A candle in the dark

Yesterday was Lucia Day. Before the gregorian calender reform that day, December 13th, actually became the date of the winter solstice because of the flaws in the old calender, something that explains the festival on the day which is a celebration of the light and a ritual to keep the dangerous darkness (filled with supernatural evils and dark magic) away.

This really is the season of light what with the outdoor christmas decorations everywhere (unless they flew away in the latest storm), advent lights on the sundays, lucia celebrations and just generally a compact darkness most of the time that make you want to light candles, lights and fires.

My sis and I love to light candles, but you can't really tell from my blog as I really don't have what it takes to get good photos in poor light (camera that can handle bad light, tripod, know-how). But yesterday I just had to take a pic of  the candle in my bedroom window. It's just a simple glass lantern from Indiska, which is also in dire need of a cleaning, but a photo of a candle against a dark background is always pretty, I think.

If I ever were to write a non-fiction book it would be about the universal ritual and love of lighting a candle.

Digital doodles with Julle

Seeing a couple of textures from Temari09, I got stuck on the computer doodling with textures and photos. After combining two textures -- this one and this -- with one of my own, I wanted to add a bit of cat. So I took what I had closest: the pics of Julle I posted earlier today. These are a few of the digital doodles I ended up with.

I added a quote to one of them too. Often when I made digital doodles I want to add a quote, but although I have collection both on Pinterest and older ones (mostly poems) written down in a folder, I can rarely find what I want. In this case, it was pretty much just grabbing the first cat related quote found...

Edited to add: Oh, I never saw that green spot on the right when making the pics -- now I do and I hate it! Blä! Need to edit it out ASAP... or at least soon: the family is invited to grandma's birthday party tomorrow, which will include helping her prepare the food (mum helped with the smörgåstårta/sandwich cake today) and my sis and I are apparently in the cake decorating team. So not really much time to do it now.

A gentle reminder

Ha! That's a bit how I feel right now. "Turn off the computer -- make art!" A little something I stumbled over on Pinterest one day and which is usually so true. Through, I like to make digital art so it's partially not relevant to me -- and sometimes it's rather "stop re-reading that magazine for the fourteenth time and go create".

And then there's the times when you're on the computer and lack the energy to take care of the stuff you should take care of, like replying to e-mails, and end up doing other things and perhaps even use the "get off the computer and to something useful" exhortation to procrastinate all those online chores.

Then I get off the computer and can't get anything started. Perhaps end up on the bed re-reading something as I've felt I didn't have the money to get something new to read (and can't get to the library, which doesn't have the books I want to read anyway). Which is pretty useless and I keep feeling that's precious time I should make better use of -- reading new books or creating something.

I know I've blogged about that before, how I keep losing that important start button. That I love sketching and planning, love creating and love being in the "embroidery flow". But that I'm rubbish at starting. Especially without deadlines. There are many reasons: feeling stuck in life, lacking the right spark (e.g. goals), frustrations as some ideas doesn't work out once beginning to realise them, getting ideas that require buying supplies I can't afford, wanting to keep certain supplies for "that special project" (not using them as they'll run out) -- and despite not feeling at all creative lately there's still a bit of  Buridan's ass issues.

But, hey, I'm not totally useless -- I just made that digital image above. The text isn't brilliant, the way it's added, but I sort of like the rest. And with creating, especially when in a rut or feeling rusty, it's more about producing that about the final product.

It does, by the way, show how I've started to more and more embrace blue -- a colours I've never really liked to work with before. I recently shocked my sis by having bought beads in several blue shades. She didn't expect that! (It's really thanks to my favourite colours purple, green and copper, which all works so well with many blues.)


You know what? I'm getting off the computer now. To go make something? Maybe, maybe not. But doing something else is always a step in the right direction. Moving slowly might seem useless, close to doing nothing, but you will eventually reach your goal. That's a big difference from standing still once you've come far enough to look back!

Photos for texts and textures -- or Why I save crummy photos and takes pics of boring things

If you've read some of my older posts, especially reading my named tag digital art, you might know that I enjoy to take photos to use as backgrounds or textures. Like the ones in the collage above.

I love old -- and broken -- greenhouse glass as it's perfect for creating moody photos (as is fog and water). Sure, sometimes they're dirty and if the focus has accidentally been on the grit on the glass rather than the glass or a object in front of or behind the glass (as in the post Caught behind glass), it can result in ugly pics. But most of the time you get fun pics ready to be used in what ever creative way you can think of.

I actually started writing a text about this back in september, but never finished it. The post was to be called Why I save crummy photos -- and take pics of boring things. This is what I was going to say about it back then:

I think at least some of you know the answer to why I do those things: textures. Previously on this blog, I've shown some pics made using both textures made by others and textures made by me. So far I've rarely made any fancy textures, but rather used special photos as textures. And it's turned out to be both fun and creative to find photos to use and think about what to photograph for new textures.

