A couple of days ago I posted about a really great way to waste time: forget to click "COLLATE" when printing multiple copies of my book. I'm sure a lot of you (some of you? one of you?) thought "Gee, that was dumb, I'll bet she learned her lesson."
Umm.
Yeah.
You would think so.
Only this time: instead of discovering it right away, I actually let the printer print all 20 copies uncollated.
Oh yeah. I'm blonde.
Actually, I'm not really sure how it happened. My only guess is that I accidentally unclicked collate on my way to click print.
Dianne had asked why my children weren't helping with the last collating job. Well, the last time I had them help collate it didn't go so well. I had to "fix" a lot. Plus, they are in the doghouse this week, and my level of trust in their ability to act responsibly is almost nil.
(One of them WROTE on his shirt with marker today. "But it's a washable marker, Mom." And this is but one example of a bad choice that has been made. Ugh.)
I had a different (funny and not whiny) post planned in my head for today, but maybe I'll do that post tomorrow. After I run to Waterloo for the 2nd straight day because I'm apparently incapable of accurately predicting how much toner I need.
Can you tell I'm not having the best of weeks? I wish I could start over. I might choose not to get out of bed.
I feel guilty for not having very many pictures lately, so here's some feathers on silk for your enjoyment:
This is probably only interesting to...well...me....but, printing has begun:
(My trusty Photosmart 8250 printing front covers)
I'm still proofreading (mom found a few things, not the least of which is some punctuation issues...), and I still have photographs to add in. I took some samples outside (70 plus degrees today!) and had a photo shoot.
Look! It's green out there!
And here, how about a sneak peek at one of the designs from the new book:
This one is called Hanging Hearts.
I've shown off the cover in a past post, but here's a closeup of the picture that's on the cover. This design is called Corkscrews.
The quilt itself is a pattern by my friends Miki and Diane who designed it just for me! As soon as I have pattern ordering information I'll be sure to share!
In addition to finishing the book, I'm trying to spend time today getting things ready to take orders. I just love messing around with website stuff. Ugh. Everything takes twice as long as think it ought to, and I know just enough to be dangerous, but not enough to be really efficient.
Well, time to eat something and then back to work. I may have to go change into a t-shirt (and shorts?)!
I never did make it to the quilting machine on Wednesday or Thursday. I barely made it there last night, but did manage to get some quilting in after we went to see Charlotte's Web. (Which we greatly enjoyed. I'm the only in my family that cried, though.)
I keep finding myself sucked into drawing and editing. More than a few times over the last days, I've intended to just check my e-mail, but then I start thinking, and start editing, and next thing I know, it's been an hour, my rear end and back are sore, and my legs are losing feeling from sitting funny. Definitely time to get up and stretch at that point.
The obsession is paying off -- I've gotten a lot done! The front cover is done, I think:
My first attempt used a picture of the quilt laying flat and it just didn't work at all. (Lying flat? Why can't I remember that rule?) I had a brainstorm yesterday -- I draped it on the back of the couch, turned a light on behind it, and voila! I'm quite happy with it! I'll post about the quilt in the picture in a future post. Some friends designed the pattern for me to use on the front cover, and they'll be publishing it soon.
I have to get back to the quilting machine. I'm not even going to open CorelDraw right now....the quilt on the machine must get done this weekend. I've got Smallville in the DVD player to keep me "company" while I quilt today (I mostly listen to it, but occasionally look up for glimpses of Tom Welling and Michael Rosenbaum)
OK, enough messing around, back to work....
My boys jar of life experiences is still pretty empty, but they now have something new to add to it. Dealing with a bully. Actually, I think bully might be too strong a word for the current situation, but I'm keeping my eye on things. Instead of bully, maybe "really annoying person" could be substituted? Today's episode included calling the boys "the ugly twins." I think it kind of hurt Will's feelings -- enough that he actually told the teacher in charge of recess about it. Just this morning we had talked about the fact that just because this annoying person calls you stupid doesn't actually mean you ARE stupid.
We talked about it some more for awhile after school. Later, at supper I said something about the boys being the CUTE TWINS. Will agreed that MOM was probably right and that this annoying person was WRONG.
I keep telling everybody, having twins was hard work that first year, but that was absolute CAKE compared to this kind of stuff. At least when they were babies I had complete control over everything.
Shortly after our after school conversation it was time for piano lessons. It's cold here, but not freezing -- it was maybe in the high 30s/low 40s at the time. If they were still babies they would have been bundled into heavy coats, hats, mittens, etc. Not anymore. Just sweatshirts. I had to make myself stop my instinct to force them to put their coats on. Pick your battles, right, Mom?
Speaking of growing up, guess who needs to grow up herself? Why do I keep having to learn the same lesson over and over again?
Here it is:
The dreaded task that you are just SURE is going to take HOURS and be incredibly painful, in actuality will only take about 5,10, 15 minutes TOPS. Plus, the relief in having the task done will far outweigh any tiny bit of pain you might feel doing it.
I have learned and RElearned this lesson countless times. And I'm only 34. Good grief. Maybe I should print the lesson and pin it on my wall where I can see it from my computer.
So now, on to more fun things:
Button weighing report: I own approximately 5 pounds of buttons. (Not counting the 6 new pounds I reported on yesterday). More than half of those, though, are buttons I got from an antique store in town last year. I haven't really sorted through them, but I'm not sure most of those are worth much. Maybe later (when I need more task avoidance...), I'll spend some time sorting.
So, I was half right -- the buttons I've collected in small amounts on my own over the years add up to about 2.5 pounds. My goal is to not just collect buttons, though -- I'd like to actually use them! Vicki made the mistake of mentioning eBay and buttons. And then she sent me an e-mail with a link to an auction in it. Oh my. I'm not sure if I should thank her or not.
(I only ended up bidding on one auction, and I won't allow myself to put in a higher bid, no matter what. I just realized that the auction isn't over until the end of the week, so I probably won't get these. Oh well, it looks like there is plenty more.....)
Other ways to avoid tasks: discover cool new things in CorelDraw.
I'm using CorelDraw 12 to write/draw my quilting design book. I bought the software last spring when I did the first book, and it has worked great. I've been well aware that I'm just barely scratching the tiniest bit of the surface of its capabilities. I played with the calligraphy pen tool for a bit. I was going to do my blog header with the calligraphy pen, but it didn't turn out quite the way I wanted. I did make the new header you see above in CorelDraw, but I don't think I really had to figure anything new out to do it. Well, except maybe to make it so that it wasn't HUGE, but I fixed that pretty quick.
I also discovered a really cool spray tool that can spray objects along the "line" that you draw
No, I don't really know how this is actually going to be useful or helpful in my life, but isn't it cool?
The other thing I did was to find this really cool art program called ArtRage
The drawing/painting tools actually act like the real objects -- paintbrush, crayons, paint roller, pencils. There's metallic paint and GLITTER. I was drawing a face earlier and was playing with layers and accidentally lost most of my drawing, so I was pretty bummed about that. I'll try again later. I am using my Wacom tablet with it (I love mine...), and probably would be totally hopeless if I tried to use my mouse. I'm a terrible mouse-artist. That sounds really weird, but hopefully you know what I mean!
(Make sure you click on it to see the texture of the background. In the real thing, some of the blue lines of glitter actually sparkle....)
Despite all of this task avoidance, I did actually manage to get several drawings for my book done, so it was not a completely lost day. We'll see what I can task avoiders I can find tomorrow. (VBG)
