What’s On Your Workdesk this Wednesday?
Not a great deal on the actual desk. I’ve put some of my stamps into my new folder but they aren’t fitting in that well… I want to store them with at least some of the original packaging so that I know what they are, but the whole folder is already bulging and I haven’t finished yet! Not very satisfactory. The smaller folder with clear stamps that I was given a few months ago seems to work pretty well, though. I’m still not sure about the best way forward for my stamp storage. I’d love to know how other people store their stamps and other stuff.
I’ve tidied up a bit in the studio, and put away most of the stuff I got at the recent craft show. There’s still a great deal of sorting to be done because I want to get rid of a certain amount of stuff.
Sewing
At last I have got around to sewing the four infinity scarves I got on Ebay! They were too long and wide, so I took them apart and cut some off the length of each one, and sewed them in half lengthwise. I was then able to join the ends almost completely before turning them the right way out, and finishing them off by hand. They were really cheap, soft jersey material, and I got four – navy, red, maroon and purple. With some of the excess that I cut off, I made matching hair scrunchies. I am very happy with the result and have been wearing them.
Devon County Show Bunting
When I was at the craft show I visited the Devon County Show stand. They were knitting triangles for bunting. This year will be the 125th year of the show, and to celebrate, they are attempting to make the longest knitted bunting in the world, to get into the Guinness Book of World Records! I came away with a pattern and thought I might make a few. The banana box that is out has got most of my double knitting yarns in it and I hope to make a start this week. They have to be in by a certain date in April.
Celtic Knot Motifs
I managed to finish the final two motifs in the first set of six.
This one, which I showed last week, I was quite unhappy with.
It came out looking really dull and underwhelming, so I worked on it a bit. I lifted the colour from the knot motif with a wet brush and blotting with a piece of kitchen paper, and this lightened it considerably. Rather than adding more colour, I left it as it was – you never manage to lift every vestige of colour this way, and what is left is a light tinting, which is quite attractive. I added new shadow with a purple shade, and I think this has improved it no end.
Here are the “before and after” pictures together.
Here is the complete set of six in the first batch.
The second batch
I decided I’d like to try and get a metallic effect with colours on the second batch, but I really didn’t get on well with this! To begin with, I coloured the entire background of a couple of them with the black Tombow marker, leaving the knot motif in white, which I then proceeded to colour in an attempt to imitate a shiny metallic gold finish. All I managed to achieve was a disastrously smudged and messy background! Things were not improved when I started lifting the black off with a wet brush.
This was obviously not going to work. I painted the backgrounds of the rest of the set with black acrylic paint and began again.
I am happier with one or two of them, but this wasn’t a satisfactory batch. I’ve had better results getting this effect on the iPad Pro with the Apple Pencil in the Procreate app, so I think I’m going to have a go at working on some of them digitally. In the meantime, if you just forget I was trying to get a metallic gold effect, on some of them the result isn’t too bad.
It would be fun to paint some with Perfect Pearls as well.
My hubby was away over the weekend and I didn’t manage to achieve much – I was very tired and rested quite a bit, in between completing last month’s accounts (my goodness, I’ve kept to one of my New Year resolutions and for three months have managed to get this wretched job completed before the first week of the month was out! Shoshi pats herself on the back…) What with doing that sewing job, and doing the ironing, there wasn’t much energy left for much else over the weekend!
Food
I’ve been through the freezer and the store cupboards checking my supplies, and have just put in another big order from the wholefoods supplier online. I really need to have a blitz on the pantry as well as on my studio, because a lot of the jar labels are out of date, and a piece of paper attached to a jar with a rubber band doesn’t really cut it for me!
On Monday I made a butternut squash curry in the slow cooker. Actually, this is just one of the functions of my Ninja Foodi – you use the pressure cooker lid with the vent open, and set it to slow cooker (Hi or Lo) and set the timer and leave it. When I got this machine I got rid of our slow cooker – this is much better because it’s a lot bigger and has a timer on it. When it’s finished, it goes onto a “keep warm” mode until you turn it off. I love the “set it and forget it” aspect of this machine!
Recipe of the week
Slow Cooker Butternut Squash Lentil Curry
This makes a good pot-full in the Ninja Foodi – enough for six meals for the two of us! I’ve kept one out for later this week, and the rest has gone in the freezer. It’s a great recipe because you just chuck all the ingredients into the slow cooker and stir them together – no need for any prior sauté-ing or anything. The flavours blend beautifully with the long slow cooking.
