Categories
Diversions

Piecing it together

I love puzzles – most especially word puzzles (oh gosh I was over-the-freaking-moon when wordle became a thing!) but also logic puzzles, sudoko, crosswords, and jigsaw puzzles.

I did a terrific jigsaw in January manufactured by Galison – a US company that started out by working with museums to make art more widely available for people to use like in note cards, posters and so on.

They have a wide variety of licenced art – from Adler to Wharhol; from 100 pieces to 2,000. For March they have a “Celebrating Women Collection” featuring female artists. They also have a BIPOC collection – there’s a Quilts of Gee’s Bend that looks lovely!

The one I did was a holiday gift from my in-laws – it’s almost as if they know me: A BOOK STORE!

the box

It’s actually called A Day at the Bookstore by Michael Storrings. I had a lot of fun putting it together – even all those bricks.

The pieces fit well together and although there was some dust in the box after I dumped all the pieces out from their bag, there wasn’t any noticeable while I worked on the puzzle. The pieces also felt sturdy and held up to being stolen by the cat and knocked around a bit. I liked the way they felt – like they had some substance and a bit of texture.

As you can see below, there was a bit of glare – but that’s also likely due to where I was working on the dining room table (Toby is so accommodating) but if glare is a concern for you – then know that it’s sort of semi-gloss (not matte).

Naturally, I went down a little rabbit hole of jigsaw manufacturer reviews – there is literally a reddit for everything isn’t there? The blogger behind My Jigsaw Journal cannot stand Galison whereas loads of people on that reddit page really enjoy them. I definitely would do more puzzles by Galison at this point.

all done!

The goal is a puzzle a month for 2022 so here’s the January post. I did another puzzle in February so I’m just behind on posting about them not the actual doing lol

Oh and you might note I tagged this with “mindfulness” as well as “jigsaw puzzles” because I think this is true. My goal for meditation is to try and stop regurgitating the past or fretting over the future for a bit. And I find that when I’m working on a puzzle that’s definitely the case!

Categories
Diversions

mindf***ness

an (irreverent) aside

Last week I did a “daily calm” session focused on loving kindness.

You start by saying to yourself:

May I be happy
May I be healthy
May I be at peace

Then the idea is to say the same about someone you love / care about:

May you be happy
May you be healthy
May you be at peace

Then someone less central to your life, or a stranger, or the squirrel looking at you through the window.

Then someone you find annoying or difficult to deal with.

So this is where some people may have difficulties. I never do. I can genuinely want the person who cut me off on the highway or the neighbour who parks his car and blocks access to our garage to be happy, healthy, and at peace.

And also to stop being an asshole.

That’s normal right? 😉

two fluffy cats snuggling in an old wing-back chair
loving kindness
Categories
Diversions

Half way through January

I thought I ought to check in with how I am doing with my habits and goals and stuff. You know, those daily, easy/hard, things?

Okay first, clearly drinking more water is actually easier than I thought it would be. Even when I did nothing for a couple of days post-COVID booster shot, I still managed to drink at least two of my water bottles full each day. That’s about 1.5L so not loads but more than I was drinking.

Okay – so booster was in the late afternoon of January 5. That first light blue box is January 5. I was soooo wiped out for the 6th and 7th at least.

picture was actually taken on January 21 – but yea, didn’t want to wait till the end of the month for an update

Moving – I was on a good roll there. That booster shot though really wiped me out. You see that lonely red box in there? I got the shot on Wednesday afternoon. On Saturday I figured I should be able to go for my walk – so I did: 40 minutes woohoo. And within 15 minutes of getting home I fell asleep. And napped for 2 hours! So then I guess I just lost my mojo? Will be working on that.

Yoga – ahhh yoga. Again. 5 days straight. Then wiped. And after a couple of days off I realised that my shoulder was actually NOT appreciating all the table top / cat-cow / downward facing dog poses. You’ll see at the bottom of the chart that I thought maybe yoga would take the place of physio maybe? Turns out I was wrong. So I am going to add a physio break to my work day to get me up off the computer at least. Ideally by the end of the month there will be a lot more of that line filled in!

Reading – ahhh reading is one of those things that’s on the list so I get the joy of crossing it off. Actually from the 12th to the 14th I did reading instead of “creating” because I needed to finish this amazing book by bell hooks and get it back to the library. (And yes, it will have it’s own post soon too). But I am also prone to not picking up a book for days, weeks even. So the ability to check it off (or fill in the box) is nice. Same with contests. I haven’t won much lately but it’s a small group of people I’ve known online for almost 20 years!

