Junebug on a String

So it’s been a while.  Needless to say.

What you see up there, the Phoenix minikit, is the sum total of what I’ve actually finished, 10kH-wise, in the past two weeks.  There’s actually more — a megakit, full of hybrid books and art journaling stuff, but it’s been sitting, neglected, on the hard drive for the past week or so.

I do have a pretty good reason for it.  What I don’t have a good reason for is the fact that I fell out of habit of using the timers, and all the stuff I’ve sat down to “sketch out” (which is always how it starts, and usually ends with three or four good hours’ worth of work), I’ve forgotten to set the clock.

Oops.  I’m estimating six or seven hours.  I’ll claim six, just in case.  More practice is better than less.

I’ll get to the kit in a second here.

A couple weeks ago, I decided that a change was gonna need to come.  I’ve got all this stuff that doesn’t fit in with my life as it is, and honestly, I’m sick of paying for a storage unit.  (No offense to people who have one for a good reason, but for me, I feel like it’s a case of not dealing with reality.  Realities of space, of time devoted to caring for things vs. people, of excess.  I hate feeling like there’s too much.)

Since I was waiting for a replacement batch of labels to come in (got a whole pack that refused to stick once they were printed…), I figured that taking care of that backlog would make it easier to focus my attention more fully on devoted practice.  Lighten the load, so to speak.

I brought about a billion boxes back home (well, okay, not a billion, but it sure looked that way once they got into this small space), and dug in.

It’s a slow process, weeding things out.  I’m down to things that I kept for a reason — sentimental, useful, something — and it’s much slower than it was when I was sorting things out for the move.  Some stuff, I kept to scan, some stuff, I just threw out entirely.  (Including, and I know this makes the diarists among us twitch in unpleasant ways, twenty some odd years of journals.  I need a break from the past to focus on where I’m going, rather than holding on to a stack of books that were, literally, waist-high, that reminded me only of what was.)

I’m almost done with the first round.  Some days, I’ve worked on it all day long.  Some days, I’ve had other things to do for work and such, so it’s been slower.  But the twenty-some-odd boxes are down to five, and of those, I’m hoping to get it down to one.

Then we start over again with more stuff.

One of the things I did finally do is overdye some yarn that I’d been meaning to deal with for a loooong time.  It’s sock yarn, as would be expected.  Turned out kind of awesome.

Introducing Leap of Faith (green &teal), Creative Flow (blue/purples), and Passion (reds):

I need to get better pictures, but that gives a pretty good idea of what they look like.  I’ve got a couple left of everything but Passion (one left), and if you want one, email me.  I need to get ‘em out of here to free up more space.  ($20, US only, includes shipping.)

So the Phoenix thing.

I started this kit way before the L&V thing turned into Spooky Stalker Central(tm).  But it fits.

It’s a minikit — seven papers, three button elements in matching colors, a small frame, a phoenix element, the star, four bits of title art (renew, reborn, rise, and emerge), and one word art quote from Maya Angelou.  (Mini kits, by the way, are, well, mini kits.  There’s enough stuff here to work with, but not enough stuff to make it a full-on kit.  If you’re an art journaller, this means you can leave lots of space to draw and/or hand-letter things; if you’re a digiscrapper, you’ll probably want other stuff to augment the smallness.  Plus side:  it’s cheap.)

I did a little test page with a randomly-picked photo (I do wish I’d changed it.  Doing anything with my own mug on it makes me all eyerolly and squicked out.)…

I still suck at layout.  Maybe I should start doing actual journal entries with this stuff so you can see that, instead.  (My art journals tend to be a little more personal, though — I kept all of those when the Big Clear Out occurred, btw — so I’ve been reluctant to show those.  Maybe I’ll push past that in the coming weeks.)

Anyway…  :)

The minikit’s $1.50 US, and SHOULD be able to be downloaded from anywhere.  (The paypal thing is, largely, fixed.  After a few phone calls.  And being on hold forEVER.  And they know my address now.  After changing it three times.  I’m a little frustrated, does it show…?  LOL…)

Just click on the kit to be taken to the download. :)

The Phoenix Mini-Kit
$1.50USD

This week, it’s back to the 10kH in earnest.  With timer, this time.  And breaks to clear more stuff out of boxes.  Whew.  (There’s a REASON I called this thing “in which we come up for air”…..)

