Buscraft

done enough

Here’s how that first page is looking now:

I feel like it could do with some stickers or something, but it’s done enough as it is. It’s like, yeah, I could go back and add stuff if I come across something that would fit, but it’s time to move on to the next pages:

I hadn’t realized that the first page would be visible behind the following pages. I’ll treat that as a feature rather than a problem. The project is feeling fun now; I worked on it a bit when we were going for a curry this afternoon.

starting the art journal

I feel like I've not managed to do much with the journal this week. It hasn't kept my attention for an entire trip to/from work, and I feel like I'm spending more time thinking about what to do with it than actually just playing. Anyway, here's how it looks now:

It looks a bit bare at the moment, and I'm having a bit of an odd week next week, so I'm not sure when it will feel 'finished'. Hopefully I won't get stuck on the first page for a whole month.

I'm taking a trip to Utrecht next week and the plan is to travel very light, so the journal may just stay at home for a few days. I feel like that isn't in the spirit of having a journal, but I want to have room in the luggage to bring home Miffy stuff.

no novel now

My November novel writing hasn't resulted in a novel. At the end of the month, I'm still just reaching the climax of the story, and it is way too short. I love the nanowrimo's stats section, though:

You can see in this screen shot exactly when I caught a cold and went from just being behind to being way behind. Still, I did manage to write a bit almost every day, and I feel good about that. I want to try to finish the story, for completeness, but I don't want to stress out about it, I just want to relax.

I'm feeling particularly lucky to be alive, because one of the people I work with died of cancer this week. It's one of those sad things when a nice person dies young, and though we all knew she was seriously ill, it is still somehow a shock.

My next bus craft project is to start an art journal. I used to do stuff like this what seems ages ago, but more recently I've been in a mindset where I wanted to work out ideas or try to improve my skills rather than just playing with paper and colours. After reading a sweet little series of encouraging tutorials on Caatje's Artsy Stuff, I felt like it would be just the sort of relaxing fun I could do with right now. So this weekend I dug out an old address book I had already pasted some pictures in, and started painting background colours. I'm not sure how well this will work as a craft on public transport, but it seems like a good idea at the moment.

Not adding up to 50,000

It's day 13 of the Nanowrimo, and I've got 17,652 words in my document. Their handy graph says I should be at 21,666 by now, but considering that I was 5,000 words behind at the start of the weekend, and now I'm only 4,000 behind, I'm not feeling bad about it. Their widget says I need to write 1,798 words to finish on the 30th, and that my average words per day is 1,357. It would be hard to finish on time, but not impossible.

The real problem is that I've already written 7 of the 12 scenes I have down in my notes. If I'm doing the maths right to calculate average words per scene, then I'll finish the story after writing only around 25,000 words. What do I do for the other half of the novel? Do I move on to write a sequel, or go back and add extra stuff? Actually, I'm not going to worry about that, and just concentrate on keeping at the writing until it's done.

Finished project: indigo square

Yes, it's done and ready to hand over at the next Guild meeting. Seeing it finished, I do like the intense texture of it. P is reminded of Van Gogh's Starry Night. The polka dot pattern shows at the edge, which looks a bit odd but not awful.

But where are the beads? Well, when I finished the couching, I did try scattering some small (plastic) pearls and some clear seed beads on it, but the beads stood out from the threads, when I had imagined they would blend in. So a final bit of learning on the piece: beads at the end stand out, not blend.

Finishing early did mean I didn't have any crafting to do while taking the bus to see the Aeolus Acoustic Wind Pavilion while it was at Salford. It is such a neat sculpture! I had expected it to sound like a flute, but it makes a more science fiction atmospheric sound. I had missed it when it was at Lyme Park, so it was a great treat to see it on the last day of the Manchester Science Festival. If you find out it is on tour near you, I recommend you see it.

So, with the indigo square done and just one more day until November, am I ready to Nanowrimo? Oh, yeah! I decided I needed a pencil case because my new bag seems to eat pens. They get sucked down into an inaccessibly narrow pocket, requiring far too much effort to get out again. So yesterday, I pop into one of the China Town gift shops, and found a pencil case shaped like a bus! It also has a girl with bat wings, and I've had a note about wearable bat wings to put in my story for about two months now. It's as if fate is guiding me.

