Category: Diversions

Categories
Diversions Uncategorized

Planning for…uhm the planning?

This post really shows a deep-deep-deep dive into my brain. You should probably know I am often told I over-think things. On the other hand, I know I work best when I have a plan. I can stray from the plan, update and tweak the plan, but I need the structure within which to do that.

For my purple journal I’ve been trying to brainstorm what sorts of things I want to keep in there – like in a bullet journal format.

Details for cross-stitching (and maybe knitting, ohhh I would love to carve out some time for knitting again) will be in the Stitching Journal but the “habit” of stitching will be tracked in my purple journal. And I plan on using the Reconciliation day planner as a gratitude and writing prompt as well as for the action steps and other great info it contains.

But my purple journal will be my main go-to for the year.

Daily Habits

I’ve been trying to think of the things I want to get done each day (or at least as close to daily as possible):

– drink more water than coffee (and more water than beer but also drink way less beer generally)

– move – walking, maybe swimming in summer, learning to ride my bike again like I promised I would last year…

– mindfulness

– yoga – yes, different than move OR mindfulness

– reading for pleasure

– entering contests

– being creative – more on this below

– write – in the journal and stuff for sharing on the blog

Here’s another example of a past weekly tracker. Back when I actually tried to keep up with Duolingo…

Chores

Then there are the chores that I’d like to track as well, mostly because of the little rush of checking something off of a list:

– laundry – honestly not sure – this isn’t daily but definitely not weekly either! But I don’t want to not do it for days and days and then have to do nothing but laundry on Saturday to catch up

– kitty litter – daily

– dumping the dehumidifier (less a chore in winter but twice a day in summer)

– changing the bed sheets – weekly

– cleaning the dishwasher – monthly

– a household fix that needs to be done – monthly; stuff like take inventory of the baking cupboard; fix the side storm door; take a car-load of things to the donation centre; box up things for donation

– cleaning the washer – quarterly

– I’m sure there are LOADS I am forgetting but those are the ones that jumped out at me as I am writing this

They are beautiful and I love them even though I have to clean their litter

Less Frequent Reminders

And things I want to remember the last time I did:

– changing toothbrush

– tracking periods

– bathe – I don’t mean for cleanliness (those are showers); I mean having a long soak with a bath bomb and a book. I love doing this but always push it off (“I just don’t have time”) and then find it’s been four months since the last one.

Time to be creative

And I still want to carve out time for being creative and crafty and stuff. So I brainstormed a list of what I want to do:

cross-stitch

knit

paint

bake

colour (I have some awesome pencil crayons and some amazing colouring books)

play an instrument – there are three in the house I have my eye on: piano, trumpet, and, uhm, I’ll just keep the last one a secret for now.

lego!

But I obviously cannot do each of those every day. And I don’t want to just happen to notice that I haven’t touched the watercolours in weeks. So I thought I would put them into two categories: EASY and HARD. Now it’s not the activity itself that is inherently easy or hard. Playing piano is under EASY (though I find it challenging) – because it takes no time at all to set up and when I am done, I just close the key cover. Watercolours would be HARD – I have to prep the work space, I have to figure out what to do and why etc, then do the thing and then I have to clean up after the thing.

Make sense?

EASY LIST

Cross-stitch – the task itself is easy (though time consuming lol) once I get the stuff I need all put together. But the putting together of the pattern, fabric, hoop, and floss only happens once. Then it all stays together in a kit bag until it’s done.

Piano – as noted: open key cover, play, close key cover

Colour – pick a book, pick a spot, colour. Put it all away after.

Lego – I do have loads of this. And I love working on it. It’s almost a form of mindfulness for me really as I have found I cannot fret about the future or dwell on past screw-ups when I am building. Even just following instructions etc. (right now this is still sort of medium instead of easy because of a lack of space and organization in the basement so maybe that should be an early chore…)

HARD LIST

Paint – lots of prep and clean up involved. And keeping the cat away from the work space. And finding a work space. And looking up a lesson. You get the idea.

but with less beer remember

Bake – lots of prep, including shopping ahead of time. Then often lots of clean up as well.

Trumpet – not really hard but not really easy either. Okay, never mind, maybe I should move this over to easy because it really is just open case, open book, play, put it away. But I have to do it in the basement to save my family and neighbours. And look up lessons? Okay, maybe it’ll stay here for now.

Knit – I’m putting this here basically because I haven’t given it any thought at all in the past 2 years really. So I would need to sort out my yarns, find my needles and do all that prep work before I can get started. But once I get that done then maybe it’ll be a medium-ish task? Like the trumpet 😉

The other instrument – this is completely new to me so I’m putting it under hard. I have to look up you tube stuff on how to play. I have to find a book. I really should put “clean basement room” as a top chore for January…

Now what?

