Random semi-spooky "art" - day 4

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)

Random semi-spooky "art" - day 3

 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.

Random semi-spooky "art" - day 2

 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.

Random semi-spooky "art" - day 1

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.

Silhouette

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.

Silhouette Cameo

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.

Week One: Vinyl sticker

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.

Week Two: Cards Psych!

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...

Baking-Adjacent

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?

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.

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

Just a Little Fun

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...)