Out with the Old Laptop, In with the New
July 2024 has been a crazy month, in terms of political news stories! My own life has been much quieter than that, thank goodness, but one thing that has happened is that I got a new laptop. The old one has been having some issues, and it was time for a change. I’ve finally gotten it mostly set up the way I want it, with all the programs I regularly use installed and the settings more or less as they “should” be (according to me).
While in the process of getting everything just so, these dueling pop-ups amused me:
Maybe it’s just me, but I found it funny… “Change it back.” “Wait—don’t change it back!”
Boys, please! There’s no need to fight over little ol’ me!
(But Bing pays me to use their search, so I’m sticking with that for now. It’s easy enough to visit other search engines, as necessary. Besides, I’m not sure Google has lived up to their sinister-sounding “don’t be evil” motto—not that Microsoft is any better, really!)
As for the laptop itself, I’m still getting used to its quirks. To tell the truth, most of the quirks so far seem to be with the newer versions of the software I’ve installed, rather than the laptop itself, but there are some differences with the device itself, too. For instance, this is the first device I’ve owned that has facial recognition and can tell when I’m not looking at the screen. (It’s set to dim when I look away for a certain length of time, then go to sleep, to conserve battery.) I have to say, that’s kind of creepy. Convenient, maybe, but still creepy.
Selvage Sawtooth Stars Progress
I’ve made good progress on this quilt top. Last time, I wrote that I found the diagonal squares more time-consuming to make. With a little more practice, the process became more streamlined, and by the end, it was a snap.
My system worked like this: Pin central string (not selvage) to paper template. Glue down the selvage pieces for about 8 to 10 squares at a time, then sew everything down. Next, mark the white background square, pin things together, and sew. Trim them up, press them open, and done! Working in small batches kept it interesting and improved my motivation to continue as I saw progress with every new stack of completed HST units.
After all the HST units were finished, it was time to start joining together the quarter-star units. Each one is made the same way, just positioned differently to make a full star.
I don’t remember if I mentioned this last time (or if I’d even thought about it), but I’ve decided to put sashing and cornerstones between the star blocks. I think it will look better that way, with a little breathing room between the stars.
I’ve already prepared the sashing and cornerstones, so now I “just” need to start sewing it all together! I hope to start later this week.
When I put my first squares for this project on the design wall, I wasn’t impressed and had some doubts, but looking at the wall now, I feel more excited about it. These super-scrappy projects really do look better and better, the more variety you can throw in them.
"Reverse Coloring Book" Fun
I’m sure I’ve posted about this type of thing before. I think I discovered it for myself before seeing anyone else talk about it, but it turns out it’s a popular thing, at the moment. Essentially, you loosely paint a page (in watercolor, in this case), let it dry, then go back over it with pen, markers, pencils, crayon, more paint, or whatever you like, really.
You can try to find and define logical shapes in the page (a landscape or a floral arrangement), or you can take it in a different direction. Sometimes the color splotches in these reverse coloring pages are fairly well defined, so you can see what was originally intended, but I assume that others are more abstract. You can buy these printed like a coloring book, or you can paint your own pages. And of course if you paint your own, you can make them with a specific subject in mind, or keep it more spontaneous and see what you find once it’s dry.
Anyway! That’s what people mean when they talk about reverse coloring books/pages. In the last month or two, I watched a video of Diane Antone painting a floral arrangement in a vase, and I thought I’d give that a try. I’ve done the reverse style before, but not (that I can recall) in that particular way. I’d share a link to the specific video, but I can’t seem to find the exact one. If you’re interested, you can browse her many, many watercolor videos here on YouTube.
I decided to paint several of these types of abstract floral arrangements all at one time, using different colors and even different brands of paint. Here, I put four on one page, divided by washi tape…
These all start out like the two on the right—just random-ish blobs of color running into one another. (One of these is laid out more like a landscape than a floral arrangement.)
Then I went back over the page with ink, sometimes white chalk pastel pencil or color pencil, and more watercolor to create contrast, color the leaves, etc.—and you get something like the ones on the left side of the page.
Sometimes it works out better than others, but this type of thing generally goes better if you just go with the flow and don’t worry too much about the results. It’s about having fun (which is true for all of my stuff, really).
This landscape one is a bit too simple (boring), in my opinion, but I wanted to try out adding textures in pencil, so I guess it was a learning experience.
I think the next two are my favorites of this batch. I still have one more yet to be added to.
A Few More Watercolor Things
I posted a phone snapshot of these little trees last time (or the time before?), but while I was scanning the rest of the things in this blog post, I scanned those, as well.
The scanner changes the way things look—sometimes for the better and sometimes not. And then there’s the attempts to color-correct in Photoshop… It can be hard to know when to stop, sometimes. And I don’t always know which version I like best!
After doing the row of houses shared in a recent post, I decided to try making another similar thing, but without the big trees in the background. My colors are very “illustrated children’s book” or “cartoon”, but I guess that’s not necessarily a bad thing—just not what I usually tend to gravitate towards.
Bottom line: It was fun to do!
Listening To...
There have been times when I’ve listened to a fair bit of talk radio, but in between there have been periods where I was fed up with the state of the world and just needed a break—sometimes an extended one!
I’d been in one of those “ignorance is bliss” moods for a while, but the events of this month (the assassination attempt against Trump, the debate, the whole mess with Biden and Harris) encouraged me to tune back in.
I’ve located a few of the shows that annoy me the least. I tend to listen to them in podcast form, though occasionally I’ll listen live. I like that I can listen to the podcasts when I choose and more easily skip through the parts that don’t interest me as much.
For music, how about something simple and relaxing, with beautiful visuals? “Starry Night” by Jordan Critz:
