Fiber Monday

 

In Which I Have Made Progress on the Shawl...
But Have Nothing To Show For It.

That's right, I forgot to take pictures of the blue shawl I'm working on despite all the time I spent on it. Sorry, guys.

And when I say I spent a long time working on it, I mean it.

I spent over three hours crocheting one project this week!

Since I time myself using videos, that means that over the course of 8 sessions (eight separate videos) I crocheted a good 2" of length and probably 6" width. And each session was about 23-24 minutes long. I am thinking that I'll be trying to do more things using that Video Timing Scale.

I spend a lot of time watching videos. Maybe if I Did More Things while watching videos, I'd get more done lol.

Actually I'll try that tomorrow and we'll see what happens! As it is, I'll be doing more work on the shawl. Maybe I'll even remember to take a pic and post it on Twitter or something.

I'll be perfectly honest, my family and I took a trip to the planetarium at UMO on Friday and I've been completely wiped out since then. Some of that could be attributed to my overindulgence at Dysarts, but let's be real, you cannot underindulge at Dysarts.

You must fully indulge.

And you 100% must have pie.

So maybe that's why I'm a little draggy lately lol.

Regardless, tomorrow's another day, and I'll test my Videos=productivity theory and get back to you.

For now, Go Enjoy Something!
FC

Talk About Tuesday

 

In Which I Have No Sleep Schedule...

So...

I don't sleep correctly. I try - believe me when I say I do my best to increase my sleep hygiene - but even the Military Method isn't reliable. Maybe it's the squirrelbrain thing I've got going on.

This means that I can't ever predict when I'm going to fall asleep or (more importantly) wake up.

Today I woke up at 10:57AM.

I have not felt awake at any point today, though I do otherwise feel pretty good.

This means that I have finished zero snowflakes today in my Snowmageddon 2022 endeavors. I haven't drawn, I haven't written, and I haven't even planned for anything. I just... flailed around doing self-maintenance (you know, eating and exercising and bathing, that kind of thing...)

It also means that my general cravings for caffeine have been off the charts.

I want coffee. It's 6:30PM. Coffee is a no-no. I will probably have coffee anyway and to hell with trying to sleep lol!

It was a lovely cold day today, too. Temperatures hovered between 30 to 40℉ (-1 to 4℃), the sun shone, the winds were still. It felt like a proper November day in the northeast!

So of course it's going to be anywhere from 40 to 50℉ (4 to 10℃) for the rest of the week with rains, heavy at times, and up to 65mph winds (105kph or so). Dandy.

At least Friday is supposed to be clear.

Speaking of the rest of the week, the plan is thus:

• Carry on with Snowmageddon by crocheting at least 1 snowflake/day until Monday!
• Art for Thursday. I have no plans but I have a new toy to play with so if you have suggestions for me to try out, feel free to buy me a coffee over on Ko-Fi (button in sidebar!) and leave a message with your donation telling me which category you'd like me to make art from. Categories are as follows:
• Animal
• Vegetable
• Mineral
• Dedbert
• Location
• Geometric
• Word
• Get pictures of all the snowflakes for Monday, possibly with some shots of them being blocked!
• Back again to blather on Tuesday :)

Hopefully I can rectify this sleep nonsense (Update: it's after 7 and I never got that coffee. I'm being kind to myself here), but until then, I hope you all...

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Talk About Tuesday

 

In Which Time Is Still Quite Fluid

I woke up around 9AM today. It would stand to reason that I've done things, right? Not so. I have been mostly in bed today. It was a warmer day today, 40℉/4,44℃ and sunny, but inside was a bit chilly for my toes, so under the Red Blanket of Sleep I curled.

I have been dealing with a weird headache all day, too. It's been swimming in a circle around my head, though for now it's stalled out over my left eye. I'm sleepy, yes, but I'm also trying to figure out a couple of crochet projects I've been working on.

Cat sweaters are shockingly complicated, it turns out. You wouldn't expect a pair of rectangles and a weirdly sloped third rectangle to be so complex, and yet I'm on my 8th attempt at making the damn thing. this time I need to add an inch or so to the neckband so it's easier to slip over my cat's head.

I will also need to find a nice chunky button to use for the belly band on it. If I get that far.

Gotta admit, this is the most frustrating thing I've made in a long time. And I just used trash to help connect eyes to a project after misplacing my o-rings.

