Guess who's back!

Yup. Yours truly. I'm baaahaack!

Since my previous post I have been über-busy with all the preparations and first steps of my web design business. But alas! The long days of working and sweating over design mockups and programming training are almost over, and the long days of working and sweating over client design mockups and debugging are almost starting. The main difference: I'll get paid. At least I hope so.

In case you were wandering "did you really need three months for that?" well, I did plan the launch to be in only half that time. However, en route my body and mind performed their united "hey you there, get back here!" routine again so I needed to take things sloooow for a while. Yeah, life and health and sanity and such. The good news is that now I'm both rested ánd well-prepared, beat that!

Since all this work left little time for other projects, I'm slightly behind on pretty much all of my plans. I hope I'll be able to pick them up slowly the next weeks. There might also appear some older creations that I had already photographed and subsequently forgotten about. I'd tell you what kind of projects if I hadn't forgotten about them.

One thing I do remember is going to the textiles market with a friend. Though the reason I still remember it might be that it happened a few days ago. Ah well. In case you are now looking at me with the stern look that says "didn't you already have waaaay to much fabric while doing pretty much nothing with it?", it wasn't my fault. I was morally obliged to tag along for mental support to my friend who needed to stash big time for her sewing plans. And the reason I came home with a big stash of cloth as well was, ehm... Well you don't need an excuse for stashing really nice €1 per meter cloth, really. I just need to find more storage space, that's all.

Among the new supplies is a piece of unbleached cotton (Dutch: kaasdoek). Which is very convenient in the kitchen as well as for drying herbs as my friend told me. Herbs. Whenever I stumble across the word 'herbs' I think of Eddy Izzard's sketch:

The man is a genius.

*Disclaimer: I am Dutch but only speak two languages, the other six have long been forgotten ;). 

A bit of work and a bit of fun

There is not much to tell about the rings I'm working on unfortunately. I'm still busy with manually adapting the details, but can't work on it for prolonged periods of time in order to prevent wrist injury playing up. I really want to escape to other activities, be it personal projects or professional ones (making my own website, etc), but so far I've managed to control those urges. Once three designs are up and ready and sent to the printer, I can devote all my time and energy to those causes (the professional ones, I mean). But until then, it's knuckling down to boring work. I mean, it'll have to be done óne day. No, not before the deadline of last week, no. I know. And my next design is going to be be a whole lot simpler, I'll tell you that.

On the other hand, my perception of time is once again too far ahead. Do you know that feeling, when you feel like you're already halfway through the week, while in fact it's just Monday evening? I often have that when a lot of projects are 'flowing': when things are háppening, impasses are resolved, decisions are made and results become visible; it seems like everything just starts doing that at the same time. It feels great, dynamic and rewarding, but it also means having to watch out not to overdo things and overwork myself, a threat always lurking around the corner. Darn you, necessary balance!

I did manage to squeeze in a few creative and fun activities though:

A new little drawing:

Random inanimate object photography:

Plans for a new website for our Tuna (music group, not fish), together with C.; I really want to start with that, finally a stress free (i.e. no paying client) web design project again!

And: my camera basket is done! Yes, the one that was supposed to be made once I had shortened my sewing to do list... I needed to lubricate my sewing machine and after that, I had to take a little test run. I didn't want to use one of my more 'serious' projects for that, so the basket was perfect practise material, easy to make and no need to be precise (I can feel you thinking: haha, good excuse ;) ). Now it stands on my desk to contain my camera and accessories, I like how it turned out!

A small tutorial will follow later, I always wanted to make tutorials but since I mostly sew in the evenings, pictures tend to turn out rather bad and that held me back. That, and most of the time trying out things for the first time (i.e. messing up time after time) and not wanting to make a second version for the tutorial. But then I thought about the book of Mme Zsazsa who often explains things with simple but clear and attractive drawings, and I figured I should give that a try. So... give me some time and the tutorial will follow.

Okay, now back to the sewing waiting list. There are some long overdue birthday gifts that really need to be made... In order to keep myself going I already cut out the parts for some projects and assembled some halfway done pieces. I also need to make the curtains for our living room closet since I finally found a somewhat decent fabric, you can see it in the background of most pictures. However, since the fabric is a bit too bright white, I'll have to figure out how to get a pattern or something on it, to make it less intrusive. Anyone any ideas?

Keeping yourself busy

Boredom? What's that? Just pick up a few pencils for a quick coloured sketch:

Or grab some lino cutters and an eraser for some custom stamps:

Or browse a fun book try to decide what to make first (after the sewing waiting list has been shortened, yes, I know...):

And not to forget, grab a camera and try to make pretty pictures. Or just try to remember the controls, perhaps that's enough of a challenge already.

Or, when reeeeeally bored, just pick up some design work with 3D software. No, not the 'design' part, that is the fun part and usually done before you know it. No, I meant the 'work' part, as in manually rearranging thousands of digital points to avoid getting gritty edges on you product when printed. Yes, thousands of them. One. By. One.

Nooooooooooo... On the plus side, the webdesign job is finally 'sorta' finished, with honours from the client. Yeah, more time for 3D modelling! ... Wait a minute...

Rain and clouds

Well well well... Turns out I had forgotten even more than I thought about my camera. I had problems getting my images lighter (they kept turning out rather dark), even when adapting the diaphragm and shutter time over and over again. That was, until J. ('zee boyfriend') figured out I hadn't been adapting the shutter time but the light balance instead, which doesn't do anything when zooming manually. Oh.

You'd thínk that realisation would leave one with lots of motivation and inspiration to take lots of pictures, but unfortunately the weather forecast for this and next week has basically been rain and clouds, accompanied by a rather grey and dark sky and thus bad lighting. Maybe I should take the opportunity to practise working with a light box and maybe even separate flashes, but, well, yeah... I'm dreading that. Time will tell if I'll ever have the courage to start with it.

But fear not, I've gotten several fantastic crafting tools as birthday gifts, so I guess I'll be able to keep myself busy for the time being *grins*. Among these, pictures will follow later:

...lino cutting tools (Dutch: linoleumgutsen) for making custom stamps, I've already made a few
...thick high-quality colouring pencils (my fingers get cramped when I use regular ones, so I'm really happy with these)
 ...a wood-cutting knife
...an ironing board (already had a small tabletop one, but using that was annoying the living daylight out of me), great for my sewing projects
...and THE most awesome sewing book ever, "Allemaal rokjes" (all kinds of skirts, only available in Dutch yet) from Mme Zsazsa, and everyone who knows me in real life knows I never even wear skirts but I really wanted the book anyway. Because it's so awesome. And because I do want to make skirts, even though I might not wear them that often, as they are much easier to make than pants or shirts.

And I've found another song I really like for practise, but I'm still pondering which one I like better, the original or Joe Cocker's version:

Oh so unfitting with the current weather here, but hey, hopeful thinking never hurts.