Indulging...

I’ve been very self indulgent over the last couple of hours. It didn’t involve food either, but I don’t rule out a cuppa and a biscuit now that I’ve mentioned food! There’s a bit of momentum gathering over the 600th edition of What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday this week and so I’ve done some looking back. It has, for eleven years been a weekly story of how messy my desk can be. And, it seems to me, a lot of words about how I might improve in the tidy stakes. Well, we know by now that it isn’t ever going to happen!

Still mastering the decoy photos!

Back in the day, I used to routinely post at about 9am. Now that has changed.  There was a period when I had to schedule every WOYWW post because I was always out on a Wednesday. I can’t put my finger on when, but that stopped. There have been times when I’ve posted a picture of whatever I was helping with in the joinery, because my desk was (still untidy) empty of anything crafty. Each year at about this time, the posts become filled with ‘to do’ panics because as we all know, the days between November 10th and Christmas Day seem to compress into something close to a week. Of course, there was the few months that Jan did all the Wednesdays whilst I went through and recovered from that surgery; we’re all still grateful to her for that, huh. In the first couple of years, the participating numbers were huge, some weeks over 100 desks to visit. Better bloggers warned me to make the most, enjoy the attention because it would wane and eventually contributors would stop. Others advised differently...make it a membership thing, offer editorial spots, offer to review products...all sorts of things. It’s not that I took it all in my stride and continued because I had a focus and knew what I wanted out of it. It’s been a very evolving thing, WOYWW. I’m not good at rules, firmly believing that nice people do the decent thing. Membership is a given..if you link up on a Wednesday, you’ve joined, and it doesn’t matter if you link every week, once a month or three times a year. We get to know you. If you stop linking, that’s OK. Its been lovely to find some previous Deskers on social media, it’s just nice to know you! Life changes and causes change, it’s natural to dip in and out, isn’t it. Consistently, the only thing I’ve asked and gently policed is that bloggers who join in don’t blatantly promote their own or their sponsor’s products..the odd link here and there is interesting. A link every line is irritating and my blog isn’t the place. A good post and some stunning samples on your own blog is the place to do that. Because actually, the WOYWW section of my blog is about you. Your desk tells a story about you, your words add to that picture and we who read your posts get to know you. And that’s it, plain and simple. About two years after it all got going, I found these words from Elizabeth Jane Howard, novelist:

‘Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family. Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one’.

What’s On Your Workdesk? Wednesday 599

Ooherrr, time moves us on and here we are at 599 already. I’ve done some moving myself in the last week. Look, I have a new view!

There’s always a story. When we did the electrical planning for the extension (the kitchen is one end of the new bit), I made a big thing about siting a socket in a particular place for the Christmas tree. It’s been the plug in point for my heat gun for months and months, but of course, the advent of December means that my desk has to move. And I can’t move back into the proper room because there’s still no daylight, and I can’t go a whole month without access to a bit of crafting! So I’ve set up on the boundary between old and new house. Good thing is that I can just wheel the whole show into its original room when Christmas sets in for real. And look, I’ve even started a scrapbook page. I cropped with some friends online at the weekend and this is the last of four challenges we had....and the easiest, because it’s just a sketch to interpret.  

So.....I expect you have a more productive desk, let’s face it, this week and next we really should be writing if not making our cards! 

Report in please, link your WOYWW titled blog post here and put the kettle on. It may take days, but there will be visits!

What’s On Your a Workdesk? Wednesday 598

Chicago is six hours behind GMT Lulu, so does that help? gentle Deskers, if you haven’t yet seen it, there’s a post below this one that explains some of the procedures for our WOYWW Crop on December 5th. There will be another post to clear up a couple of things that have come up, I’ll point you to it when it happens.

Meanwhile....I had a moment of decision. Cleaned up a bit, stopped faffing and got on with some stuff.

