Even worse, but less worse that it could have been

We discovered that an ambulance ride costs more than rent now.  In Millennial terms, around 400 Starbucks coffees and 150 avocado toasts.  I need to start making friends with drug dealers.

By the gymnastic grace of God, there was same-day treatment and no permanent damage.

ICE has been in our area, but I haven't seen any personally--that I know of.

One thing in my home that I've been appreciating lately is a tall narrow garden trellis that we picked up for free from a neighbor who was moving.  Similar to these curved ones, but with four top spikes that each end in a small ball.

It fits very well in an awkward gap next to an awkward corner in the bathroom, we can hang towels off the spikes, and the trellis keeps them away from the wall.

The Goodwill doesn't really take garden furniture, so it is often given away.  I switched to a metal flower pot stand for my nightstand, and set a wrought-iron-style napkin weight? for picnics? upside-down in it to keep small items from falling through so easily, while still allowing most of the dust through.  I don't put water glasses there because the mattress is frequently used as a trampoline; small house, long winters.

I managed to paint a large picture frame and an office stand that we had picked up at other times, using old toothbrushes as brushes.  Uneven paint coverage, but I think that could be an advantage when trying to simulate marble.  A clear varnish of similar reflectance to polished stone would make it more convincing.

The calm between the storms

I've been working very hard at various things, such as mending, organizing, deep cleaning, family gatherings, and volunteer work, in addition to beginning to write a book for the month formerly known as NaNoWriMo.

Today there was just enough of a break in the schedule to get caught up on raking leaves, and the weather turned out to be just perfect for it.  We made one giant leaf pile in the backyard, and a teenager buried himself in it very comfortably.

Recently my husband and I discovered the clearance paint shelf at the friendly neighborhood big box store.  I painted the outsides of two medium plastic plant pots and made them into baskets for toys and sewing projects.  One of them has a nice contrast between the new color on the outside and the original color on the inside.  I'm not yet at the point of using normal woven baskets much; too fragile.

I also painted the wooden frame from one side of a box spring, which I've been saving with the idea of making a clothes rack, and leaned it up against an empty wall.  I might hang some things from it later.

Porch chair

A project that I planned last year, but didn't do, was to create some kind of a seat for the front porch.

I started thinking about it again, and looked at a couple of broken chairs that I was thinking of combining and re-making.

It turned out that a wood folding chair just needed one small piece of wood replaced--and that piece was held on only by screws.

Replacing the piece--with wood from an armchair that I de-constructed some time ago--actually went as well as expected.

Then I painted the whole thing, after washing it.  That did not go as well as expected; I gave it three coats of paint and it really needs another.  

I also replaced the hinges of an old suitcase that we use for toy storage, with strips of leather, attached with screws and washers.

Thicker, vegetable-tanned leather would have been better, but I used what I had, and I expect that it will stretch and possibly tear at some point.  The leather wanted to twist and spin as I was driving in the screws. 

The other thing I've been working on is teaching myself needle tatting, using shuttle tatting instructions as a reference, but mostly just figuring it out as I go.

I'm not having the tension problems that I was with a shuttle.  The downside of using a needle is that it keeps running out of thread.

Speaking of thread, I find that when I am doing much sewing, the handed-down spools of thread that I am using run out of thread almost regularly.

What looks like an ample supply of thread, may not be.

Back from a working vacation...

 ...in which we scraped and repainted a porch for family, and then went and started the clean-out of a very cluttered rental house owned by other family members.

I came back with ideas about things that need to be done to declutter my own house.

Someone dumped a push mower in our yard while we were away; both my husband and I have been thinking about learning about small engine repair, so we are going to see what we can do with it.

My turn, parts 2 - 94

A few years ago, I read a book called Everyday Racism, a thoroughly unscientific although commercially published book about a "study" that a professor did with black college students.  She asked them to tell her what the three most racist things that had ever happened to them were, and then she took their stories and wrote this book around them.

Reading it, I noticed two things:  first of all, the vast majority of these students' three worst victimizing racist incidents were in fact not all that bad.  Not really surprising, since both professor and students are from some college which I haven't bothered to remember the name of, that has a certain amount of Privilege attached to it.

The second thing I noticed is that very similar things have happened to me and my family.  And not just a few times; quite regularly.  And where they don't happen regularly, it's because I've been avoiding returning to the places where they did happen--shopping malls, for example.

