With ten bottle babies in the house currently, pretty much every time I turn around it's time to feed a kitten. But it does mean that I have an abundance of kitten photos at the moment.
This kitten is actually adorable and sweet. I still think this image is funny.
Is it spooky? Meh.
I may have achieved either peak redneck or peak MacGyver over here. Or possibly I am just a cautionary tale about idiots owning a home.
Anyhow, I had my kitchen faucet replaced a few years ago. I was going to do it myself, but then I couldn't get the valves to turn off under the sink and my plumbing rule is that if the water to the house has to be shut off, I'm paying someone else to do it.
The problem is, the faucet I used to replace the previous one (which was literally crumbling to pieces, was a cheap piece of crap. After a couple years, the handle got loose. Then it started falling off, which is a pain because I had to slot it back on the stem while the water was running.
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| View of the underside of the handle |
But I lived with it like that until I realized I couldn't leave it like that when my petsitter came by. That was when I looked more closely and realized I could shove an allen wrench through the hole in the handle and tighten the screw that holds it on the stem. Problem solved.
... for about six months. Then it got loose again. I ignored it for a few months, then tightened it again. And so on. But lately the time between tightening and falling off has been decreasing to days, so I looked more closely — the metal ring that fits on the stem is broken. So every time I tighten it, it just opens a bit more.
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| View inside from the bottom |
Ideally, I would replace the faucet, but I'm between plumbers at the moment and I don't feel like dealing with it. This is my solution. How often do I need to use my socket wrench anyhow?
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| New handle created by parts from my socket wrench set |
It works great.
Once again, I'm realizing that I was influenced by Lisa Frank during my formative years, so asking me to produce "spooky" is like asking a neon dolphin to solve a Rubik's cube. I mean, it could happen, but it would probably be by accident.
Today I tried to draw a pumpkin. A four-year-old can draw a pumpkin, but I required an artistic filter to fix what I'd done. Then I tried to make it fun. Is it spooky? Not so much. But I kind of like it.
I decided to go back into DazStudio today and try to get the dForce stuff to work. The idea is that you have clothing with certain values set such that it hangs naturally on the 3D model when you tell it to run the simulation.
Since non-hooker clothing is rare in Daz, I was excited to see a nice shirt. It's a little hard to see here, but it's what's known as a "batwing shirt".
The problem is, when I put it on the 3D model it looks like a puffy jacket before I run the simulation, and when I run the simulation, it goes completely off the rails. This is where it was going when I finally killed it off today. The tornado of gold polygons heading off to the upper right corner is the shirt.
I have no idea what I'm doing wrong. Oh well.
Anyhow, while I was in Daz Studio, I messed around with some options and made a green person. I should have worked on the lighting a bit, but I'd already wasted a bunch of time on that shirt simulation, so... Yeah.
Is it spooky? No, not unless you are frightened by my complete lack of perfectionism. Maybe I'll re-render it someday with lighting that doesn't wash out all the features. But dang, those trousers look great!
Looking through some old photos for Halloween inspiration, I found one I'd taken last year of my dog next to a stack of pumpkins. They're at a bad angle, but I grabbed them anyhow, added some sparkles and some swirls, and there you go.
Is it spooky? No. I think it gives more of a cozy vibe, but I'm okay with that.
It's good to have a reason to practice, but I think we've confirmed I'm really not into the horror/spooky vibe.
For today's terrifying image, I wanted to once again to attempt blood drops from text, this time using this tutorial. After much screwing around trying to create a new dynamic brush option, I mostly figured things out, though I couldn't find a good font within GIMP.
(Do I understand how fonts are made available on my laptop? Absolutely not. It's one of the few reasons I haven't booted Adobe InDesign to the curb yet — I know I can use any font available there for commercial use and it has a bazillion fonts. Just not $23/month's worth.)
Anyhow, the "Run away!" was fine and all, but as an image, it was kind of boring. And then I thought: Kittens make everything better! I find this hilarious.
