My most important project...

I had a baby!

So, yeah. An entire friggin' year since I've said anything. Among the many things that have happened over these last several months, the thing I'm most proud of is the creation of that cute little thing up there.

Having my daughter has done more for my self-esteem and confidence than all the antidepressants in the world. I grow happier and more capable and self-assured every single day, because there is no way I could ever second-guess or downplay the significance of her, my most treasured possession.

I plan to funnel this incredibly uplifting boost of confidence into my crafting. There is so much stuff I want to make! I also need to do a drastic redesign of the site, something centered around owls as a graphical element. Consider this notification of impending posts to come. I've already got tons of stuff I was working on during my pregnancy that I'm just dying to show you all!

I end with little Sophia practicing her SuperBaby pose.

The hermit comes out of her shell

View the horrid state of my sewing room. I have too much stuff. Waaaaay too much. My other grandmother died and my sister moved to a different state. I got a lot of stuff from each. I've also been promoted to manager at my job, so I have not much time on my hands.

I've gotten a little stuff done... but not much. I started altering a book...



... and worked on my journal a whole lot. But that's pretty much it. I'll try and be more forthcoming with recent creative endeavors. Time to come out of my hole.

BTW, Lily Allen is awesome. I'm loving this album of hers.

I'm not actually dead (an update in photos)

Contrary to popular belief, I did not die. I simply got incredibly lazy busy with life. I got a new job, I went back to school, I cured cancer, I saved a third-world country. You know, the usual. Takes up so much time.

I've also been working on a lot of projects, surprisingly. I've been getting huge boxes of fabric from my mother, courtesy of my dead grandmother's estate. It's the ultimate estate sale, but I don't have to pay anything. (Though it takes my mom $20 a box to ship them to me, God bless her.)

Here's what I've been up to!



I've been taking all my tiny scraps and making crazy blocks. They came in handy when we found ourselves broke at Christmastime and needed quick presents. I stuck a couple of these together, whacking the sides to make perfect squares, then sewed on a quick border and sashing. Instant placemats for the mom-in-law! I felt so accomplished, and I'm pretty sure she liked them, though I did preface her opening of the bag with "Look, these were an experiment, and you're the guinea pig. I'm sorry."



The rolls of paper on the left are little patterns traced onto fusible web from this book, which was a present from my aunt one Christmas a few years back.



I finally took all of my reproduction Aunt Gracie prints and cut them into nice little squares. I'm going to stick these together with some white squares for some lovely bright nine-patches. It will no doubt make a very lovely lap quilt.



I've been drawing out different blocks that I like and looking at the pieces and how they come together. I need to figure out what to do with the ridiculous amounts of fabric I've inherited. It's quite shameful, how much I'm getting, and me with no earthly clue how to store it or what to sew it into. But when my aunt asked me what I wanted from the estate, I just said "Give me all the fabric you have! It ships well and it will satisfy my collector's OCD."



A small sample of some of the pieces I've gotten cut out from various scraps and pieces. There are exactly 1,213 triangles in that box, every single one cut out by hand without the benefit of cutting mat or ruler, while seated in front of the television and watching seasons of X-Files. I'm up to season three already.



My little work box with all that I need to cut out the rest of my triangles, along with my most favoritest pincushion in the world, a beautiful gift from Monica Magness. See that roll of pink fabric? My grandmother seemed to have an affinity for taking old pants and shirts and cutting them into ridiculously shaped pieces, then rolling them up in little bundles and rubber-banding them for some unknown purpose. I think I know where some of my mother's crazy came from.



The other thing taking up my time (besides my new job) is my Anatomy and Physiology II class. Wait, you ask me why I'm taking it again? Did I fail? No, I did not. I got a B. This is unacceptable to me. I am taking it again. And we get fresh cats this semester, so I've been really excited about dissections. I've heard such horror stories about mold and bugs infesting the leftovers from A&P I.



Finally, there is the husband. Such a wonderful, interesting man. Our friends and relations fondly remember the recent Pork Chop Incident in which Dane attempted to cook a pork chop, failed to put it under the broiler, got extremely angry, and threw the offending chop across the kitchen! I thought that was the end of his kitchen-related tantrums, but he tried to make pancakes several weeks later, with similar results. (He was able to aim the flying batter into the sink, at least.) Our friend Skylar responded by then making his own delicious pancakes and taunting Dane with photos of them posted to Facebook.

