PhotoShop Cloning

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Original photo and the same photo with the people photoshopped out.

Now to find a picture of Owen to photoshop in with Thomas.

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Crop and Resize

A New Background

Day Two of PhotoShop was even better than Day One.

The hotel was better: a fully stocked kitchen [minus food] with microwave, fridge, and dish washer, a huge flat screen TV with free DVD "rentals," a couch, table, desk, free wifi and a view of Barnes and Noble. Many hotels offer a complimentary breakfast, this hotel (StayBridge in Oklahoma City) offers a free supper with free beer on tap. I don't drink beer but I'm sure some people would really enjoy that. I checked in and never left the room. When I woke up I wished I could stay till check-out time, but I didn't.

The workshop was really good too. Our teacher, Kathy, is so funny and makes learning this stuff easy. There were people working with five different versions of PhotoShop. Yikes! And Kathy can teach it all at the same time without going too crazy.

One thing we learned was how to put a different background behind your subject. Here's an example that I did from home this morning.

I'll get better with practice, and I will practice because this is so much fun! I hope my insurance covers carpel tunnel.

Photoshop Elements

I am leaving this afternoon for day two of an Intermediate Photoshop Elements workshop at the Oklahoma Department of Libraries in Oklahoma City. At this time when jobs are scarce, I have two of the best jobs ever. I'll use Photoshop at my school library job so they are glad to give me the time off and pay a sub while I'm gone. The workshop is offered through my public library job, so of course they are supportive of my trip north. And icing on the cake, ODL has grant money to pay for a hotel room for people who have to drive a long distance. That way people can get there on time and aren't so tired when they do arrive. My job is sending me on a mini-vacation. Did I say I have two of the best jobs ever?

Learning and using Photoshop Elements is so much fun. Here are examples of one thing I learned, recoloring: giving Mari purple eyes.

Regular Mari
Purple eyed Mari

Poppin' Purple Eyes

More examples to follow.

Crochet & Happy Labor Day

We said "Good-bye" to Mari and Shawn as they head back to Baton Rouge.

What to do with the day. Checking e-mail I linked to a comment on NaBloPoMo where Heather told me about ravelry, a website for knitters and crocheters. I checked it out and joined.

Back to email, I read the new A.Word.A.Day. This week's theme is all about yarn. "What's common among a disc jockey, a spider, a PR agent, and a cricket bowler? They all spin. But this week we are talking about a different kind of spinning, the original kind: the spinning of yarn." Today's word is "distaff." It originally meant a staff for holding flax, wool, etc. for spinning. It now has alternate meanings of relating to women, women considered collectively or woman's work or domain. Interesting. (Click the picture for information about it.)

I plan to spend some time today working on our "plarn" sleeping mat, a service project I'm doing with my pre-teaching class. Click here to view a video that inspired this project.

What fun things did you do on Labor Day?

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Owen is 6

Each year with Owen is better than the last. Here is a short slide show commemorating his birthday party 2010 at the YMCA. I wonder if there's a copyright free version of the song to add to the slide show. I'll look into that. For now, add your own music or watch in silence.

What to do with Green Yarn

This is one in a series of Green posts for August on NaBloPoMo.

What will you create with your green yarn? The possibilities are almost endless. If you have an idea in mind and want to look for a pattern or if you have no idea and want to browse through patterns, you could go to your local library. I helped a lady yesterday find the knitting section of the library. She couldn't fine exactly what she was looking for. I suggested the Internet. Her response, "Oh, I don't use the Internet." She was with a teenage boy. I thought it might be a project they could do together. But she wasn't interest in this newfangled technology and the boy didn't seem interested in helping Grandma with her knitting project. Too bad for both of them.

But you, here on the Internet and most likely bloggers who use the Internet with ease, will love looking for patterns on sites that are also social networks.

Lion Brand Yarn - (Logo used with permission from lionbrand.com)

You can learn to knit or crochet, watch videos, read blogs, listen to podcasts, follow Lion Brand on Twitter, Facebook and/or Youtube and get thousands of free patterns.

You can share your projects and look at the projects other members have posted. Take a look at some of these green projects:

Green Birthday Hat

Boy's Green Sweater with Train

Doll Dressed in Green

Green Scottish Bear Frog

Martha Stewart Poncho

Scarf and Purse

There are games (I'm not a big game person, but I know how people love their facebook games so I mention it here), links to knit/crochet charities, a comic, tip of the day, newsletter, you can buy yarn, and, of course, the reason we came here in the first place, there are free patterns.

BERNAT - This site is a little more basic and a little more high end. You can learn to crochet or knit and gather your free patterns together in your own free pattern library. Here's a picture of some Bernat Baby Boucle yarn that I bought at Walmart.

My favorite way to find something fast is to just google it: free crochet plastic bag patterns. Google rarely fails to deliver.

Question: Does anyone know where you can get GREEN plastic bags to recycle? (Is that an oxymoron?)