Now that I have developed this amazingly comprehensive classification system (hahaha!) I’m still thinking about what to do with it. Maybe each item on the HARD LIST has to be done at least once every week?

But that seems like a lot. And once every two weeks feels like not enough. You know where this is going right? My goal is gonna spend time on each item on the HARD LIST at least three times in each calendar month. Maybe some months I’ll do more, maybe some I’ll be short but that’s the goal.

The goal will be to do stuff on the EASY LIST at least once a week. At least for stitching and piano and colouring. I’ll be a bit more flexible on the lego.

Categories
Diversions

Getting ready for the end of days….

It’s not as macabre as it sounds, I promise!

I always have this thing about not really getting into “spring cleaning” but there is something about the end of the year that gets me a bit excited about the possibilities of the new year.

Even this year. The second year of the damn pandemic.

I wallowed in my own misery for a bunch of December and now I feel like turning my mind to the future.

I ended up with a cross-stitching journal and planner (from The Black Needle Society‘s November “resolution” box) and a Reconciliation day planner (from Colouring It Forward) and I love my little notebook so I am going into the year planning on using all three!

Here are some of the pages from the stitching journal:

I love the trackers!

I will use this to keep track of the details for my stitching projects! I have only a couple of things that are truly WIPs to finish off; I have a few more things that need “finishing” (framing, or being made into a pillow or something!). I’d like to get one of the things in the “finishing” pile done a month. Otherwise my plan for January:

– start a full coverage piece

– start, and keep up with, the temp tracker from Climbing Goat Designs

– start a small piece

– start a kit

The Reconciliation day planner is also pretty nifty – the daily pages are undated so if you miss a day, or just have a “rest day”, then there is no wasted pages!

It begins with messages from Elder John Sinclair, Diana Frost and a bit about the artist Ashley Barclay. It also lists all the “statutory holidays” as well as other important Indigenous dates such as:

– February 10 – Moose Hide Day

– April 28 – International Dance Day

– June 8 – World Oceans Day

– September 30 – National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

I love the space for gratitude – and also the reminder to actually DO something

The suggestions are great as well. Others include attending a cultural event, consider stereotypes, follow up with political representatives about the Calls to Action etc.

And there are Q&A pages:

Others are on women and ceremony, land acknowledgements, why men wear braids, Indigenous education etc.

And finally my own little planner. This has whatever the hell I end up putting in it. Like birthdays, and habit tracking, and notes from reading or listening to podcasts. That sort of thing. Like one of my habit trackers from last year:

So there we have it. My starting to plan for 2022! Yippie. What type of planning do you do? Do you set goals – short, medium, long? easy, medium, hard? For different things (i.e. reading, movies, moving?)

Categories
Diversions Toronto

Tourist in my home town – The ROM

India’s painted and printed cottons

In the many months since March 2020, I have been back to my office twice: both times on a Sunday to pick up things I needed. And then IT asked that everyone come into the office during September 2021 for updates and to make sure everything was still working etc.

EEK!!

Grey haired female with a periodic table of elements mask and a TTC stop in the background
Waiting for the bus for the first time in 18 or so months

So I got up, showered, put on office clothes!!, and waited for the bus. Overall the day went pretty well. Only a few of us went in. Toby encouraged me to get a nice lunch as a treat. And then I left work a little early to take advantage of being downtown and walked up to the ROM.

The benefit of a membership I think is that I do not feel compelled to see.all.the.things! I can look at what’s happening, chose one thing and then just see that and leave. And that’s exactly what I did.

The exhibit is on until January 2, 2022 so you can definitely still go and see it. It was pretty nifty. All about cotton and how artisans in India created and advanced their craft time and time again.

The colours and patterns were stunning. And so interesting to see the differences of the fabric made for different markets!

  • Fabric for Egypt
  • In Japan

Both of the above were made in India but for export to different markets: Egypt and Japan. There was also Sri Lanka, Iran, Indonesia and of course Canada:

Made in the 1990s from Indian design for Canadian market

There was also a discussion of how local makers took inspiration from Indian chintz but also made it their own:

From Indian chintz to Javanese batik

And from Indian chintz to African prints. The ROM exhibit explained that in East Africa, women first dressed in printed cottons imported from India but by the 1970s they had switched to their own designs.

Why yes, orange does happen to be my favourite colour, why do you ask?

There was also a little section showing how some of the dyes were developed.

If you have a smart phone you can listen to a free descriptive audio tour of the whole exhibit with 10 or so stops. As someone who has a bit of working knowledge of fabrics from my own forays into knitting and basic sewing and cross-stitching (and some embroidery) I was just amazed by the variety and the obviously huge amounts of work involved.

