Creative Every Day (CED) 21-27 Jan 2013

It's week four of the challenge already and I've managed to keep it up every day so far!  I'm really quite pleased that, not only with this one, but also another two things (reading and study related) that I wanted to do daily have also been 100% so far.  If you can manage a month, you can manage a year.  Well, with most things, anyway!=)  I wouldn't mind having a go at some things that might be seen as unreasonable to do every day for a year, like travelling, buying nonsense I don't need (although I would actually get sick of the latter as it would lose its lustre and I would feel the pointlessness of it very quickly)....

So, here's this week's summary:

Monday 21st:

* Took photos of the snowy scenery at home and also of an icicle that started to develop in an interesting way.
* Finalised and posted last week's CED update.
* Did 3 more rows of knitting, which also included the working out (correctly, thankfully!) of where to re-start in the pattern.
* Selected some of the cribbed-from-the-web-and-a-possible-copyright-problem photos I had in a special folder, pasted them to a Word doc, ready to print out and try to reproduce/adapt in pastels and, maybe later, other media too.

Tuesday 22nd:
* Took several more icicle photos!  Good thing I did as we knocked them all down later on.  We live on the top floor of three and our home is alongside the entrance path, so a falling icicle whilst melting could do someone a real injury and we did NOT want to be responsible for that!  Imagine being speared by this baby ->

* Joined the new 'Needlepainting!' group on Stitchin' Fingers, (what?  You're not an SF member yet??!!), of which I will be the moderator soon...  If you aren't yet a member, you mayn't be able to see the group itself, I'm not sure.  Moderating this group is by no means meant to suggest that I am any sort of expert in the subject though.
* Finally edited my photos from Durham (Nov 2010) and posted a selection to our travel blog.
* Ditto the Edinburgh photos for a post that went live on Friday.
* Spent some time with the printouts I made of various C&G embroidery syllabi and planned how to do a few of them by myself.  Maybe I can join up with the local class sometime and get my work accredited as I know the teacher will do that.

Wednesday 23rd:
* Made my first deliberately gluten-free meal for a coeliac lunch guest.  It really only meant doing a separate pan of pasta for him, but I did check all flavourings carefully etc, so there was an element of creativity there.=)
* Knit several rows up the top right front of my baby knit, which is a jumper/sweater with a 3 button placket trim.  Getting a bit complex...

Thursday 24th:
* Finished that part of the knitting (although I'm not sure how correctly - I may have fluffed it) and made a start on the other side.
* More icicle photos.  One opposite our place seemed to be a good metre long...

Friday 25th:
* Another intriguing icicle...
* Finally did some work on my sampler.=)
* Ordered an embroidery book from Amazon UK and 2 issues of 'Inspirations' from a UK magazine subscription site.

Saturday 26th:
* Edited the icicle photos (for this post!)
* Finished the roses etc on the cross stitch section of the sampler
* Took the knitting photos, edited them and created the SY post that went live yesterday.

Sunday 27th:
* Flicked through a watercolour book over breakfast
* Wore some more new eyeshadows and tried to take a photo of the result - but as it didn't work out well, you'll just have to take my word for it this time!!
* As I worked through a section of a Chinese grammar book that I'd assigned to my student to do, I tried to think of ways to include the material in her future lessons.
* Collected together and printed out the material I need to refer to to create a short 12-15 sentence passage for translation to form part of a sample chapter for a book I'm to be the (junior-ish) co-author of.

In many ways it wasn't an overwhelmingly creative week.  Having said that, I have tried to keep it in mind and also to realise that, sometimes, circumstances don't allow and that a little something will do.=)  Sometimes I'd love to be able to work and others I think, 'Why would I want to lose the freedom of choice and use of time that I have now??!'  Perhaps I'll do some temp work sometimes...

Text and images © Elizabeth Braun 2013