procrastinating

as i often do with a deadline looming, i find myself procrastinating - making detailed lists, skimming a few chapters of "podcasts for dummies," updating the trello boards (yes, they are really just more lists), going through scads of photos to choose which ones should be sent for retouching (not a priority), writing this...doing things, but not the things i should be doing as i'm careening towards that deadline. doing things only tangentially related to the task at hand. doing things to prepare for doing the task at hand but not actually doing the task itself. why do i do this? why do i need to feel the sharp blade of the axe whispering against my skin in order to get to it? alas, it's not there yet, and so the procrastination continues...

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oh to be a poet of procrastination.

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i've been thinking that america looked like an empire in decline for some time now.
apparently i'm not alone.

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perhaps a reason to start running?

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i jumped on the fire & fury bandwagon and ordered the book.
maybe i shouldn't have.

make hay while the sun shines

those WIP stitched-up photos

autumnal solids

soft, supple leather

i confess that i have been led astray from my creative endeavors by glorious autumn weather. when the weather got good last wednesday, i abandoned my post at the sewing machine and went outside. i've only come back in to do things that were absolutely necessary (laundry, meals, making sure the child takes a shower), but otherwise, i've been out with the horse and the bunnies and the chickens and the child. puttering in the garden. helping husband clear an area to plant some grapes and some special cider apple trees that we ordered. ok, i didn't actually help that much, but i discussed where it should all go before i settled down in the hammock with a book.

however, i do have all of these lovely materials, waiting patiently for me on the table in my makeshift studio and they promise rain tomorrow...

panic sets in (in a good way)

my very first market draws near. it will be on saturday and i'll have a table, together with jude & elizabeth at a spring market in sønderborg. the local fish shop guy had the idea last year and they hold four of them per year. it's a mix of food and handmade items and they want to have a focus on organic - i imagine the june and august markets will have more local food. but i imagine a lot of things about the market, because i've never been to it, nor have i ever participated as a seller myself.

sabin has selected a few of her stones to sell as well (tho' i have to sneak a few back out since i want them!)

it feels like i've been working towards it for forever and a day, but i suppose it's really only since january. i have quite a good stash of items built up, but there are lot of unfinished items as well, that aren't going to make it this time. i'm trying to be kind to myself about that. i have plenty - i have birds and stones, a couple of quilts, a tea cozy, a coffee cozy, some sweet little duvet covers for the baby duvets they use here in denmark (baby dyne, as they're called), garlands. lots of items.

a new helleristning viking ship - now i'm branching out a bit more from the originals.

my sewing machine broke down in earnest on the weekend and i was a bit panicked as i have a number of unfinished things for the market that need sewing. but i came up with an idea for some scarves made of jersey that won't need any sewing! i found beautiful, thin, soft jersey in soft spring colors and got out my gocco printer.

i drew up some feathers and burned two screens and got to work with the fabric inks. i've done plenty of gocco with paper in the past, but not much with fabric. i learned so much about how the ink behaves and how the screens behave. the hours melted away as i worked on the scarves. in a very good way. it was definitely a feeling of being completely in flow. and that's what it's all about, really.

i am absolutely delighted with how they turned out. again, an instance of something that's even better in reality than it was when the picture popped into my head. it's also an interesting exercise in how necessity does indeed breed invention. i was a bit panicked about my sewing machine and wasn't sure i'd get it back in time to finish the last items that i wanted to take to the market, but then this idea came to me (surely a product of hours of browsing goodness on blogs and online - but also my own) and i was able to do it without needing the machine.

better photos of the scarves once they're totally dry. i'm really excited how they turned out! and while i had the screens out, i did a little stack of moleskines with feathers for the market as well.

i have all day tomorrow to finish the items i can finish (i DID get my machine back - more on that later, as it's a story itself) and then i'm ready. i'm really ready. i have no idea whether anything will sell, but if it doesn't,  my etsy and big cartel shops will be well-stocked next week. and the process itself has been worth it.

realizing zen

it seems that completing one thing will cause an avalanche of sorts and it will become lots of things. it was this i was trying to get to with the whole finishing friday concept, but didn't seem to achieve. (when will i learn not to force these things? ) somehow tho' finishing wednesday just doesn't have the same ring to it.

not forcing it, but just going with the flow once you're in it, leaves you with the most wonderful zen sort of feeling. maybe it was all of these lovely stones i gathered on the beach yesterday, sitting there on the table in a big bowl, that set the tone, but i got completely on a roll. it all started with finally finishing that binding on this quilt:

once that was done,  i also finished a tea cozy and my basket of clarity birds and got them all tagged for the april market. once i had all that done, i allowed myself to start some new projects. as a sort of reward.