I was pretty impressed and happy with my little visit. I checked the ROM website again afterwards and found a few links to talks and interviews they have posted to youtube about Post-Independence revival of India’s craft industries and with the curator of this exhibit. I love that they made it easy to dive as deep as you want to go on the topic. I’ve added the “Ethics of Production in Historic Chintz” to my future watch list!

I recently decided that I want to do a deep dive into fungi and lichen so I’m off to the ROM website again to see what they’ve got…

Categories
Diversions Get Crafty

Autumn Watercolour workshop

There’s a whole lot to complain about with social media. I know this. But I am also grateful for the friends around the world it enables me to keep in touch with and all the new people to become friends with.

So I started listening to the Ologies podcast I already talked about. Which meant I found the Ologies fans facebook group. Which lead me to join a couple of subgroups (books, parents, and crafts). Which has had me so inspired and motivated you cannot believe.

Someone recommended the Completely Arbortrary facebook group when I was trying to brainstorm ideas my kid and I could use to explore our local parks and trails “with a purpose” (which is highly beneficial to motivating The Mighty Q). So I joined that. And started listening to the podcast – which is terrific, BTW.

AND as a result I’ve been paying more attention to local opportunities to learn more about the outdoors… which led me to the Toronto Botanical Garden website. Which of course led me to their “Learn” tab. (seriously, can someone just pay me to keep learning stuff? Like random stuff that catches my attention, obviously not the continuing professional development that is required as a part of my actual occupation)

And so I signed up for an online class on autumn watercolour painting! 

Oh gosh - I just realised I haven't even done a "how I fell into painting" blog post yet! It'll come - someday...

Anyway, I went over the list of materials and got everything ready – and because it’s me – easily a couple of hours before class actually began:

Painting supplies on a blue steamer trunk
Yes, my smaller supplies are in a whisky tin – reusing = cool 😉

Haven’t messed anything up yet…

White paper taped to a board

So the theme is obviously “autumn” and carrots are a good, easy shape to work with.

faint pencil outline of a carrot

I learnt a couple of things right off the bat – straight lines aren’t really “natural.” Carrots are wobbly. They don’t look like the letter V in real life.

Here’s the first layer of paints. I have some lovely orange from Annwin Arts so I was pretty excited to put it to good use!

Next layer – I was a little too heavy on the right-side of the carrot tops. This is when I learned my second big lesson of the night. Do not try to fix it. Just let it go.

What I did do was try and fix it. And tear the top layers of the paper in the process. Sigh.

It’s about here in the process that I yelled up to Toby:

Me: I’m so not good at this!
Toby: That’s why you’re taking a class.
Me: Oh, I don’t know that the class is gonna help
Toby: Are you having fun?
Me: Absolutely!

  • Then I kept going thinking at least I’d be learning still!
  • And the final carrot

We also did a bunch of carrots – mine are still separate as opposed to a bunch together but I really like it.

Week 2 is going to be pumpkins!

Categories
Diversions Reading

Turning 50 (in 2023)

This is quite possibly the most “all about me – look at me” thing I have ever done but once I got the idea (years ago now actually) I couldn’t forget about it. I figure I really want to do it and I will risk the consequences of someone thinking I’m being all grabby or insensitive or rude or something.

So anyway, here we are now, about a year-and-a-half until I turn 50 and I have the most awesome idea for my birthday but it would require other people to do a bit of work. Am I allowed to do that? Am I allowed to ask for a specific present? I know that most people might not want to buy me anything anyway but someone might think it’d be fun.

Basically, for the longest time I’ve wanted a full set of Agatha Christie books. Like all of them – and there are a lot of them (almost 100, more than a 100 if you consider different versions as different books).

A collage of ten different covers from Agatha Christie novels.

At first I had it in my head that I wanted them all to match – so the same series from one publisher. But then I had a brilliant idea. Instead of them all to match, I want them all different – new, used, plain paperbacks, fancy hardcovers, whatever. AND so I thought for my 50th I’d ask people to buy me a book and write a message in it (or on a bookmark/card inside) and send it to me.

I’m still trying to think out the logistics and how to do it. Naturally, I have a spreadsheet of all the books. You can send me a copy of your favourite (if you have one; and really I would find it amusing if I end up with 10 copies of murder on the orient express!) or ask if you want to know what has already been received. Maybe you have a dog-eared copy that you know you should get rid of but feel bad for just tossing? Or a copy that an ex-partner left on the bookshelf? Or you stumble across a Russian copy in a used book shop in New York or whatever.

I don’t think it would work if I had to wait until March 2023 to open them all – so if that would upset you then write “WAIT” on the package. Otherwise I’m just gonna open them and share what I’ve received as I get them.

The scene below is what’s going through my head of course – so do please forgive the imposition of my request. There is obviously no obligation at all on anyone to play along; there will be no score card; I will not think you love me any less – I’m pretty good at assuming that if you read this blog and we’re friends on FB or whatever that you love me as I am – foibles and all.