I could have blended the kitten image better, but that would have involved getting out the tablet and I was too lazy. The whole thing is still funny anyhow.
Be proud of me — I dropped by the shelter to pick up food for my (eight) foster kittens and did not pick up any new kittens, despite the foster coordinator sending out two emails today. Turns out this was a good thing because one of the litters later turned out to have ringworm and while I'm not against taking care of ringworm kittens, it's not a good surprise.
For today's image, I was playing around with gradients. Again, is it spooky? Hm. I think this may be the closest I've come to a Halloween theme. So I'm going to say: YES!
(Purchased image: DepositPhotos 376866310)
Today I did sort of the same thing I've been doing for the past two days, but this time I followed the directions... Well, not entirely. But I got within the 50th percentile, which for me is amazing.
Is it spooky? Not really. But it's black and white — does that count?
I've also started doing an alphabet in smoke, but it's not done yet, so I threw this together instead. Enjoy day 3 of Horrordailies!
(Original image is from DepositPhotos 10846953.)
In other news, I have five blobs sharing my office and they are pretty cute.
It's day two of Horrordailies. This one is better than yesterday's, but that's not saying much...
Anyhow, this uses an image I purchased from DepositPhotos (376866310). The background was created using Hurl noise with added sparkle.
I think this smoke fade technique works better with a close-up of a head, but I'm trying to use images that I already own.
Okay, so October is Horrordailies time. But I'm not really into horror. Or spooky things in general. Or even pumpkin spice.
But I'm willing to use this as an excuse to play around with photomanipulations because I got some new digital pens that imitate smoke and I'm still working out the best ways to use them. So why not?
This image is objectively terrible, but I like the vibe. So there. Day one is done. It can only get better.
My local library has a makerspace on the first floor with a bunch of hobby stuff including a 3D printer, laser cutter, and sewing machines. It's all free and very cool and I've been meaning to check it out for the last ten years, but going there on my own without a specific goal in mind felt too intimidating. Also, most of the advertising seems geared at teens and groups of teens are super intimidating. So I haven't gone. Until now.
A week ago Tuesday, Facebook accidentally showed me a post I wanted to see: the makerspace was offering a free four-session class on the Silhouette Cameo machine and they still had five spaces available. Did I know what a Silhouette Cameo did? Absolutely not. (I googled — it's similar to a Cricut, which I've also never used, but at least I kinda know what it does.) This was my excuse to get a toe in the door, so I signed up. But first I checked and it said the class was for both teens and adults.
Class was supposed to be T, Th at 4pm for two weeks. Half an hour after I signed up, I got an email that due to scheduling conflicts and low enrollment, they were changing it to four weeks of Thursdays. It was a little weird that they changed the schedule an hour after posting on Facebook and the day of the first class, but whatever.
I showed up, signed in, and was directed through a busy area to a room in the back. I took this picture seven minutes before class was supposed to start. I was the only person in the room.
This was the point when I started to wonder how low the "low enrollment" really was, but I took comfort in the fact that there were three computers set up, so it wouldn't just be me.
The next people through the door were a woman with her two kids — one child was probably less than a year, and the other little girl was... eight, maybe? She could have been a tiny ten-year-old. (I don't know. I'm terrible at guessing ages of kids.) Anyhow, I wondered how much the mom would be able to concentrate while riding herd on two (admittedly really well behaved) kids. Meanwhile, she looked at me and said, "Oh, is this class for adults, too?"
The third person never showed.
So it was me and the eight-year-old. She had the advantage of the confidence of a kid who knows what she wants to do, whereas I knew how to use a mouse and how to press the shift key to get capital letters. We were actually pretty evenly matched.
The instructor, who introduced herself as "Pam" to me and "Miss Pam" to the little girl, had prepared the class for teens and adults, but she's a school teacher and she had no trouble adjusting. She had a makerspace aide work with the girl and went through the software with me and it all worked out far better than I'd expected.
