Quietish

Posted for CraftBorg.

Saturday does not have a weekly feature assigned. I’m sure you might have guessed that.

In case you don’t see me much this weekend and wonder where I am, feel free to assume that I’m wrapped up either

1. this scarf

or 2. this journal

Wednesday will be internet wealth day. For now anyway. It may or may not work out, depending on whether I can come up with new stuff each week.

Throughout the week I will be bookmarking things I find on the net that I think merit a nice plug. It hasn’t exactly been a whole week yet though, so today I will just share a few (but definitely not all) staples of mine.

1. The Art Journal challenge at Shimelle.com. You may remember that I took part in her last 20-week challenge. It was excellent. A new one has started this week, and I have at least one friend that is doing it along with me. If I remember correctly, one could join in any time so feel free to jump in if it sounds like your bag.

2. Knitty. Most of the knitters that read here will likely have heard of this. A free online magazine filled with the coolest, cutest, funkiest knitting patterns. I have many, many of them dog-eared as potential future projects.

3. Craftster. Crafting for those not of the teddy-bear-and-rubber-duckie persuasion. I love to see what others are making and stalk other crafters lurk on the forums often.

4. Pottercast and because I can’t play favorites, Mugglecast. Harry Potter. Podcasts. Nothing more needs to be said. Just go listen.

Ok, that’s it for now. Tune in tomorrow for knitting progress, etc!

Headed, in a bit, to the concert that I mentioned back in August. Not quite so excited about it now, as I have to go by myself. Or I could skip it. I really am tempted to because well, who wants to sit in a crowded football stadium all by themselves?

I guess I’ll go though, and if I’m miserable I can go drink some coffee or something.

My impending departure made me decide to forego today’s ATC, but I did manage to do something artsy. Awhile back I bought a coupla blank books with good, sturdy covers. Love them. I slapped some patterned paper on the front of the first one and called it my new paper-journal. (I have since made the second one into my art journal.)

I didn’t end up doing much actual journaling in it, sadly. Made some lists in it, tried out new pens in it, wasted the pages. So last night I sat and tore out every page except the blank ones and the few pages the kids colored on (gotta keep those!) so I could start fresh in it. The book, however, ended up quite skimpy with its missing pages.

So today I grabbed some larger scraps of solid and patterned scrapbook paper and bulked it up by making extra pages that are attached to the existing pages. That was my art project LOL and now I have a new paper journal. Think I’ll actually use it?

Here’s what I did.

1. Cut paper to the heighth of my journal’s pages (my book is 10 inches high). Then cut that 10 inch piece to the width of my journal’s pages, plus at least an inch.

2. I then used a scoring blade to make a fold at the width of my journal pages, creating a flap.

3. Glued the flap parts to the journal pages with the fold of the paper up against the binding of the book.

4. Covered the edges of the flaps with other pieces of paper that I had cut to the actual size of the page.

Anyhow, Mom, Dad and Sarah are headed up this way tonight and will be here probably before I’m home from Stillwater. So that will likely cheer me up. And tomorrow Sarah and I are going to crop with Amy and the gang at Just 4 Keeps‘ new store. Maybe I’ll actually make some pages.

It has been a long day and I’ve only just gotten home from Jamie’s first dance class, so I thought I’d simply post a list of things I did today before slumping onto the couch early tonight.

~ ATC:

Inspired by today’s Coffeegeek podcast.

~ art journal entry
~ Fortunate Traveler progress

~ Jamie before class:

Leotard to arrive next week.

I have been in an exclusive, committed relationship with Yahoo Messenger for some time now. Yahoo has always been my favorite as Yahoo has always been so attractive and funny, and has been just a pleasure to spend time with.

Recently Yahoo has developed some issues. I am not being treated like I deserve to be treated. Yahoo has become needy, taking too much of my energy (er, resources) and keeping me from doing other things that I love. Sure, Yahoo can put on a good show and try to win me back with promises to do fill-in-the-blank cool thing, but what I really need is a relationship I can put my faith in.

So Yahoo and I are taking a break. I love Yahoo, but I need some time to sort out how I feel and Yahoo needs time to work out some issues before any promises are made. We are now “just friends”, and have reverted back to our earlier casual relationship (version 6.0) for the time being.

Okay, that was silly. For those of you that did not follow: The new version of Yahoo Messenger is really cool but it keeps freezing up my computer when I’m trying to do anything else and it is making me insane. While I hold my breath and hold out hope that Yahoo will get it working smoother, you can go ahead and download the new, cool, much simpler Google Talk if you want to chat with me. :)

The fam and I had a nice, lazy weekend. I stitched quite a bit and actually almost attended a stitcher’s group meeting, but got another of my now-famous headaches before it was time to go. I think I will be driving down to sit and knit with the Norman Knitters tonight. Some of them are in my API group, so that should be good. Between church, knitting, stitching, and my little group of Harry Potter geeks, I’m being quite social lately.