The life of a crafter with zero organizational skills.

Maybe the biggest issues I'm facing with the sweater are 1) I have that headache and thus less patience, 2) the green I'm using is way darker than you'd expect, and 3) my lighting isn't too great and I can't really see the stitches.

Regardless, my plans for this week are primarily Thanksgiving/Christmas related. I hope to do some art for Thursday, but I don't have a topic yet, so if you want to tell me which category to paint from (Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Dedbert, Location, Geometric, Word) by donating a coffee on Ko-Fi with a message telling me which one!

Otherwise, I'll do my best just to do something.

Hate to admit it, but the post-Halloween letdown has been way harder this year than most. I just kind of want to hibernate. I might need to start eating more nuts & beets, apparently those can help boost your energy.

I want to say this, though - I'm not sad. Sure, I struggle with my usual ridiculous brain zaps and occasional bouts of despair (that's par for me, and I've taken to mocking the despairing voice in my mind mercilessly, which helps a lot), but mostly what I'm feeling is...

Sleepy.

I'm very sleepy lately.

And I can't help but feel like if I fluffed my blankets and wore thick enough socks and covered myself in softness and warmth, I could sleep forever.

But in a cozy, content, happy way.

Picture the fluffiest chipmunk you can imagine, dress it in the cuddliest pajamas you can find, and bury it in blankets next to a tall mug of cocoa.

That is how it be.

Instead, I have to be like the hilariously fluffy doe I saw yesterday under the bird feeders. I have to keep moving and doing and making. I have to nibble furiously at the millet of life and hare off into the thickets when the neighbors dogs bark.

That analogy kind of fell apart there.

Maybe I just wanted to talk about adorable over-fluffed animals?

Seriously, though, if you have never seen a white tailed deer's winter coat, look it up some time. They kind of look like those fluffy cows that went viral last year. All rounded and floofed up!

I just stood in front of the window, holding my cat so she could see. Evie was perfectly still in my arms, ears perked forward, tail swishing slowly and hypnotically. I was cooing at that deer the whole time she hoovered up the fallen seeds on the ground.

"You are so round! You look so sturdy! So chonky! So Thicc!" I kept giggling to myself.

Late fall/early winter is my favorite time of year because of this.

I may get cranky (who doesn't, when they crave coziness and instead have to do laundry?), but mostly I just muddle through days and cozy down into coffee and carbs and thick blankets. Do I sleep at night?

Absolutely not.

Nighttime is when I get to watch silly videos and slowly sink into sleep.

Daytime is for being sleepy lol.

Anyhow, how are all of you doing? I hope you're having a very comfortable November. I hope you're having a good time prepping for Thanksgiving (in the US) or just enjoying the week elsewhere.

And I hope you Enjoy Something!

FC

Talk About Tuesday

 

In Which I Forgot it was Tuesday

This will be a short little blog, guys. Just here to touch base, basically! It's 10PM and today was 80℉/26,7℃ with 80% humidity so I did not do a whole lot! I ran the old Wahl over the buzzed area of my head (10/10 do recommend shaving your head for summer, even just halfway), showered, took the bottles back, bought chips that were too expensive (everything is), and mostly just played with colors and video games the whole day while watching random videos and listening to music.

All in all, a pretty enjoyable Tuesday.

My plans for the rest of the week are as follows:

• Art on Thursday - I haven't received any Paid Requests yet (see my Commission page in the sidebar), so if you want a say, go for it!
• Still nothing video game-wise, but I'll keep looking
• Still working on a lot of different projects, but the plan for Monday is to have more to show you towards a finished Mystery Project/Secret Project!
• Next Tuesday I'll be back to hopefully talk to you earlier in the day.

The heat has been killer on my sleep schedule, so when something like tonight's weird balmy-but-soggy weather happens, I take what I can get. I'm hoping to get at least five hours tonight!

How are all of you guys sleeping? Are you getting enough rest? Hydrating enough? I hope so.

In the meantime, though...

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Talk About Tuesday

 

Yep. Still Tired lol.

Great news! I'm sleeping more than 2 hours a night again!

Bad news is, though, that even a full 8 hours a night isn't recharging me yet.

I'll be working on rectifying that by moving more tomorrow, since I think part of my tiredness is because I keep forgetting to exercise enough. I took a short walk yesterday (the uphill-both-ways one I do every week), but I couldn't go out much today because not only was it chilly, it's been raining off and on since the afternoon. Right now it's pouring and the wind is roaring.