In truth, I had a flip through the work diary and realised that I don’t have as long as I thought. Till anything. So I had a word, and now I’ve got all sorts on the go. I took this photo on Tuesday morning at about 10. I took the picture so early because I knew I wouldn’t spend so much as a minute at the desk before today. 
You can see, I’ve made a couple of cards featuring die cuts. I’ve lent ALL my Christmas stamps to a friend for a few days, so I was forced to use something else, a good exercise actually. The brush ink pen thingys (like Wink of Stella in colours) are strewn all over the desk because I used them to colour in a whole bunch of Janet Klein images ... you can’t actually see them but they are on the white card slightly under the heat gun. I stamped a load on a sheet of A4, fully intending to use the Scan & Cut to cut them out. And I forgot, coloured them in and cut them into pieces to cut out individually. Can you believe that. Oh well, it’s all therapy, innit. See the black ink pad which appears to be floating on the iPad stand? clever huh! I was video chatting to my sisters and auntie. My iPad leans back on the stand and gives a view of double chins and up my nose. So I dropped the ink pad behind it to make it sit up straight. And it still hasn’t fallen out of place! Probably make me jump out of my skin when it does! 

Your turn then, show and tell do, that would be great. 

WOYWW Crop

What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday number 600 actually falls on December 2nd. Oddly, it’s a Wednesday.🤪 we’ll do that as normal, of course. (I hope!). But the Crop is usually on a Saturday and so, Saturday 5th December it will be. Hurrah.

Now, we Deskers are a world apart, literally.  I’m proposing two separate Zoom meetings across the 5th December so that I and hopefully, some of you, can be online to various parts of the world to enable visiting. If you want to, you can drop in on both, stay awhile or stay the course. You can call in on us at any point during any of the designated meetings, and no one will mind if you come and go at all. It will be lovely.

To do this, you need Zoom. You can download the free App or you can treat it just like any other website and use the url and link that I will publish. If you download the App, there are slightly different actions to take. It’s actually much easier than I thought it would be, and having all participating faces on screen at once is just lovely. 

The App looks like this once downloaded:

Ignore the photo of my two lovelies. My favourite photo ever so far. Once you’ve downloaded, you have to register, of course. Sorry, no getting around it. You can always delete the whole Bally lot once our Crop is over!

Then, when you tap on the App, it opens to reveal this....I have reduced the screen shot to remove dates and things..too confusing.  You click on the Join icon. 

And then another screen magically appears into which you have to put some detail. Detail that I will publish here on this very blog on Friday 4th December. Not before. 

Then you do as prompted;  add the Meeting ID, allow audio and video and click JOIN. Then at my end, (for I am the Meeting Organiser) a pop-up will magically tell me that you’re waiting to be allowed access, which of course, I’ll allow. In my experience there has been a short delay between clicking JOIN and me ‘granting’ access, so please be patient and don’t panic. It’s probably not more than 30 seconds but feels very long when you’re

 a) nervous

 b) trying new-to-you technology and  

c) not sure you’ve done it right because it was easy.

Zoom seems to be updating fast. At the last test, two people used the link and entered the meeting via their browsers. Both had to register with Zoom first though, just as you do to use the App. I suspect at some point that it will be App only access, but for now it still generates a URL as an alternative. I know that Ministry of Defence and Government don’t use it for meetings because just as I can’t guarantee it, security online is always an issue. We’re going to be shooting the breeze, talking glue, paper, fabric and family, so it’s definitely up to you to decide whether to join or not. As with all things WOYWW! 

If you decide to join us, please will you make a legible name badge/tag/desk sign, especially if you blog under a nickname. Set up your phone/camera so we can see it and your lovely face if nothing else....there is no dress code. If you swing by in PJs, gardening clothes, that’s just fine. We want you to swing by. Birthday suits too, if you’re brave. You’re certainly beautiful enough. Bring something to work on too, it’s very much easier to pass the time chatting if you’re cutting, colouring, knitting...eating. The only thing that makes it difficult is extraneous background noise, so it would be helpful if you weren’t in the same room as a TV that’s on, for example.

