6/24/17

Relaxing Afternoon

It seems I wasn't just kidding around when I said I was going to take the afternoon off yesterday. I ended up taking a nap and generally loafing for the rest of the day. It was a refreshing change of pace from the business of the past couple of weeks. Today I'm ready to get back at it with some barbecue sauce. If I have time, I'll re-pot the tomatoes today.

Backing up to what was accomplished yesterday, I sewed the first section of the scrub jay together. Now I can see what I'm doing. Only...after looking at this


and comparing it to the original photos, I realized I had a background piece where the beak should actually be. There's some glare on the top of the black beak in the original photo that makes it hard to accurately visualize the colors in the beak.


So I switched in a black piece where I had background. The pieces to the right of it (not yet completed) will finish off the beak. The image below shows where I left it yesterday.


Since walking away yesterday, I've suddenly had a big brain storm (beware of smoke and burning embers) about the background. Today I'll do a little experimentation and I might decide to do something really wild and crazy. I'll say more with pictures later.

So what drew me away from my bird in progress? Okay...so I have a small confession to make. Remember when I talked about the Sketchbook Project? As I mentioned, I ordered a sketchbook with the idea of taking photographs of our upcoming trip and including those in the book along with some brief captions about what we were seeing in the photo. Pretty much the instant I clicked on the "finalize purchase" button, I realized the fatal flaw in my plan: I have no way to print pictures when we're traveling. Doh!

So, enter my favorite shopping mall...Amazon...and I was pretty sure there were some little mini printers on the market that would meet my picture-printing needs. And, bonus, they are small enough to store in the seat bottoms of our RV dining room chairs. As it turns out, they aren't even terribly expensive, and so I purchased one. This is the Canon Selphy CP1200. You can get either black or white. I clicked on the white to see what it looked like and discovered it was $10 cheaper. Really? 


So anyway...it arrived yesterday. What a cool little machine! It's about the size of a small clock-radio. The screen tilts down flat, and the paper cartridge is removable so that it all folds into a tidy little box. It requires special paper (of course). Here's the explanation from the Amazon website of how this works:

"This printer is a dye transfer printer. The dye is on plastic sheets. Special paper is required. A print is made by the 'printing head' heating a spot on the plastic sheet and therefore transferring the dye to the receiving paper. The roll of dye sheets has sheets of 3 colors, cyan, magenta, and yellow. The printer also has a fourth clear sheet which it uses to cover the print after the dyes have been printed." 

Mike tells me that "dye transfer" is a good choice because the resulting pictures will resist fading. I've ordered paper and print cartridges and those will come separately, but the printer came with a print cartridge and eight sheets of photo paper. So we gave it a try. Each sheet passes through the printer four times. It happens automatically...it travels back and forth. After it's made four passes, it spits out a finished print.


The two photos above were printed directly from the camera's memory card. The white edges of the paper are serrated and tear off so that you end up with a 4 x 6-inch print. Cool! Then we tried the wireless function. The image below was printed from my iPhone photo album.


Ha! I love it when a plan comes together...and where technology is concerned...when it actually works like it's supposed to! So...that was kind of a fun diversion. Now I'm set for the sketchbook project, but I'll also be able to print my own picture postcards while we're traveling.

Speaking of fun diversions, Smitty caught a mouse yesterday, and then brought it to the door to show it to Sadie. It's good to have a friend, isn't it? Sadly for the mouse, this game was a lot more fun for the kitties. The mouse quilt playing fairly early on.


And that's about all that happened yesterday. I told you I was lazy. This morning I have a set of clean jars, and I'll get to work making another batch of barbecue sauce. While I was drinking my coffee, I noticed the morning sun was shining on the needles of our fir tree out front, turning them red. I've never noticed this before.


Ya gotta love a warm summer morning. Time to get going on the barbecue sauce before the house gets too hot.

9 comments:

Vroomans' Quilts said...

Love that photo of the flower. The sketch book project sounds like a perfect fit for you. I'm getting bigger vermin - Bella is into bunny and squirrel mode right now.

claudia said...

What a cool little printer! It prints out really nice pictures.
What a good boy Smitty is, bringing in a mouse. I liked/hated when my cats did that for me. Alas, I will no longer have gifts presented to me in such a manner. :)
I have to get busy and clean off my front porch. I loved sitting out there last summer with my morning coffee and Kindle. It's a gardener's dream right now, soil, pots, repotted plants wait for their forever spot to live. Why oh why do I do this to myself??? I also need to find a forever space for my new BBQ that I didn't really need until the kids started showing up a lot more often. Dinner is so much tastier when the daughter's boyfriend is cooking! I guess after the catio is complete, the next thing is the companion patio for us humans.

Quilting Babcia said...

Super photo of your tree in the morning light. Your Jay is coming along nicely - he has a great eye!

quiltzyx said...

Cool little printer indeed! And the photos look quite nice.

Go Smitty the Mighty Hunter! How nice of him to show/share the mouse with Sadie.

Love the sunlit tree needles. Very artsy!

Lyndsey said...

I love the morning sun on your fir tree. On camp last weekend with the Guides, some of the girls took amazing photos of the trees and wildlife but the haven't yet uploaded them to google drive so I can't share them. The printer should be perfect for your travels and I must follow the link to the sketchbook challenge. Not a lot of hunting for Picasso and Scamp as they are spending all their time staying out of the way of the foxes that have moved into the area. I've been told where I can buy fox repellent and it is said to be safe for domestic pets so I'll be checking that out this week.

piecefulwendy said...

I have that little printer and I love it. However, I haven't used it lately because I upgraded my phone and I need to get the printer synced with it. You're reminding me that's on my list to do! Boy, you whipped that part of the scrub jay together in good order. Curious to see what you're cooking up for the background. Speaking of cooking up -- with the barbeque sauce, do you think you could use other fruit in place of the cherries? Just curious.

Doreen said...

Seems like all these clever techie things have "special" needs! LOL! This one is a great one, though. Photos of travels find their way to 'puter folders and don't get printed...just stored. That's a good idea of a useful compact gadget, though. The days are racing by and it doesn't help that so far we've gone from very hot/dry to very cool (cold?)/wet...almost like a couple of seasons in just no time! I'm not sure if "laziness" is an acurrate word for your afternoon...more like earned serenity! Enjoy!

Auntiepatch said...

Oh that Smitty; always the gentleman!

Brown Family said...

That is a spiffy little printer! I can see you are going to have fun with it!