Shoshiplatypus

What’s On Your Workdesk this Wednesday?

As usual, not a lot going on on my actual workdesk, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been creative.

Tombow Colouring

I’ve downloaded quite a few free adult colouring pages from the Internet. I don’t really like using other people’s designs, and since these are free, I don’t think it’s a problem to alter them a bit. I can use them as springboards for inspiration for my own drawings. However, I found one that I particularly liked:

and didn’t want to alter it that much, but I did want to alter the layout a bit, and perhaps add some background. Also, the original is cut off at the edges which is a shame, so the outlines needed completing. I did some of the manipulation in my photo editor, and then most of the drawing on the iPad with the Apple Pencil, using the Procreate app. This is the beginning of the editing, where I’ve separated the fish and moved them apart, and added a bit of rotation.

Once I had finished, I darkened the outlines and it was ready for printing and colouring. I also added some weed.

I’ve been doing some experimenting with different grounds on cheap, ordinary computer printer card – white gesso and my new clear gesso. I printed out several copies of the drawing on this card so that I could treat each one differently and compare the results. Painting the gesso onto the printed card made the printing ink smudge a little, which turned the white gesso slightly grey. The ideal would be to use a laser printer but unfortunately I’ve only got an inkjet printer, so I sprayed the printed card with some inkjet fixative, and then added the gesso, and this worked perfectly. The effect with white gesso was to lighten the black lines to a more subtle grey, but they were still visible. Of course, once dry, the clear gesso is invisible and the lines remain black. Although my new clear gesso is a lot smoother than my original one (which is like sandpaper!) it is still a bit rough for the delicate Tombow brush nibs. The white gesso also has quite a lot of tooth, so once the surfaces were dry, I sanded them lightly with a fine grade sanding block, which produced a much smoother surface. The Tombows blend beautifully on this.

Choosing the printout which I had fixed and painted with the white gesso, I created a background with several Distress Oxides in blues and greens. I rubbed the pads onto my glass media mat and spritzed the ink with water and smooshed the drawing into the ink, applying more where necessary, until the background was complete. I was able to move the colours around a bit by spraying more water onto the card. The gesso kept this cheap card intact, so that it didn’t disintegrate with all the water I was throwing at it. Once it was dry, and while I was doing the colouring, I was able to touch up the background where necessary with Tombows, blending in the colours with a damp brush.

Colouring with the Tombows was a delight. You hardly need any – just applying a little into the areas you want the darkest, and blending them out with a damp brush, creating automatic shading. The colours blend with each other beautifully in this way, too.

The final step was to apply a little white marker to add some highlights. This proved to be a problem – I tried a selection of different water-based white markers and each time, they picked up the colour underneath which tinted the white. The white looked quite bright until it dried, when it dulled down quite a lot. I found the best marker was the Derwent Graphic Line Painter in Snow colour – these pens contain acrylic paint which is non-reactive and fast once it is dry, but of course while it is wet, it is water-based and will blend with what is underneath. I added some Ranger Micro-Glaze over the areas and this provided a bit of a barrier, and I’m more or less satisfied with the result. I think next time if I apply the Micro-Glaze before attempting to add any white, I might get better results, but with my experimenting, there was already some tinted white in place, which affected the intensity of the final white layer. It’s all a learning curve!

Here is the finished result.

I can see myself using these techniques for a lot more pictures in the future. I’ve ruled up one of the gessoed sheets into squares into which I am going to make some smaller drawings using permanent black markers, and then I can paint them. Before painting, I shall scan and save the originals so that they can be printed out again and again, and coloured individually, and used for cards.

Stencils

Thanks, Shaz (Silverwolf) for your enabling last week regarding Mylar stencil material – I have just ordered some on Ebay! I’ve gone for the thicker version as I want to be able to use moulding pastes etc. as well as inks. This stuff is going to be a lot softer and kinder to my cutting machine blade than acetate, and easier to use as a stencil, I think. I’ll let you know how I get on with it.

Kitties

Now that the defences in the garden have been repaired after the storm, the kitties are delighted to be able to go out again. However, they aren’t out for long before they are asking to come in again! It’s still too cold and wet for such coddled spoilt girlies who are used to their home comforts. Here they are on the rockery outside the kitchen window.

Without their white bibs they would be very difficult to spot! Tabbies are excellently camouflaged outside.

Here they are, asleep again – as usual! This time Lily is on top of Ruby, which doesn’t often happen.

Ruby has been mega-affectionate with me lately and wants cuddles all the time so I have to keep dropping what I am doing in order to indulge her! When I’m busy with the laptop she’s content to sleep on my legs when they are raised on the recliner. If she comes up top, she gets between me and the laptop which makes life somewhat difficult! When I try to do anything she squeaks in protest. Which of course means that I can’t do anything.

Food

Back in September I shared my vegan Madras curry variation with you as recipe of the week. I thought I’d show you this again because I made it this week and took a couple of photos – when I originally posted this I didn’t have any pictures.

In my large sauté pan, ready to serve:

and served, together with various accompaniments.

It’s great nosh! I always serve my curries with brown rice.

Meal planning

For the past couple of weeks, on Sunday evenings when I’m starting my online grocery order, I have been working on a meal plan for the week so that I would know what I needed to order. Having tried the Forks Over Knives plan, I got the idea of looking at different recipes to see if there was any advance planning I could do, to save time when actually cooking the dish. It all takes a bit more time, but it’s nice to know what I am going to have to do on each day of the coming week – some days I don’t have to cook at all, but just knock together some pre-prepared ingredients, or take something out of the freezer, or eat the second batch of a dish I’ve cooked. So far it’s working pretty well! There’s a meals section in my Paprika recipe management app and this is proving very helpful. You can also add ingredients to its included shopping list if you want.