Here's one example of that. I'm going to show you the result, the original photo and the texture photo just to show what the two components look like and how easy it is to make textures of your own. [yeah, I'm not going to do that today. If you want I can show you an example some other time. Just let me know.]

There are some really fab textures available online. Many are free, other can be bought. I love them. But sometimes it feels more rewarding to use your own. It's your picture from start to finish, your creation -- from scratch -- to take credit for. And using your own textures, there's no copyright issues either to worry about.

Anyway, I wasn't going to write about it at all today. I just wanted some way of introducing two of my latest results of my "digital doodling". Two different approaches to the same photo that I intend to use as a background for text. Here, I just pulled out two quotes I found on my Words and quotes Pinterest board.

First a version with a black edges. As I like dark edges, makes it more moody and old-looking. There's also a slight texture (from a photo of the same greenhouse glass) layered on top of it.

Then I thought, "why not try something new and add a white mist to the edges instead of the usual black?" A bit washed out. If nothing else, why not do it to match the snow on the leaves? And that's how I ended up with this. Also with the same texture as above.

Wonder what the original photo looked like? I inserted it below. It's just resized, not edited in any other way.

It's a lot of fun taking these photos. Not sure how much longer I will have this great place to go for moody textures and backgrounds: dad has said he wants to tear down the old greenhouse as there's almost not one whole window pane left and the door rotted last summer. The smaller greenhouse isn't as good as this one, especially since the glass doesn't go as far down as it does in this one and there's less room to take photos. Well, it's not coming down anyway soon, I think, so there's still some time to take photos.

Hopes for the new year

The blogs are filled with people wishing others a happy new year and planning ahead for 2012 now. Some are sending out greetings to their readers and followers, others are making resolutions and preparing for their own personal challenges or inspirational mottos for the new year. I was just going to publish the photos today and let that be my greeting to you on this day, but then I just read this new year's wish from Neil Gaiman on his blog and thought it really applied to us beaders and jewellery makers -- in our personal lifes as well as in our creative pursuits -- so I wanted to share it with you:

"I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.


Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something.


So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.


Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it.


Make your mistakes, next year and forever."

You can read his whole new year's eve post at Neil Gaiman's Journal.

*

Now I'm going to enjoy the last six hours of this year. And I hope you're doing the same. See you next year!

Poetic fog and quotes

I keep saving a lot of photos on the computer, thinking I want to show them off on the blog, but often I don't get around to edit them and after a while it just feels misplaced. For example showing summer photos in September. I have said I'm going to do three "remember summer" posts this autumn because there are a few things I really wish I had time to write about at the time.

Right now it's a batch of photos I took in the last days of September that bugs me. It was one of those foggy days you get when a cold and chilly weather suddenly changes and you know that tomorrow it will all be so different, sunny and warm. Fog adds such a mysterious veil to the landscape and softens everything. I know some of the photos I took look good on the camera display, but not in full size. Still, I really hope there are some photos good enough to publish here. So far I've only edited a couple of them, as you can see here. Not the best, but not the worst either.

That photo inspired me to do this (as I'd already softened the focus on that one, cheating a little, but not so much it altered the original mood of the photo):

The quote is from Hamlet (there is a small, almost invisible credit to Shakespeare in the pic). I found it on this lampwork bead, which I more or less fell in love with (the front, not the back, sorry).

It was kind of along the same way as another quote I've been contemplating for some time now:

Without going in too much on my personal life and why I've spent the last two years dreading my 30th birthday (which is just a little more than a week away by now), I can say this quote -- which I stumbled upon my chance in a magazine -- really struck a cord with me. Must admit to not knowing who Joseph Campbell is, but at least he has said some good things it seems.

See, since I began studying and choosing what I wanted to learn more about, I've not had a big plan about how I wanted my future to turn out, but I knew I wanted to work with the issues I felt so passionate about: environment and planning (samhällsplanering). Since the day I stepped out of the university world into the real world, the adult world, I haven't gotten a chance to do so. That hurts me, makes me feel so sad. One of the reasons I don't sell my jewellery is actually related to this in a weird way. I have this idealist in me that want to dedicate my life to the big things, to create a sustainable development, and I don't want to be side tracked by less important things. I think I feared that by focusing on my beading and putting my energy into making that my business (that's one of the things I've studied, by the way, business administration) I would turn my back to the one thing I really want to work with. Since I don't seem to be able to get a job in the field, I have to rethink my whole purpose in life. Or at least that's how it feels. I'm at a turning point. 30 years old without a job, lover, own home or money (but a nice big loan after six years at uni). That sucks. And I have to do something because it can't go on like this. It's just that I feel like I have to give up a dream, an education -- a part of me. I know there will be other dreams if I just let them in, but there are so many things I hate to let go of. I don't want that to be my only way of getting out of the deep, black hole I'm in. But I have to do something. I've slowly begun to -- if not accept it so at least realise it might be what I have to do. Because my life can't continue as it's done these last years. I wish you could just pause life, make everything just stand still and stop time. To give me a moment to really think about what I want and must do without being stressed by the clocking ticking and minutes, days, years of my life just floating by and be gone, never coming back again but lost forever. And it was at that point I saw that quote.

