@gretchenkdeahl
I really LOVE your beautiful illustrations! Love the NO-AI especially. The Monsters falling is brilliant. What are the medias you use for these?
Just a friendly suggestion though- people might be more likely to go to your site if the lists of hashtags in your posts weren't quite so looooooooong. 😉

@randomgeek
And good riddance to my distant memories of struggling to get skype to work. 🤪

@imyke
Are these pads using paper that works well for fountain pens? (very little bleed through to other side, ink doesn't soak in and feather or spread)
A lot of people who take pocket notes or journal use fountain pens, so they would need to know this.)

@slott56
Nope. 🥲

@overholt
Daughter and i went to a show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art last summer that showcased gowns and fashions from various eras. Included were the SCENTS of the old gowns, based on what they were made from and perfumes and other residues. Plastic pipes were attached from each glass case and you could lean in to actually smell the unique apparel. There were some interesting aromas! None 'bad'.

Also, I read an article once from someone who was a performer on the old Lawrence Welk show. The show sometimes travelled for performances as well as their taped TV shows. This person said that the many outfits and costumes worn by the cast were seldom cleaned, and that the performance clothes smelled pretty funky. My knowing that fact just adds to the already unsavory aspect of that weird show from my childhood.

@neale
Hahaha... well it's not not i dumped it into a forest to fend for itself... it's got a happy new caretaker now. 😜 "pet"...lolol

The giant allium bulbs i planted last Fall are sending up big strong bud shoots... so exciting! The pom-pom like purple flowers should be about the size of oranges.
#gardening #allium

#Houseplants.
At the start of covid in 2020, everyone suddenly was buying lots of houseplants. I too succumbed and bought a bunch more than i already had in the house.
One of those was a young potted Monstera Deliciosa philodendron, which is known to get very large and grow in vine form. I really liked it! I put it on a stand in the corner of my office, getting light from the window. It grew. And grew.

Fast forward five years. The other day i was noticing how big and spindly it had gotten. I'd had to train it and cut it back several times. It had taken over the whole corner of my office, and was still putting out nice big well fenestrated leaves. But, I suddenly realized it was no longer really bringing me joy.
After mulling this over in my mind for several days, I decided it was time to reclaim my office corner space. It was time to let someone else enjoy this plant.

I laboriously lugged the entire big potted plant along with its stand, down the stairs, down my driveway, to the edge of the road. It stood proudly, hopefully, there on the edge of the road, and I wished it good fortune.
I trudged back up the driveway into my house and up the stairs to my office. What a pleasant light space in that corner I now had back! It felt good.
I heard a car door and glanced out the window just in time to see a middle aged lady happily putting the plant into her SRV. It had been there by the road for approximately 1 minute.
Bye bye giant Monstera, you served me well and i thank you. 🪴😘

@mayor
Struggling through Silver Lake Waltz years ago, such a lovely tune... 😂
https://youtu.be/9-blJfWJgCI?si=zaxnHJEB7WTBTw_5

@mayor
Agreed- Tim has generously contributed an entire lifetime's worth of wonderful early banjo recordings for generations of banjo players to learn from now and in the future. I know he helped and inspired me, for sure. He's kind and encouraging in person too. Thank you Tim!

When I somewhat randomly found myself with a fretless 1850s style banjo, Tim's YouTube channel was an invaluable resource, and over the years he has single-handedly recorded pretty much every single tune from every major banjo instruction book of the mid-late 1800s; I haven't looked at the count in a while but he has over a thousand videos:

https://youtube.com/giggletoot

@Autumn
That is a really, really lovely lush green!

@neale
That makes total sense! Especially for folks with small hands like me who would love to play lower whistles.

@Caiotekit
What a terrific way to start a journal!
It's like the first sentence of a really good novel. 👍🏼

Also.... if an elderly woman falls over a planter in her yard and the only witnesses who saw it are animals who mock her misfortune... did she make a sound?

I hope you are ok and didn't get hurt. I can relate- Last week i badly sprained my little toe on a dumbbell that was propping our door open. Because of our cat who otherwise likes to SLAM the door shut in the middle of the night. Half my foot was black and blue for almost a week. Owww!!

@BlueDot
They look just like the tomato seedlings that i accidentally killed by over fertilizing the soil with 'organic' Tomato-Tone. Turned my healthy seedlings into dying corpses pretty quickly. Had to dilute the soil and start with new seedlings, which were then fine.

#illustration detail for my band Slugpest.
#penandink #stippling

@tallastro
Did any of these people give you hints or reasons for why it 'failed' with them?

@JohnMckellar
I'm looking forward to seeing some buds begin to form on my oriental poppies. The plants all survived winter and are looking healthy and bushy.

@DMakarios
I too love my vintage dip pens with steel nibs! I love that you can just pull out the nib and swap it/clean it etc so easily, as compared to fountain pens. And relatively, so much cheaper.
Fortunately/unfortunately, I will never be succumbing to glass dip pens, and that will save me money.
Knowing myself means I cannot ever use glass pens. I have an strange urge whenever I have used mechanical pencils in the past- I cannot stop myself from pressing down on the lead point until it breaks. I can't help it! I also cannot drink from exceedingly thin glasswear- a terrible urge to bite down on the rim, just to 'test' the strength of it.
Just LOOKING at pictures of glass dip pens makes me want to press down on those points to 'test' the strength of it... just until it breaks. lolol
Yes i know this is a weird compulsion. It does not happen at all with ftn pens or steel dip pens, or with regular pencils or ballpoint pens... so with all those I am safe and happy!

They say fountain pens are addictive, but I'm not so sure. I got my first fountain pen in 2007, and after 18 years I'm up to 10, most in regular use.

But no one warned me about dip pens! I got my first nibs and holder a month ago today, and already I have 3 holders (one of which fits 0 nibs in my possession) and 144 nibs! One hundred and forty-four!! In a month!!!

Which is quite appropriate in a way, as nibs for dip pens in their heyday were sold in 1 gross boxes (1 gross=144), and most of my nibs were made in the days when they were widely used.

Still, I think that's enough to be going on with.
#FountainPens #DipPens