maharetr

I really haven't been putting much effort into tracking things here; my last post about it was 10th of May. At that point I had finished 2 projects of the 10 I'm hoping for, and made good progress on three. I've not finished anything else since, but I have made good progress on some

Previous good progress

1. towel rail - has not been progressed. I need a day a) without rain and b) that I have multiple hours available and c) (most importantly) that I remember this needs doing
2. door mat(s) - I've used up all the existing 'yarn' and I have half a rag rug. Every time I am surprised by how much 'yarn' it takes. I need to work out where I stashed the rest of the strips while we had a houseguest, and assemble more.
3. Teach myself to draw - this has stalled. I keep misplacing my drawing book or the sketch book I'm using, or the pencil. I need to get a better process.

Progressed since

1. pink / white / brown crochet blanket -- crochet finished, sewing in the ends. I think I'm half done on the ends?
2. brown / green knit -- this gets 4-6 rows roughly every second Thursday (when we game online) plus I've sat and worked on it while listening to podcasts.
3. T's jumper - a handful of rows. I need to make sure to do this every second day at least
4. blue / white virus blanket - I've finished the first of the two balls I had left, now on to the last one. It is just shy of 70cm square, and I'm on the 13th repeat of the pattern. I suspect this is the last repeat, based on available yarn. Hopefully I have enough to finish.
5. Eldest's quilt - I have laid it out, I have worked out what is needed to finish it. I have made and joined four blocks and worked out that I was doing something different from the book, and now those are going to be the front of a cushion, just as soon as they aren't attached to the quilt any more (basically, I'm adding 1/2" to each so the finished size is 9.5" rather than 9", but hadn't noted that down anywhere).
6. Knitting for Kitties - using up a couple of balls of yarn; the green one is done, and we have handed three squares over to purrdence

I'm reasonably happy with this progress. It is possible that either the knitting for kitties or the virus blanket will be finished next, because those are relatively portable. The former lives in my handbag; the latter is going to go in my uni bag (it is possible I will mostly stop carrying the handbag, because it doesn't fit a lunch or a laptop)

This anonymous comment over on fandomsecrets made me laugh:

"But we didn't have cable growing up, just 4 or 5 channels on the TV and kids shows were only on at certain times, plus we just didn't watch much."

I grew up in the city. There were three channels (ABC, 7, 9), until 1986, when SBS launched here. The addition of channel 10 in 1988 brought us to 5. Cable television wasn't a thing for most of that time. I believe that the regional areas had two channels. I presume that most of the remote areas had none.

I have no idea how old that commenter was, but the idea of 4 or 5 channels still feels like luxury. Even though I've (yet again) been reminded about just how long ago 1988 actually was.

ETA: also, the part of the city I grew up in was really close to the transmitters for at least two of those stations. Because of physics, some of my school friends couldn't get at least one of those stations at home, because they lived too close to the transmitters (and sometimes because there was terrain in the way)

We've had a bit of rain - nearby weather station recorded 10.2 to 9am yesterday, and 21.6 to 9am today. I haven't looked attotal for the last week, but in terms of June rain, that is good, but not unusual. It is, however, still raining.

ETA: From http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/tables/cw_009172.shtml mean June rainfall is 151 mm while median is 156 mm, usually 13 days of rain. It is the second wettest month.

I have made zero progress on The Artist's Way in the last, hmm, three? weeks (maybe four, maybe more? I have stopped tracking). I do intend to keep working through it, but I've been doing the cycle of find the book, put it somewhere to progress later, forget, lose the book. My general thoughts

• the morning pages are working. I'm doing them in 750words, and that makes it easier in some ways and harder in others. The later in the day I do them the more grumpy I am about doing them, because they really do work for me if I can clear my mind in the morning.
• the artist's date idea doesn't work for me. I suspect if I didn't already have space carved out in my life for me to just do my thing, it would make a huge difference, but as it is there is more stress in trying to Do The Thing.
• I hate the principles, I stopped reading them daily because I kept wanting to argue with them. Too culturally Christian, and too USian alien mind set (I have the same reaction to a lot of self-help type books out of the USA).
• I understand the point of the affirmations, and I have a document of them I can read whenever (I just keep it open, but I should do something more accessible with it), but I find doing that daily beyond tedious. I had it in my daily to do list; I'm taking it out as part of my going-back-to-study paring down (post pending, still making the choices on that)
• In the bits I've read, I've felt quite othered, because I don't have a strong feel of myself as a blocked creative.

Long term, I intend to at least read the rest of it. I don't think I want to try and do as many of the exercises. I did a decent job of the week 1, and I might have of the week 2, and I have a log document that I'll leave open. But I think that reading the book and ignoring the exercises might be the best way for me to get anything out of it now. Possibly stopping at the end of each chapter, looking at each question, and allowing max 5 minutes on each writing task (if I feel like writing at all) and then not trying to do a bit every day.

the tl;dr: I didn't like this enough to try and work on it daily.