My eyes constantly feel gritty, right now, which is a pain, but I've been through this before. I go through the eye-grime every time I start recovering from an insomniac bout. Best things for it are water, sleep, and face-washing. I'll be getting the first and last as soon as I post this blog, but the middle one will come when it comes, and no amount of relaxation techniques and soothing jazz will change that. It'll probably hit me around 2AM. That seems to be the magic hour for sleep lol.

I still haven't grabbed my red crochet thread, so I won't be able to finish the Secret Project for a while yet, but we'll get there.

I have ideas for Thursday - I might try to do more work on that silly Happiny idea from last week, or I might try to draw something else. Maybe a dinosaur. I have been thinking a lot about raptors this week lol.

Mostly I just keep getting distracted. I'm distracted a lot lately, mostly because I'm having SpeedyBrain, which is hard when I also have MolassesBrain at the same time. My thoughts are very very fast, but it's like having an auctioneer in my head. The thinky thinky goes fast, but the understandy goes very very slow. I'm fairly sure that's just because of the overabundance of coffee, so I'll try to have less caffeine tomorrow - easy since I plan to be using the treadmill and coffee + treadmill = disaster, so there will be less bean juice tomorrow than today lol.

Then again, I'm seeing that it'll be pretty nice out tomorrow. Still windy (the real feel will be about 10℉ lower than the ambient temperature), but sunny (in the afternoon). If I'm very sneaky I might be able to get all the way down to Main Street without too much trouble from the neighborhood dogs, and if it really is all that nice (I'm seeing temps of about 53℉/11,7℃!) I might find a spot downtown to sit in the sun with a sketchbook and a thermos of lemon tea.

We'll see how motivated I feel around noon.

Let's see, what else should I talk about...

• I saw a bald eagle on Sunday! It wheeled around the intersection I cross on my way downtown to the local bookstores and vanished behind some houses and trees. Very cool.
• My next door neighbors have somehow ended up with a rooster, which is fine - it's not a very loud boi. It was just driving me nuts trying to figure out where the rooster noises were actually coming from.
• The deer have been emptying my mom's bird feeders into their cute lil faces on a nightly basis and my mom is getting ready to sic the cat on them.
• The cat got a new heavy ceramic planter which my mother planted with cat grass. The cat thanked her by trying to dig in the damp soil, then smugly trotted away to use the freshly-cleaned litterbox, only to bound upstairs with inquiring noises as soon as my mother tried to replace the literally soiled table cloth with a new one. The cat then proceeded to sit in the very center of the table and refuse to move, which ended with my mother just draping the tablecloth over the cat, who happily sat there in her tablecloth tent for a good 10 minutes. During the smug tablecloth adventure, I punctured a piece of plastic wrap a bunch of times and covered the cat's ungrown grass with it, using some toothpicks to hold the plastic off of the dirt.
• My dad finally beat a hard level in Beat Saber. He's getting good at the base game, apparently, and he plays it before dinner.
• I tried faroh risotto tonight and it was very nice. 10/10 do recommend.

I think that about covers my news this week, guys. I'll do my best to post a drawing on Thursday!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Talk About Tuesday

 

In Which I Napped Too Much LOL

So.

I may have gotten a bit caught-up in my crochet yesterday.

And it may not have gone well.

I made half a shirt and... I misread the pattern. In my defense, I do that a lot with DROPS patterns, and this one was especially obtuse to me. It has been frogged and set aside for the time being, but eventually I hope to have it made.

Today, though. Today I just did not want to get up. Whether it was the indecisive weather (too hot! too cold! super damp!), the skunk outside my house (phew), or the incessant complaining of a very cranky and lonely cricket, I could not fall asleep until well passed 3AM.

Which makes my awakening at around 8:30AM that much more frustrating.

Naps and I do not usually get along. In the past, napping is either "well, have 8 hours during the day and say goodbye to your circadian rhythm" or "you have laid here for 3 hours and not rested at all, also still say goodbye to your circadian rhythm you putz".

Today was... the latter, sadly. I napped all day and slept not a wink. It's why I don't nap.

But don't think I did nothing all day!

