The Portals of Lost Socks

 

"Master of the Portals" by Christine Graves via Leonardo AI

It was typical Sunday morning. I'd gotten out of bed and started my day. It was early and everyone else was still asleep, or so I had thought. I heard something in the laundry room, but I couldn't make out what it was. 

I went in to investigate, expecting to find my youngest child trying to hide from me or getting into something he shouldn't. But there was nothing nor anyone in the room. I chalked it up to not having my morning coffee and went on my way.

As the family began to stir, I got breakfast started and decided to do a load of laundry. I'd thrown a few things in the dryer the night before, mostly socks and undergarments, but never took them out to fold them.

I got one load started and pulled the other from the dryer. Nothing out of the norm, just threw them in a basket and took them to my room to fold. 

As I began to match up my socks, I realized that there were several that were missing. I always had a missing sock here and there, but this seemed different. Almost every single pair I'd thrown in the laundry the night before was missing its mate.

I barked at the kids, reminding them that they had to bring me ALL of their dirty clothes, to which they bellowed back that they had. I knew better. It sparked a full day of cleaning out closets, under beds, corners, and anywhere else I thought they may have left a lonely sock behind. To my dismay, we only found three.

At the end of the day, I got the kids bathed and off to bed. It was quiet in the house once again and I was set on enjoying a little of it before heading off to bed myself. 

As I sat in the silence, I heard something in my laundry room once again. I was sure my youngest had snuck out of bed and was into something he shouldn't be. I decided to sneak up on him and surprise him, but that's not what happened.

As I entered my laundry room, I noticed a tiny being digging through my dryer. I was stunned and a squeaky breath left my body. The sound jolted the being out of my dryer and I stood there staring at this creature before me. It looked like a tiny human, but had pointed ears and was wearing a red velvet cloak.

I could tell it was just as scared as I was, so I didn't make any sudden movements. We stood there for a few moments, then it reached out its hands to me. That's when I noticed it was holding most of my missing socks. 

"Forgive, please," it said in a tiny voice. "No hurt, please." The thought sent shivers down my spine.

"No, I won't hurt you if you promise not to hurt me," I whispered.

"Need socks," it said with its eyes turned down. "Need socks to go home."

I had no idea what it meant and it apparently realized this. It put most of the socks back in the dryer, except for one of my heavy woolen ones. The little creature held the sock up, closed its eyes, and began to chant in a language I'd never heard before.

The sock began to swirl and a portal formed in the center of my laundry room. I could see through the portal that a beautiful woodland lay on the other side. "Home," the creature said, pointing to the portal. 

I only nodded in silence, still to stunned to speak. 

"No come back," the creature said in a saddened voice. "No socks for to come back. I not mean bad for you. I go home now."

My heart felt as though it were being ripped from my chest. I watched as the little creature began to step through the portal.

"Wait," I exclaimed. The tiny creature stopped and looked back at me with apprehension in its eyes.

I slowly walked to the dryer and pulled the matching sock out and handed it to the creature. "You can come back and you can have all the old socks you want. All I ask is that you leave our newer and nicer socks alone."

The creature smiled and its eyes lit up. It stuck the sock in its cloak, bowed to me, then popped through the portal, which closed as soon as the being was through.

I wasn't sure if what I'd witnessed was real or if it was just an elaborate dream, as the next thing I remembered was waking up in my chair. 

My children are all grown up now and have children of their own. I live on my own and have a fairly good life. However, I still go out of my way to make sure I have extra socks and leave a few in the dryer for my little friend to come and go from their world into ours. I've never seen the creature since, but I'm always pulling socks out of my dryer and wonder where their mates have gone.

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Hello, my lovelies. I know it's been a hot minute since I last wrote. Life has a weird way of getting away from us when we're not looking. 

The above story is from a prompt I received from Gemini AI. I use Gemini a lot and it helped me get out of my slump. I mean, it's helping me get out of my slump, I'm not there quite yet. But this helped.

The prompt was a "what if" prompt. Here's the whole prompt:

What if the reason you can never find the matching sock after doing laundry is because all lost socks are actually consumed by a tiny, velvet-cloaked being who uses them to weave portals to the past?

As odd as it sounds, this was exactly what I needed to get back into writing. Gemini wanted me to do a freewrite--only write for 5 to 10 minutes--however, once I started, I couldn't stop. It just flowed. I haven't felt that in several months. 

