It’s *almost* that time for me to start another spin around the sun! I enjoy my birthday – and I’m pretty proud of the fact that I’ll be 55! I’m trying to live healthier so that I can feel good, I never thought I’d make it to this age. Reason to celebrate for sure!
I haven’t written here in a while. It’s hard for me to compartmentalize things like gen0cide and still just live a normal life. I’m having difficulties in keeping depression at bay, so I limit my news intake drastically – but that makes me feel guilty. Not only that but our little business has taken a bit of a nose-dive recently and I’m starting to panic while looking for outside work. Top it off with sleeting ice storms and cold weather – I don’t have a lot of good things to share. I want to try to keep this blog more on the positive side of things, so that’s why I’ve been away.
Health Care
I started this year with an intention towards feeling better in my body. So I’ve started seeing a menopause practitioner who is helping me figure out all that stuff, and I’ve started another round of iron infusions! I’m pretty sure that most of my issues stem from a simple mineral deficiency. It’s only been 2 weeks and I already have 100x more energy, lost the intense anxiety, and my brain is working again. I can’t explain it, but I really lose my cognitive grasp on language. I can hear things fine, but my brain just turns everything to mush. It’s a bit scary. BUT these iron infusions are like magic for making me feel better – and I’ll take it! I just wish they weren’t so pricey.
Stress
Financial stress levels are very high for us right now. Our screen printing business has taken a big hit with higher shirt costs and digital printing competition. The market is super saturated with t-shirt printers now with on-demand printing. Anyway, I’ve been doing some side hustles and looking for other opportunities for more income. It makes things very stressful.
To keep busy and help promote the business, we reprinted our business cards from 20 years ago! The information is all the same – we’ve been printing t-shirts for a long time!!
Staying Positive
Staying positive – looking for the positive in things – is what keeps me sane. One way for me to stay positive is to work on projects and finish them. So I started a project a couple weeks ago that I’m just about finished with… it’s a color matching project where I matched Kona Solid fabric colors to Pantone Coated color swatches both physically and digitally.
This was an intensive project – and I’m not sure it will be of any real value, but I looked at it like a school assignment. Good for practice in color theory.
Color Matching Process
My color matching process started out by scanning in each swatch from the Kona Color fabric card with a 600 dpi resolution. Then I selected the whole area of the swatch and blurred it into only one color. I took the Hex, RGB, and CMYK codes and noted them next to the scanned swatch photos. Then I cut apart an old Kona Color fabric card and an old Pantone Solid Coated swatch book and physically matched the fabric to the ink color in two different lighting situations to choose the closest PMS match. Not all had good matches… but I picked the closest ones.
I glued the two swatches next to each other onto paper and then photographed those. Then I went back to my digital file and added the Pantone Coated color swatches I chose from the physical cards. Then I made and .ase file that has both the digital (Hex/RGB) color matches for Kona Solid fabrics, as well as the Pantone Coated color matches. I also made a .pdf download of the photographed swatch matches and the scanned book with all color codes.
At least when I design on the computer, I’ll have a good set of colors for my own visuals! I’m not sure how they would actually print since the coated colors are for printing on coated papers. Color matching from screen to real life is much more difficult than the other way around. I think I’ll put this all together for as one download and put it in my shop for anyone interested.
Storm Drama
We are currently on the tail end (hopefully!) of an ice storm that has taken out trees and power lines all over the PNW. It has been unusually cold and super windy.
Our neighbor from across the street used to park his car in front of our place all the time for years. Last year someone stole his catalytic converter so the car was very loud and he stopped using it. The car sat for some time before we realized the guy had moved and abandoned it.
Skip to earlier this week when temperatures plummeted. We noticed a shopping cart covered with a blue tarp behind this abandoned car. One morning we noticed the inside was all fogged up. Someone was sleeping in the car. For hours, I was going back and forth in my mind wondering if I should bring the guy a blanket or something. While pondering, my husband noticed a firetruck turning down our street. So we looked out the other window to see where it might be going and there was this HUGE fireball right outside our front door! The abandoned car was totally on fire!! The fire department put it out and saved our big cedars! Found out the houseless dude left a can of sterno lit in the car while he went to do something – luckily he wasn’t in the car!!
Now we are waiting to see how long it takes for the city to tow this from the street. It’s attracting all sorts of crazies who just want to smash it more. There were two guys with bats out there this morning, just hitting the hood of the car. Can’t wait for it to be gone!
Happy New Year!
How are you starting the new year – do you have resolutions? Do you really try to stick to them? I have a few, but I’m not so good at following through – so if I get to them, I’ll share. One fun thing we did was print some FUCK stickers and cards. The stickers are vinyl (durable) and Gregg used his ink blending technique on screen to create unique and colorful backgrounds. This one was the coolest of the bunch:
I’m excited for this new year and new spin around the sun – I will work towards peace and kindness in more aspects of my life. What is your resolution?