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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2jlyDT0:
I spent most of the morning tidying my living room with my sister, which was pleasant; she’s judgy about some things, but not about the state of my house, I think because I’ve spent so much time cleaning hers. She’s extremely clean and tidy, as a person, but also runs a farm and has a black Lab mix so I’ve done some pretty heroic things trying to get her house presentable for visitors. (Her house is basically a public space, that’s just how it is.)
Anyway. My sort of resolution this year at New Year’s was not to declutter, which concept and word I detest in an uncordial fashion for many reasons, but to actually make my way through some of the stuff I’ve saved to use in projects. I’m trying to spin it sort of positively, is the thing– I am an exceptionally handy/crafty/creative person, I can do some pretty impressive things especially with thread and paint but also with other fine motor skills, and I do a lot of really creative stuff with repurposing and found objects and the like. I really do. So I’m not crazy for collecting stuff to use, and I’m not crazy for resisting the Tidying Up Industry that has sprung up in response to the Buy More Shit Industry.
So my resolution is to work on one of my bajillion projects every day, even if it’s only a little. And in my tidying, I rediscovered a lot of said projects, which was lovely– including a gorgeous painting I did of a magpie on canvas, which I’d intended to then embroider and bejewel and frame in a frame I was going to decoupage, and give to Middle-Little, who identifies strongly with magpies for their love of shiny things– and I know I planned to give that to her for Christmas 2013, and I meant to revisit it in 2014 and couldn’t find it, so that’s been missing three years at least. Anyway.
One of the projects I found was a bit of linen I’d begun to free embroider an inscription onto, and I’d taken it from a bit of silver-gilt from the Staffordshire Hoard. It says, Surge domine et dissipentur inimici tui et fugiant qui oderunt te a facie tua, which translates to “Rise up, O Lord, and may thy enemies be scattered and those who hate thee be driven from thy face”, and I thought it was actually kind of a nice inspirational message for this particular dark January so I’ve started working on it again. The linen is natural-colored, a nice variegated gray-brown, and the thread is handspun blood-red silk that’s kind of inconsistent and a bit of a hassle to embroider with but fucking phenomenal for this purpose, I think.
I’m just going to do as far as “inmici tui” I think– “and may thy enemies be scattered”– I’d laid the text out in wet-erase marker but it’s faded now so I’m kind of just winging it.
I got as far as most of the word “out” in my other project, a hanky that says “No Way Out But Through” in rainbow on beige osnaburg. But the thread ran out and I need to find the right skein to cut another one; the proper one got filed somewhere and I am so blessed I have several different skeins of rainbow embroidery floss, so I have to paw through and find the correct one, or decide to switch to super-brights halfway through and figure that’s part of the Aesthetic.
I haven’t done any great amount of work on any project so far this year, but I have done at least a handful of stitches on one every day, and the focus of my sister’s rearranging was to give me a handy spot where I can stash individual, labeled Ziploc bags with discrete projects in them so that I can always find one if I want something to work on.
She proposed a system to limit how many projects I could have going on at once, and i vetoed that: that’s a great way to make sure I get paralyzed and don’t work on anything, telling me I’m not allowed to work on something until something else I’m blocked on gets finished. No, but– the countersolution is to have a culling system, where the projects I pass over every time get put into a bin to Re-Evaluate, where I decide why they’re never going to get done and maybe repurpose, rethink, or recycle them.
I’m done subscribing to other people’s systems, because my brain doesn’t work like other people’s, and trying to be pointlessly mean to myself to “motivate” me is counterproductive, and I have thirty-seven years’ worth of results to prove it so I’m over trying it.
Another project: I’m finally going to commit to sewing this lil guy down onto a vest or jacket or bag or something:
I spent most of the morning tidying my living room with my sister, which was pleasant; she’s judgy about some things, but not about the state of my house, I think because I’ve spent so much time cleaning hers. She’s extremely clean and tidy, as a person, but also runs a farm and has a black Lab mix so I’ve done some pretty heroic things trying to get her house presentable for visitors. (Her house is basically a public space, that’s just how it is.)