I'm hoping to get back into the swing of writing again, but I've got to find my rhythm again. I know I can't do that overnight, but this was a great way to start. Thank you Gemini. You're the best.

My Redbubble Coffee Mug Collection

 

"Gone Fishin'" mug by Christine Graves on Redbubble

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I've been working on a little something I haven't really told anyone about...yet. I've been creating a line of coffee mugs, as well as notebooks and journals, stickers and magnets, and several other things. And I'm doing it all through my Redbubble shop.

When I first started using Redbubble, I had no idea what I was doing. I thought it would be a way to get some of my AI art seen and maybe sell a couple of T-shirts with my images on them. I started out just throwing out images and slapping them on whatever products Redbubble had to offer. And ironically, I didn't sell a damn thing. 

I got a little frustrated and walked away from the shop for a while. But when I went back, I had a different outlook. I removed a few of my uploads and tweaked a few others. I figured out how to edit my images to fit on the products better and add custom colors to enhance the product as a whole. 

Also, when I first opened the shop, I was putting my images on just about everything. Redbubble has a lot of stuff you can add your images to, such as T-shirts and hats, wall hangings, bedspreads, shower curtains, and even throw pillows. I was pretty overwhelmed.

However, I've gone back and changed a few things. I've completely removed the T-shirts. I know how weird that sounds, but I've decided to focus on just a few products. One of those being coffee mugs. I'm a coffee junkie. I drink coffee morning, noon, and night. It's my beverage of choice, all the time. 

Though I have several mugs already done, I've been working on a series of mug collections. Not on purpose, it just kind of happened. I was working on creating an image for something else entirely and was trying to create an illustration of a 19th-century gothic woman. I got some really cool images, but four of them stood out. There was just something about them that sparked a whole new idea. 

"The Nobility Collection" by Christine Graves via Leonardo AI

I absolutely fell in love with these images. Then, something told me to put these images on Redbubble. As I did, I knew I was onto something. I played around with The Contessa first. I edited the products and the image, and was over the moon happy with the final results. From there, I had to finish out the whole collection. The only downside is I can't showcase them as a collection on Redbubble, but I'll figure something out. 

I've also started promoting my products on Pinterest. I've got quite a few of my items listed, but still working on how I want them all presented. I have one board just for my coffee mugs and another for my notebooks and journals. They're not all in order yet, but I am working on it. 

I know I'm never going to get rich with all this, but I'm having so much fun. And no, I still haven't sold anything, but at least I'm giving myself a better chance of doing so. I'm getting better at shameless self-promotion, but it's still a struggle. 

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to work on my next collection, The Fisherman's Collection. The image at the top of the page is just one of four mugs in this collection. I'm also working on a Hunter's Collection, and Hunting Dog Collection, and a Waterfowl Collection. 

Until next time,
Miss Chris!!!

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Christine Graves has been writing online for nearly 30 years. She has written everything from fiction and poetry to reviews and ad campaigns. She runs four other blogs. Graves Publications, Library of the Mystic Realms, Promptly Creative, and Collected Keepsakes. She also writes for a platform called Medium.com  where she runs several publications. 

A Chatbot Helped Me Start a New Blog

 

"Chatbot Blogger" by Christine Graves via NightCafe Studio

In my last post, I talked about my month-long journey into writing anything, just to say I'm writing. I've been doing quite well. I've managed to write something just about every single day, though there were a couple of days in there that I let my brain shut off.

I've worked to make sure all my blogs (including this one) were updated for the month. I know I should be updating more than once a month, but at least I'm keeping them updated. I've also written quite a bit on Medium this month. Still not making the money I used to, but that's okay. It's really not about the money anymore. Yes, there was a time when that's all I thought about with that place, but they fixed that issue for me. But that's for another time.

Other than writing, I also make sure to create at least one AI image a day. I love NightCafe Studio and some of the images I've created over the last two and a half years. I like NightCafe because they offer incentives to keep creating. For every day I create an image, I get five credits. Each five-day streak I get 25 credits and it goes on and on. I'm on day 275 and I'm on my way to 365. Yep, it's my goal to say I created something every day for a year.