Preparing things in advance also helps me to be able to send my hubby off with a decent lunch if he’s going to be out. He tends to tell me late at night that he’s going to be out for lunch, when I haven’t got time to prepare anything! I think he’s finally waking up to the need to start eating sensibly after having an MOT for 70-year-olds recently, when the doctor suggested he went to a slimming club! I had my own opinion on that, and I think after the doctor’s pep talk, he’s at last willing to take my lifestyle on board. It was very encouraging the other day when one of our nieces-in-law who works in some sort of dietary capacity for the NHS (not a dietician – not quite sure what she does!) saw what I’d provided for his lunch and gave her wholehearted approval! Having that professional seal of approval made quite a difference to him, I think.

Health Update

Last week I had my one-to-one appointment with the women’s health physio about my bladder. It was a very good appointment and she allowed me plenty of time, which I needed, because it took quite a long time to fill her in with my medical history! She needed to know everything because much of it has probably had an impact on my bladder function. She said I would probably need to be referred to a gynaecologist (this surprised me because I had assumed I would need to see a urologist but I suppose this sort of problem would come within a gynae’s remit!) – and she said it would most likely be necessary for me to have a bladder scan. This was not done when I first started having problems. It is an ultrasound (non-invasive) scan and I would have to have a drink and then pee, and they would see how much was retained. We discussed my pelvic floor muscle strength and I said I thought it was pretty good, having had to deal with so much bowel, and now bladder, urgency over the years, so she said she didn’t think it was necessary to put me through an internal examination, which was a relief.

In the meantime, she said it would be helpful if I kept a bladder diary for four consecutive days, and then to make a further appointment with her once this was done. She gave me a sheet, and said that I could make my own if I wanted. Their version was fairly limited, just giving the 24 hours of each day, how much you drank and how much you pee’ed at any given hour, and when you experienced any incontinence. Since they are also interested in what I am retaining, I suggested that I revamped the form to include this, and she said that was a good idea. I also divided the “wet” (i.e. incontinence!) column into two, one for before, and the other for after peeing. It took me quite a while to design the chart on my desktop publisher, but I quite enjoy messing about with layouts on the computer so it wasn’t too much hardship! When I was doing my secretarial training, I got a distinction for my Stage II typing exam, partly on the strength of my layouts. This was long before word processing  and computers, and everything had to be calculated character by character before you could finally type up the chart, and then you had to rule the lines by hand!! (Yes, Shoshi’s ancient and her keyboard skills came out of the Ark! I learned to type on an Imperial 66 – a green monster tank of a machine, and in the college there were only two electric typewriters which were considered extremely modern!) Computers make all this so easy, and people don’t know they’re born…

Anyway, she also wanted me to note down what it was that I was drinking, e.g. tea, coffee or water, but since I drink a variety of beverages (tea, coffee, kombucha, kefir, my rehydration and electrolyte drink and water) I decided to make a further chart on the back, giving this breakdown for each day. I printed out my original draft which I amended on the computer several times during the period of the diary, and wrote on the draft. Yesterday morning, having completed the final day, I entered all the data on the computer version and printed it out so it looks neat and tidy and easy for them to read. I phoned them and left a message that the diary was now complete, and they will get back to me with a further appointment.

Since then it’s been quite a relief just to be able to go to the loo without catching it in a jug and reading off how much I’ve peed!! Measuring everything I drank was a bit of a pain too, especially as we were out for lunch on Saturday. Before I started the diary, I measured the capacity of all the vessels I use on a regular basis – tea cup, mug, two sizes of glass, etc., and I also used my small plastic beaker that I have at night-time, which has measurements on it, to measure out the water I was drinking.

The whole experience was quite revealing. I knew I was drinking quite a lot, because with an ileostomy you have to, or there is a danger of getting dehydrated, but I hadn’t realised just how much! I also pee gallons more than I thought! It’s just something you do throughout the day without thinking about it much, and it’s quite interesting to get it down in black and white. I think the stoma nurses would be pleased to know that I’m drinking a good lot of liquid.

So now we wait – again! More appointments over the horizon.

No news yet from Exeter about my upcoming operation but it’s going to take several weeks before I hear back from the complaints department about the delay in my scan follow-up, and whether I can jump up the waiting list for surgery a bit because the hospital messed me around.

Ostomy product trial

I had been approached to attend a day in Birmingham next month as the first step on the trial. Not having heard anything further, and with my hubby asking me, so that he could start planning the route and timings etc., I contacted them again, and I had a phone call this morning. She said she was gradually working through the list of applicants. It seems that because I use convex stoma bags rather than the regular flat ones, I do not qualify to take part in the trial at this stage. She said if this first trial is successful and they move on to include users of convex bags, she will definitely approach me again. This is rather disappointing, because I was very interested to take part in the trial. Whenever new stoma bags are launched onto the market, it’s always the flat ones that come out first – these are the ones the majority of people use; you can only use convex ones on the recommendation of a stoma nurse, to solve specific stoma management problems, and any new production doesn’t cover convex bags for some time. I had this experience in the early days, when they brought out a new version of the bag I was using, which I really liked, but because it wasn’t yet available as a convex, I had to wait many months, during which time I had to use another brand. I tried several different convex bags during that time and hated them all!

I said to her that on balance it might turn out to be a good thing that I wasn’t going to be included at this stage, because I am waiting for an operation and don’t know when it will be. In the meantime I am experiencing various difficulties which might muddy the water a bit if I presented with a few too many variables to make a trial result clear in my case. She saw my point, and agreed to keep me on their books anyway.

I think that’s all Shoshi’s news for the week! Have a great creative week, everybody.