Anyway. My sort of resolution this year at New Year’s was not to declutter, which concept and word I detest in an uncordial fashion for many reasons, but to actually make my way through some of the stuff I’ve saved to use in projects. I’m trying to spin it sort of positively, is the thing– I am an exceptionally handy/crafty/creative person, I can do some pretty impressive things especially with thread and paint but also with other fine motor skills, and I do a lot of really creative stuff with repurposing and found objects and the like. I really do. So I’m not crazy for collecting stuff to use, and I’m not crazy for resisting the Tidying Up Industry that has sprung up in response to the Buy More Shit Industry.
So my resolution is to work on one of my bajillion projects every day, even if it’s only a little. And in my tidying, I rediscovered a lot of said projects, which was lovely– including a gorgeous painting I did of a magpie on canvas, which I’d intended to then embroider and bejewel and frame in a frame I was going to decoupage, and give to Middle-Little, who identifies strongly with magpies for their love of shiny things– and I know I planned to give that to her for Christmas 2013, and I meant to revisit it in 2014 and couldn’t find it, so that’s been missing three years at least. Anyway.
One of the projects I found was a bit of linen I’d begun to free embroider an inscription onto, and I’d taken it from a bit of silver-gilt from the Staffordshire Hoard. It says, Surge domine et dissipentur inimici tui et fugiant qui oderunt te a facie tua, which translates to “Rise up, O Lord, and may thy enemies be scattered and those who hate thee be driven from thy face”, and I thought it was actually kind of a nice inspirational message for this particular dark January so I’ve started working on it again. The linen is natural-colored, a nice variegated gray-brown, and the thread is handspun blood-red silk that’s kind of inconsistent and a bit of a hassle to embroider with but fucking phenomenal for this purpose, I think.
I’m just going to do as far as “inmici tui” I think– “and may thy enemies be scattered”– I’d laid the text out in wet-erase marker but it’s faded now so I’m kind of just winging it.
I got as far as most of the word “out” in my other project, a hanky that says “No Way Out But Through” in rainbow on beige osnaburg. But the thread ran out and I need to find the right skein to cut another one; the proper one got filed somewhere and I am so blessed I have several different skeins of rainbow embroidery floss, so I have to paw through and find the correct one, or decide to switch to super-brights halfway through and figure that’s part of the Aesthetic.
I haven’t done any great amount of work on any project so far this year, but I have done at least a handful of stitches on one every day, and the focus of my sister’s rearranging was to give me a handy spot where I can stash individual, labeled Ziploc bags with discrete projects in them so that I can always find one if I want something to work on.
She proposed a system to limit how many projects I could have going on at once, and i vetoed that: that’s a great way to make sure I get paralyzed and don’t work on anything, telling me I’m not allowed to work on something until something else I’m blocked on gets finished. No, but– the countersolution is to have a culling system, where the projects I pass over every time get put into a bin to Re-Evaluate, where I decide why they’re never going to get done and maybe repurpose, rethink, or recycle them.
I’m done subscribing to other people’s systems, because my brain doesn’t work like other people’s, and trying to be pointlessly mean to myself to “motivate” me is counterproductive, and I have thirty-seven years’ worth of results to prove it so I’m over trying it.
Another project: I’m finally going to commit to sewing this lil guy down onto a vest or jacket or bag or something:
no subject
Date: 2017-01-08 12:14 am (UTC)My high school required everyone to take a class on public speaking as part of the English requirement. I spent a whole semester writing very nice proper bullet-point outlines and giving really bad speeches because the standard advice about outlines doesn't work for me at all.
Other people, apparently, can write down the main points they want to make and then improvise the transitions between topics. I can't do that. I suck at transitions. The only way I can give a successful speech is by writing out large portions of it and just reading them word-for-word out of my notes. But I can give a pretty good speech that way, and that's ok.