It’s the thickest heaviest flannel I’ve ever come across. It’s a queen size flat sheet and it is absolutely going to end up as a dress with long sleeves.
ChatGPT takes a crack at it –
Ummmmm wut? That’s pretty, but I want the stripes going vertically.
Okay!
Oh, boy, ChatGPT.
There was lots of attempts to explain in words.
How about another AI? “thenewblack” gives a free sample.
THAT’S what I had in mind!
Then I realized I gave that AI an advantage because I rotated and cropped the image of the fabric first. I explained to ChatGPT that it was an image of a folded sheet, buuuut… baby steps.
Given the same advantage to start with, ChatGPT does better. But unfortunately I said “illustration” and I didn’t say “a girl wearing…” and that’s the end of my free images for today.
Scroll down to “How to Switch Template Designs” and watch the 19 second silent video.
OH.
Didn’t know that was there. ALL THIS TIME THAT WAS THERE AND I DIDN’T KNOW and it’s not like “you’ve had the ruby slippers on your feet all this time, but you wouldn’t have believed.”
I would have believed. I just didn’t notice.
And really that’s the key, the one that turns everything on. Notice the difference between those two tabs and how to move around them, and the options open up. You kinda gotta know that.
I’m finally figuring out TwentyTwentyFive and LOVING it! (I went to Carolina Nymark’s blog and read some of her posts, including one with a tragic long ago love story with a boy with a terminal illness that nearly made me cry. I love reading the good stuff from random strangers) and I love T25.
I’m not going to say it was easy to figure out – the key above is necessary and is non-obvious – but two hours work max, and I’m getting it. I have T25 on JWH, Playground and Friends and I feel like I’ll never need another theme. (I “know how” to work with CSS but if you don’t do it regularly, you forget the details.)
In the olden days, installing WP was hard, then cropping an image was easy. Now installing WP is easy, then it takes, well, at least more than just a casual glance, to figure out how to change things. Once you do WOW, so much power and possibilities!
So with a little fiddling, I can make my theme look how it’s supposed to, like a 1990’s girl crafts website with a floral allover background again XD
I still have my FABBDAlous background! And AI just made me a cool blue vines tile for JWH, too. I didn’t have to go searching, or create it myself.
Boy, sometimes I just need to talk! Oh yes, I talk to my darling and I’m so grateful we still have things to talk about. We’re not bored of each other after three years! If there’s nothing to do, we can sit and talk about things and we are entertained.
Sometimes I need to write. I gotta share with the world at large. But then, there’s this awful writer’s block lately, like I don’t know where to start, and there’s so much to say it feels like a six foot water balloon and I’m holding a pin.
The beauty of the internet is that I don’t have to worry about boring anyone. If they’re bored, the page impression will be 4 seconds.
I used to write looong letters to random friends/relatives who hadn’t necessarily indicated any interest in receiving such, and then I’d have to hear, “Wow, you really write a lot!”
If anybody gets through the blog, it must be because they read a lot š
Facebook was so cool, with those overlapping circles. Since people can hide each other and the other never knows the difference, I can rest assured that if anybody sees what I post, it’s because they still want to.
Maybe an emotionally healthy person would feel the way I used to feel, that writing letters to people is a gift. But by now I’ve heard “wow, you sure do write a lot” enough times that I’m hesitant to share. I don’t like bugging people.
Realizing I am autistic helps that make more sense. I’ve read several places that this habit of sending “too-long” letters is indeed an Aspie trait.
I guess the typicals write cute little one page missives with nothing in them, kinda like when they get together and talk to each other about nothing for hours – and have the crazy idea that they’re “getting to know” each other even though they can talk for years without really getting to anything that matters.
They say “we weren’t at the stage yet” to talk about the good stuff. Are we ever? So we waste time with sports / cooking / weather / travel for years, then one day the truth comes out and find out that “friend” is on the other side. So all that time was just passing entertainment, or a maybe at least useful connections for when it comes time to need help moving, or populating special occasions.