I started listing these incidents out, and so far I am at 93 and counting.  Ninety-three little sob stories that would be marketable today, if only I were of some other race.

Well, that's not an insurmountable obstacle.  If the Black Like Me guy could travel around the South and "pass", I should be able (with a little work) to pass well enough for a couple of virtual book tours on Zoom over the next two or three years; everyone knows that COVID-19 is racist, just like everything else is....

The elite method, demonstrated so brilliantly by Christine Blasey-Ford, who didn't even need to resort to blackface, is to specifically blame whoever the Establishment is in need of demonizing at the moment, and to not worry too much about who was really present or not.  As long as the "feels" of the story are told in vivid enough detail that even the fictional elements are "brought to life", the hard facts of the matter can be left so hazy and nebulous that no one can disprove the story for certain.

The only real obstacle to this scheme is that I have a hard time writing in other styles without lapsing into parodying them.  But Sokal and others have blazed the trail there... I think the secret must be in the set of one's eyebrows; a sanctimonious posture must be a necessary precondition for sanctimonious writing.

Oh, and I better run my profile picture through MS Paint and add some Color.

Boxes

I thought of various alternatives for making storage boxes for the shelf, and ended up with paper-covered boxes as a medium-term solution.

I happened to have a larger box on hand that I was able to cut apart and reconstruct as two smaller boxes of the size that I wanted.

For the paper, we did another round of shaving cream marbling. This time I tried mixing a base color all through the shaving cream, and then swirling in a second color. It turned out all right, but I think this technique works better if some of the shaving cream is left white, to help the gaps where it doesn't touch the paper harmonize with the marbling.

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A journalist finally got the percentage of Minnesota coronavirus deaths with a serious underlying health condition out of the Department of Health:  94%, with an additional 4% "unknown".

Slices

The "Quick bar cookies" recipe on this post, which is actually a recipe for chocolate chip blondies, is very forgiving. I've recently tried substituting vegetable oil for the butter. This works all right, but comes out a little drier, as butter contains some water that the oil doesn't. I also tried adding cocoa powder and peppermint extract to make something more like a brownie. The family liked the result, and didn't realize that it was almost exactly the same recipe. Rolled oats were not in the original recipe, but I almost always add them, for nutrition.

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We've been very busy, and I was looking for a quick and fun project, and decided to paint one of our stump tables. The stump is a chunk of a large pine tree that my husband brought home from the county yard waste site last year. The wood was very green, and quite wet, so I kept it in the garage for months to dry it out, turning it occasionally. It picked up some dirt during that time, and lost over twenty pounds of weight, maybe as many as forty--I weighed it early on, and then later, but I don't remember the exact numbers.

Eventually I brought it in, and debarked it in the kitchen. There was some mold growing under the bark, so it had to come off.

The stump found a home in our living room/indoor parkour course. I counted the rings; the tree was sixty years old when it was cut down, and more than two feet in diameter.

Anyway, I mixed some paint to approximate a color that would fit into the decor, and painted the sides, just wiping the paint on with scrap fabric. I very soon had several eager helpers.

The color came out a bit bright for the room, so I plan on wiping on another coat at some point.

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A child wanted to learn to make angel food cake, after a lady from church brought us one. I had never made a foam cake, but our efforts were successful.

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Our resident papier-mache artist is thinking ahead to Halloween, and has made a good start on armatures (support structures for the papier mache) for upper and lower skeleton jaws, made out of milk jugs and tape.

Finished the bowl, and a few other things

I decided to use puff paint to cover the gap between the lining strip and the upper inside of the bowl. The gap proved to be a little too big to bridge with paint alone, though, so I found a piece of twine, stuffed it in, and then painted over that. Now the bowl is finished, and in use. With the paint colors that I used, it looks very Eighties.

I also made a new seat for a kid's chair. It's an old school chair, with a metal frame and a plastic seat and back, where the seat had broken. I mangled the rest of the seat off, and then the chair sat for a couple years waiting for the right piece of scrap plywood to come along. I cut the plywood to shape using our scroll saw, found bolts in our hardware hoard, and drilled holes in the plywood for them.

Then I noticed that the bolts were slightly too large for the holes in the metal frame, so I had to drill them out a bit larger. The pointy end of a file will work as a deburring tool (for taking off the little rough bits of metal around the edges) in a pinch.

