Making Things Always Helps

[elisem]

No matter what else is going on -- and there's a lot else going on -- being at the workbench always helps, and I am so grateful to have it.

Right now there's some labradorite on the bench that I need to go play with. Tomorrow's Optical Effects Sunday will have a piece of opalized dinosaur bone in it, but I'm not sure what else yet, because I think I want to save the labradorite for a day concentrating on that. And I've still got the lightest of the superlightweight earrings to put up, and there are the other earrings I've been hoping to make, the really sparkly ones, just because those beads are so different and refreshing right now.

Anyhow, hi! Is making things helping you too? Or looking at things other people have made? Feel free to leave a link here.

Comments

[jenett]

Yay workbench time. Looking at things people have made is indeed really good.

I am currently on "listening to interesting music", becuase I just finished two rounds of witchy teaching, one of them on Pagan arts and music. (The current playlist is a bunch of stuff from Terri Windling's Tunes for a Monday Morning posts, though I need to go through and add another batch of posts sometime.)

[sovay]

Anyhow, hi! Is making things helping you too? Or looking at things other people have made? Feel free to leave a link here.

I am not writing anywhere near as much as I want about anything, but I spent much of the spring taking photographs of my neighborhood as it flowered, and I'm still posting more photos than usual. I think it's part of staying connected to the world. I am also about to embark on actually trying to make a thing with my hands that is art rather than household repair and we'll see what results it returns.

I love labradorite.

[carbonel]

I am spinning lots of yarn, but that's nothing new. What's new is that I have a couple of new tools. I love my blending board and have made several skeins from fiber I've blended on it, and I'm looking forward to doing a different sort of blending on my brand-new hackle.

Currently I'm spinning a batch of angora bunny fiber. It's going to become some amazingly warm and fuzzy yarn for the person I'm spinning it for.

[readinggeek451]

I've slowed waaaay down on my various craft things in the last year or so, because fibro fatigue is kicking my ass. I miss it, on days like today when I don't get anything done.

But I finished the first head of a Care-Bear-Us (guardian of the underworld) last weekend; it's either going to be awesome or a disaster. And I keep coming up with new ideas.

[pameladean]

Hooray woorkbench time!

I am not making much at all, including writing. I am continuing to make dinner on a regular basis. I was attempting to branch out instead of cooking the same ten things over and over, and found a recipe for pasta with greens and sausage. I had very nice vegetarian sausage, so I made it. The recipe called for white wine, which we were out of; but I looked up substitutes and discovered that allegedly one could use half white wine vinegar and half water to make up the amount of wine called for. I dutifully did this. I suspect where I went wrong was doubling the vinegar and water mixture when I doubled the recipe. I don't think that was necessary.

We did eat the pasta for dinner and it was not exactly non-tasty, but we both got awful heartburn. I put it in the fridge labelled ACID PASTA. Raphael ate an additional serving and said definitively that we should just toss the rest. I can't even recall the last time anything had to be tossed for inedibility unless it had turned into a science experiment, but since I didn't even want to taste the leftovers, we did toss the rest of it.

Possibly I had inferior white wine vinegar; that's another possibility.

The other story is more pleasant though not exciting. I often make Indian food, and have frequently made either black-eyed pea masala, curried chickpeas, or rajmah, which is curried kidney beans. They are basically similar, but there are variations in the types of spices, the amount of or even presence of onions, whether the ginger is fresh or powdered, and so on. I decided to try black bean curry. It had cinnamon in it, no onions but lots of garlic. It was delicious, and the lack of onion, while I would not care to impose it on all bean dishes, meant that it was faster to put together.

That is about as creative as I have gotten recently.

P.

[shewhostaples]

I've been making curtains! It's a bit of a learning curve but I think (with three seams left to go) they're going to work. It's nice to do something to make the house look better given how much time I'm spending in it!

[mrissa]

I started a new novel last week.

[xeger]

Trapping, and now fostering Momcat + kitten -- it's a different sort of making, but very rewarding (although not at all conducive to other sorts of making)!

Most recently, Momcat's actually started playing when I bring out the stick-and/or-string toys.

[stultiloquentia]

Writing is my primary creative outlet, but since writing's been hard lately, it's helped a lot to remind myself I have back-ups, even if my skill level isn't the same. I dug some Sculpey out of a neglected drawer, and made a cow. It was fun.