Creative Every Day (CED) 14-20 Jan 2013

Good Monday!  If you're here from Saturday's Grow Your Blog party, my post is the one just below this one, so do feel free to just scroll on down to the party...

Here's the list for the 3rd week of the challenge and I've felt a bit of a cheat this week as I became ill towards the end of the week and couldn't do much, but I appreciated Rachel's comment on last weeks review post that thinking about things was every bit as important as doing them, then she reminded me of the popular mantra: Failing to plan is planning to fail, so, yes, I will certainly include the conceptual process as part of the challenge, whether there's anything on paper or not!

Monday 14th:
* Knitting - finished the pattern and knit the next 3 rows, up to the point where I've to start the dividing for the buttoned part
* Sampler - completed the square box
* Read the next two and a bit chapters of 'The Power of Creative Intelligence'
* Finalised and published last week's CED post
* Played with the chemistry stencil I bought last week (I've wanted one ever since I saw them when I was a little girl and was fascinated by the shapes!!) and 'drew' some experiments, then coloured them in.  This was FUN!  When I was visiting Sue Lancasters' C&G exhibition, she told me she was joining in a textile artists' show to be inspired by 'The Elements'.  She was working with 'water' as a theme, but my mind went straight to chemistry and the Periodic Table of the Elements!!
* Messed about with my viola for a couple of minutes - something I haven't done for months, but want to do again just as soon as I'm strong enough to manage.=)

Tuesday 15th:
* Looked at some patterns and other peoples' work in the dolls house textiles line
* Read chapters 4 and 5 of 'The Power of Creative Intelligence'
* Created my 'Grow Your Blog' event post in good time and scheduled it to publish on Friday night as instructed.=)

Wednesday 16th:
* Edited and developed my 'Grow Your Blog' post.
* Read chapters 6 and 7 of the creative intelligence book - and used part of chapter 5 in the Chinese lesson I planned and gave.
* Finished the green cross stitches around the square box on the sampler
* Spent some time with the Colourcraft catalogue - esp. the fabric arts section...  £$£$£ are easily spent there!
* Created the WIPW post

Thursday 17th:

* Used some eyeshadow shades that I think I haven't used before (I have several of those huge 88 colour palettes, so there's a lot of room for new colour usage!!).
* Knitted half a row, which is a bit of a no-no - leaving it half way, but I didn't feel alert enough to try and work out where I was in the 12-row pattern and, as the printed pattern gave no help there, I would have had to do some serious counting and figuring.  So, it went back in the bag until a more intelligent moment showed up!!

Not the most creative of days, although Sir tried to convince me that making dinner counted....=)

Friday 18th:
* Finished 'The Power of Creative Intelligence'
* I didn't make, or even 'design' this cake, a piece each was brought for us by two of our Chinese Bible students this morning, but I frankly felt creative just eating it!  There were 7 different coloured layers in it, from the red at the top through 2 orange shade, 2 greens, the blue and the violet, then about 4 different toppings.  The time this must have taken...
* Did some last minute additions to my GYB posting, including making many photos larger and adding in one or two more.

Saturday 19th:
Ill at the moment, so can't do much =(
* Have been considering which books to buy from my Amazon embroidery wishlist and have been looking at a large number of 'new-to-me' creative blogs on the Grow Your Blog Party!
* Looked through a fair number of the files in my 'Source Photos' file and began to think about some embroideries that might be based on them

Sunday 20th:
Still ill and more or less out of action
* Looked again at several photos on my computer and have come up with, not only stitchery ideas, but also some pastel painting ones.  Hope to get some of those done over the next few weeks and can kick start my art blog.

I joined in the Grow Your Blog party this weekend and, despite being very low down on the list (already having a good number of followers and being near the end of the alphabet), I still managed to attract about 8 9 10 as many as 12 new regular readers (welcome one and each!) and had some fun leaving and receiving nice comments.  My post got 19 21 22 comments, which is a nice number, although my current record for one post stands at 21 (from a tutorial posting last year), so I just need one more....  esp. as it's beaten my previous record.=)  I often wonder 'how in the world?!' when I see blog postings elsewhere getting 50+ each time...  I think my readers are just too busy stitching, and I can't argue with that!=)

Snow is the order of the day just now and this is a (slightly zoomed) view from our living room window today.  The other buildings aren't this grey, most are the usual brick-red, but it hasn't shown up well, so it looks a fair bit more bleak a scene that it is in reality.  And it snoweth still, but I don't mind as I don't need to go out until Thursday and we've got plenty of food and other essential (toilet paper etc!) in.  I can just enjoy the nice brightness and pretty view.  I quite like snow.=)

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2013