 

Sudden deadline

I realized yesterday that it’s only two weeks until November. I’m aiming to do the Nanowrimo again (I’ve got my basic plot and lots of notes, but I’m not sure I have the required level of enthusiasm to get through it); that mean my free time in November will be pretty much full of writing. So, I need to finish the indigo square before 1 November, or it won’t be complete in time to go to the show in February. Here’s what needs doing:

• finish 2 corners
• fill 5 holes
• fill in a 4x2 cm gap
• add some beads (this is optional, but was in my original ‘plan’)
• mount on the thankfully pre-cut card

The clock is ticking! (And I'm on my last bit of indigo thread; will black thread work well enough? Only one way to find out...)

No reprieve

I couched down the last bit of my collected denim string, and when I ravelled some more string from the piece of denim I had ready for this project, it was instantly clear that the scrap was much less worn and therefore darker than what I had been using. It was the perfect excuse to stop work on the indigo square. After all, I couldn’t possibly have two shades of indigo on the same square, oh no, no, no.

So, I get all excited about my next project! I want to try using the paper patchwork technique to make a little heart ornament, with each half of the heart (front and back) in a different fabric. I had my four half heart paper shapes and quickly found three fabrics to use. Then fate interrupted. The first box I looked in for a fourth fabric had a wide selection of denim scraps. And so, I’m still working on couching denim threads on this project that I’m determined to finish even though I’m sick of it! 

Learning

I’m still stitching on the indigo square. It has become a bit of an albatross. Every month, I tell myself that I’ll finish it in time for the next guild meeting, but then the meeting comes along, and it looks no closer to being finished.

Still, I can look at it as a learning process. For instance, I’ve learned that couching doesn’t stand out on polka-dot fabric, and that it isn’t a quick filling stitch. I’ve also discovered that it’s easier to coil a bit of thread and stitch that down than to fill a circle with couching.

Also, I’ve discovered an advantage to embroidering on the bus: the light is very good. Generally, I think of the bus as a challenging environment to craft in. But as I was stitching on my sofa yesterday, with the overhead light and reading light on, I still struggled to see the indigo thread against the indigo fabric to thread into the needle. It struck me that though it’s hard to thread a needle on a moving bus, it is easy to see what you’re doing. Not surprising, as the buses have as much window space as possible, giving lots of natural light, I just hadn’t realized it before. So even when you’re working on a project you’re totally sick of, there’s still something new to learn.

Feeling better

Here's an update on my indigo square:

I haven't been working on this much during the summer. The couched denim didn't go with the background fabric as well as I thought it would, and so my motivation to work on it dwindled. Actually, my motivation to do anything got pretty low. I'm not sure exactly how or why, but I feel like I've been grumpier than I ought to have been.

I picked up the indigo square again and started filling in the gaps. Stitching it feels less creative,but I am liking the filled in areas. When I started it, I had hoped it would be done by last weekend. At the moment I feel good to just be working on it again.

Forgetful

A couple of weeks ago, perhaps triggered by the new Conan movie publicity, I remembered having read a really good short story, not a classic, but something from the early pulp era that was just good entertainment. I wanted to re-read it, but I had no idea of the title, author or even the name of the characters, just that the setting had something to do with Atlantis and the main character's wife was from somewhere else, like maybe Mu or Lemuria. Anyway, I read a lot of interesting Wikipedia pages about fantasy authors, but nothing that led to this particular story. So I gave up, having no further clues to investigate.

Then the other day, I was looking over P's Michael Moorcock collection for the one with the pearl and the girl in the tent (that would be enough to figure out which book I'm looking for if Mr Moorcock hadn't written a bazillion books) when I noticed the words "Edited by Lin Carter" on Flashing Swords! 2 (exclamation point in the title, I wasn't that excited at the time). That's one of the interesting early fantasy authors I had read about in my short story search. Curious, I opened the book, and the first story was the one I had remembered so vaguely: L Sprage de Camp's The Rug and The Bull. I read it on the bus yesterday and it is as good as I remembered.

Perhaps it's my age, but I do find it marvellous how much information is available on the internet, and I'm also amazed at how challenging it is to find the exact information I'm after. Though I should add that I've not been at my sharpest for a while. I'm not sure if that's due to work related stress, the weather, too much/little tea, or what; but as I'm not at my sharpest, it's probably not the best time to try to figure it out. However, after the triumph of finding the story, I'm hoping things will perk up again, and maybe I'll feel up to finishing that embroidery I put down almost two months ago.