Too much stuff
The internet can be at once an inspiring and daunting place. Looking through craft blogs for inspiration starts off well and makes me feel excited about the potential of creating things. But as I click through, reading tips and tricks and admiring pictures of beautiful creations, it invariably leaves me feeling uncreative, useless and like I’ll never have enough get-up-and-go to make anything ever again. Which is rubbish. I just need to know where that tipping point is between “yay” and “bluh” and close my browser before I get to it.
Read Morewristlet
Just finished a little wristlet pouch/purse thing for LD’s birthday. There was a lot of angst with this one because I kept jamming up the sewing machine – something to do with the thread I was using I think. But I like how it turned out, even though some of the corners aren’t as rounded as I’d like. Used a pattern from the excellent Keyka Lou Patterns…love her stuff.
Read Morethe Rocking Man Bag
I made this one for Lachy, who is affectionately known by Elijah Peters at Wild St as Rockran. So we called this version the Rocking Man Bag…
Click on any of the pics for a close up view. I took them in a bit of a rush, so no time to make them especially artsy!
It has a more man-friendly colourway than my last one, as well as double brass pop snap closures and an internal pocket with zip. It also has piping around the flap! My first attempt at piping…and it went pretty well I think.
The fabric is ‘latte’ denim for the body (that’s what it said on the roll!), checked taffeta for the back lining, and a cool grey London print for the feature fabric and handle .
(you can see the print detail if you click on the image above, but it has two quotes on it, as well as a bunch of Londonesque images. One is from a favourite childhood rhyme of mine: ‘Oranges and lemons / say the bells of St Clements / You owe me five farthings / Say the bells of St Martins’. And the other made me laugh: ‘”When a man is tired of London he is tired of life, for there is in London all that life can afford” Samuel Johnson’)
We had fun at the Remnant Warehouse yesterday looking at everything and trying to make good fabric combos. There is so much choice, the possibilities just reel through your mind. (Also, little shout out, I just have to say I love the staff in that shop. They are truly awesome.)
Lachy also managed to find a +$200 pair of scissors and when the lady was cutting our fabric, asked her if her scissors were the expensive ones. She said yes, and that they were amazing – I held them and yes, they felt incredible. Lachy said it was just as well sewing wasn’t his hobby or he would have bought so many toys by now. I am only restrained by poverty, I must say – there are so many bits and pieces you could buy.
And now to start planning the two commissions for bags I’ve taken on as a result of my crafty endeavours…
Read Moremaking
Okay I know I didn’t have to stay up til 2am on Saturday night to do this, but once I got into the swing of making stuff again I just wanted to keep going til I finished. And I don’t have to get up early tomorrow. And I’m really happy with how this bag has turned out…
Fits a 14″ laptop, has two pockets at the front (that can fit a large notebook) and a giant pocket at the back, which would fit magazines or whatever. I used some green denim-like material (which you might remember from the Ramona bag) and some leftover bits of heavy fabric I bought at Ikea ages ago. I modified the pattern from here (I changed the feature/plain fabric combos, omitted an interior pocket, made it larger and left out the zipper and magnetic closure because I didn’t have either and I wanted to finish it).
I don’t know I why I keep forgetting how good it is to make things. Just about anything, whether it’s a card or a cake or something a bit more complicated like this bag, but to actually create something new is immensely satisfying.
And now, to bed.
Read MoreDrawing
Further to that last post and talking about design skills, something I’ve been enjoying lately has been drawing. You wouldn’t know it, by the length of time it took me to finish some comics for the upcoming Kinds of Blue anthology, but I realised I actually got quite a lot of pleasure out of it once I stopped comparing myself to everyone else and just enjoyed what I was able to do.
The little falling girl and cat in the header is one of the characters I drew for Guan’s Labyrinthine and I like how she looks here, on my blog.
Read Moreloss of joys
I gave a talk to my chaplaincy group at college the other day about what it’s like to have depression. I’ve been sick all week, so it wasn’t the most coherent of chats, and thankfully it was very informal and relaxed. I am always happy to answer questions about depression and what it looks like for me, as I feel that if I can at least contribute to peoples’ understanding of it, then it will have been worth something.
One of the things I talked about was the loss of things that give you joy, and I’ve been reflecting on that a bit more since I gave the talk. It took a long time for me to realise that two of those things for me were reading and writing. Well, I kind of understood the reading thing; depression can make it really hard to concentrate, and I know my mum talked about being unable to even read the newspaper when she was going through a period of grief.
It took longer to come to terms with the writing thing. Writing had been part of my identity for so long, and expressing myself with words was what helped me sort out my thoughts and emotions. It came easily and what came was reasonably polished straight onto the page, even without editing.
I definitely took that gift for granted.
When the creative writing slowed to a trickle and then eventually dried up, I didn’t want to admit it. I thought “I’m just being lazy” or “I’m just stuck on this stupid novel”. People would lovingly try to encourage me by telling me how much they looked forward to reading my book, how much they loved my writing, how talented I was. But I wasn’t writing. Can you be a writer if you don’t actually write? If you suddenly have no love for the written word? If the thought of finishing your novel fills you with dread, rather than elation? If you think you have nothing to say that anyone would want to read?
I didn’t want anyone to know this. I didn’t think they’d believe me anyway. But especially when I was standing up in front of people at events like The Faithful Writer and giving writing advice, what a charlatan I’d appear if they knew I couldn’t actually write anymore!
I’d say that every writer goes through periods like this. But it took me so long to link this with my depression, to see it as a symptom of the black dog’s presence in my life. That my joy was being stolen.
The decline in my writing seemed to coincide with the ascendancy of my graphic design skills. It’s almost as though I lost the ability to express things in words, so found the immediacy of images more suitable. I have struggled with feeling confident in this area too, thinking “I don’t know what the rules are”, “I never learned this stuff”, “someone’s going to find out I don’t know what I’m doing”. But I realised the other day when I saw some books I’d designed for sale in a bookshop that I was actually proud of my work! Seeing them on the shelf alongside other books for sale made me realise that my work stands up well. And suddenly those negatives can be seen in a more positive light – “I don’t have to stick to any rules”, “I can make this up as I go along”, “I taught myself how to do this from scratch!”
I think I am getting better. Very, very slowly. Each day has its own challenges. But the fact that I can be proud of my work and positive about my skills is a huge turning point.
Maybe one day the words will come back too.
Read More