And now that that beast of a post is out of the way...

I made two new desktops while dealing with all that mess, from photos I took at the arboretum. The hibiscus, I swear I barely touched the color. :) I know the colors are a little extreme, but I kind of wanted that kitchy sort of '70s photo color. The meaning of hibiscus is "delicate beauty", the lines are what came into my head after a minute of letting my mind wander around the picture.



The orchid, so far as I can tell that's the kanji for "orchid" - though I drew it pretty crudely. Haven't sorted out how to properly simulate a sumi brush in Photoshop, there's a whole specific way to handle the brush when you're doing it in real life. This one was going to be waaaay more colorful, but as usual, things got out of hand, so I shoved a lot of the mess back out by simplifying the color. I think I really, really like the result.



In other news! Tom had to work today, but I made him an Easter breakfast. Baked Doughnuts, a la Heidi Swanson. HOLY FREAKING CRAP ARE THEY AMAZING. I can't even begin to describe. Even after eating like four, it was painful for Tom to pull himself away from them. I made the dough up last night, let them do their second rising this morning, then threw into the oven. They're so soft and delicious and omFg *perfect*. Not really all that much trouble to make, either, just need to have time for the dough to do its rising.

I'm still crochet-binging. I found this girl's craft blog, and her crochet designs are too freaking cute. I'm so in love. I've had to talk myself out of the crochet bows like ten times today. I did, however, make a headband and the white flower necklace, both of which I freaking love. I had a good bit of some hand-dyed cotton from my purse, and the colors suited these patterns perfectly - a creamy white, fading sometimes into sage-seafoam-spring greens, other times into a pale aqua. So pretty and springy.

I've developed a sudden crush on crocheted necklaces, but it's hard to find patterns that are not...well, hideous. Berroco yarns has a couple I might try, and there's one on Lion's site that is on my to-do list. Summer means you can get away with more hippie/ethnic things than the rest of the year, and I intend to ignore Tom's complaints. ;)

...though, speaking of complaints. Last night, Tom was THIS close to telling his boss off today, that he'll quit if he doesn't get better hours and things. He hadn't said much about work to me in awhile, and that's always a bad sign. (He prefers to save me what he sees as unnecessary angst, and also forget about it as soon as he can once he's home. Personally, I would always rather know everything that's going on, but, I'm aware I get way too nosy somedays.) He had a serious chat with me about him possibly even applying at The Paper Factory. While, omfg, we could SO use someone as reliable as he is, and the environment would be 47382032 times better than what he's in now...the pay would be a good deal less, which, as I reminded him, would only delay us getting out of here, which is normally his main focus. Some days, he feels like he has enough saved that we could just go. Yesterday, he felt like we had nowhere near enough. (Also - Paper Factory doesn't hire people who are going to be around for less than a year, we would really have to stick around a good while longer.) He was really, really upset about his whole situation last night, seemed calmer today though. I gave him a few other suggestions - things we can do to cut costs and save up better, and reminded him that there are other places in town to work. It occurred to me that Ann and Bruce know EVERY storeowner in town - I offered to ask them if they knew anywhere that might be hiring, or anything in Tom's line of expertise.

Ugh, my neck is noooot used to leaning over a computer desk, it's been awhile since I sat here this long. And Tom will be home soon - I should warm up some doughnuts. :)