I made this vinyl sticker for my phone case:
I called week one a success and went home to prepare for week two.
The Cameo can cut card stock, so you can make really intricate birthday cards, and the schedule said we'd be making cards during week two. This time, I had something in mind and I was all prepared when I went to the library, except...
The makerspace was closed for scheduled maintenance.
In retrospect, this shouldn't have surprised me because I had evidence that scheduling was not their strong point. Still, it would have been nice to know class was cancelled before I walked half a mile in 90-degree heat.
Oh well. Next week...
It's April, and kitten season has begun. What does that mean for me?
It means I haven't had an uninterrupted night's sleep in almost three weeks, the kitten cam has 15 new subscribers (because who doesn't want to watch kittens, right?), and I'm actively believing that brown stain on my pant leg is kitten food. (No, you don't want to think about the alternatives. And it's entirely possible it is kitten food — weaning is a messy business.)
Big Chungus and Elmer are delightful, by which I mean they've each been full of delight when peeing on me during the post-bottle snuggles this week. Did I mention I've washed three loads of laundry this week?
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| Cute little jerks |
One thing I'd forgotten about bottle feeding is what a pain in the butt it is to get kitten formula to dissolve. 90% goes into solution in the first 20 seconds, but the rest refuses to dissolve. And it can't have clumps or the nipple clogs. Trust me, you do not want one more reason for the kittens not to eat a full meal. Your life is already consumed their weights: Elmer requires the milk to be warm, so he needs to be fed first, but sometimes he needs a few minutes to wake up or he won't suckle. Chungus eats more even when he's half-asleep but takes forever. And did Elmer really lose 10 grams overnight? That's time to panic, right? Or wait, is that because he finally pooped?
On about the third day, I stopped doing the Shake Weight(TM) dance in the kitchen with a bottle of formula at 3am and switched to the immersion blender. That was a game changer. The only drawback is I had to prepare multiple meals at one time, because my immersion blender doesn't work with less than about five tablespoons of liquid.
But it occurred to me there might be some sort of miniature immersion blender. My searches for miniature mixers brought a bunch of hits for things that stirred paint, which wasn't helpful since I needed something food-safe. So I did what any rational person does when faced with a question about mixing small amounts of kitten formula:
I asked the people at King Arthur Baking.
Hear me out. This totally makes sense.
First off, these are possibly the kindest, most polite people in the world. Maybe they're born that way, or maybe they just work out all their aggressions by punching dough, I don't know. But it's true.
And second, they know everything there is to know about specialized food-safe gadgets. Like, someone will write in saying their arthritis prevents them from fizzling the outer rind of the stigglefruit (or whatever — I'm not a baker) and the people who answer questions on the page will immediately offer links for wide-handled stigglefruit fizzlers, packaged dried stigglefruit fizz, and a suggestion that coconut flakes could be substituted in a pinch as long as an extra teaspoon of water is added. Seriously. They know everything.
So I said "Hi, this is baking-adjacent (at best), but can you think of something that will do this?"
Upon reflection, I'm not sure why I thought mixing kitten formula might be considered "baking-adjacent". I can't actually come up with a way to connect kittens and baking at all. But I haven't had much sleep lately.
Anyhow, Kat wrote back almost immediately, asking if a "milk frother" would work. See what I mean? I didn't even know a milk frother was an actual thing one could buy, but it is. And they aren't even all that expensive. (Kat also requested kitten pictures, which I was more than happy to provide.)
So if you have a bottle feeder friend, consider buying them a milk frother for May Day. (Don't wait until Christmas. It's kitten season right now.) The immersion blender does a slightly better job breaking up all the clumps, but if you run the coil of the milk frother around the container edges after you blend, it will pick up any clumps so they don't end up in the bottle.