Out in a flower bed and some planters, I am trying to grow flax this year, from grocery store flax seeds. The idea is from a short article in Farm Show magazine about a Canadian lady who got into growing flax that way.

The magazine looks very interesting, full of very creative homegrown inventions for farm and garden, although I think the single issue of it that I saw was a special edition that gathered these from a number of previous issues. I may try a subscription at some point.

I was growing to try to sprout some of the seeds first, to see if they were growable, but didn't get to that before the time I wanted to plant them, so I just planted away, and will see what comes up.

Most have tested negative?, and a project

Apparently Minnesota, with a rate of positive tests that has been around ten percent, is also one of the states with the highest rates of positive tests. At the same time, ICU beds have gradually filled beyond the number that were available before the pandemic started.

The Minnesota State Fair, which is a very big deal around here in the weeks going into Labor Day, was cancelled for 2020.

In other news, I have been working on a replacement for a "stuff bowl"--a decorative bowl that serves as a holding place for stray small objects, until they are put away. I had been using one of my husband's large pottery bowls, but he wanted it back.

So I have been trying out a new craft idea:  a sort of papier mache, but with fabric and acrylic or latex paint instead of paper and glue/paste. For a base or form, I used the lower part of an ice cream bucket, cut to the height that I wanted. For fabric, I chose a stretchy textured synthetic that has proven to have poor durability on its own.

A bowl with some kind of a regular visual pattern seemed best for the location, for balance; there are already shiny and organically-textured things there.

I found it helpful to use a smaller plastic container as a stand, so I could work on the bottom, sides, and inside top edge of the bowl all at once. I cut out a largish circle of the fabric, and made regular cuts so that I could closely wrap the form, gluing the fabric in place with paint.

After it dried, I sponged another color of paint on, to help bring out the fabric's textured pattern, and then gave it a coat of Mod Podge, to help the surface feel smoother.

For the inside, I cut a circle of fabric to fit the bottom, painted it in, and then covered a strip of plastic from the remainder of the ice cream bucket with a tube of the fabric, to cover the inner sides. I hot-glued the strip in place, and painted that too.

The next step is to find something to cover the space at the top of the strip.

Painting the toilet seat again

When I first started doing this a couple years ago, I found that the new paint job would last about six months, based on the first two times.

But the third re-painting only lasted for three months, if that. I don’t know why.

I finally got around to the fourth re-painting, still using the original cans of spray primer and paint. After priming and painting, there was still a little of each left, but probably not enough for another round.

They cost $4 each, so the cost of each repainting is about $2, making the process cheaper than buying a new seat, although there is about 2.5 hours of labor involved each time.

I’m happy to have gotten this done, and will have to see how it holds up.

Sent outside

We have a free-from-the-side-of-the-road table that is not needed in the house, but which could be useful on the deck. I don’t know whether to call it a large end table or a small coffee table, but it is a little over two feet square.

To help it weather the outdoors, at least for this summer, it needed its grooved top protected, and the shelf underneath mostly removed.

I did the shelf part first, since the table would have to be upside down for that. I drilled holes at the corners with a bit brace, started cutting with a keyhole saw, and finished each cut with a regular hand saw. Otherwise, I could have used my husband’s jig saw, but I prefer hand tools, which are usually much quieter, safer, and cheaper than power tools.

For the top, my preference would have been to cover it with sheet metal, but what I had was fabric left over from the latest armchair project:  some sort of canvas with a waterproof backing. I had to piece it together a little, and for this I did flat seams by overlapping two pieces, and then running two parallel lines of stitching down through the overlapped part. This particular fabric was a bit difficult to maneuver through my sewing machine with the size of pieces that I was working with, so the end result does not lie perfectly flat. Just good enough for a temporary solution.

Having run out of upholstery tacks with the chair project, the best solution for securing the fabric to the top was staples, along the sides of the top. I folded the edges of the fabric under before stapling. Like always, I found it difficult to hold the staple gun firmly enough to make all the staples to go in smoothly; many of them got some assistance from a hammer afterward.

And that was it. Ideally, I would like to paint both base and top, in different colors, but that is not a priority at the moment.

A fake bowl for the fake flowers

 I finished the coffee filter hydrangeas that I was making. Since I was using paper and paint instead of coffee filters and food coloring, I found that I had to paint each side of each cutout separately. And I air-dried them, instead of using an oven at low heat.

