February in review

Wow, I’ve actually managed to meet my goals for this month, pretty much. It’s kind of surprising that February wound up being more productive than January, since there was a good ten days where I felt like doing nothing. I think the main key to my success for February was in not making 12,000 Pointy Kitties.

So, here’s what I got done:

1. I got the Squoosh pattern posted. This was kind of a gimme, since I had actually did most of the work on it in December, but I was having issues actually laying everything out in the program I was using. Anyway, I got it done. Yay!

2. I wove a scarf and a shawl this month, meeting my goal of 2 woven things a month. I’m really happy with the shawl, since that uses so many different colors and textures of yarn.

3. I spun about 12 different skeins of yarn in the past month. Actually, I did a little more than that, but I haven’t taken photos of everything yet. This month I played a lot with a few different techniques that I hadn’t experimented with before, which was fun.

4. Hey, I actually completed 2 quilts this month! Hooray! Since my goal is to get one quilt per month done, I figure this makes up for my slacking off in January. I’ve realized that I don’t have the motivation yet to finish up the projects I started that involve hand quilting, so for now, I’m just trying to work on completing smaller projects that I can easily machine quilt. I’ve already got the next one picked out that I’m planning on working on.

5. I didn’t go anywhere near as crazy with the toys this month as I did in January, but I still managed to crank out my set of 3 Lost-themed plushies. I love them. I gather them around me when I’m watching Lost, because I’m that much of a geek (and also, because Lost is awesome this year!).

6. I got a ton of photos enlarged a few days ago. My first attempt at mounting them on foamcore failed miserably since I used the wrong kind of glue (they got all warped and icky), but after Sulafaye extolled the wonders of spray adhesive to me, I picked some of that up and did a test run yesterday.

I mounted one of the photos that I printed out on metallized paper onto fabric-covered foamcore using the spray adhesive and stuck it up on a wall. I figure if it’s still up there in a few days and doesn’t look weird, I’ll go ahead and start getting the photo enlargements mounted. I’m excited because I got some of my HDR photography printed out, and also some of the photos I took of radio telescopes in West Virginia printed out. Those are going in my living room. 🙂

7. I am currently post-processing the heck out of photos right now, probably to a ridiculous extent.

I do so much of this that I’m not even trying to count how many I’ve done.

8. I managed to use a lot of beads this month, to the point where I think I’ve more than made up for bead-free January. I used them as the stars in my Little Red Boat quilt, and also in 3 different handspun skeins of yarn.

9. I sewed up some new curtains for my craft room, completing the “make one thing for the house” goal.

I still haven’t worked on making a book using Blurb. I’m thinking about just making a small book (I think a softcover 7″ x 7″ is the smallest and least expensive that you can make) that just has yarn photos in it or something, just to kind of start getting used to the Blurb software.

It’s still cold and crappy here, so I haven’t done anything regarding the garden yet, either. Although I do need to place an order for fertilizer sometime in the next few days – we have a coupon that we need to use before the 5th, so that’s kind of a priority.

The only thing I really didn’t do that was on my list is the whole “make 2 illustrations a week” thing. I think what’s happening is that I’ve become accustomed to using my sketchbook as a place where I jot down or draw little pictures of things I would like to make, but not so much with the whole actually using it to sketch stuff. I bought some tiny canvases the other day that I want to try painting on. Really, I’m just far more comfortable and confident using a camera rather than a pencil or paintbrush or something. I think I just have to accept that whatever I paint or draw or whatever is probably going to suck, and that I can produce things I like more using other media, but it’s a valuable creative exercise. Or something like that.

Overall, I’m really pleased with what I was able to get done in February. I feel like I’m learning a ton of new stuff (especially regarding photography and photo manipulation). It’s also nice to revisit skills that I had forgotten I had enjoyed, like quilting. I hope I’m motivated to get even more things done as the weather warms up. I’m looking forward to the first day I can use the craft room and have the windows open, and watch the breeze moving around my new curtains. That’ll be nice. 🙂