And some people, when they find out their friends are completely different on the big ideas, will change to suit the group! I find that baffling. I say, might as well drop the big stuff earlier and not waste time.
I’ve had a couple opportunities lately to be put in a position to “get to know someone better” by enduring a period of interchange with good manners and small talk.
In case they can be useful in the future? Hmph. I tend to clam up around people easily enough anyway, now make schmoozing an obligation because I want something you have, and there’s a recipe for stubborn silence. Just go home. (Hooray! Now I have a home to go to!)
On the contrary, if someone stays in my presence for a while and doesn’t pick at me, I’ll probably divulge my entire life story and enjoy doing it. In person at least you can tell by the body language whether they are still interested or not. How do you do that by email?
I miss Facebook, I really do. I want to be HIDDEN by all of those who are bored.
Well, here I am. Here, I can go on without self-consciousness. Like Facebook, if they see me, it’s because they made the choice.
Look what my darling found on the road the other day, and brought home to me!
She may have been run over. She’s a lil bit squashed and battered. Just like me.
I was delighted to receive her, but concerned about who may have lost her.
My husband happened to have a friend with him at that moment, and the friend, seeing my worry, suggested, “Maybe you should put up a lost and found poster?”
Oh, that’s a great idea!
My son interpreted – “I think he was kidding.”
Maybe he was.
I wasn’t.
Oh yeah. The premise. “What are we all doing here?”
If you’re still here, you know what I mean about going on and on XD
This is a place for me to go on and on without self-consciousness.
I put that Barbie pattern up aeons ago, and people liked it, to the point janelwashere.com is found, and feels ever so slightly like a storefront. I only want to put useful, public-oriented stuff there. So that’s less like “my play room” now.
Seven years and up. That means me. I’m older than seven!
I made a post called “A Doll I Didn’t Buy / Purpose of This Subdomain” to talk about her, but then I bought her.
She was ten bucks. I’m an adult. I can buy whatever I want to XD
I want to be one of those old ladies who sits among piles of lace and ribbons, dressing dolls!
Last time I walked down to that Little Free Library, I had a pile to donate and I wasnāt intending to pick anything up. But then there was this. āThe Wisdom of the Westā compiled by Criswell Freeman. I opened it and found several pertinent sayings that I ought to try to remember. I walked away, then walked back and picked up the book.
āI would rather live as we do, in a sod house we own, than to rent and have someone boss us around.ā
This is the heart of the matter. Iāve dreamed my whole life of a place where I could feel like I belong there. I belong with the darling of course and would live with him under a bridge if necessary; but it would also be peachy to have a home assigned on earth. This is where Janel goes. When we are done playing with Janel, we put her back here.
We finally have a chance to own our own place without obligation. Thatās the big dream and doesnāt have to include the creature comforts, hehe, itās all about surviving that first winter, and if youāre lucky, write a book about it later. Now I get to do that, too.
āWhere would you go? Back to the place where you were dissatisfied before you came out here?ā
This is a concept that might help me at the new place when I begin to get cold. In fact, I think it already has. We were out there camping for two weeks when it was 24 degrees. I sometimes wished I could goā well, not home, this is home!
Not back. Anything but that.
After only a couple weeks, I did begin to wish I could go inside. Weāll have an “inside” soon enough. In the meantime, ONWARD.
āPeople on the Pacific Coast think of themselves as belonging to the ācoastā; the āWestā is quite something else again.ā
We have been marveling and giggling over the concept of heading east to get to the West.
I spent my early years deep in the heart of the old West, far south of here in gold country, where except for the cars and telephones it was still 1849. That place was excellent in all ways except that it was, unfortunately, politically situated in Cali (cough) Forn (cough) – sorry, I canāt say it. If the State of Jefferson ever became reality, I’d move back there instantly, but for now, no.
Anyhoo the West was alive there and I loved it. But right now weāre heading eastwards inside our good old birthplace WA, to get back to something a bit more West.
