Moving On With Spoonflower

It has been quit a time for us here since my last post! Lots happening. On the bussiness front it is all good. Things are moving along quite nicely in spite of not having the time I would like to sit down and create. I still manage. That is the beauty of using Procreate on the iPad. I can take it to bed and do my thing while Bob is sleeping.

On the personal front - This is one crappy winter for us! Just when we thought we were out of the woods with Bob's health he had a setback. It happened at a bad time too. Just before the heavy snows and massive cold came knocking at our door.

Bob's heart is doing fine. We have gotten his blood pressure way down and also his cholesterol levels. He was very active and with the aide of the exercise bike the pounds have been slipping off of him 10 times faster than it has for me. I am loosing weight but only a pound at a time. Sometimes nothing! Still I am persistant and know by the summer I will be wearing those summer dresses come Hell or High Water.

The problems came for Bob in his foot. His left foot. It swelled up fast and huge. It hurt like Hell and he couldn't put any weight on it at all. He kept insisting it would reverse itself so we just had to wait it out but he got bored with life sitting around the house and got cantankerous. I mean he got downright mean and nasty and I am not one to sit back and take that nonesense from ANYONE. Not even the man I love and adore! We had some doozy fights in between me having to go out to do snow removal on my own in the frigid weather and then coming in to do my own chores around the house all while he sat around moping. I didn't mind the extra workload even though collecting firewood is not my thing. I just couldn't take the nonstop self pity party happening in the house.

I finally put my own foot down and told him we were going to find a doctor somewhere to inform us as to what the problem is, if nothing else.

Now finding a doctor who will see you is not an easy task in New Brunswick these days and having your own family doctor is not a luxury many people have unless you are a new comer to the country but I will not get into the politics of it all except to say that in our day Seniors were treated much better than we are now.

With that little piece of knowledge I set out looking for some place that would take us in. You might think that you could go to a walk in clinic but you would be gravely mistaken. Those are by appointment only and amazingly trying to make an appointment is the closest thing to impossible. So our only hope became the emergency at the hospital. I have always hated going to Emergency for issues that are not dire but in this case that is the only place that cannot refuse you so we were off to spend the day in Emergency with a couple dozen or so people with colds and flue. Sitting with our masks on amongst the coughing and sneezing was horrifying and hopefully we didn't catch anything. I mean PEOPLE, it's not rocket science!!! What do you think a doctor can do for you except to tell you to go home and sleep it off? There is NO MEDICAL CURE for a cold and you are only infecting others who are in a very volnerable state to begin with!!! Stop being so selfish and stay away from public places while you are coughing and sneezing!!!! After spending the better part of the day in Emergency after a very long and uncomfortable drive to town we got to see a doctor. Well, they sat us in a hallway and unbeknownst to us the doctor walked by and then wrote a prescription. Apparently he just glanced at the foot as he was walking by and decided that Bob had gout. He doesn't know about the Hellish winter we have just been through and I am hoping he took a look at Bob's record to learn about having a stroke but who knows. We didn't even know he walked by. I started to question the nurse who brought us the prescription and she very abruptly told us that was the diagnosis and if we didn't agree we were welcome to spend another day in another emergency room to get a second opinion. The cheek of her!!!

So much to my own trepidations Bob started taking the pills and low and behold, the swelling is going down. It is looking like in another week he should be right as rain so it seems this invisible doctor was right in his diagnosis and so far the medication isn't interferring with the rest of his medicinal routine. God help us in a couple of months when we have to go find a doctor again to get his perscriptions renewed but for now I think we will be OK. At least this episode has passed and I am hoping it will be a while before the next crisis befalls us, and I have no doubt there will be another crisis. Seems to be the way things are going these days.

On to happier things. On the art side, I have been doing awesome with Procreate and as I mentioned I tend to spend lots of time in the wee hours creating. Just before Bob's foot flaired up I actually opened that Spoonflower account I was hoping to get and I have added a few patterns to it. Hopefully it will pay off but it feel like a good fit for my new art form. I am still adding to Redbubble as it has been very good to me and I just can't bring myself to removing FineArtAmerica from my list. I think it is because it was my first POD and not to mention that the sales still come in there. Not at breakneck speeds but I am still getting the occasional surprise that pays off quite well. So as long as it pays for the annual fees and then some, I suppose I will continue to add to it. I am not sure it is a great venue for patterns but so far they are being recieved just fine.

Now with my new Spoonflower account I am really enjoying the ease of uploading. I have been promoting on Instagram and X but I am getting uncomfortable even going into X these days so I might have to find a replacement for that. Even with art being my only reason for going in I am continuously seeing disturbing stuff. Mostly of a political nature. I am still using FB for friends and family but to be honest I don't really go there much anymore either. Even friends and family can get very abrubt with their political stances these days. I just don't want to be a part of that. I just want to 'Live and Let Live' as the saying goes. Pinterest is still giving me grief about pins that I didn't even pin. One or two they are admitting they have shut down wrongly but I will not post any more of my art there right now. I think maybe someone is doing a lot of complaining about me for some reason. Maybe they think it is amusing. I don't know why this is happening but it is urking me to no end that Pinterest is telling me they are going to shut down my account. I might just beat them to it and go private for a few months. At least that way I can salvage what is left of my reputation there.

Well this blog post ended up being a bit of venting and I appologize if it is not what you came for but it does feel good putting it out there in the universe. I am sure my next post will be less personal and more art as I really am excited about this new Spoonflower store. The whole thing is very inspiring to me.

Please check out the link if you are interested. I add more and more every other day as I make more. I love the wallpaper and the fabric too. It really is a class act. I actually ordered a few fat quarters of fabric with my art on it. Will take some pics and share them when they arrive.

Meanwhile I am learning more and more about pattern making. It is much easier to do when you start to get a grasp on it all. Some of the tutorials out there are great and I do appreciate all the help but some are very misleading. I think the authors actually believe all those steps are neccesary. Still, I am thankful for their attempts to share their own knowledge and by comparing the various techniques out there it made it easier for me to come to my own conclusions of how to go about things.

I do find it rather disturbing, however, the amount of people who really think it is OK to charge others for their brushes and templates, and they charge a lot. As I have mentioned before, I have created a few textures of my own. The other brushes I don't really use but creating the bows helped me to learn to draw and if they are of help to anyone at all I am happy to continue to keep them in my freebie page for anyone to download. I will add those texture brushes when I get the time. When things ease up around here I might make a few templates for patterns to share for free just to counteract those looking for subscribers or worse, (money) I was going to add my Mandalas also for coloring but have since decided to use them myself. If you see the mandala patterns in my shop those are the ones I created for coloring a few years ago but no one seemed interested at the time. Still I hung onto them because I liked them and thought they might be of use down the road. Seems now is that spot in the road I was looking for. hahaha. I have many more and will use them in the future for more patterns but for now I think I will move on to other patterns so as to create a little variety in my new store. So that is about it for now. Be sure to check out my new Spooonflower shop if you are at all interested or if you are (like me) a Redbubble fan here is the link to that. Then there is my original store at FineArtAmerica. I think between the 3 you will find a great variety of art and merchandise.

All my best Leslie :)