Monday for Mindfulness (or my thoughts and ramblings

I had expected that today I might have been showing everything I had learned at yesterday's workshop with Maria.  Sadly, life intervened and put a stop to that.  

Having wrenched my wrist (which is a funny shape and arthritic from being badly broken a few years ago), it was very sore and I did not fancy the four motorway drive, so I sent my apologies to Maria, and sulked at home.  There are times when you just have to be sensible and work out priorities.  For me, it was working out that if I did not give my wrist a chance to recover, I might not be able to go to the Groovi Retreat next week.

I did do a little gentle finishing off on a piece started recently at parchment class.

Our tutor, Pat White, had started us off on a traditional design by Christine Coleman, tracing with black pen or ink.  There are a number of variations on mine, some deliberate, some to cover up my failure to engage my brain.  I have already shown an unfinished version of this on a previous blog (https://silvercrafter.blogspot.com/2019/04/thursday-for-tips-and-techniques-post.html)  

One of my brain failures was forgetting to check which side I was adding the Dorso Oil to, and ending up with nasty black smudges all across the front.  Fortunately, after a few cross mutterings, I sat down again and engaged a couple of brain cells.  With the help of a Faber Castell pencil/ink eraser, and the Pergamano blending nibs with more oil, I managed to tidy up and remove pretty well all of the offending black.

Two things to learn and remember for ever:-

1. Permanent black Micron pen is not permanent when you rub Dorso Oil all over it (we were told at the start of the class so no excuses).

2.  Don't panic.  There is almost always a way out to avoid having to start again.

  Now it is finished and mounted up.  It is backed with designer parchment and then the matching designer paper.

My next job is to reorganize my parchment tool bag.  Having recently bought the six newly reintroduced Pergamano tools, and acquired a few tools from EBay that had been dropped from the range before Clarity took over, my bag is running out of space.

Listening to Linda Williams on the last Pergamano shows, I think I am going to follow her example. I have just bought a second bag, and will now move all the colouring things into the new bag, which will give me the space to put all my tools into a sensible order.  As the new bag has just arrived, I am off to do that job right now.  I might even be able to fit my underused Dorso crayons into the colouring bag too.  Result!

What are you going to do today?  Crafting or sorting or something completely different.

Just remember to never throw things in the bin until you have really thought about it for at least twenty four hours.