While the world has gone to hell in a handbasket, life keeps going on without pause. I’ve seen a lot of comments saying who cares about the invasion of Ukraine as it has nothing to do with us, which makes me so damn sad. And not just for the lack of empathy it takes to say that comment but the complete and utter ignorance of it too. The war might be physically half a world away but it will affect us for years to come in many ways no matter the outcome. And for all those who are saying that Putin is only after the Ukraine, that is the same BS that Hiller started with and look how that ended.
Sigh. Ok, let’s move on to beadwork as that is what you are here for. Here is the long, promised gift I finally got around to giving yesterday morning. It is a bit more wobbly than expected, but it stands up just fine and will hopefully last a long time.
One amazing lady set up a Facebook group called Beaders for Ukraine, where Beaders donated prizes to encourage donations to charities. The group raised between $41,800 and $43,000 all of which were directly donated to charities working in the Ukraine. And many people won amazing beadwork prizes.
A lot of Beadworker’s have also been buying digital patterns on Etsy from Ukraine designers and I have several waiting to print out when I get some more coloured ink. Mum brought black ink for me the other day at $69 dollars and the colour ink will cost me at least $71. I will have to buy a laser printer when I move as a good one is about $200 so it works out much cheaper in the long run. And saving $$$ is going to be a big priority now with fuel over $2 and getting close to $3 in some places, the cost of food going up and lord only knows what else. I will hopefully get time to make some of the patterns to highlight them soon.
Speaking of saving money I had to find a new photo editing site as I couldn’t justify spending $108 on basic editing at the moment. It took me a few goes but I found one that you can do basic editing for free. Some of the other sites you could do basic editing for free as well but they were not really set up to edit just photos and would have been a lot of stuffing around.
Anywho the small jar of stars above was a gift for my mum and to the right is a photo of my scarf so far. It will have to wait with my other half-finished projects awaiting more beads. Unfortunately it will most likely be a while before I manage to order more.
Here is what I have done on the jar so far, though I do have more flowers made up to put on. Progress on it has kind of stalled as I stopped to start the scarf and then days for girls has started back up this year and we have been house hunting which is slightly traumatic. And mum is on holidays so we have been catching up almost everyday. I will have more time on the school holidays but I might have to spend that time looking for extra work or a new job as I don’t think I will make enough to cover everything without dipping into my small amount of savings. It’s unfortunate as I quite like my boss and Ana who I work with.
I had made up a few flowers in different colours to see what would work with the blue. It’s not in this photo but I decided on a silver and have made up a few to put on the jar. I will use the pink and a yellow for different flowers along with the white.
The Tulips I made from a youtube tutorial by Рукоделие ТV. The Russian flowers from Jill Wiseman, she may also have tutorials on RAW.
Other than that there is not much else to say on the beading side of things, I am looking at proper projects for funding, but I haven’t decided on anything at the moment, but I shall keep you updated.
Hopefully, my blog will see some basic improvements in terms of punctuation and clarity as I have started using Grammarly, though the basic free version is a wee bit frustrating. Still it has been giving me some helpful suggestions. Oh I will make a post about Ukrainian designers for anyone interested in buying some of their patterns to help out. I feel sorry for the Russian designers who don’t support the war but are suffering the consequences of it none the less.
One lady from Ukraine thankfully made it all the way to Mackay when she fled and was reunited with her daughter who lives here. And my fave podcast Talk Art featured a photographer who lives in Ukraine and had to flee when the bombing started. The Photographer Mark Neville has a book out called Stop Tanks with Books which he has been working on for six years. It is in my wish list.
And finally the south QLD/NSW floods. While Mackay did not flood this time we have still been affected as most of our distribution centres are in Brisbane or down south. So there have been lots of empty shelves but at least we didn’t have to deal with all the flood water like others did. Though it is one of the reasons it’s proving to be so hard to find a house as many of the ones for sale in Mackay are in flood zones. Well anyway keep your fingers crossed for us, that we find something soon.
All the best, and please stay safe and sane as best you can in this mad world. Lou.
delicatebylou 