I wish I had more time for blogging. I wish I had more time for everything at the moment. When I closed my studio doors in July just before the school holidays, I thought I would hold an open studio in September. Now the September is almost over, and I have not come much further with 346, much less am holding an open studio.
Actually, time is so scarce at the moment, I struggle to keep my shops open. Life is not exactly running smoothly and as I would like it to at the moment. I don’t want to bother you with uninspiring family details, let’s just remark that for the first time in my life I started to play lotto. Because after how the last two months went for us, I figure, somewhere the good luck has to lurk. Who knows, maybe it is hiding in the shape of a lottery draw. – Not that money would help fix all that didn’t go so brilliantly…
But things could also be worse, you gotta be grateful for what you got rather than cry for what you don’t, and we are all soldiering on.
When life throws punches at you, you gotta fight back, and so I picked up my martial arts lessons again (well, obviously I changed the club). And then I figured, I need to do something new, and picked up online teaching. Do you know the plattform skillshare? Well, it is a plattform where people can publish their video instructions. A typical class is 20-25min long and consists of several lessons. As a non-member you can watch the first, introductory lesson for all the classes, but for most classes (not all) you have to be a paying member to see them all. Now many of the things explained there might also be available on youtube. However, I think the beautiful thing is that once you are a member, you can watch and enlist in arbitrarily many of them. – And you are much less likely to search for something and end at a video of a teenager explaining something too quickly and with bad lighting.
Interesting classes that I have seen so far cover cooking, technological things, and drawing.
This is my first class on making a 3-hole pamphlet stitch. I am so nervous to see what people think of my first class. It is a lot of material to put into a 25min class, and it took me four weeks to film and plan these mere 25min! I guess, if I am going to keep teaching there, I’ll next make a free class “basic bookbinding” which covers cooking paste, paper grain. gluing, measuring, and cutting. Just so that I can refer to it for later classes of which I have already a bunch in my head. I would love for this to work!
If you would like to take a closer look here is the link. If you decide to sign up and use skillshare, please do use that link. It will then count as a referal through me, which helps me morally and also financially (For full disclosure: I get a bonus of $10 for everyone who signs up through that link.)
What else is new?
Less than I would have hoped. Work on 346 has progressed very slowly since my last post since filming and planning the class took up so much of my time. I had two attempts at making a wall mounted desinfectant dispenser for my room. Although I am not quite happy yet, I think I am getting somewhere.
I also remade the bed frames which are now a little smaller and generally a bit better, I think. Next I’ll need to actually assemble the bed (including caster wheels to the bed, and I am not quite sure yet how to make these).
On the other hand I am rather happy with the screen I made for the room (you can see some more pictures here):
I also cut a couple of stamps and then made jotters using them, they are listed in my Etsy Shop here.
I have also, very slowly, been using my sewing frame. This book here is the first I (very gently, with a bone folder, not with a hammer) backed according to K. Smith’s instructions for books with a visible spine. It seems to work so far.
I am going to add some leather to the top and bottom of the spine and intend to leave the middle open and visible. And I have another one in the oven on my table which is still waiting for boards and the like where I used the printing plates for the 346 bedsheets to print lines onto some of the pages. That probably sounds weird, I’ll have to show you once it is finished.
There are also some new items in my supplies shop, but I’ll let you discover those for yourself.
I wish you a beautiful start into autumn! And hopefully we’ll talk soon again, maybe I’ll be lucky, will finally have some time again for reading, off but also online, and it will be on your blog where we meet next. Cheers!