Showing posts with label learning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label learning. Show all posts

Sunday, 31 July 2011

Belated Merry-Go-Round: On Holidays from your Art?

Jump on our merry go round and join a group of artists/crafts-women from around the world as they link hands and tell you a little bit about their lives in craft.
Do look up the answers from the rest of this band of crafters (links to your left).
If they haven't all posted yet, remember we all live in different time zones and check again later...
This month:
Do you take a holiday from art / craft?



Oh Wow!
More like on holidays from my brain it seems... This was due last Friday. I did remember, and mull it over— until I completely forgot to write my post up!

My answer would be: No.

Obviously, my routine is gone down the drain and I tend to forget what day of the week or month this is when I don't have to "go to work", and t
he summer holidays in particular are a time of renewal and exploration, but I never really completely stop making and planning, just as I never stop reading all sorts of stuff, all year round.


Last week-end, I took a workshop on digital photography and ghow to make the best of my camera. The man who gave it was this very unpleasant, supercilious kind of "pro" (there— I had to say it— he really was a prat) and his "workshop" was shockingly poor value for money, but it did make me explore the possibilities of my camera for 4 hours and discover a couple of useful things, both for artistic purposes (considering transforming and maybe even selling my photos more within the next year) and utilitarian ones (as in taking better photos of my jewellery).


I've also started knitting arm-warmers from some lovely yarn I just bought. A good opportunity to hae a go at a pattern I hoarded ages ago— and to realize how very bad I am at knitting with double-pointed needles... not sure you'll be seing photos of that any time soon...


I also made the two necklaces in my Wednesday posts (and they're now on sale in my DaWanda shop, where they are getting precious little attention— the weather must have been nice somewhere...).

The fact other people are on holidays and not shopping on the net so much means that I spend more time preparing for my next move than actually making or even doing anything much. But then, and we've discussed this already in former Merry post, I've always worked like that— mulling for a while and working in a spree, and then mulling for a while, and so on and so forth
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Friday, 29 October 2010

Merry-Go-Round - Comfort Zone(s)

Jump on our merry go round and join a group of artists/crafts-women from around the world as they link hands and tell you a little bit about their lives in craft.
Do look up the answers from the rest of this band of crafters (links to your left).
If they haven't posted yet, remember we all live in different time zones and check again later...
This month's theme:
Get out of your comfort zone and try something new.


"Comfort zone"? What's that?!!

I don't think I have that in stock.

First things first— I should apologize for taking my seat on the merry-go-round a bit late this month.
Excuses: yesterday evening, I had planned to finish knitting a cashmere jacket. I am not a terribly competent knitter*, but I have knitted, on and off, for over twenty years. For some reason, I knit a lot during heat waves. Don't ask... I don't know.
So anyway, being only moderately competent, I make mistakes. Bad ones. Yesterday, as I was finally trying to sew the pieces together, I realized I had made one of those bad mistakes. "Bad" means I have to unmake. I had to. Quite a bit. So I unravelled the whole collar and the top of both front pieces [yes— I had bound off on the wrong side].
And I re-made them. Well, I had to go to bed before I had quite knitted the collar again; So I had to do that today.

But this morning I had to do some paperwork and this afternoon I was going to the bookbinder.
To learn bookbinding.
I started taking lessons from a professional bookbinder a month ago. It's something I have long wanted to do and now that I don't take upholstery classes** anymore, I have decided I could make time for bookbinding.

Yes, I am supposed to make jewellery and I do have plans to explore silversmithing and artclay again, but I am an uncurable Jane of all trades. Mistress of none, but never bored...
I swing from one craft to another.
Mixing and matching materials and crafts.
Exploring life and the world as I go.

That sounds good, doesn't it? But really it's pathological— I cannot stand the idea of living just one life....

Plus, just you wait until you see the wonderful notebooks and accessories I am going to turn all this discomfort into! Not sure you're going to have to wait, but I know that in the meantime I won't be bored.


* Rather better than at crochetting, but I am working on that.
** Still have to finish covering a chair for my mother