March Progress

March definitely came in like a Lion for me. And while it's calmed down some, I really don't see many lambs in my future.

The stress is entirely work related. This is always the busiest time of the year and there were a few compounding issues thrown into the works this time around. And so I’ve been feeling pretty stretched since late-February-ish. Then pretty much from right around when March started it’s been like running full throttle into a brick wall. Over, and over, and over again. Can you tell from all of my amazing metaphors (and I could easily think of dozens more) that things really are not very happy for me there? Yes? Good.

Thank goodness that my personal life is actually for real happy, or I would be completely doomed. Reason #1 for this is the continued awesomeness that is my Man. We hit six months on the 11th. Yay for us. I’ve also been happily crafting, reading, managing to ride my bike at least a bit, and I’m a bit loath to say where the Man can see it but I’ve even been video-gaming it some as of late. These things make me happy. Although even some of the happy things have been a bit stifled owing to exhaustion and what not. Boo.

But let’s take a closer look at my specific March goals:

• WoT Reading: An easy easy check. I finished book 2 early in the month and as I only have 170ish pages left in book 3 I may actually be back on track with my book a month plan.
• Bike 100 miles: Uh-oh. Right now I’ve only logged 35 miles. And I have absolutely no excuse as the weather has been incredibly gorgeous. It’s just so hard to get motivated when I can collapse on the couch and read or do a craft. Or if I want to enjoy the weather I can go read outside. Technically I still have 10 days which is quite enough for lots of miles. But I don’t see it happening. Maybe I should modify and try for 50?
• Blocks of the month: Double-ish check. I finished the planned 4 squares. Then at some point I calculated how large the afghans would be and decided I ought to be doing 3 of each (6 total) blocks each month. Last night I started to question that so who knows what I’ll really do. But so far this month I have completed 2 crochet squares and 3 knit squares plus have 1 crochet block started.
• Art Journal: I started 1 page and didn’t finish anything. New things are totally not my strong point. Must kick self into action.
• Wall-decal: 2 weekends ago when I was actually not working I found that I can easily freehand a dandelion seed. I was very proud of myself and promptly cut and ‘hung’ one lonely seed which floated their alone for a time. Then yesterday I was re-inspired and drew up a bunch, cut out 4 and proceeded to attempt the stem. It’s much too big and heavy now, but it’s still good progress and quite awesome.
• Blog comments: So far I’m slacking. It just feels so weird. And is exasperated by my own lack of bloggage recently. But I should be able to do it now that I am posting again.
• Postcards: I was going to do something for St. Patty’s day. And even started/tried something new. But the new thing wasn’t so cool and I never kept going. But if I do something relatively simple, maybe design something printable, the goal could still be easily met.
• Organize craft stuff: Check! I did this 2 weekends ago. It was awesome. I took many pictures with the intent of blogging about it.
• Cook: Kinda doing ok at this maybe? Early in the month I made Chicken and Biscuits which is kind of cheating because everything, the meat veggies and starch, are all in the one dish. Last week I had two good dinners of ham steak and pierogies with peppers. The peppers thing was an unknown but it worked out happily.

Well I do still have some work to do. But seems like I stand a chance at being moderately successful. Rock on!

March Goals

Goal setting has never been one of my strong points. If it's something I can do right away I'm perfectly good at that. Frequently when I have free weekends I'll make giant task lists and typically do pretty well at accomplishing them. But the farther I get from the goal-set date the less likely it is that I will complete the task.

But I'm feeling motivated today. This is partially owing to the fact that I have totally been banging out craft projects recently. So I'm going to try for some March goals. And I'll try hard not to be too overly ambitious.