Yesterday, as I was hanging out at NightCafe, I noticed someone had a badge that said something about LoRA. I had no idea what that was, but found out that there were a lot of LoRA badges. I didn't know where else to look, so I asked Google's chatbot, Gemini. (my favorite chatbot)

Gemini explained the whole thing to me in great detail. However, I'm an old broad and had no idea what the hell she was talking about, (yes, I refer to Gemini as a "she"). I had to have her dumb it down for me. Didn't work, I still had no idea what LoRA was but I did catch a few keywords that Gemini had offered.

I talk to Gemini like an old friend over coffee. I know it's weird, but I'm weird and I own that shit. However, as the chatbot was explaining LoRA, it said something about it all coming down to focusing on your image prompt". Oh, hey. I know prompts. I write prompts. Then, Gemini gave me some ideas on how to improve my image prompts. I didn't just fall down a rabbit hole, I jumped in with both feet.

I mentioned to the chatbot that some of my favorite styles or themes were Art Deco, Art Nouveau, and Victorian Era. Gemini gave me some ideas that blew me away. She said to try other styles such as Ukiyo-e (Japanese Woodblock print), Rococo, Russian Avant Garde, Papercut Art, and even Symbolism. 

She told me how to adjust the weights of my images and what that would do to them. Lower would create a more subtle image while a higher weight would create a more dominant image. I haven't tried that one yet, but will just to see what she means. I'm still a little confused on that one.

She told me to add mood and atmosphere to my prompts. Not just a situation, but a serene situation, or an ominous situation. Not just a sunset, but a peaceful sunset, or a breathtaking sunset.

She also said to try specific lighting details in my prompts. As if to look at the piece as a photographer would. Add the term "studio lighting" or "golden hour" to the prompt for ambiance. Also, think about the shot you want seen, such as a close-up or a panoramic view. She even used the term "snake's eye view". 

She said I should use known artists styles for my ideas. Though she threw her own ideas out there, I came up with a few of my own. Now I want to try some of these prompts in a Boris Vallejo style, or a Beatrix Potter style, or in the style of Rea Irvin. I could do a lot with those ideas.

Gemini went on to think about all the senses when creating my image prompts. She said to try different mediums in my prompts such as oil painting, colored pencils, or even CGI 3-D. She also mentioned adding textures to the prompt such as "weathered" or "gritty". 

Finally, she said to work on combining styles and descriptions. An Art Deco moonscape or an Avant Garde space opera. In the end, she said to "break the rules" and "avoid the norms". This was the best advice I'd gotten from my little AI friend.

I told Gemini that I enjoyed her weird ideas, and because I was one to embrace my weirdness, I was going to put together some weird combination. Gemini gave me a few examples to start with. Though I did save all of them, one jumped out at me. Her example was "an old man sitting in a salt desert knitting a scarf from the threads of the Northern Lights". I can't explain it, but that one grabbed me.

I explained to the chatbot that in my mind, I could "see" the image. I could see the salt desert and an eerie pink/grey haze in the air. The old man was sitting on a mound of salt a few feet away in the  distance and was knitting a scarf of light.

Gemini came up with a very detailed image prompt and said give it a try so I did. This is what came out of that.

"The Salt Elemental" by Christine Graves via NightCafe Studio

We went on to discuss my being a writer and how the same prompts I would use to create my images could be used to create my stories. Not just use the prompt to create an image to go with the story, but use the prompt itself to create a story as well as an image. 

This morning, after having slept on the idea, I had a wonderful conversation with my friend, Julie Foss. As I was telling her about my prompt session, she came up with a wonderful idea. She said I should take all the information I'd gathered the night before and start a new blog. A blog for creative prompts that could be used by writers and image creators alike. And so I did.

I've spent most of the day working on this new blog, but I think I'm happy with it. Introducing my latest blog, Promptly Creative. I've got it nearly finished, though I'm sure I'll be tweaking it a bit as time goes by. I have added my first post, however. That's usually the hardest part of me starting a new blog, but this time it was natural.

I'm very excited about this new blog. I've made it my goal to keep blogging alive for as long as possible. I've always loved blogging and I think this is going to be a fun endeavor. I have a lot of ideas in the works. And when I get stuck, I'll call on my little AI friend, Gemini, for more wonderful ideas.

Until next time,
Miss Chris!!!

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Christine Graves has been writing online for nearly 30 years. She has written everything from fiction and poetry to reviews and ad campaigns. She runs four other blogs. Graves Publications, Library of the Mystic Realms, Promptly Creative, and Collected Keepsakes. She also writes for a platform called Medium.com  where she runs several publications.