i guess i'm the kind of person who has to work hard to get into the groove, but once i'm there, it feels pretty unstoppable. i wish i had a bit more discipline and could make it happen more often. does anyone else out there struggle with finishing projects before beginning new ones? how do you discipline yourself?

gimme some stats stat

what's the first thing one does when embarking on a new venture?
one orders mini MOOs, of course!

i always find it amusing to look at the "stats" button here in blogger. i'm far less obsessive about it than i once was, but i do like to see which browser people are using, what they searched, how they found the blog. and i'm quite pleased to see, for example, that on the sustainable life blog, at this moment, only 14% of the readers are using the archaic internet explorer (isn't it so early noughties to use IE?) while 37% are using safari (yay mac people!) and 31% firefox (my own preference). it's telling that chrome is right behind IE at 13%.  here on MPC, firefox is beating IE by a nose (at this moment - it changes, all the time, you know).  i am a little concerned that the top referring URL for this blog at this time is some kind of sex site, but i suppose it was the ruin porn title last week that did it.

i'm spending time on this stats thing to avoid the photoshop elements window that's open in the background. i'm trying to put together a little html newsletter and all of the templates have a photoshop base. and i have to tell you, i find photoshop to be the least intuitive, most cumbersome program, ev-ah, and i've only got the elements version of it. maybe i'm just too old, but it simply doesn't work in a way that my mind can make sense of. (i know that's a dangling participle, but i just can't bring myself to write: "it simply doesn't work in a way of which my mind can make sense." can't you just feel the difference? did photoshop wander away yet?) masks, layers, vectors...i find it all very confusing.

i guess i'm generally going through a period of adjustment. although i love the idea of being independent and working at home, rather than going to an office, i sometimes struggle with the lack of structure it gives me. while i can easily sit all day at the computer and at times, even longer than i ever would if i was sitting in an office, i have discipline issues. the hours i can spend are looking at inspiring things other people are doing on flickr or in the blogosphere. and that doesn't make me very productive. tho' i have bursts of productivity, i'm really inconsistent.

so i procrastinate by looking at blog stats and sniveling about photoshop. i guess i really should just get down to work...this newsletter isn't going to put itself together.

if you have any tips for developing discipline for working at home, do let me know!

waiting for clarity

it feels sometimes like everyone else has all of the ideas. which sounds odd, because i've been babbling on of late about how many ideas are swirling in my head. so maybe it's not a lack of ideas, it's that everyone else actually sits down and acts on them, while i sit here stewing in my idea soup. but it's also that other people's ideas seem profound - like these beautiful little art quilts that commemorate the zeitgeist by exploring the theme of foreclosure.

i can't really remember the last time i had a profound idea. i guess my ideas come in quantity and not quality these days. and that quantity can be paralyzing, leaving you unable to act on any of them. or even just get started. so i sit around, making what i can only begin to characterize as an obscene amount of clarity birds. there is, after all, a kind of meditation in repetition. and i remain hopeful that clarity will come. but i don't feel very patient here in the waiting.

cleaning frenzy

i've reached a point of idea overload. 

there's so much floating in my head that it's very hard to focus. 

so, i'm making a huge batch of clarity birds, 

hoping to encounter some clarity along the way. 

to quiet my mind from all these ideas.

to be able to just work on just a few of them.

and feel it's ok to leave the rest alone for now.

some of them will wait.

and get even better with age.

i just need to get down and DO something.

but first, a cleaning frenzy.

it's what i do.

when i can't do anything else.

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don't forget the garland giveaway. i'll ask my lovely assistant to draw one lucky name tomorrow!

a need for focus

kristina suggested that we do a week of blurry shots on across ø/öresund. she's so good at finding ways to get out of the doldrums brought on by a too-long and too-slowly-waning winter (in fact, she's been doing a whole series on it on her blog of late). and it's interesting how difficult i found it yesterday to go out with my lens on manual focus and allow myself to purposely take unfocused shots. of course i take shots all the time that aren't perfectly focused, but to do so intentionally is something different. at first, i had to also take every shot focused as well as the unfocused one and then i realized that was arguably a symptom of my growing obsessive compulsive disorder (put the pens back in color order, people), and so i took a whole bunch of totally unfocused shots and didn't allow myself to take a focused companion. really weird how difficult and awkward it felt at first. like any new thing, i suppose. but it got a little bit easier as i went along.