• Finish reading WoT book 2. I should have been able to accomplish this in February but the olympics distracted me. Now I'm going to have to work a bit to make it back up to getting through a book a month.
• Ride 100 miles on bike. This is pretty ambitious and will be entirely weather based. Right now the sun sets around 6 and we only occastionally make it into the 40's. But I'm hoping that by the end of the month I'll be able to push out a few 1 or 2 hour rides with temps in the 40's and if i'm really lucky 50's. Fingers crossed.
• 4 squares. 2 crochet, 2 knit for my 'block a month' afghans. I really ought to like space these suckers out over the month to keep my yarn-crafting itch satiated while working on other things through the month.
• Make at least 4 art journal pages. Maybe even get watercolors to play with.
• Dandelion wall-decal for bedroom. I have wanted to do this for a long time.
• Leave at least 10 blog comments for others. I am a total lurker, but must break out of this habit.
• Send another batch of postcards to friends and family.
• Organize all craft stuff. I have so much stuff and a good bit of it is randomly stored. Organization (or as close as can be) will be awesome.
• Make at least 2 real home-cooked meals (meat, veggies, and starch) from scratch. I've been failing on the feeding-self-well thing recently. But I don't want to do more than 2 because frequently such things feed me for a full week.

 

It would be way to easy to keep thinking of more things but I really must contain myself. It's a good list. A few things may be a challenge (biking), but with some persistence and drive ought to be do-able.

I'm thinking I ought to do weekly reports. Breaking things down into smaller pieces is always helpful to success.

Weekend crafting.

A good bit of my weekend time was lost (in large part owing to the fact that my man wouldn't let me knit during the LOTR marathon) but luckily I was able to spend most of Sunday with my various crafts.

The knitting was a necessity. My local knitting meet-up decided to participate in the knitting of scarves for the Special Olympics and the deadline is pretty tight. I only just got my yarn on Thursday and me being me, unlike most of the rest of my group, I didn't pick a particularly quick pattern. But I figure if I bang out at least 5 inches each day I'll be good. And given my status as "glued to the TV because she's addicted to the olympics" I may even best my 5 inches each day.

I added 4 rows to my kitchen rug. Before it seemed big in my lap and not so big in the kitchen. It takes approximately forever to get a whole row done, but it's easy work. So now I work on it on the floor while sitting on it, it's big, and it doesn't even look half bad in the kitchen. Yay.

And speaking of craft projects from recycled materials (the rug is from old sheets) I have my eye on another recycled materials project. Stay tuned for that.

It was my intent to add at least another page to my art journal but after painting backgrounds on 2 pages I didn't find quite the inspiration I was looking for to keep going. Although I totally just had an idea for what I should do. (Note to self: simple paint chip mosaic) Backgrounds are totally useful however as now I won't have to wait for paint to dry! Plus having just had that idea I'm good to go whenever I find the time and inspiration again. Also earlier today I totally had the idea of what I would like to put on the cover of the journal. (note to self: favorite quote plus feathers, figure out how to secure feather nicely)

But most excitingly of the weekend I 'finished' (really I could easily add more but it's not necessary) a project that I started in October or November and managed to ignore despite the fact that it is prominently displayed in my apartment. Brilliant. However I'm ridiculously long-winded so this is already long. I think that I shall describe this project as its very own post.

Ars gratia artis

Having been quite inspired by everything that I've been reading from the postcard swap and all of the beautiful postcards I decided that I wanted to try my own improvisatory/mixed media/whatever comes to mind "art". I especially liked the idea of an "art journal".

But before any arts and crafts time I needed to clean house. In organizing/clearing out my bookshelf I came across an old notebook. It's a bit odd so I'm not a big fan and decided it was silly to be keeping it and went to throw it out when it struck me: Art Journal!

I tore out some old notes I had from a business conference and found a crazy squiggle pattern that is a doddle I've often done. Although normally I don't get the page nearly so full. I must have been very bored.

My hope is to just get myself creating something different at least somewhat regularly. There's no other goal. Maybe in the future I'll be able to take it less from a random creation to more of an emotional/journaling type creation. Actually I already have a few ideas :-)

Here are my first pages:

Left: pen on paper. Right: 2/17, acrylics, regular brush, scrap paper stencil, sponge brush, thread, mod podge, paint chip, puffy paint.

Ars gratia artis: Art for art's sake