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| Pick your weapon! |
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And here are some affiliate links for convenience:
My immersion blender: https://amzn.to/4cZibjf
My milk frother: https://amzn.to/4d4nEoQ
Realized late last night that the 8.1 person in Daz Studio has a slider to make elf ears. So I had to use it.
(When I mentioned that I didn't know what to do with this render I'd created, my friend H. said, "Write a book with an elf MC and her tiny dragon friend, obviously."
Maybe a short story...)
I've been working on narrating the audiobook for Shift Happens off-and-on for the last few months. Let me tell you, this is the first time in my life that I've been really sorry I've never acted in anything. But that's not the point of today's post.
It occurred to me recently, that I need to have a cover for the audiobook. I have a cover for the ebook:
It's fine, but
Welcome back to Thingadailies.
If I were plotting Thingadailies, I would be ending on a high point — maybe an image that showed off all the skills I've learned this month. But no. I'm ending the month with something random, which is totally in keeping with previous Thingadailies.
After trying to find something I wanted to do, I settled on this tutorial on Glowing Magic Effects, which would be practical for me to learn. Unfortunately, I wasn't really in a "follow the directions" sort of mood, and also, it turns out I have no idea how to determine the saturation of a color. So I diverged from the tutorial pretty quickly.
Still, it was kind of interesting, so I'm leaving it here. (Also, I have to post something.)
Step 1: Draw the basic shape with a color that has 50% saturation.
Or, if you're me, ignore that thing about saturation because it's a word that doesn't really have any meaning, and pick a color and draw a shape.
Step 3: Increase the saturation and add highlights.
The interesting thing here was switching the pen mode to "dodge". Also I had started messing with colors by this point.
Step 4: Ignore the tutorial and start adding random colors.
That's it for Thingadailies! Join me next year!
Tip of the day:
Switch the pen mode to get different effects. Dodge is a fun one.
(Just added the tags and it turns out the "Not following directions" was a tag that already existed. Excellent branding, T!)
Welcome back to Thingadailies. Today I decided to follow this tutorial on creating northern lights.
Step 1: Find a picture of the night sky
DepositPhotos is my friend here. (Depositphotos_243388432)
The first time I did this, the purple disappeared when I switched the layer to overlay mode. I ended up desaturating the original picture and then adding the overlay. (Was there some other way to do that? I don't know.)
For whatever reason, I couldn't get the linear motion blur to work until I resized the canvas to something smaller, which was fine in this case because I started out with something huge — I resized it down to 3500x2500 pixels. It started out as 11850 × 7908. But still, I'm not sure why GIMP just didn't do anything with the linear motion blur instead of... crashing or something obvious like that.
Step 5: Repeat (on different layers) those steps for a couple other colors
Yes, this is where GIMP really falls down. So I moved into Photopea.
(Why didn't I use Photopea from the start? Mostly because I'm familiar with GIMP. But also because Photopea has a bunch of moving ads on the side and I'm too cheap to pay $15 to make them go away for three months.)
After warping it, we did another linear motion blur, this time horizontally, in order to get rid of the lines.
I think I switched the layer combination to "hard light".
Copy the layer a couple times, warp the layers, and change the opacity to make things blend.
I think I could have blended the lower band of light with the green band a little better, but it's a decent first try.
Tip of the day:
To warp in Photopea, Edit->Free Transform, then click the Warp button on the upper right.
Welcome back to Thingadailies. We're currently working on a version of this Cat Butterfly Manipulation Photoshop Tutorial.
Today we're going to finish this image and prove that everything is better with glitter!
When we left off yesterday, Sabrett was facing the dragon:
(Yeah, I went ahead and spent another $0.33 on this. Trust me, I'll use it again.)
I spent twenty seconds looking up what "screen" actually does, found the equation that explained it, and decided I would just accept it pulls bright things in and makes them brighter. We ended up with this:
Okay. So for the most part, GIMP contains nearly every feature found in Photoshop. But this was one of the exceptions. It looks like I could download some filters to do this. Honestly, if I knew what I was doing, I'm sure I could do all of it through the other features already available in GIMP.
