Home Alone

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Pat’s phone call last night confirmed what I had been joking about for a few weeks now – that there was going to be less snow on the ground in Alaska than there is here. The snow is lovely, but the frozen white landscape is starting to get old and is definitely not melting fast enough. I need some color around here!

With both of them gone, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with myself. I made it about an hour and half before I felt really lonely, thankfully about 5 minutes after that, Loretta showed up and I was alone no longer. I crave alone time and then don’t know what to do when I actually get it in large chunks. I have a whole list of things I’d like to and should get done, but starting on them seems to be another story. It might just be that huge pile of mending/ironing/unfinished projects I have blocking the entry to what Edie calls my “Happy Corner”, where my sewing machine and all my craft supplies are. That seems like a very good place to start, and I can hole up and watch movies and the Olympics up there while I’m at it. I might be onto something… .

Pondering picture taking and other things.

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I really need to figure out how to take a good picture of stuff I like to make. Definitely need to play with it more. Need to pay attention to light and things like that. I think that’s why I wanted to upgrade to a really good camera a while back. Because I have a hard time taking good pictures of stuff I like to make. And in trying to take those pictures, I’m realizing I have few places in my home that are picture worthy backgrounds. Hmmm. I should take that as a hint to declutter. We have a small home, we use just about every spare inch. I don’t think we need a bigger one – that’s just more house for me to not clean, I just could get rid of some stuff. There’s an idea.

I really do like my new camera. It’s nice. I bet I could get Edie to teach me how to take good pictures of stuff with it, since she’s figured out so many of the settings on there. I could also stand to learn to play more with photoshop and do all sorts of fun things to pictures, but I feel a little intimidated by everything I could possibly not know about it. I have a fondness for light and color though, so it seems like I should be able to figure it out, I just need to concentrate on it. I like to think though, that you can just be old school about it and take a picture and not alter it on the computer at all.

This here is one of the shirts I made for Edie’s pals. The other is black with a red linen center on the painted daisy. And they both have a coordinating smaller daisy on the right hand corner by the hem. Edie wanted them that way, so I made them that way. I outlined them both today in purple paint, but cannot for the life of me get a decent picture of it. But that picture almost works, right?

I like experimenting. I like trying to mix mediums – in this case, fabric and paint. I did a few shirts last year that were a mix of embroidery and an iron on transfer. I kinda like how they turned out a little more than I like this mix. But maybe I just haven’t found the right combo yet. Definitely something to kick around…..

Master Plan, Day 2.

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So the idea is that I do this alot, make it a habit, which will then help keep me inspired to make stuff. Which seemed really easy in the master plan stage and I know is going to be hard in the execution stage. Today, I really was a wee bit inspired by all this, but also by all the crap I had to get done today. I had an overly productive day, definitely. Alot of it I needed to do, like laundry and dinner and figure out what Edie was giving as gifts at this weekend’s slumber parties, but making them T-shirts was maybe a wee bit over and above (although cheaper and really much less stressful and time consuming than going shopping with her to the toy store where we have to make sure we have time to fully take in the entire Hello Kitty display in all it’s glory while they wrap our gifts for us) and the zucchini bread was definitely over and above. I was in the mood to bake the other day and pulled the zucchini from last summer’s garden out of the freezer and had to just make myself get around to it. See? Overly productive. And worn out, I didn’t feel like doing this, but if I’m going to fall into the habit, I have to do it.
And now I’m going to curl up next to my honey and knit and watch some Olympics and call it a day.

The first step

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I have spent the last several months in a creative drought. Absolutely no juices flowing to get me going so to speak. I went on a bit of a knitting frenzy in December, but once I used up a good portion of my stash knitting scarves as gifts for a few deserving people, I couldn’t get inspired to start anything else. Especially anything that was most certainly not a scarf. Definitely not the shawl, sweater or socks I had promised my family members I was going to start on right away when I bought the yarn.

Out of the blue one day, a friend asked about making them a shower curtain. This friend had a few ideas, but they needed to be thought out some more and it got me started up again. I got to thinking about materials and textures and thinking in proportion, methods of construction – how to finish the seams, how to lay out the fabric. What fabric to use, how would it wash, wear, all that stuff I think I had started forgetting about. I pulled out my sketchbook, my old drawing tools, and borrowed a few of Edie’s colored pencils and markers. It made me realize how much I missed drawing, sewing, designing, everything I do to create things. I went to the fabric store, walked around feeling fabrics, pondered ideas, came home, hopped online and started ordering samples of other fabrics to be considered. It got me going again. For now, that project is on hold, which is good, because it allows me time to slowly dip my toes back into the water of creativity again. I’ll admit, I was slightly overwhelmed by the idea of sewing all that fabric. In the meantime though, I finally got around to making some long overdue gifts. Finally made something. A few things. Little things, but things nonetheless. I will certainly post some photos of that work here soon, but first I have to get them to the intended recipients.

It’s awfully good to feel that mojo again.