moving along

Well, I’ve not been working at this everyday, but I feel like these pages have reached that ‘done enough’ stage:

In a way I’m disappointed with myself, because I think the bunnies could do with some watercolour, but I just can’t be bothered. (I mean the bunny paperchain there, not the bunny sticker that is from the Flow magazine as recommended by Caatje) Maybe when I get the watercolours out to add background colour to more pages, I’ll try adding a bit to these. But right now, I’m going to work on the next two pages:

The milkshake picture is just tucked in at the moment, and will probably end up on the green page. I love the green-pink colour combo. There’s the prospect of going for a curry tomorrow, so it may get some work on the bus to Ashton.

It’s Winterval!

Birmingham City Council came up with the term Winterval back in 1997, and I don’t care if I am the only person in the two universes who loves the word. It combines winter, carnival and interval, which is what I want at this time of year. Because I’m off work but not going anywhere, it just has a very different feel to the rest of the year.

So, after my last commute of the year, this is how the journal is looking:

These pages feel a bit boring, but maybe that is just part of the un-finished-ness of them. My plan for Winterval is to keep working on the journal but to time box it to only 30 minutes a day. I can’t really explain why that seems like a good idea, but I don’t want to not work on it, and I also don’t want to burn out my enthusiasm on my first day off. We'll see how it goes...

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.