Accidental Heat Hiatus

20260703 - Friday

Hi! It's been really hot where I live lately, so my laptop has been freaking out/mostly useless these past few weeks & I haven't been able to work on my site. But I'm happy to be back! And I hope it starts snowing sooner than later at this rate...

Craft Progress

I was hoping to have Empoleon finished in June, but have been burnt out with it. I had also meant to print out the pattern at the library, because working from the pattern on the laptop has been slowing the process as well. However, I'm too close to done with it to justify printing it now.

I started and finished (sort of) this two-color kogin project. I'd like to maybe make it into a small handkerchief or maybe a cushion? But I don't have any fabric that matches it well. The two modoko I used for this project are here and here. From what I understand, they're both flower-based patterns from the Okawa Collection. Since I used the Japanese version of the site while looking through designs, I'm not really sure if they have a more official English name.

Many months ago, I bought a sashiko tote bag kit at a craft expo. Not many months ago, I saw and picked up Susan Briscoe's The Ultimate Sashiko Sourcebook from the library and remembered I had the kit. It came with a stencil that showed exactly where to stitch, but everything kept ending up misaligned and strange, so I followed the instructions from her book instead, which I think looks better so far. On one side, I'm doing doubled thread with larger stitches (kind of how the stencil looked), and on the other side I'm trying with one thread and smaller stitches. Overall, I don't think I like sashiko at all- it's just not for me. I love seeing people's precise grids and such online, but I feel like no matter what, I'm just not achieving it myself. The thread seems to keep puckering in ways I don't really understand even though I've been following the book closely. I think it's a sign...

Reading

I started working on a deck for June at the start of the month, but again, with the heat I haven't been able to touch it. Will hopefully be able to work on it this weekend/week. In total, I think I only read two books though. Sigh. The first was The Mill House Murders by Yukio Ayatsuji, which is kind of a follow-up to The Decagon House Murders. I liked it fine. The other book was Flesh by David Szalay. It was also fine.

I've been thinking about how to best balance reading what I want with reading more educational/nonfiction as well as with contemporary and classic types of books. I borrowed Edward Said's The Question of Palestine, but have yet to make any meaningful progress with it. Part of it might just be that I only tend to read before sleeping, which doesn't create a good environment for taking denser reads in. Maybe the other reason is more lame, but I think my motives for getting into contemporary and classic books is just FOMO, and I'm not sure that's ever been a good enough motivation for me in any part of my life. But it should be! I do want to keep up with things, and to understand refrences when people talk about the books they read in school/college/life. One thing I've been decent at is reading from banned book lists from my home state, because I think there's a lot of reading I could've done as a teenager that maybe would've made me a better person/made me feel more like a person.

Miscellaneous

⊳ I've been thinking about starting to make craft works specifically to sell. I don't think I totally want to do this, but I think I am starting to need money in a way I didn't earlier into being unemployed. I've been feeling so lame about all of this.

⊳ I went to a nearby town this past week, and picked up Yumiko Higuchi's Seamless Embroidery. I got another one of her books from a different library last year, I think I was called Zakka Embroidery. Her work is so gorgeous. I haven't done an embroidery project in a while, but I'd like to pick it back up.

⊳ I skipped the Web Browsing and Japanese parts of this blog post because I haven't been up to much of either. Again, the heat, and that I've been in such a slump lately. I don't like that it's already July.