Edited: Oh yeah! Art journal entry this morning. Eee!

I’ve been tagged by Danielle.

5 Random Things: (guess they’re supposed to be about *me*?)

1. After high school I trained to be a dog groomer, quit to go to college, then quit college to sit home and be pregnant.
2. I didn’t have my *own* computer until early 2002. I haven’t gotten a new one since.
3. I bite my fingernails/fingers until they are mangled and bleeding. I often don’t notice until it’s done.
4. My husband, then someone I didn’t know, bought me for 6 bucks at a date auction.
5. I read more Star Trek: The Next Generation novels while a sophomore in high school than I can count. Often blatantly during class when I was supposed to be taking notes or working on something.

Thanks Danielle, now I have content for today’s post! (says the unmotivated Rosemary)
Guess I’ll tag Amy!

In case you’re checking in for some sort of update:
I did 2 art journal entries yesterday: Mom’s House and French Press.
Justin and I stitched some last night while watching some more of the 1st season of The Muppet Show, and I stitched quite a bit during the day today.
That’s about it. I’m leaving in a little while to go talk Harry Potter with other local HP geeks. Yay!

I was sitting here awhile ago writing up some ideas for scrapbook-page journaling when the dam broke. When I get going with something creative, sometimes inspiration begins to flood and it won’t stop. Not that I don’t welcome it. I want more. I think I need more; I would like to avoid being consistently boring. This particular surge of creative energy brought me several pages worth of journaling outlines, and the bulk of this post.

No offence to all of my wonderful friends and family who have been so supportive and encouraging in my efforts to take over the world become a really good scrapbooker, but my scrapbook pages really suck.

I’ve been thinking about my journaling a lot lately. I need to go back and count, but I think that I have mentioned needing to scrap or needing to write journaling at least a few times in the last couple of weeks. Did I scrap anything like I said I would? No. But I think I have found my problem. I have been blocked. Not really with scrapbooking supplies or design concepts, but with my journaling. I recognize now that I have really been letting myself down with the majority of the journaling in my scrapbooks. This realization is a little scary for me, because while I don’t yet fully understand what this will mean to me and my previously-created pages, I think my style (which I still have yet to really define) may be on the brink of a renaissance.

Eep. That sounds like a lot of work.

The thing is, reading and writing have been very important to me for a long time but because of my limited time, and lately, my lack of motivation, I have been slack. Journaling is also massively important in scrapbooking, or rather, memory-keeping, and I guess I’m becoming convicted that it needs to take center stage in my pages. But then, most of the journaling I have written is in no way worthy of being center stage. With my life as it is, I whip out 2 or 3 lines of mediocre journaling that fits nicely in a little spot I’ve left on the page I have already designed.

I haven’t been all the way through Clean and Simple Scrapbooking yet, but Cathy Z.’s chapter on writing journaling rings so true for me. A lot of her points are actually things I likely have recommended to other people, but the hypocrite that I am has failed to take the advice myself. So now I have some renewed goals, thanks to Cathy:
1. Write first. Sometimes the words and the memory are more significant than the photo.
2. Say a lot. Why not? Someone sometime might really enjoy knowing what I thought about something. At least I can hope so.
3. Design my layouts so that my journaling does not appear to be an afterthought. I don’t want to hinder myself by making my thoughts fit into a 3×3 square.

Which reminds me: I need to take my non-scrapbook journaling more seriously. For the same reasons my pages suck, my blog has also sucked. I don’t know if I have been uninspired, haven’t had enough time, or have just been unwilling to devote the time to just writing. I used to like to write. Yeah, it is crazy I know. Poetry. Fiction. I even liked writing papers for school most of the time. I was impressed with my own ability insert pieces of my personality into non-fiction things.

My mom thinks I am a good writer. I haven’t really felt like I need her approval to do anything, but she confided once that she thought or maybe assumed I would become a writer. Her considering me a writer makes me want to be a writer.

I admit, when I was in middle school, I wanted to be a writer. With every profession I might have tried, my poor self-image has led me to believe that I am simply not smart, talented, or good-looking enough to do whatever it is I fancy at the moment, and my ambitions fade. There are lots of fields I haven’t even considered and I wonder how many things I could really have the aptitude for without knowing it.

It is not to say that I am a sad, depressed person who is always down on herself. I used to be that person but I think it is safe to say that nowadays I mostly like who I am. I do have my moments though, and often doubt myself, but here and there I catch glimpses of a me that is in fact talented and well-equipped for a task. I am encouraged.

So I think I might scrapbook tonight. Feel free to hold me to it.

In other news, I finished the kids’ Halloween robes and scarves. Picture to come. I’m very close to being done with Futurecast. Picture to come. Today I started reading on the Lemony Snicket books. I am almost through with book two. They are very quick and easy reads, and I like them so far, I think.