jadesfire: Bright yellow flower (Book with key)
[personal profile] jadesfire
I have committed Merlin fic. No, wait. I have committed 4,500 words of Merlin fic on something that I was not going to write for a ficlet prompt. Um. That didn't work out so well.

Anyhoo, I need to give it time to settle and be beta'd, so I am amusing myself with trying to find appropriate poetry quotes and catching up with memes like [community profile] snowflake_challenge. I'm skipping a couple of days, because I don't really know where the good comms are any more, and starting writing again feels like trying something 'different' at the moment. So, onto Day 7!

Day 7: In your own space, share something non-fannish about yourself. A passion or a hobby or a talent, something that people might not know about you. We are more than just our fandoms. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I sometimes think the tagline of my journal should be 'never met a craft I didn't like'. Then I remember what happened when I tried to make birthday cards, and have to revise that to 'never met a non-paper craft I didn't like' and that's just not got the same ring to it.

Apart from that, in the past couple of years I've tried dressmaking, bag making and quilting. I crochet, I knit, I've made jewellery. I've done some fabric painting, embroidery and most recently, I've made soap (yes, from scratch, and yes, it was awesome). I bake. I've added painting and decorating to my list of skills, although apparently I'm really rubbish at filling holds, though I'm handy with a piece of sandpaper. Nowadays, I don't think there's anything I would assume I couldn't make, and the main decision is "is it quicker/easier/cheaper/better use of my time to buy this" rather than "can I make that?"

Away from DW/LJ, I follow a lot of crafting bloggers, and that attitude is definitely infectious. When you're surrounded by a community of people whose default position is 'making is good', you can't help but feel that too.

Crafting also allows me a level of non-perfection that I don't allow myself in writing. I can't write poetry for toffee, but my (not terribly) humble opinion that if you try hard enough, you can hone your prose just as carefully. I hate silly mistake and inaccuracies, and I'm a ridiculously fussy reader, chucking a fic even if I'm near the end, if it's not just right for whatever twist of the brain I have.

But in crafting and making, I allow myself to be silly. I'm slapdash and impatient, and I make for the sake of making, not to achieve perfection. Don't get me wrong, I'm always aiming for something good, but as long as it's good enough, or as good as I can make it, I'm pretty happy. No, the points on my quilt blocks don't always meet, and there are dropped stitches in my knitting. But the satisfaction of having made it myself outweighs the inadequacies, and no one is ever unhappy to receive something that you made yourself.

...you know what? reading that back? THIS IS HOW MY FICLETS GET TO 4.5K words. Heh.

(no subject)

Date: 2013-01-07 11:11 pm (UTC)
seyren: (Default)
From: [personal profile] seyren
But in crafting and making, I allow myself to be silly. I'm slapdash and impatient, and I make for the sake of making, not to achieve perfection.

I used to be a pretty horrible perfectionist, and it's kept me from just doing a lot of things for a long time. I've crafted some stuff in recent years, thanks to the craft room /workshop at my OT's office, and it's really helped me to be better at being imperfect, so to say.

*smiles fondly at handpainted silk scarf* Not doing that again, but I like it, misplaced lines, colour bleed and all.

And I'm seriously impressed by what all you've given a try through the years. The bit about paper made me grin. My mom's done a bunch of papercrafting in addition to her painting, and us kids had the chance to do some, too. Origami* especially appealed to me, but that has fallen by the wayside, forgot all the patterns.

*Bored in class? Fold a duck and colour it with pencils. ^^

(no subject)

Date: 2013-01-08 03:06 am (UTC)
hellkitty: (Default)
From: [personal profile] hellkitty
(From snowflake) Oooooh do you have any crafting comms on DW or LJ you'd recommend?

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