When I bundled them together, I just used a paper clip at the bottom of each bunch, and left the leaves loose. I have some spools of fine wire, but I didn’t need them.

With the flowers finished, I looked around the house for a good bowl to put them, but didn’t find anything suitable. So I ended up taking paperboard from a saltine box, and using strips from it to make a “bowl”.  The quotation marks are because it has no bottom, and is actually only a ring.

I made it by taking two long sides from the box, and making interlocking slots at each end. Putting them together made a shape that was more like an eye than a ring, so I did the same thing with the other two long sides of the box, and slipped the second eye inside the first, rotating it so that the whole thing was reasonably round.

I glued on some scrap paper to cover and hold down the protruding tabs, then I painted the outside with craft paint. The unprinted side of the paperboard soaked up most of the water in the paint, so I did the second coat right away, and from there went straight into applying white puff paint in a geometric design.

The puff paint dried with a shine, while the craft paint didn’t, and the shine contrasts with the non-shiny flowers, so I’m glad I used the puff paint, even though it did run downward a little on the vertical surface. Otherwise, I would have added a coat of something clear like Mod Podge for shine, since the bookshelf the bowl is going on has almost nothing shiny on it, and could use a little sparkle.

More deliveries

Another week of having people grocery shop for us, because of Symptoms. Again they were more or less able to get everything on our list. People from church dropped off some additional things, which were welcome.

I have been learning how to make artificial flowers from coffee filters. Except that I don’t have coffee filters. What I do have is several boxes of unused letterhead paper, which is harder to cut, so I’ve been making one less fold than in the video. I also don’t have food coloring, only paints.

I’m also planning on covering another cardboard box with fabric, for prettier storage.

The trend of confirmed cases in my state remains more or less linear, with gradual increases in the numbers currently hospitalized and in the ICU. The state has a summary of available medical resources up now.

The state is also publishing a list of the larger senior living places that have confirmed cases, which is now over forty, and scattered over many counties. The median age of confirmed cases has increased slightly, as expected.

From before

Last weekend, I did several quick little decorating projects.

The first was to take the painted string that I salvaged from my temporary wall decoration a while back (string wetted with paint and coiled onto a big sheet of graph paper in a large oval) and make a wreath out of it. I decided what size I was aiming for, and then found a book of corresponding size to wrap the string around, to keep the length of each turn consistent. When I was nearing the end of the string, I slipped the wreath off the book, and then used the rest of the string to wrap and hold the coils together.

The string had some entrenched tangles in it, from when I was wrestling with it while the paint was still wet. I arranged those as best I could, and painted them pink and green to simulate flower accents. The finished wreath went on the front door as spring decor.

The next project was to cover a cardboard box with fabric, for prettier storage of toddler clothes. Last weekend, my mother-in-law dropped off a considerable load of toys, books, art supplies, and fabric from her house. My initial idea was to cover the box with paint and fabric, but then I found a piece of fabric that I liked. It was large enough that I didn’t want to cut it, but to allow for it to be re-used for something else later, so I decided to skip the paint and gather the fabric up around the box instead, securing it at the top edge by sewing it directly to the cardboard by hand. The tradeoff is that the box’s lines are softened, and lose some visual tidiness.

Before I sewed it, I decided that I might as well line the inside of the box with fabric as well, and found a piece from my stash. It was tricky to drape and pin it so that it followed the inside contours of the box, with the raw edges gathered and tucked in at the top, and the grain of the fabric more or less aligned with the box. I whipstitched the outer and inner fabric together at the top edge, and it was done.

The third project was to repaint a wooden tray that I use to hold baby blankets. I still had a little of the white string paint left from back when, and I wanted to use it up. I mixed in a little craft paint to tint it, and gave the tray a coat.

These painting projects turn out much more nicely if you unload the excess paint from the brush each time you fill it, and put the paint on in thin coats. I only did one coat, and called it good, although I do have enough paint left to do another layer; the original color of the tray shows through a little more than I would like.

A further tip would be to do some surface preparation beforehand, and give it a light sanding, and possibly even prime it. In this case, the piece was old enough to have been pre-roughened, so it’s not a big deal that I didn’t remember to think of that.

