Welcome to the first post of 2019, what I hope will be a happy year for all of you filled with piles of shiny inspiration and crafting time. If I look back over the last year, before I start looking forward into the next one, it has definitely been an interesting time as well as the year where this blog has grown to over 100 posts!
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For regular readers of the blog, it will come as no surprise when I say I really, really like colours. I like looking at them, playing with them, making them and stumbling upon which combinations come together to make something even more exciting than their constituent parts. It probably also comes as no surprise then, that when I saw Kassia St Clair’s ‘The Secret Lives of Colour’, I felt as though someone had written a book just for me.
I think I am suffering with a great case of crafter’s block, which I am going to define as suffering with the desire to make all the things, having lots of ideas, but no ability to actually execute any of this.
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For those of you not familiar with temari, they are the wonderful embroidered balls that are often covered in mindboggling geometric designs or traditional Japanese motifs, such as cranes or 菊 (kiku), the chrysanthemum, often considered the national flower of Japan.
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The last six months have been a bit of a rollercoaster ride, with two moves, a new job and all the general chaos and upheaval that comes along with that. It has been rather exhausting and the whole thing has seen me decoupled from a lot of my crafting equipment, my stash as well as all my usual routines.
In last year’s New Year’s Even post, I set out some goals for 2017. Now we’re at the other end of 2017, how much progress have I made on any of them?
When Taiwan was discovered by Portuguese sailors, they gave it the name, ‘Ihla Formosa’ meaning ‘beautiful island.’ It’s an apt name for a place that, even in November, is still about 30 degrees and is host to some beautiful landscapes and fantastic flora and fauna. I love how you see orchids absolutely everywhere too and I really miss the delicious pineapple that is just as ubiquitous and also makes its way into cakes and sweets.
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It’s New Year’s Eve and traditionally the time for decrying all the disasters and misery of the past year and making promising about slinking into the next year with perfectly coiffured hair, two dress sizes smaller, speaking six new languages whilst simultaneously completing an MBA and running an ultramarathon.
I’m not entirely sure whether to write 2016 off as a year of disastrous underachievement. There are still five billion works in progress that haven’t really progressed as much as they should, there are still projects and designs that haven’t made it off the pages of sketchbooks and the stash monster looks like it may be making territorial gains.
It has been far too long since I’ve had chance to update my blog thanks to a rather excessive amount of international travel. I’ve blogged before about the joys and tribulations of travel and how to try and find ways to stop all your craft projects getting lost in work-in-progress (WIP) oblivion while on the road but I really need to learn to take my own advice.
The worst part is I’m still not quite done with the anxious hours at airports. I have a few days of respite at home before the final leg starts. With any luck, I can get some sleep after that and I might finally be on the correct time zone and not jet lagged before New Year!
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One of the great things that this blog has encouraged me to do is not only buy my first DSLR camera but to really start thinking about photography beyond a ‘point and click’ process.
However, as those of you with your own DSLRs might remember when you first got them, they’re not necessarily the most intuitive things in the world straight out the box and whilst they do often come with comprehensive manuals, who wants to sit there looking up every stupid acronym?
Learning to take a photograph isn’t just about understanding that AE on your camera standards for Automatic Exposure but it’s about understanding how to manipulate those settings to achieve the effects you want. Sometimes that is faithfully reproducing what your eye sees, sometimes that’s playing with exposure times and light levels to do something a little more creative.
For those of you not familiar with Craftsy, it is an online learning platform where you can buy video courses for a whole variety of crafty subjects, as well as feedback and support from the tutor running the course. For photography, this is an excellent format for learning as you just pause to check comparable settings on your own make of camera and it gives you flexible time periods for practicing the skills you’re learning, that are often weather and light dependent.