October rose

Yay, I finally managed to over come the computer issues and write by blog hop post, which will publish in the morning. Over here it's 02:25 so I really should get into bed. I look forward to the sari ribbon party tomorrow, though I don't look forward to the fact that I have to work some more with the ol' computer. Hopefully it'll be in a good mood. Fingers crossed.

Until the post will appear on the blog (at 6 my time), you can enjoy this rose image I made the other day, using a blurry and noisy photo of a rose blooming in October. Took the photo on one of the first days of the month so I haven't checked if it's survived the cold nights we're having now. Don't know if you can read the text due to my font choice. I just jotted down a short text about it to add a bit of interest in the image. It's in English as it's really annoying trying to write something in Swedish when you can't add three important vowels because the font isn't adapted to the Swedish language. Well, as long as I keep it simple, it less noticable how much more eloquent I am in Swedish than in English.

Now I better turn the computer off so I can get at least a few hours sleep tonight. I believe I've got four hours until sunrise at least.

Good night!

Digital collage II

I actually made another similar collage before the Harry Martinson one. This one has a text that's very familiar to Swedes: the first verse of Fjäriln vingad syns på Haga by Carl Michael Bellman. This is the 64th song in Fredmans sånger, published in 1791. It has been recorded in English under such titles as On a summer's day in Haga, Haga Butterfly and Haga. The setting is the Haga Park, founded by king Gustav III. Here you find famous buildings such as the Haga Palace, the Chinese Pavilion, Gustav III's Pavilion, the Echo Temple and the Copper Tents.

But let us return to the collage. I had a hard time with the layout here and I'm not that fond of the results. This isn't what I wanted and the density of the font paired with the spacing made it impossible to cover the whole page with the text as originally planned. In the end, I even made a second version by cropping the original image. And now I just realised I forgot to change the Äs and Ås, hence the question marks in the text. Stupid... As with the Harry Martinson image, I didn't intend to make the text clearly visible. I was after the mood of the lovely handwriting, rather than framing a quote for someone to read. The reason I used a quote rather than just write random words was that I wanted a mood to create the image around -- and from a practical point of view, a real text would look more realistic than a nonsense text.

I think I like this one better even if it does look very much like an image cropped from a larger picture. Much tighter composition, putting the text in centre (though that wasn't the plan). Again, not perfect. Far from it. But better, I think. And, oh, if you didn't notice it yourself already: I'm really fond of that tree "sticker" in Picnik.

Digital collage

I mentioned I wanted to learn more about digital art and collages not too long ago. This is one of my first digital collages since my laptop died a few years ago. Made in Pixlr-o-matic (textured background) and Picnik.com (the rest) -- something that took a bit of time since I'm used to working with layers in PSE, which I can't with this software. It's not great and I can't even call it my first try (though my first try using Picnik for this type of images), but I think it's nice enough to blog about. Showing at I at least try to learn something new. 

I've got a few more with quotes, but right now the big issue is that I find it hard to pick out quotes to work with. I've got to find my old compilation of poems and texts I like...


The text in the collage is by Harry Martinson (1904-1978), a poet and writer I really like. He won the Nobel prize in literature in 1974. He grew up in poverty without his parents -- his father died and his mother emigrated to America, leaving him behind. Became a seaman at age 16. Then he became a famous and loved writer, making his debute as poet in 1929. The years after he won the prize, the critizism against him grew harder and harder -- and in the end he comitted suicide by stabbing himself with scissors in a way similar to harakiri. A sad and brutal end to a man whose words I love to read. After his death, the Harry Martison Society (Harry Martinson-Sällskapet) was founded. Amongst other things they reprint his works and have founded two prizes in his memory.


This short essay is titled Försonande rymd ("Redemptive space" ) from the book De tusende dikternas bok (1986). It's been reprinted in Naturessäer by the Harry Martinson Society. I don't know if it has been translated, I'm afraid. As it's almost impossible to read the font -- and it didn't have å, ä or ö, three crucial letters in the swedish alphabet -- I'll publish the text below. First in original, then in my slightly clumsy translation.