Shutting down, and a simple craft

The local schools are closing tomorrow, the governor has banned restaurants and similar establishments from offering dining-in services, and the library is maybe closed--their website has conflicting information. My husband's employer is having everyone start working from home soon, which is going to force us to upgrade to faster internet.

No one seems to have a plan beyond the next couple of weeks. The present measures are not so much "flattening the curve" as they are just delaying it a few weeks. From this post by The Silicon Graybeard, it appears that we had better be increasing our medical system's capacity to cope with coronavirus cases as quickly as possible. That is possible, with a focused mobilization of resources.

I am viewing this season as something like an unplanned sabbatical on a large scale. The difficulty is that our society is not at all set up for it, and instead requires a regular income to pay for debt and all the other services that people and businesses are now dependent on.

Being reasonably well-supplied on food and toilet paper, I spent a very small amount over the weekend to stock up on intellectual stimulation for the coming weeks. I went to the library's book sale area, which I had all to myself, and bought a German-English dictionary and the only other book in German that they had, which appears to be a collection of articles by Sigmund Freud on the unconscious mind. I've never gotten very far with German; we have one book on the language, but it's from the 1940's, with Gothic-like type that is difficult to decipher.

I also looked at craft and decorating books, but didn't buy any. I did pick up some ideas for projects, both from the books that I looked at, and the thrift store that I visited next. It was also sparsely populated, with one cashier in a mask and gloves.

Yesterday, I mixed a little red craft paint with some shaving cream that we had, and we made marbled shaving cream prints. We learned that the technique works even when the paint is mixed evenly into the shaving cream; you just have to swirl the shaving cream around, and the paper picks up irregular amounts of color from the irregular surface.

Mostly we printed onto sheets of paper, but I also tried printing directly onto a white cardboard box that I had, and a piece of white fabric. These prints came out, but they were affected by the surface textures:  the paper surface of the box is slightly coarser than office paper, and the fabric's woven texture visually competes with the marbling.

Progress on the chair seat

Previously, I had stripped it down to the frame and springs.

Going by the careful notes I had taken while stripping off the old upholstery, I tacked on the new old burlap.

For the crocheted "rug" padding that I had made, I decided that the best way to attach it would be to crochet a round of single crochet 1, chain 1 around all four edges, doing slip stitches to get around the corners. That gave me a less-dense edge to tack to the seat frame.

Next came the thin pillow that I planned to put over it, which was a bit smaller than the crocheted layer. I decided to sew it directly to the crocheted layer, using some very strong thread that I have.

With that done, the seat is ready for the outer fabric, which still needs some preparation. It is a heavy canvas-like fabric, with a waterproof backing, which a friend of my mother's gave her along with a big load of other fabrics.

I made a page of little concept sketches for possible stamping designs, to be done with potato stamps, and chose one. After carving my two old, sprouting potatoes, and picking the best one, I mixed my two colors of fabric paint, and did some test stamps on a sheet of paper.

I did not like how it looked, at all. The paint was thinner and drippier than I expected, and the potatoes had become uneven in texture. Also, the paint color was not good--so I added a lot more brown to it, which gave a better color, but with a lot more contrast with the fabric than I was planning on.

Since I had given up on stamping, I went with scribbling on the fabric with a bamboo skewer. When I got done, I still was not very happy with the result, so I rinsed the pieces in the utility sink with hot water, which shifted around and rinsed off much of the fabric paint, depending on how much it had dried, leaving a combination of scribbles and splotches.

I hung the pieces outside to dry. Looking at them now, my first impression is that they are "too yellow", but really the color is only slightly brighter than a tablecloth I already have in the room. Hanging the pieces up made the splotches tend to turn into streaks. From across the room, the pattern looks like an unnatural color of marble.

This chair has wooden arms, and no skirt, so only the seat and back will be upholstered. I think this fabric will be tolerable for that, but I would not want to use it over a larger area.

If I find that I really don't like it, I can always make a slipcover.

Progress

I've started putting the chair that I'm reupholstering back together. I am trying to use what I have for it, and not buy anything.

It is remarkable how much materials and labor go into a piece of upholstered furniture.

For a layer of seat padding, I decided to take strips of fabric and crochet them, just like a rug. I used several old skirts that I had retired; there's a lot of fabric of them, but it is too worn to use for just anything. Crocheted, they become dense and a bit lumpy, so there will need to be another layer of padding above that. I am going to use the pillow that my grandma made for the chair seat.