Ohhh and I made this today for tracking my books. A bookshelf! In my journal 😊

And at least the cats can’t complain much 😉

So creating – the plan from the beginning was:

☐ 1 x each easy list item per week

☐ 3 x each hard list item per month

Well, mostly I’ve been cross-stitching. Once I coloured. A couple of times I’ve written blog posts. Definitely not spreading out the easy list items.

And the hard list? No painting, no trumpet, and no knitting as of yet. At least we baked once before the 15th! Q asked for – and to help make – chocolate cheesecake for his birthday so I got one hard list item done in the first half of the month! Yikes.

And – I managed to bake twice again since the 15th so baking is okay. But none of the other stuff. You’ll see my little note to myself that CREATE is going to get it’s own chart in February and we’ll see if that helps any.

Categories
Diversions Get Crafty

Galaxy Cross Stich – week 1

Ohhh so this was a bit of fun actually. I had decided to use timeanddate.com for the weather. And then this happened:

well, that was unexpected

I ended up chatting with someone in the facebook group who is also in Toronto and told me that she uses a website from the Canadian government so I went over there and have now switched to using the temperatures as reported by NavCAN from the Toronto Islands. The Island is about 10 km away by car. Pearson Airport (where the weather is traditionally taken from I guess) is about 25 km away. And in a whole other city!

Anyway, here’s the first week:

-4 degrees C = DMC 550

I explained in the first Galaxy Cross Stitch post that I have a spreadsheet – of course I do – that I use to keep track of the temps and the colours and all of that jazz.

For the first seven days of January in Toronto:

Highest high: 5* – on January 1

Lowest high: -3* – on January 3

I’ve used the same colour twice two times already!

Oh and another nifty thing – apparently @muzic_drama06 did a tiktok about it and it’s been watched almost half-a-million times!!

Categories
Diversions Get Crafty

Galaxy Cross Stitch

A temperature tracking pattern by Climbing Goat Designs

Okay, I have to go back and check my XStitch magazines because I am sure I have seen Climbing Goat Designs before. But I stumbled across it again recently on FB and discovered they were doing a stars stitch-along in 2022 so I bought that – wonders of the night sky – more on that in another post 😉

Then someone mentioned the rainbow temperature galaxy pattern, so I had to go give that a look and well, I looked. And I was hooked. Conveniently enough I have some down time now to get them both ready.

Okay first of all – why do I love the temperature tracking pattern so much? Probably because it’s complicated, and fiddly, and I had an excuse to pull out the spreadsheets! (well, “pull out” in this case means open another tab on the laptop; but I am a sucker for spreadsheets).

This is the example from the website. Yes, it really says Southampton!

What range to use?

The instructions explain that it’s a good idea to look back at the last year or two and see what the range of temps your place has. You can see where my spreadsheet came in handy! I went back and counted how many days in each month hit whatever max temperature. For all of 2020 and 2021. Yea, I really LOVE spreadsheets.

	4	5	6	7
January	1	2	3	
Feb		1	2	
March	1		2	4
April	1	1	1	2
May				
June				

This is just a random chunk of the spreadsheet. The columns are the maximum high (in Celsius) reached that day. So in April 2021, one day the max was 4*C, and 2 days it was 7*C etc. May and June didn’t have any max temps this low; whereas January didn’t ever hit 7* or higher!

My spreadsheet goes from “-7 or less” to “31 or more” though from -2 to 30 it goes up by one degree at a time so I ended up with 36 different colours in the final range.

Climbing Goat’s designer – Clare Bray – included six different colour charts with the pattern. So you’re covered if you want to use 16 colours or 36 or really anywhere in between. Which I think is kinda awesome.

And then my mind turned to the fabric…

How could I resist?!? It’s NAMED Galaxy! Handdyed fabric from the amazing Mystic Fabrics

Spreadsheet ready to track temperatures ✔️

Threads assigned to temperature ✔️

Fabric – sorted ✔️

So now all I have to pull out the threads (and order the four I am missing) and I’m ready to go. Well, except it’s not January 1 yet!

I’m not certain I will stitch on this everyday – though that itself would be fun to take pictures of…

(note: I included links where I could because I love supporting artists and creative people etc. I did not receive anything for doing this and, in fact, I didn’t even tell them I was doing this until it was done; which is basically what I always do…)

(note #2: looking back at my “planning for planning” post I realised that I didn’t include EITHER of the CGD patterns in my goals. So I guess I should add them!)