Other than that, business as usual. I've been getting a lot done, so I really can't complain. I just haven't put blogging at the top of my list. Y'all can beat me with flexible bamboo sticks later. For now, I have to go to bed.

My fifteen minutes of almost fame

I feel very flattered and privileged right now. An article has been written about my humble little blog! Linda from Top Blogs by Crafters is doing a Get To Know The Crafter series, and I was lucky enough to be able to answer her question! You can see the article here, as well as many other interviews of other wonderful crafters.

This makes me very happy! Now, I sleep. Nappy time.

An actual notification...

...as opposed to just disappearing for a while.

Tomorrow I pick up my nephews, who will be staying with us for five days while my sister goes to our cousin's wedding, where she is maid of honor. I don't have the money to fly to Reno, so I have no problem being on kid duty for the next few days.

Summer semester II is finally done, and now I can have a few weeks to breathe before Fall semester begins. Tanya's asked me if I regret doing back-to-back-to-back semesters, and I'd have to say... ask me when I've graduated. Then I'll add up the busy weekends and immense brain-expanding headaches and calculate them against my massive salary.

In other news, before I wrap this up and start washing the dishes, my grandmother is coming to the end of things, so my husband and I have been invited to Utah over Labor Day weekend for a small family reunion. It's a sort-of last big hurrah before the colder months start to roll in and take their toll on her waning health. Tickets are already bought and paid for, courtesy of my uncle. I'll have to remind Dane that Utah isn't like Texas. He'll need to bring a sweater! And will actually wear it! He had to bring a coat on our honeymoon because he hadn't realized that Octobers in Utah act like they're supposed to, instead of oh-my-god-my-face-is-melting-off like Texas.

Later!

Late in coming

For lack of photos, I've included some recent doodles of ideas, sketched so quickly that I haven't even had a chance to get them into my notebook.

This has been a few weeks of changing and rearranging. Starting from the back and working to the front... Lando has had his first distemper shot and is now in the hands of his new daddy Les. I already miss him terribly, but he's very happy where he is, with an entire house to run around in.

We got a nice new king sized bedroom set, and the bedroom is now all bed. It is a room meant for one thing, and it makes sure you know it. I'm already enjoying propping up my pillows, grabbing some stitching, and relaxing while watching a movie, cuddled in the vast expanse of comfort. And at night, Dane doesn't gouge me in his sleep with his pointy toenails.

Due to the influx of new furniture, this has led to a complete redesign of the spare room, and has gotten Dane to finally admit that, aside from the computer, the room is essentially mine. I have assimilated it. I am grinning evilly.



As I have been cleaning and rearranging, I have been finding many new ideas hidden, footnotes to bits and pieces of things I forgot I had. It's been very hard to not be able to instantly give life to these ideas among the mess of spring cleaning.

However, I am making progress on my Diet quilt to the point that it feels more tangible than when I started. A solid and real thing is emerging from my scraps. At a loss as to what to do when I forgot the main part of the quilt on a road trip, but still with a box of scraps on my lap, I stitched together some small squares, measured and cut right there in the car. Pieced by hand, it became a mini patchwork to add to the main piece. I have since basted it in the very center of the main body. Scraps for this new addition were kindly donated by dear Mary Anne.

We went to the Dallas area over Memorial weekend and saw my sister and nephews. We all went to Scarborough Faire together, which was awesome as most renaissance festivals are, and I got tons more ideas to add to the already overflowing box in my head. Those will have to wait until next year, however, as they're only relevant to RenFaire season.

Final order of business until next post, which should be in the next day (I'm still preparing pictorial evidence), is that Summer semester starts tomorrow, and I begin the frightening task of Anatomy and Physiology. I have some plans for this semester to keep me from missing out on the time I need to craft. Wish me luck, one and all!

I thought I could take a breath...

Finished my finals today, and I did pretty well. I'm predicting middle A's, if not very high B's in all classes. But then I came home and took a nap, and as soon as I woke up, I felt like utter shite.