āDonāt let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.ā
Right. There are so many limitations, but we have āa lotā and we can do āall kinds of thingsā and it is deeply satisfying to do as much as possible with what we have, rather than to just stay stuck. Knowing youāre doing everything you can do is all thatās necessary to be able to sleep at night.
āWe have learned to follow the customs of the country, and get along as best we can with what we have.ā
Exactly. I dunno about the customs, I’ve never been good at that. But I’m def making do with the things that I have. Funny, but I think Iāve been preparing for this my whole life. Iāve scoffed at spoiled American women, and yet when it came time to leave “civilization”, it turned out I’d been comfortable there so long, I had started to get a bit dependent. Well, I’ve scoffed too much to deserve any sympathy. Toughen up.
Canāt we live without hot running water? Canāt we wake up cold and make a fire like our ancestors did, who craved freedom? Yes! If that’s the price of freedom, then absolutely yes, and that’s a cheap price.
Canāt we do without the internet? ::cries::
Iāve collected candles all my life. Whenever I saw someone’s used wedding tapers on the giveaway table, I picked them up. Now I finally get to need them. And the wool blankets, Iām gonna need those, and warm quilted clothing, for real. I have a self-constructed hand crank sewing machine for exactly this exigency! In case thereās no more electricity. There’s no more electricity, so yay.
I was one of many who was a bit crestfallen when Y2K didn’t happen. I was hoping for TEOTWAWKI while I was still young. And now, here it is! Because I brought it on myself.
āA dose of adversity is often as needful as a dose of medicine.ā
Itās true. I can feel it coming. A bit of actual discomfort might just do wonders for my seething. There’s no time to be nuts when you need to carry some water to wash dishes and get the firewood in before dark.
Long ago when I first read books about dogs, the standard advice was to give your new puppy a hot water bottle and a ticking clock, so it will miss its mother less. As if any baby mammal would not be able to tell the difference between a mother and a clock.
I just checked, and they’ve upgraded the standard advice to at least putting the dog’s pen in your bedroom so it won’t be so lonely, “and if the dog cries, comfort him briefly but don’t make a big deal out of it.”
Still sounds like baby dog abuse to me.
It’s about instinct. A dog on its own is a dead dog. They need the pack. If they find themselves alone, their crying is for survival.
Can you make a human go to sleep in a hammock hung from a steel cable ten stories high? “GO TO SLEEP, stop whining, you’re perfectly safe.”
I say the humans should put their spoiled human self down there on the floor and comfort that poor critter. Here’s my baby dog’s first night home. We had a lovely night.
I slept on the floor with her for the first week, and after that she was comfortable and didn’t mind sleeping in her bed.
Here’s how to tell it’s going to be a grand day!
Here’s the baby dog having her first ride home.
Now she rides on my lap to everywhere!
If she isn’t allowed in my lap for some reason, she’s sad. It’s baby dog abuse š It doesn’t happen often since my wardrobe now is chosen for how it will look covered in black hair and paw prints, but still, sometimes…
That’s the baby dog’s idea of staying in the back seat.
“Why don’t you love me any more Mommy :-(”
I didn’t pose this one, but here she is along with the shopping bag I made out of her dog food bag!
My mother would let us pick our birthday cake. My sister always had Bonbon Ribbon Torte (layers of thin cookie with raspberry sauce and whipped cream), my brother liked pineapple upside down cake, and I wanted chocolate chip cake. The recipe was something my sister clipped out of a magazine back in the 60s.
Here we are.
Chocolate Chip Cake
2 eggs 1/2 cup butter 1 cup sugar 1 tsp vanilla 1 cup sour cream 1 tsp baking powder 1 tsp baking soda 2 cups flour 12 oz choc chips
Cream soft ingredients together, combine dry and mix.
Bake in greased and floured cake pan at 350Ā° for 45 min or until a toothpick comes out clean.
