Doggy Under the Weather

So my goal of posting more on here has recently blown right past me. Things got crazy around here about 4 weeks ago, and I just haven’t had the energy to even express my thoughts.

I am still having issues from my car accident, pain, can’t remember things, and can not focus on anything for very long. I want my attention span back please :P.

So a few months ago we woke up to a few of our chickens being gone, and a large black dog cowering near my neighbor’s house. He was obviously starving and very scared, so we fed him and somehow a few days later he was in my house being treated for tape worms and had a new name and a new dog collar and ID tag. We live in the country and it seems people like to dump animals they no longer wish to own or take care of, we have seen kittens that go missing before I can get them, goats you name it we’ve seen it. I actually witnessed or drove up on 2 men pushing 2 dogs out of their truck when they saw me they sped off. I called the sherif but nothing was done. It’s sad really especially since we live in a county that has an animal shelter with a no questions drop off, they will not prosecute or even pursue you if you drop of a dog on its death bed.

So anyway the dog we took in is actually a great dog, he is a large Great Dane mix, he was fully house broken, heck he poops in the woods so there is no cleanup at all. He goes in the woods with the kids and stays with them not on a leash and protects them (I have witnessed this first hand). He protects me even seriously ill recently my hubby went hunting and came home with his ski mask still on came in and the dog could barely stand up from being so sick yet he got up next to me and would not let me move he would push himself against me pinning me in the corner.

Well as I said he got really sick about 4 weeks ago, he was so sick I had to call the mobile vet that treats animals out here since we are so far out in the country. They came out and thought at first he had a fungal pneumonia from digging, but his lungs were clear so they figured he had a stomach infection probably from eating garbage or from eating bad food, or maybe from eating the chipmunks he loves to catch.

They gave him an antibiotic shot, an IV bag of fluids since he had stopped eating and drinking, and sent us on our way with antibiotics and anti-emetics. He did not do well though we had to force him to drink water from a syringe, and cook chicken and hand feed it to him. This was an every 2 hour task for 3 weeks, finally this week he is eating dog food again and drinking on his own. he is now going outside and running in the woods again on his own as well, we are so happy we really were so worried we were going to lose him.

How strange it is to have an animal show up and so quickly become a part of your family and your heart. We really do love Duke and could not think of life without him.

 So I leave you with a photo of our fatihful companion and loving friend Duke, this was taken about a week ago when he was starting to feel a little better.

Duke

Vintage Photography

So I have been experimenting with curves, levels, and channels as well as texture levels in Photoshop in order to achieve a vintage or old photo look. Sometimes it’s called the LOMO effect after a plastic camera with interchangeable lenses of the same name. The camera was not sealed very well thus let in light creating this washed out or high contrast photo.

I started playing around because I really liked the look of the Hipstamatic App (again named after a camera) for the iPhone but I don’t have an iPhone. I am really good at manipulating images and making them artsy with Photoshop, I have been using the program for about 12 years now, have dabbled in graphic design, actually had a design business for a few years before it burnt my brain to a crisp and made it not fun anymore. So I knew I could figure it out if I just played around, and viola I created the image below. The first is the original untouched straight from the camera image, and of course the second is the manipulated image.

Original Photo

 

Altered Photo

 

If anyone wants to know how I did this I wrote down what I did so I could recreate it, just comment and I will post the directions on this post at another time.

Change is Fun!!!

So I have been thinking about this blog and my crafting life a lot lately. For one thing I hate that I don’t post on here very much anymore, I feel very intimidated by my own blog. Strange I know but see I started it as a way to get information out to the masses about my favorite company “Provocraft” and all their great new, old and up and coming products. Then somehow it turned into a blog only about products and not about crafting really at all.

I guess this is the biggest thing I dislike, I feel I have nothing to post if I have nothing new to announce or talk about, even if I wanted to post about a project or life or anything really.

So I sincerely hope all the people who do follow and visit my blog often will continue to visit as I am going to change things up a bit around here.

I love crafting!!!!! I like pretty much all aspects of it, I am an artist and a photographer as well, I also like to fool around with making photos look vintage and different. So I will be posting lots of different things from now on, I will post about knitting, scrapbooking, card making, embroidery, painting, photos and life in general.

See I read a ton of blogs and the ones I seem to gravitate to all the time are ones that post on a multitude of subjects relating to their lives and their hobbies so I want to express myself and write down my thoughts and show all the great stuff I make 🙂 I never get to show it to anyone but my family so it will be nice to hear some other people’s thoughts as well.

So if you like crafts and neat artsy stuff subscribe if you haven’t already and keep coming back I hope to post at least a few times a week this year.