Meal planning
Since starting to use the meal planner section of the Paprika recipe management app, I’ve found I’m using my time in the kitchen more efficiently, and some days I am not having to cook – I can just get something out of the freezer, or we eat the second serving of a dish we’ve eaten earlier in the week. It takes more of an investment of time at the beginning of the week but it’s time well spent. I go through my recipes and decide what to make, and note down any ingredients we might be short of. This activity is combined with my usual Sunday evening job of checking supplies in the pantry while making my shopping list. I do keep the shopping list running throughout the week, so I can add things as we run out, but I like to do a final check. I put up a preliminary order on the supermarket site, in order to secure a delivery slot when I want it, and I can add things over the next couple of days as we need them. Meal planning, looking at ingredients, checking the pantry, and making the shopping list, are now a combined activity.
The only fly in the ointment of this perfectly organised scheme is my hubby… bless his heart. He has never been that forthcoming about his activities and I have to extract the information from him in a way that closely resembles getting blood out of a stone… He’s not secretive or anything, it’s just that he doesn’t think to let me know! On Sunday night at 10 p.m., for instance, he announced that he wouldn’t be home for lunch the following day, so I had to go through and rustle up a nice wholesome salad to put in the fridge ready for him to take in the morning! This put my meal planning way back, and apart from securing my grocery delivery slot, most of the rest of the planning spilled over into Monday…
He does rather do things on a bit of an ad hoc basis, and usually only tells me at the last minute! This rather messes up my meal plan for the week, but I’ve learnt to be flexible and we don’t always have the things I originally planned. This can be a bit of a nuisance if I’ve scheduled in time for advance prep for certain dishes. Fortunately I’m always pretty well stocked up with salad ingredients, and I can rustle up a healthy sustaining salad with the addition of chickpeas or quinoa or whatever, and slosh some oil-free dressing on! Off he goes with it in a Tupperware container! – and it’s back to the drawing board (computer) for me, to reschedule things again.
Kitties
The kitties didn’t go out at all in my hubby’s absence over the weekend. They spent most of the time asleep – in the flat during the day, and all over me in the evenings! Together they weigh over a stone and it’s quite a weight with both of them on your legs! Nice and warm for all concerned, though. As a result, most of this week’s photos are of them sleeping…
As usual, Ruby is on top of Lily.
Last night my hubby had Ruby on his lap, on top of the blankets to keep his legs warm, and rather than disturbing her too much when he wanted to get up, he lifted her up lock stock and barrel in the blankets and deposited her on the floor! She just stayed there.
I thought you might like a little reminder of how cute they were when they were tiny. This is one of the photos from the Internet when I first discovered them and instantly fell in love – just knew these were the ones for us! I think they were about 3 or 4 weeks old here, because when we first went to see them, they were 5 weeks.
This one was taken when we’d had them home for about a week, when they were 10 weeks old. From the beginning, Ruby was always on top of Lily! I bought a posh new kitten bed for them but they preferred to lie beside it. Oh well. That’s kitties for you.
Weren’t they little dinks?
The funny thing is, we never noticed until much later that Lily had a grey nose and Ruby had a white nose! What distinguished them initially was a tiny white tip on Lily’s tail. This has now disappeared, but if you part the fur carefully you can still see a few white hairs. Looking at these photos of them when they were so small, the white and grey noses are as noticeable as they are today! How did we miss this?
Have a great creative week, everybody.
Wow it’s amazing how much Lily and Ruby have grown (although unsurprising lol). Love the reworked Celtic knot piece from last week and the purple against the brown background is spectacular. I use blank DVD cases to store my stamps in a tall CD/DVD cabinet. It holds 88 cases altogether and I label the spines so I can find what I want quickly. Happy WOYWW and meow to the kitties. Sarah #?
Hi Shoshi, interesting experiments with the Celtic knots. Loving the kitty pics as always, it’s amazing how much they’ve grown, isn’t it? Have a lovely week, Hugs, Shaz #4 X
Oh, I totally forgot how little they were! I wish I had saved the initial photo we saw of Oreo on the internet but didn’t think of it at the time. He didn’t come from a very nice place, so I often think of him as a rescue cat. LOL at Ruby swaddled on the floor – Oreo gets that treatment too – sometimes he puts up with it, sometimes he doesn’t. I like to carry him around like a baby! Your space looks very well organised and I like what you did with those scarves and got some free scrunchies out of it too. I’ve done something similar once with a double duvet cover – I wanted a single one, so I cut it to size and made two pillow cases from the cut-offs. That was about 16 years ago and I’m still using them! The celtic knots look fantastic – it must be a bit fiddle filling out the spaces between. Hope you’re well, Shoshi. xx zsuzsa #14
Hi Shoshi, you really are very organised, with the meal planning and shopping. I did giggle at your comment “the only fly in the ointment …” – my husband and I now share an online calendar, so I check that in case it slips his mind to mention something. I also need to print off some new pantry labels, as I now have unlabeled jars and no idea what is in them! My stamps are either in zip up wallets if they are the A4 stamp sets that came free with magazines, or in ring binders with different sized plastic holders. I’ll take a photo next week and add it to my blog. Have a lovely week Heather xx #21
Hi Shoshi. You have been having fun – and frustrations – haven’t you? Hope you have really enjoyed the experimenting.