I am now sick with what I'm calling a hyper-cold. Because it came on suddenly, progressed from sore throat to drippy nose to all of the above, and I am now so extremely tired, despite napping nearly the entire day, that I'm in a sort of sluggish daze. Pretty much how every cold works, I suppose.

However, I did manage to start on a new project today (before the great bacterial revolt) and will be posting about it very soon. Not now though, as I'm about to fall over. And I just sneezed all over the keyboard.

Almost back on track

Two doctor appointments this week, and two great bits of news.

I had my 3 month follow-up colposcopy after my scary pre-cervical-cancer ordeal, and I was told I have a "million dollar vagina". Please tell me someone else finds this as hilarious as Tanya and I do. We spent all morning quoting it, telling her mom, my husband, and each other about the great worth of my lady bits.

I also saw my family doc, and I do believe I shall be getting my energy back sometime very soon. I seem to have a messed up thyroid level. I suspected it when I started steadily gaining weight even though my eating habits hadn't changed and I had in fact been getting more exercise from trudging all over campus. I've also been sleeping twelve, even fourteen hours a night, and have been utterly exhausted during the day. Doctor finally took one look at the weight gain and the tiredness, and heard I was taking A&P this summer, and said "Let's check you and get you on some drugs!"

Anyways, I start on said drugs today. And this is the second-to-last week of school. I'm so relieved I'll be able to get a breather, and will actually be able to recover from the tiredness, as opposed to just staving it off for another few days.

It's such a relieving feeling to know that the reason I've been struggling is something that wasn't my fault. I've had such a self-defeating thought that the real reason I've been exhausted is because I've been pushing myself too hard just to keep up with the "average" student. I was worried I didn't have the ability to learn, which I know is a ridiculous thought.

But to hear that my body is just sabotaging itself with no input from my conscious mind, I'm just so glad. I heard about the high thyroid today, and Tanya and I cheered and high-fived. It was a moment of "Yay! An answer! A relieving change! And an explanation." I feel so much more confident too, now that I know I haven't just been incredibly lazy. Maybe now I'll have the energy to come home and actually do the laundry, put in a load of dishes, and then just relax in my room and create and experiment with whatever I feel like. I won't feel like a failure.

I really do find it strange that just the loss of a little bit of energy and some added emotional (and physical) weight would seep into every other part of my life, infecting my confidence, my drive, my mental capacity to learn, my desire to be a good wife, student, and friend. It's strange, but at least fixing the origin of the problem will help with everything else.

Listen to me ramble on... Not much else to do at this point, I suppose, at least not today. I'll be trying to clean up the spare room, get some projects either organized or stored away in preparation of the upcoming surge of creative juices that I know will inevitably come. I'll also sit down and breathe and be thankful.

Moving Day!

So then, welcome to the new Creative Sufferings/Aspirations, which is really just all my entries moved to a different server. I decided I just needed more flexibility in my layout options. With this layout, I can make new custom banners whenever I want!

It is very late right now (or very early, whichever way you want to think about it) so I'm going to go straight to bed, but tomorrow, I shall post.... something. I'll make something and then possibly talk about it, as one is accustomed to doing when one writes about one's projects.

Or, I could procrastinate like usual, and spend all day tomorrow watching Law and Order, which ironically enough, was how Dane and I spent most of our honeymoon.

Changes

When I started this blog, I was worried I'd start to feel tied down to it, like an obligation I didn't want to bother with, but I'm already getting the bug. I hope to stick around for a while! I imagine entries will be a bit more spaced out as I start school in January.

This journal will be intended mostly just for chronicling my growing skills in the art field, as it will be useful for me in the future to refer back and see my progress. For all of you new visitors, don't let the initial lack of content scare you away, or the mediums in which I'm working in. I work in so many different mediums, and in so many different areas, that once I get a build-up of posts, I can't see a reason for anyone to not be interested.

Here's a list of just some of the areas I'm working in: art doll-making, textile arts, art journaling, quilting, art-quilting, collaging, toys, bookmaking, felting (if I can ever get my hands on some wool roving...), photography....

So, blah blah yada yada. I'm going to bed and tomorrow I'll post about my new Christmas present.