Försonande rymd

I en by där jag levde fanns en bonde som jag hatade. Jag hade
beslutat att innan jag lämnade byn kasta en sten i hans ansikte.
En kväll såg jag honom köra hem från arbetet. Jag stod inne
mellan några träd och han såg mig inte. Men plötsligt höll han
in hästen och stanna den kracklande arbetsvagnen.
    Han satt länge alldeles stilla. Och efterhand gick det upp
för mig att han lyssnade på själva aftonens tystnad omkring sig;
till den frid som kan höras bara av den ensamma mänskan. Då
smög jag mig bort.

Redemptive space

In a village where I lived, there was a farmer I hated. I had decided

to, before I left the village, throw a stone in his face.

One night, I saw him drive home from work. I was standing behind

some trees and he didn't see me. But suddenly he held his horse

and stopped the cracking work wagon. 

     He sat still for a long time. And gradually it dawned on me that

he listened to the very silence of the evening around him; to the 

peace that can be heard only by the lonely man. Then I slipped away.

The scene captivated me the first time I read it. Standing like that, alone in a silent evening, is one of the most divine experience you can get. The beauty and harmony in nature at moments like that are hard to put in words. Pair my personal experience of moments like that with the man in the text. Her was this hard man, who probably had treated the young boy badly (I've read Martinson's depiction of his childhood and how he was treated by his foster parents and other adults so I'm not just basing it on this text) -- and suddenly we see his secret, soft side. A glimpse that tells us there is much more to this man than he has shown the child. Even our enemies can have benign sides we can sympathize with, though we might never see them. But if we do, we might change our opinion about them. As we get to know other sides, get a fuller picture of the personality, we might no longer in the same way hate the person we have made our enemy.


I hope you like it. Both the collage (though far from perfect) and Martinson's text.





PS! It's just as good the font is hard to read. I misspelled Martinson!!

Philosophy tags -- words, more words

I keep saying how I'm not really interested in word charms and beads -- and then I buy some... But I thought these Philosophy tags from Tim Holtz' Idea-ology line were kind of cool. They had a bit of old time feel about them with the font used for the numbers and a somewhat more "rough" style than most word/affirmation charms. And industrial or army type of atmosphere.

So therefore I bought a package and split it with my sis, who also liked these. Like with my Diane Hawkry word bead, I just felt that this time it was made in a way I liked. And as with my dream-create-inspire bracelet, I found a couple of words I liked, which didn't sound too bland, common or pretentious. At least not when I used them and when combining them -- of cause the words on their own are so common they're cliché.

'Wander' was the one word I haven't seen that often in this type of charms. I like to wander. And to daydream*, which is intellectual and imaginary wandering really. Unlike the journey, wandering has no goal and so the wanderer is sometimes seen as being less than the traveller, who doesn't walk about aimlessly, undisciplined.

...and then it makes me think of this one verse the whole time, "I wandered lonely as a cloud". I'm not from an anglophone country so Wordsworth's poem is not one I hear very often. It might be so well-known it's like a cliché to everyone who have had to read and analyze it in school. I haven't done that. I first heard about the poem in a cookbook of all places (a lovely book by the way, Sannas kokbok by Sanna Töringe). So for me it's still a "new and fresh" poem. And I still only know the first stanza, never really read the whole thing...


*Sadly daydreaming is still concidered lazy and rather unproductive by many so that may account for why I don't see that word in affirmation charms that often, but I disagree. And I'm not the only one. Of cause, it depends on how you daydream and some of what I see as daydreaming, others see as a contemplation or meditation, excersices to rejuvinate and gather new energy. Also, you can daydream while working if you like me have a somewhat tedious seasonal job like setting and picking potatoes: it's either that or talking to the others on the machine or work would be extremely boring and slow.

Sometimes I use that daydreaming time to design jewellery in my head of explore colour schemes. Or contemplating what beads to buy next week. Besides, you got to dream. It's like magic: it might not be real, but sometimes you need that little spark in life, either to cope or to get inspiration.

But if the word daydreaming sounds lazy to some, heck, then just call it visualisation -- that's very productive, at least according to the psychologists. Einstein, da Vinci, Beethoven -- they all daydreamed "about their area of success" according to Wikipedia.

It's only words

Normally I'm not that fond of affirmation/message charms and beads, but I did fall for Diane Hawkey's word beads. I'm tempted to buy more as I really like the lime green beads, but I'm not sure there are any words of interest. (I'm not even going to check out her website as I might find more stuff I want -- message heart beads, cats -- my bead I bought at FusionBeads.)

I chose a bead saying magic because I think we always need a bit of magic in our lives. Plus I liked the colour and shape of the bead.

Still no idea what to do with it, but I have found some matching beads. Lovely czech flat lily flowers and maple leafs in a "rusted" opaque turquoise. Now I'm just waiting for the right inspiration to come along. Like that affirmation bracelet I made for myself -- yes, I know I just said I don't like those charms with the same old words. It says: dream, create, inspire. I need to dream som more right now...