But today I saw a link to Photopea — a free Photoshop analog that runs in your browser — and I wanted to try it out. So I exported my file as a .psd file and pulled it into Photopea. I'm pretty impressed with how responsive it is. And it had most of the "camera raw" settings that were used in the tutorial.
Anyhow, I increased the temperature and contrast and it looks very spiffy. I'm calling it good.
What should I do for the next two days? I'll wander through some available tutorials and see what I can find...
Tip of the day:
To get the sparkles to shine, use the "screen" option.
Welcome back to Thingadailies. We're currently working on a version of this Cat Butterfly Manipulation Photoshop Tutorial.
Here's where we were yesterday:
The further I get, the more I think my background choice was a mistake, but this is how we learn things, right?
Moving right along...
Step 1: Add the butterfly dragon
I already own this dragon image, so I decided to use it.
Step 2: Add shining lights
Okay, so the tutorial added an image to do this. I thought (and still do think) that I should be able to do this by adding a supernova followed by gaussian blur. And it sort of worked, but I'm not sure if it doesn't look as good because I didn't start with the bright colors of that butterfly or because the supernova didn't produce the same effect.
Step 3: Light up the cat
I tried a bunch of different things (color balance with masking, airbrush painting directly, using the burn/dodge tool to make the back of the cat darker) and I'm not completely satisfied, but it's...okay?
Step 4: Add a light reflection in the cat's eyes
This helps a lot.
Anyhow, here's the current image:
Tip of the day:
Picking a tabby or solid color cat would have been easier than using this photo of a calico, because overlaying colors has different effects depending on whether the fur is light or dark.
Welcome back to Thingadailies. We're currently working on a version of this Cat Butterfly Manipulation Photoshop Tutorial.
When we finished yesterday, things were looking a little odd.
Though really, can you really go wrong with a kitten in the picture? I say not.
Today is all about trying to make it look like the kitten and the background belong together.
Step 1: Darken the kitten and adjust the color balance
Presumably people who know what they're doing have a logical process for this, but I just tried to make it so the kitten and the background might possibly exist in the same universe. It still looked like I'd copied a picture of a kitten onto the background, but this made it closer.
Light will be added back later, so don't panic (yet) because it seems too dark.
Step 2: Fix the kitten's whiskers
This happens at the very end of the tutorial, but it was bugging me, so I did it now. They really ought to be a little thicker, but I think I got close.
Step 3: Add more fur. No, more than that. Keep going.
The key to making it look like this isn't a cut/paste of a kitten is using the smudge tool to recreate the kitten fuzz that got shaved off when removing the background. And the more I added, the better it looked.
So here we are!
Tomorrow, I'll add the butterfly (or whatever I use instead of a butterfly).
Tip of the day:
If you increase the flow rate above zero when using the smudge tool, it adds in the foreground color. (Yes, I found this by accident and couldn't figure out what was going on. But I can see this being useful.)
Also there's a "Sample merged" option in the smudge tool which makes it so you can smudge from any visible layer.
Welcome back to Thingadailies. After the doom and gloom book cover of the last few days, I've decided to go back and do a version of this Cat Butterfly Manipulation Photoshop Tutorial both because it's lighter and also because I want to try what they did with the sparkles near the end.
But since I have no idea how they're sourcing their pictures, I'm going to find my own. So it won't be identical.
Step 1: Find a cat
Ha! This was not a problem. I went with this image of my former foster kitten, Sabrett, of the reluctant weaners litter
.
The tutorial started with a city at night scene, blurred it, and added a blue overlay. I'm starting with this:
Really happy I didn't spent too much time on the back half of the cat now.
I promise this will look better soon! But right now, I need to go bathe the current foster cat in lime sulfur and bleach the heck out of the bathroom, so it will have to wait.
Tip of the day:
Don't give up on the project because it looks like crap now. Wait until you've really screwed it up.