Now, the big issue. Time Zones

I’m splitting the day, hopefully to allow as much coverage as possible. It would be great if you can join in at both sessions for some or all of the time, I really don’t want to sit on my own!

Session One : 930am GMT till 1130 GMT will cover time zones east of London, Europe to Australia
Session Two : 530pm GMT to 830pm GMT will cover time zones west, the US and Canada etc.

I think that’s plenty of info for now. I hope I’ve answered some questions. Loads of you are already Zoom familiar so feel free to comment if I’ve got something wrong or you know of a better way.

What’s On Your Workdesk? Wednesday 597

Hail and well met, fellow Desker. I hope it’s all going well with you. 

Yesterday was a doing day, and I took this photo at about 5pm. I tidied! I had to, been putting kits together for some Christmas cards which has required a level of space and organisation that just wasn’t possible without a tidy up. Unlike a ‘normal, pre-pandemic’ workshop, a kit has to include all the stamped images as well, so that’s what I’ve been up to at the desk. Away from the desk, I spent yesterday afternoon grouting. Yep. We now have tiles in the kitchen. Hurrah! 

Last week, quite a few of you suggested that if your desk was as untidy as mine, stuff would simply drop off the back. Well, my bone idle genius was present at the design stage of my desk, and I had him include the most fantastic design feature.....

A little wall around it! He calls it an ‘upstand’. Whatever, it stops stuff falling off and for that I’m very grateful and a little smug. It means that I can push back quite a lot - at least until it all builds up and fills my actual working area. It’s a great alternative to having my desk against a wall. Originally, the desk was parked  in front of a glazed door. At some point it will be again. That’s where the upstand design came from...having to move the desk once in a blue moon to allow the door to be fully used meant that I needed to be able to move it without major spillage. See, even then I knew that it was never going to be tidy enough to move without effort!

Enough history, let’s see what you’re up to please! Link your WOYWW post here and standby...!

What’s On Your Workdesk? Wednesday 596

Well, a new lockdown begins tomorrow here in dear old Blighty and however much that changes your daily routine, please be reassured that some things will not be changing. Not even in a four week hurry.

I acknowledge that the mess is astonishing. I ‘work’ at this desk and even I’m having trouble. What is astonishing is that the piles at either end are still intact! It’s a different view completely. Since we put it in the new part of the building so that we can knock walls out of the old part, the desk has been against a glass door and I’ve sat with my back to the room. Didn’t give it much thought in all these weeks. Last weekend however, on a rare day at home, Mr Dunnit started the finishing in the new kitchen. And in order to keep him company but stay out of the way, I turned the desk around and sat with my back to the glass. Hello room! It didn’t make me anymore productive, but it did make me more sociable! Slow, my genius, huh.

You can see the extent of the desk chaos in glorious daylight. I was making cards using up scraps, colouring some found images and thinking about clearing everything card-y away to do some scrapbooking. When I was struck by the need for a number of birthday cards over the next weeks that I have no excuse not to make. So you see a bit of a master board balancing on top of er, GKW. There's also the kitchen tissue used to clean a water brush I was using with the radiant pearls, cosmic shimmers etc to paint the just visible foxes. There are a couple of the new air pump cosmic shimmer sprays. Distance is everything with these - too close to the card stock and you get big old blobs (see masterboard). The iPad stand holds postcards from The Shrieking Wizard Co - check ‘em out on You Tube. The pile at the end is made up of the bin, the cutter, the glass nib pen in its box, a RUB box containing my Tri Blends and barely visible...a very large reel of double sided tape. In a former life it was glazing tape; very aggressive and only good for card making - not sure how glaziers are with acid free product!

So I’ve really bared all. Now please do the same in the interests of my nosiness. And please remember that however flippant I am about the lockdown, I’m not unaware of how difficult it can be. Reach out if you want some company; especially if you want to test run the Zoom thing!

Join in now, before this becomes the longest workdesk post I’ve ever typed. Please put WOYWW in your post title and link that post, not just your blog, it’s ever so helpful. Thanks!