Infusions, Stencilling, iPad Zentangle and WOYWW 406

My desk this week.

At the back you can see my teabag stain sheet propped up, resting on the Florabunda card toppers I made recently (haven’t made them up into cards yet). On the table in front you can see my Infusions experiments. Between the two piles you can see a white oval thing. In case you are wondering what it is, it’s this upside down:

I’ve got a set of painted Romanian eggs and this week one of them fell down and got broken. I couldn’t bear to throw it away so I filled the back with Polyfilla, and once it’s set hard, I shall sand away the back to make it flat and use it as some sort of embellishment on a project – maybe to decorate the lid of a box?

I have been doing quite a bit of creative stuff during the week. I had a wonderful play with my Infusions (both the old set and the new) and am planning on making a mini-album out of the samples, with a description of what I did on each one. The first samples were just to showcase the colours.

You can read about this here.

I have also prepared some other pages for this mini-album, using Polyfilla One-Fill through a selection of stencils.

Infusions work very well with stencils and moulding paste. I shall probably add some other effects to these pages, too. See this post for details.

Next, I’ve been working on some small Zentangle tiles on the iPad Pro, using the Apple Pencil.

I have added colour to a couple of them. Working on the iPad I can keep the colour on a separate layer which means that I can recolour the original drawing differently if I want. See the posts here and here for details.

Finally, I’ve completed one more piece for my embroidery project, and this is the result.

Unfortunately the light wasn’t terribly good for these last photos, and all those gold French knots look rather dull! I do wish photos would pick up sparkly stuff better…

Health Update

Today it is exactly six weeks since my emergency surgery for a bowel obstruction and to perform a temporary repair on my parastomal hernia which was the cause of the problem. This week I really feel I have turned the corner and I’m feeling very much better now, and have started doing a few more things. The fact that I actually want to do things, and am thinking more about what I want to do as time goes on, is a good indication of how much better I am feeling. At this stage I am ready to be reintroducing some fibre into my diet – I’ve been on the low residue diet all this time, to allow things to rest and heal up properly. I’ve eaten a couple of pieces of fruit over the past couple of days with no ill effect, and I am looking forward to sampling some more adventurous vegetables – baby steps to start with as I don’t want to overload my system!

The district nurse made her final visit last Thursday and removed the remaining two small dressings from my wound, which is now nice and dry. It still looks quite angry, which takes a bit of getting used to, as I’d got so used to it as it was before they opened it up again, and it seems to have shrunk a bit, causing mounds of flesh either side, so you could say I now have a second cleavage!! I am sure things will settle down in time – one’s body always changes shape after surgery like this and what it looks like at any given time is no indication of what will be its final shape.

I’ve gained a couple of pounds since leaving hospital and I’m not over-keen on gaining too much more! Now I’m so much better and starting to eat normally again, I am considering re-starting my 5:2 diet fairly soon.

The granny frame is now in the loft, and I am back to using my crutches and trolley again. This is great – the trolley is a lot easier to steer, and I can carry stuff around on it! I suddenly feel a lot more normal. My hubby is still doing the meals and still bringing me breakfast in bed, but I have started doing the odd bit of washing up, and am now doing the laundry again, which is also helping me feel much more normal, and giving me the feeling that I’m getting my life back again!