Monday miscellany

in which our plucky heroine gets an early start on the day...

This morning was the first attempt at our artistic encouragement meeting via Discord. My online pal Turquoise had suggested it, and since she lives in the New Forest, and I live a good way toward the other side of the planet, we met at a time later in the day for her and not too terribly early in the morning for me. Which encouraged my waking earlier than usual so as to have gone through my morning routine prior to tackling the computer. I even managed a bit of a before breakfast walk!

Our meeting went well once we somehow got it all sorted out with the Discord video interface (though I can't guarantee it will be any smoother the next time. We each have aspects of our art life we wish to move forward on, so I think that this will be a fun and helpful weekly activity, not to mention that it is lovely to be able to see friends in "person" albeit on the pixel screen. She was able to give me some useful tips about using the new printing press, and how to set things up for registering multiple colors. Since learning and trying more in the way of print making is one of my goals for this year, I expect to begin some explorations soon, once I clear away a space on one of the worktables.

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slabs of avocado pit drying and oxydising:

I found an interesting post by someone called "The Artful Acorn" about making a miniature basket using slabs cut from an avocado pit for the base, and weavers of dried dandelion stems... I realised I had one more avocado left, so after adding it to my salad, I decided to try cutting the pit into slices. It wasn't as easy as slicing bread, but I was able to use a paring knife, taking good care not to slip and slice my paws. I'll drill holes, rather than use a steel straw to punch holes for weaving as they did, and see what I can come up with using whatever botanical weavers foraged for last year since for sure there are no dandelion stems tucked away somewhere. For now, I am letting the slices of avocado dry...

Isn't this inspiring?! Images by "The Artful Acorn"
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making slow if steady progress on my "return to the benthic strata" fingerless gloves, knitting up in spare bits of time while on zoom meetings. Have finished completely one of the two today, and will soon begin on the fingers and palms of glove the second. Realised that the first benthic strata had fingers that were in stockinette stitch but two row stripes rather than how these are just single rows. Oh well, still looks okay if not quite as sharp, and no one but myself would notice.

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I was going to mail out more calendars, but since I need the extra postage (adorable rabbit stamp) and today is a holiday the post office is closed. Hopefully there will be another day this week without too much rain. I can hope that they also have the Lunar New Year of the Rabbit stamps as well.

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January SMART goals (x=extra)

#	THINGS MADE	THINGS FIXED	THINGS GONE
1	striped tabletweaving	drawings for Vikki	recycle bin
2	night socks toile	2023 calendar masters	yard waste bin
3	2nd set of calendars	-	-
4	night socks	-	-
5	music broadside	-	-
6	x	x	x
7	x	x	x
8	x	x	x
9	x	x	x
10	x	x	x
11	x	x	x
12	x	x	x
13	x	x	x
14	x	x	x
15	x	x	x

today's gratitudes -
1. figured out how to reset my laptop display to be more correctly sized and how to make the text large enough to easily read. Dunno what I had bollixed earlier, but this is better!
2. despite getting a late start on cooking dinner, I managed to find enough already prepared things to throw together something tasty in just a few minutes. Which did rather put paid to my idea of making a spinach rice bake, but the spinach and the rice were easy to combine with a frozen cube of zucchini sauce and some cottage cheese, with some canned applesauce for dessert. Yay for preparing food ahead!
3. the amazing treat of meeting online with my friend Turquoise, as we begin our artist support dyad

Time of Isolation - Day 1045