it doesn't work."

So I bought blue fabric paint and painted them. After taping off the faux leather trim and the soles, I decided that I'd leave the side panel black. I can always change it later.

Unfortunately, the tape pulled off some of the faux leather so I need to fix that – maybe I can make it look like faux blue leopard (as opposed to real blue leopard). Anyway, they're fixable.

 

Now here's where I really blue it. I decided to dye this jacket (photographed last summer), and I wanted a kind of denim color.

This is what I got.

 

The color is supposed to be Royal Blue. It's more like Five-day-old Bruise Blue. I was leery about using the washing machine, so I did it in our utility sink, and I probably didn't leave it in long enough because I got tired of standing in the garage stirring blue liquid with a bamboo cane. Wouldn't you?

The result is not unusable, especially if I swap the buttons. I could also add some layered ruffles to the collar and cuffs. 

But – I – do – not – like – the – color.

So, more dye? A vat of watered down fabric paint? Altered couture to the point of making it unrecognizable? What do you think?

Val