Take care. God bless.
Margaret #15
Happy WOYWW. I love those Celtic Knots. I am already missing not having the Procreate app to play with (I had just started doing some colouring on there – Molly Harrison images). I have got software on my Windows 10 pc in my craft room, but no more sitting in front of the tv with my iPad. The kitties are huge now. Our Milky is 13 this year and totally rules the house. Ali x #25
oh so sweet to see the pics of the kittens! your food prep is very organised (even if hubby puts a spanner in the works). good to see you persevering with the celtic knots. I’d be throwing them across the room! Helen #12
OMG! Had a horrible time figuring out the comment button! My old brain sometimes makes me crazy. I love the baby photos of the kitties. I love my girls so much. I have a couple not so stray “stray” kittens that I feed on a daily basis and even asked the owner if I could get them spayed because she obviously just wants mousers and doesn’t care for the kitties! I am taking them in next week! Love the Celtic knot works. I just found out last year by the Ancestry DNA that I am 28% N Irish and the rest is pretty much made up of Scotland, Wales and Nordic genetics. Interesting turn out I think. Love Indian food and curries but DH doesn’t so we tend to stick to the same stuff. I might try again with him. Hope you have a good week. Vickie #26
tried to leave a comment a couple times and it wouldn’t let me…maybe I was too long winded. Love the Celtic knots work, the kitties, the foods etc. Have a great week. Vickie #26
Love the Celtic knots, it must be quite painstaking work to keep them in their shape. Love your kitties as usual, particular the one with Ruby on the floor in the blanket 🙂 One of these days I am going to come visiting 🙂 x Angela #28
I had forgotten how cute your two looked when they were tiny, I just love looki.ng at them but never noticed their noses. I see now what you mean. Aren’t cats funny, you buy these things for them thinking how comfortable they will be and they prefer something like a cardboard box, or in the case of you two, to sit right outside that lush basket.
Know what you mean about hubby not telling you things, it happens here, but not with any malice, just a ‘man thing’ I think.
Your desk is amazingly ordered, I can remember when you first had it built and I was so envious of that curve. Still am if truth be told – but in a nice way.
Lovely celtic knot pictures – I look forward to seeing some computer generated ones.
Love how your food looks and I now know why you seem to organised on the cooking front – must have a look for that app and see if I could work with it. Maybe it will be better than Alexa, who knows? Plus we need to be more organised now with this virus about so that shopping time is kept to a minimum.
Hugs, Neet xx
I just love seeing pics of Ruby and Lily, and now I can tell them apart! Yes they were adorable when they were little, aren’t all kittens? They are still adorable now!
The insta-pot has always intrigued me as to whether I would want one or not. The combination of slow-cooker, pressure cooker (always scared me) and air fryer at least made me look up the insta-pot on Amazon. While most of the comments were good, there were a few that were really scary, the worst of which the thing caught on fire! I hope your is OK, these seemed to have caught on fire on first use, but I think I will stick to my tried and true slow cooker and not bother. Your curry looks delicious!
I like what you did to the green Celtic knot, but seeing them side by side, I think the reason I liked the first one so much is that it looks old and mossy, as if it were found in an old castle somewhere in Ireland! But you did a good job brightening it up!
You asked how people store their stamps, I have mine in photo album binders, by category. I am in the slow process of unmounting them all (and more than likely reducing their re-sale price), but I am about 80% done. I have 3 shelves of the albums, and I write where they are from beside them. I made my own pouches using extra strong plastic page protectors and sewed the pouches (with some cardstock inside) to the size needed. I use Tack-it-Over and Over on the back of the stamps, just a few drops here and there, and then stick them on the plastic cardboard sheets that come with a lot of the photo albums (the kind that you pull the plastic back to insert the photos). I bought all the albums at thrift stores. I really like this system so far, it’s easy to see the stamps all in one place, and easy to store!
Thanks for your visit, I think I have fixed the photos on the blog (I just replaced them all), have a great week! Lindart #20
Hi Shoshi, loving your kitties and the Celtic knots. I tried to leave a comment earlier in the week but couldn’t like Vickie so trying again. Angela x2x
Hi Shoshi.
The Celtic knot collection just keeps getting better and better – the second batch is really striking. How will you ever be able to part with them?! I’m also curious to know how big they are – six to a sheet of A4?
Love the picture of the Kitty kittens scrunched up next to their bed. How funny that you used their tails to tell them apart when the difference between them was as plain as the noses on their faces!
Have a lovely week!
Amelia #22