Underneath the crocheted layer, there is supposed to be a layer of burlap. I have a piece that's large enough-- which I have sometimes used as a Christmas tree skirt--and it is older stuff, about twice as substantial as the burlap being sold in the craft stores now, so it will work well.

I have plenty of the outer fabric, given to me at Christmas, and I have fabric paint for making some sort of a pattern on it. I am thinking of doing block printing with carved potatoes, and I have a couple of potatoes set aside for that, but they are getting shriveled and old. I may have to switch to some other vegetable.

I salvaged some of the tacks when I stripped the old upholstery off the chair, and I also have some tacks left over from an earlier project. I am going to use a staple gun for some parts, because one of the pieces of the frame is starting to split. It is still strong and doesn't need repair yet, but I don't want to be driving tacks into it.

I still need a couple of things:  some kind of stiffener for the back of the chair, originally this was a large piece of paperboard; and some paperboard tacking strips. For the padding on the back, I will either crochet up some more of my scrap fabric, or use foam from a couple of spare cushions.

Holiday interlude

I spent a bit of time thinking about how to spend my Christmas money, and ended up at the used book store.

Most of the time, I buy books from a thrift store or from the little book sale area at the library, so going into a real bookstore is like a trip to the candy store--except better, because you can read a book more than once.

Within the wider selection of books, I found a number of books that related to areas that I want to branch out into more.

My second stop was the craft store. I don't visit these very often either, because so many of the things in them, I could make for myself, if I wanted to put in the time and effort. What I did buy was basic materials:  leather remnants, wool roving, and fabric paint.

My third stop was for the really mundane things:  socks and a new toilet brush. I've had a remarkably hard time buying socks in the past, either because they weren't quite what I was looking for or needed, or because they were beyond my budget. I've settled on buying ankle socks a few pairs at a time, and using them as the feet for homemade knee-high tights.

I decided not to buy a new dish drying rack yet, but to just turn the old one around, so that the more worn-looking parts are at the back.

Also, I received a box of garage sale fabric from a visiting relative. There is a large piece of fleece that should be good for one or two pairs of child-sized pants, one and a half bedsheets, and more than enough upholstery fabric to cover the chair that I brought home from vacation. While I was busy with holiday preparations, my mending pile outgrew the small amount of cupboard space that I allotted for it, so I'm going to have to get to work on that again sometime soon.

When the toddler wants to paint

My husband bought a "Buddha board" recently. It is a flat, square surface on a stand; the stand also has a reservoir for water and a place to rest a paintbrush. The idea is to paint on the surface with plain water, which will dry within a few minutes, leaving it ready to "paint" again.

This gave me the idea of letting the toddler paint with water on construction paper on a tray. The paper can be dried and reused a time or two, if it doesn't get too crumpled.

This is an idea I should have had a few years ago, though, when the arboretum put in a new nature play area, including a bare-wood playhouse, a water source, and lots of paintbrushes. Every time we were there, there were a half-dozen or more little children industriously painting the playhouse with water, over and over, as the water dried quite quickly.

A frugal transformation

The neighbors gave our family a lamp and a small side table. We did need the lamp, for a reading light in one of the children's bedrooms, but we didn't need the table.

The table hung out for a bit in the living room, but it clearly wasn't sturdy enough to survive for long. Looking more closely at it, the top was a hollow box made out of hardboard.

I also noticed that without the legs, the top could be turned into a painting, and hung on the wall as artwork. There was an empty section of wall in the family room that had been needing decoration for a long time.

For colors, I decided to go with the existing family room decor colors, which are basically the rainbow colors, plus white. There's also a lot of pale blue, but I left that out of the painting.

For a design and painting technique, I decided to do patterns of dots. I'm much better at placing dots than at spreading paint where I want it to go, and a structured pattern would counteract some of the visual chaos that goes on in the room. The table top was already red, so I left it that way as the background color.

Then I did the dots, in patterns that varied by color. It came out fairly well--I picked a good stopping point and didn't overwork it--but it's definitely an amateur effort.

With the help of some hardware from our hoard, I hung it up. The wall it's on is not well-lit, so the white dots are by far the most prominent, followed by the yellow dots, and the rest are much harder to distinguish from the background, without moving closer to it.