In fact I:

• Walked a mile and a half on the treadmill
• Watched a tutorial on how to paint seashells in watercolor
• Read a bunch of articles on various random subjects because laying there with my eyes shut was getting really boring
• Did a bunch of situps
• Frogged that failed shirt pattern
• Made a really satisfying bowl of cereal and 2 cups of coffee (but only 2!)
• Took a shower
• Ate a banana
• Brushed the cat
• Watched a tutorial on how to make digitigrade feet for a fursuit because it popped up on my recs
• Played a bunch of Pokemon games on my 3DS XL
• Caught up a bit on some of the new areas in New Pokemon SNAP!
• Did about 10 wall pushups before the cat bit me in the back of the leg for attention
• Brushed the cat again
• Tried to nap again
• Got distracted by FB and then ended up falling down a comic book blackhole with my partner (Blue & Gold looks really fun!)

See, when I list it all out like that, I was super active today.

Except most of the actual active stuff fit in a 3 hour window.

Because I'm LAZY.

Anywho, my plans for this week consist of watching a buttload of how-to vids on watercolor, colored pencils, and digital art, all while trying to figure out how to actually follow that DROPS pattern I was talking about because I want a nice shirt that I can actually wear around people...

And that about covers my day today!

Tomorrow might be 75℉ (23.8℃), but it'll feel around 82℉ (27.8℃), so I'm probably going to just quietly melt in my backyard instead of biking down to the waterfront for some art-time like I'd hoped, but I'll try for some sun.

I hope you guys are having a more productive week than I am, but if you're not, don't be too hard on yourself. The plague isn't over yet, and it's stressful out there!

Go Enjoy Something!

FC

Talk About Tuesday - Wednesday Edition

 

In Which It Is Too Hot

I live where the air, 3-5 months out of the year, hurts my face with cold. I live out of pants and flannel shirts 9/10 of the time. I hate being barefoot.

So for the 3-4 months of summer we get up here, you'd better believe I'm miserable.

It felt only slightly cooler today than yesterday, which, if you'll recall, got to about 90℉ (32.22℃). Today felt that hot - especially in my room, which has no AC. I have my window fan gobbling up cooler air from outside now that it's near midnight (maybe if I type fast and ignore my growing urge to pee I can get this blog out before it's actually Wednesday?) and my ceiling fan spinning that vaguely less hot air around, but man does it still feel to hot to live up here.

I spent a good portion of today downstairs. I even went into the basement to grab some bottled water and it developed condensation halfway up the stairs. I wish the internet wasn't balls in the basement or I'd have stayed down there.

And then of course the internet fluffed off at some point in the afternoon. Maybe around 4? It didn't come back until like quarter to five, though, so that sucked because that's my usual blogging time.

I have a small amount of grumpage, yes, why?

But seriously, I'm not built for hot-and-humid days with no AC.

Today was better than yesterday in a couple of ways though! Namely in that my COVID Vaccine Arm cleared up.

Yeah I got my second Moderna jab on Wednesday last week, and for the next few days it felt like someone had grabbed both of my arms and tried to pull them out of the sockets after hitting me in the back with a steel chair. I felt a little nauseous and very tired, but I prefer that to drowning in fluids and choking on my own sloughed-off lung lining, so jabs it is.

And the fact that I got to have sushi last Wednesday as a treat for getting vaccinated was pretty great too.

But not even a single day after I started to feel better, body-wise, a new symptom appeared in the form of a goose-egg-sized-and-shaped patch on my upper left arm (the arm I got the shot in).

It didn't itch, but it was really red and sore to the touch like a bruise, and weirdly, it was about three inches away from the injection site. Odd.

But it was there, and I was on the verge of freaking out until I looked up some of the weirder side effects and learned that, yes, anywhere from 3 days to a week after getting vaxxed, you can in fact develop this reaction. The suggested treatment was simple: ice if you need it, painkillers if you need them, allergy meds if you need them.

I took the allergy meds mostly bc the lilacs are in bloom but they helped and now my arm is more or less normal! Still a small patch that's a little raised but nothing hurts and it's not red anymore.

In less health-related news, though, I have high hopes for Thursday since it should finally not feel like Satan's butthole then and I can draw and maybe pick up some snax. Those are my goals. The total sum of my goals for this week are

1. draw
2. get snax

That's it.

That's all I wanna do :P

Then again, it's midnight, and I should really be asleep, so who knows what else I'll come up with tomorrow during the possible thunder showers and gross heat?

Whatever the weather brings, I hope you guys are doing well and can

Go Enjoy Something!

FC