Category: Me and My Studio

Me and where I paint, and sew, and create things

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Space Fish and Web Design Manuals

I’ve been doing tons of web junk lately, adding PayPal buttons to our Ruffing’s site, enlarging the print images, showing the prints in simulated frames, adding dolls to the doll gallery. The unfortuate part is that most of it isn’t “live” yet because it needs more work, and you can’t even see it on the Internet yet. So, none of that feels very rewarding. I got bored today and made these “Space Fish”. I have no idea what that means. I was was watching Doctor Who again last night. Maybe I’m just on a SciFi kick.

I like the way these two are swimming side by side. I wish I had remembered to set my resolution higher when I took the original photos. This one is very small.

I printed out my web design program manuals, because I really can’t look things up while I am working on the computer. It is more than my brain can handle, trying to remember complex directions while I toggle from one window to the other. I think I printed out 699 pages worth. And I punched all the little binder holes in them. At least my helper likes them.

I’m still trying to find a way to absorb the information by osmosis, maybe by leaving them, one at a time, under my pillow at night, but I am afraid the osmosis will work in reverse and drain what little is left of my mind away instead of adding to it.

Okay, yeah, too much SciFi and too much work…

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Gold Medals and Arboretums

So, S.B. gets a gold medal for delivering my scrapbook to my grandma and visiting with her for awhile. She seemed to really enjoy the book and the visit. I actually made S.B. a “gold medal”, but I forgot to snap a photo of it.

We visited the J C Raulston Arboretum, and I was hoping to get some flower photos, but everything was a little past its bloom time. There were still some very pretty lilies and these Gloriosa Daisies.

I used to have bunches of these in my gardens at our old house where I grew up. They are amazing when you see them open for the first time. Some of them are just enormous, and their colors and markings vary a lot. They’re quite dramatic and easy to grow from seed.
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Scrapbook for Grandma

I’ve been spending most of this week scanning and editing old photos, and arranging them onto scrapbook pages. My grandma has recently gone to live in a nursing home. My uncle had been trying to look after her in her home, but she needed around-the-clock care. It’s very sad that she can no longer remember things she once knew, or recognize some of her family or, often, her own belongings. She does seem to be cheerful most of the time in her new home, and has plenty of people around her, as she has always liked to have. But I am not sure she knows me, or many of us in the family anymore.

So, I have been putting this book together, matching our photos with our names, and descriptions of who we are. I’ve been told not to expect her to know anyone, and I’m adjusting to that idea. Still, I’m hoping something will look familiar to her, and will give her a sense of who her family are and where she came from, if only for a few seconds at a time. I’m also saving the pages on a CD so everyone in the family who wants a copy can have one.

This is my grandma in front of her old house with the hollyhocks I started from seed. They grew much better at her house than they ever did at mine.