and it's interesting how this little assignment underlines exactly how i'm feeling this week - unfocused. i have so much to do that it's really quite silly. i think it's the waiting. we still don't know whether they will accept our offer (i guess the dog sled has not made it to the canadian arctic circle to ask the one party as of yet) on the house and husband's still waiting to see the nitty gritty details of his two job offers. and waiting makes you unfocused. there's so much i could and should be doing, but instead, i spend hours making mosaics of my flickr faves, drooling over heather's home on apartment therapy and stirring up a mushroom and fennel risotto. yeah, i got some laundry done, but once it's in, it requires little from me but the switch from washer to dryer. i could have been packing books or sorting out the attic, but i didn't. and i'm sure that later, when i'm pressed for time, i'll regret it.

spud and bee and blanca got together in london for mini blog camp on sunday and they had a discussion of life plans. blanca has one. spud and bee do not. i think a little bit that my lack of focus is because the life plan of moving to a farm with space for a large garden and a couple of horses that we developed over the past year is actually starting to come true. at least on the meta-level, of course, the details are to be worked out and acted upon. but once you fulfill your life plan, what's the next step? you need a new life plan to replace the old one that came true. i think the picture above is the perfect metaphor for how i feel right now. some bits in focus and some not so much. i need to get those focused bits out of the way and zero in on the fuzzy ones, developing them further. and it leaves me feeling restless and impatient.

what i've learned so far this week

what a week! i've been busy late into the night every night this week. and i thought i'd share a few things that i've learned along the way....

1. writing a whole 40+ page magazine more or less by yourself is not easy.
2. it's best if you never, ever let yourself think of it all at once (because it turns out that's quite breathtakingly paralyzing), but instead keep thinking of it in individual articles/items in a checklist. small, digestible chunks, in other words.
3. even if you think of it in individual pieces, it somehow does end up all fitting together, because it's all coming from your brain.
4. when you do a series of interviews on similar topics over several days, you should really type out everything from your notes after each interview. this will help you immeasurably later. (note to self: follow this advice in the future. for. sure.) if you don't, they can become jumbled up in your head and in your notes and take a whole lot longer to write into a coherent story.
5. a smooth stone, held in your hand occasionally for strength, helps your concentration.
6. chill/lounge music in the background is also good for concentration.
7. you will wake up in a cold sweat at 5:12 a.m., worried about whether you're ever going to get it all done.
8. you will get it all done.
9. you have to accept that some of it is good and some of it is dross. (dang, that is a seriously harsh word when i think about it.) but the fact is that there's only so much you can do to sex up propellers, hull coatings and propulsion systems. 
10. thrusters, on the other hand, are by their very nature, sexy as hell.
11. i thought briefly that i had lost my rock when i took sabin to the dentist, but after an only mildly panicked frantic search, i found it in the car. and felt very relieved. note to self: keep track of the damn rock.
12. a woman in england apparently kept the body of her mother in her freezer for 20 years. and i thought i was bad about cleaning out the freezer. i wonder if she had a special freezer dedicated to just that or if she kept food in there too.
13. jane fonda has been rendered unrecognizable by plastic surgery, but she's still sharp and funny (thanks david letterman (and TV2Zulu for broadcasting you when it's time to make lunch)).
14. there are people who are my age and who have children the age of my child who do not spend any time at all in cyberspace and yet they still think they exist. imagine that. i could not, however, verify their actual existence since i was unable to find them online.
15. those people who can't speak the language of blogging, facebook, twitter, flickr, linked-in, plaxo, tumblr, and social media in general are being sorely left behind and will undoubtedly soon divide off the human branch, like neanderthals. i mean, they can hardly even participate in a normal conversation.
16. in a fit of madness desire to inhabit a physical presence within my local community, i volunteered our house for a parents' party for all of the parents in sabin's class. sadly, we have nothing in common with them other than the fact that we managed to produce offspring at around the same time. and since the party is at our house, we won't be able to slip away. however, i did manage to make sure that the party will have an ABBA theme, so if i'm dressed as Agnete, eating a shrimp cocktail, and sipping a cold martini, i will no doubt care less.
17. i found my "U." it was in the basket with all of the DS games.
18. my light, bright dining room is a good place to work.
19. the pope has an iPhone. this means one of two things--either the iPhone is SO over or it's the only phone where you can get a direct line to god. if you were so inclined. which i suppose you are if you're the pope.
20. some people strongly fear being different or standing out or putting their 7-year-old on a trans-atlantic flight all by herself. i thought i feared those people, but i'm actually grateful for their existence, because it makes my existence more unique. and it always comes back to me. now would you please hand me my tiara?

what have you learned so far this week?