The past three days have been kind of a whirlwind here at 10kH Central.  The vast majority of it’s been spent on a very special project (which I’ll talk about here in a second) and another in-depth project with words (that I’ll talk about later next week), and neither were quite ready for primetime when it came to figgerin’ up the hours on the bloggybits.

Today, though, being Wednesday, and being the day that I usually have about four seconds of free time to rub together anyway, I figured I needed to get something up here so nobody thought I was going AWOL.  (Life’s nuts on Wednesdays.  L&V LIVE! days are inSANE around here…go figure!)

The drawing above is of the Bew-Tee Shoppe and Le Petit Chou, both a part of Oak River’s main street (these are in the Shoppes On Baffington, btw.), which is now about half-done.  I’m working on the scent part of it tomorrow, now that the back-end coding and drawing and such are done, and by tomorrow, the entries will be much, much more exciting, I promise. :)

All in all, the past three days have had 12:48:40 of “official” digital design work (next kit’s almost done), and 9:43:09 of scent/oak river stuff.  It’s been a busy couple days.  :)

Part of the reason I’ve been so busy is because of this:

See, my friend Dani had a dream.  She’s going to school for this highly-technical thing involving sociology and ethnography, and the other day, she said what she really wanted to do was to travel the world, interviewing knitters and spinners (primarily), to compile the data into some kind of book or project that would examine the cultural and ethnographic significance of modern handcrafts.

Now, despite the fact that my own answer would probably just be “BECAUSE THE YARN IS THE PRETTY, duh…”, I asked Dani why she wasn’t out travelling already.  She said she had to wait until she graduated.  Or until she had the money.  Or until she didn’t have anything else planned for the summer.  Essentially, every single excuse I’ve ever used to NOT do something I look back on now and think Whoa, I totally should have done that.

So I challenged that idea.  Why couldn’t she start living out the dream now?  Why shouldn’t you start amassing this data, this experience right now??   What are you WAITING FOR, WOMAN?

And now, she’s not waiting.

July 1 – 24th, Dani will be travelling the entire eastern side of the USA — nine cities ranging from Las Vegas (where she’s at) to right here in Greensboro, NC, and points inbetween.  She’s going to knitting groups and yarn shops and prayer shawl ministries.  She’s talking to knitters at events at local stores and famous designers, knitters, and yarn professionals, all across the country.

(I made her little graphicbits.)

This is where you come in.  Help Dani put this project together and make this dream a reality.  Help her publish this examination of how fiber arts and crafts have affected modern culture, and how they’re both different in every region and the same.  It’d rock to see academia take note of the way what we do has meaning.

Every dollar counts.  She’s looking for some corporate/business sponsorship (with related advertising benefits available to donators), but also for contributions from folks like you.  Even $5 helps, and if you have it, $25 will get you not only 2 oz. of a super-exclusive blend of Goddess Tea that’s just for contributors, but you’re also thrown into a drawing to have a blend custom made for you, named after you, with a custom label.  (Whether you’re on the label or not is up to you. :>)

And here’s what else I’ll do:  If you donate $25, and send me a copy of the receipt with a note, I’ll send you a download link for EVERYTHING I’VE DONE SO FAR, digitally, plus the third Tiny Art Journal, which hasn’t even been released yet.  So three tiny art journal kits and two digital art kits, in *addition* to what you’re already getting from Dani.

I really want to see this happen, see.  There’s nothing better than watching someone’s dreams come true, except maybe for cheering actively from the sidelines while it’s happening.

::shakes the pom-poms::

Now go make a difference! I’ll have some eyecandy up here tomorrow for you, I’m sure.  :)

Hey, y’all. :)

I had grand plans of showing you all the insane stuff from this weekend, but I’m flippin’ exhausted.  It’s a good exhausted.  An exhausted where you flop back on the couch and exhale and think to yourself now THAT just TOTALLY ROCKED and I need a nap.

So instead, I’m going to let you talk back to me today.  I’m getting ready to gear up for this week’s 10kH stuff, and I’d love your feedback while I’m mapping out where to go from here.

Just come on over here and tell me a little bit aboutchoo.

As a little incentive, if you do it, I’ll throw your name in the hat for a little giftie at the end of the month.

:)

p.s.  There are three or four files in the monster kit that appear to be giving PCs fits.  I’m on it.  Hold tight, non-Macfolks, and I should have it fixed and re-uploaded by the end of tomorrow.  I’ll send y’all an email when it’s no longer being a pain.   (And people wonder why I say technology makes my eyes bleed…!)