CED: Sweaters to Wear and Zines to Read

I haven't been creative every day for a while (although, yesterday's zine-making video clearly kicked me into high gear), but I have been thinking about it just as much. So, it was time to put my money where my mouth is and start creating again! Here are my three newest projects:

I started this sweater back in the summertime, but shelved it due to increased working hours and lowered sleep levels. I am proud to say that it came out wonderfully - it is the first sweater that I've made that actually fits me, and that is something that deserves a round of applause.

Yesterday, I read at a zine event called Meet Me at the Race Riot, which kickstarted me into making an entirely new zine. I've had this impetus for a while now, but the deadline really pushed me from the brink of "I'll get around to it" into the ravine of "I need to get this done now." Here is the lovely result! You can get it in print or in a PDF if you email me - I have elected not to put up this edition electronically just yet.

And the final image is one of my on-the-job projects: I help put together this board for the Meet Me at the Race Riot event - it's got a vector image of myself holding a sign and a bunch of amazing zinesters' works put up there - my job is the coolest!

Check out some past Creative Every Day postings, some of my other knitting adventures, or perhaps some more of my zines and paper art.

Reviving Creative Every Day (CED)

This weekend, I had a brief time when felt like I was starting to lose it. Life was jumbled with work and work with life so much that I felt restless and in need of some quiet creative time.

Hence, I returned to that little gem of creating every day, but in a very different format than during the summer.

Summer days pass long and uninterrupted, generally, so I had set no time for specific creative progress. Now, I've set aside two fixed hours during the day where I just sit around and do... well, anything. This week, I've written a poem, planned out a zine to be entitled Letters to Myself, and drawn a "hand-lage" (pictures coming soon). And overall its kept me a little more sane than before.

Artists and writers never have time enough for their craft - if there were three circles in the Venn diagram of my life (school, work, and creative pursuits), I would say that creative pursuits is the one I long to do the most, but gets the least attention. For now, I'm fighting back with a schedule and a raised pen.

CED Round-Up: Writing My Novel

This week's CED Round-up will be pretty short, due to the fact that I have consolidated most (if not all) of my creative energies on writing (all 16,946 words I have so far) of my novel for Camp National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). To contradict that last statement, here are two things I worked on this week that were not related to the novel - a VoteBot comic for the Washington Bus blog and a business card:

(click for the larger versions.)

Anyway, back to the writing.

CED Round-Up: Summer Writing Camp

This week was all about writing and on-site photography. This week I began writing a novel for Camp National Novel Writing Month, the summer version of November's amazing race to 50,000 words. It is totally nerve-wracking, but what makes it even scarier is that Camp NaNoWriMo goes on for two months! That means that I'll be writing 100,000 words over the course of two months, and I hope to do it all for the same story, so that in and of itself is absolutely terrifying. But I really want to top myself out this summer, so I am going for it. As a result, however, I have suspended work on my serial fiction The Observer until further notice. In the meantime, enjoy the miniature updates about my novel coming at you in the CED posts!
On the other side of things, I got to attend some stellar events this week - namely, Seattle Zombie Walk and the 4th of July at Gasworks Park! Pictures abound.

This is my poor attempt at being a menacing zombie for Seattle Zombie Walk.

Like The Cowation on Facebook to see more of the pics!

CED Round-Up: Seattle Pride Parade!

This week was event-filled and awesome, so a lot of the work I was doing happened outside - particularly at the Seattle Pride Parade, in which I fanatically snapped pictures of everything from the Washington Bus Summer Fellows to the amazing outfits that people adorned. Check it out after the jump - and yes, there will be dancing.

 

Like The Cowation on Facebook to see more of the pics!

CED Round-Up: Visual Learners Unite!

This week's round-up is a bit late because I just arrived back from a retreat with the Washington Bus, but it is here nonetheless! I did some exploration this week by way of photography and, when indoors, did some writing and drawing on my Wacom tablet. I will learn you yet, Wacom!

Check out some more of the Creative Everyday series, or some more of my photography, writing, and knitting.

CED Round-Up: Bones, Cyborgs and Flowers

This week, I introduced a new artistic medium and harkened back to the old as well. Below, you'll find examples of my coding efforts, my writing, drawing in two ways, and my severe need to move my hands while watching TV. Enjoy!

CED Round-Up: Allergies, Aliens, and South Asian Lovers

I have been experimenting with short fiction this week, or at least scenes that tell a standalone story; I have written about everything from aliens (as part of my new serial fiction, The Observer) to time travelers, allergies, and South Asian lovers. Check out what I've been writing (and knitting in between keyboard marathons) after the jump!

CED Roundup: Bears, Knitting, and Growing Ideas

My Creative Every Day hopes this week were somewhat diminished as I found that I had a lot of ideas, but nowhere to go with them - thus, next week's goal will be implementing those ideas and seeing how it all turns out. The pictures this week reflect my new sweaterdress project at different stages of its completion, my urge to draw bears, and some design changes to The Cowation logo in order to fit with the Facebook parameters - speaking of which, you can now Like The Cowation on Facebook, as I have set up a new Page for it!

 Thurs: All the blog ideas I had when I was interlinking archived posts for days on The Cowation.

 Fri: This is the back piece of my sweaterdress at just an itty bitty rib area of 16 rows. Working my way on up to 19". 

 "There was little in this world that kept her attention so much as the strange boxes that projected to these humans images of themselves. They were square and often large, spreading from wall to wall in some of the rooms she had seen. They came with control boxes or with sensors that would accept data disks and present whole new worlds to their viewers... Without the boxes, the humans were alone and unconnected, unlike most other animals."

"She found it difficult to watch the autopsies in progress. After spending countless hours encoding their information into the system, holding conversations with them, feeling empathy for their successes and failures, to see an individual human lain out on a table made her shudder. She knew that her cover profession as an investigator made it necessary, but it was never her favorite part of it."

Sat: I worked a bit more on the serial fiction story; above are two more excerpts from the upcoming work.

 

Sun: This is the back piece of my sweaterdress at 11.5" - motoring on towards 19".

Mon: I did some re-designing for the Facebook Page of my button and splash.

Tues: I originally wanted to draw a person, but it evolved into this clown bear in a box. Also, the lens flare is starting to grate on me - I must do better with lighting.

Weds: This is the back piece of my sweaterdress at 16" - working my way to 19"!

Check out some more drawings of bears in my collaborative comic The Bearniverse.
Take a look at previous Creative Every Day posts.

Creative Every Day (CED) Roundup

After listening to this great presentation by Nick Campbell on the "creative gap," I have decided to take one of his main points to heart and start creating a short project everyday. So, as of this Monday, I have been creating new work by the bucketloads (or, at least, once a day, everyday), and would love to share it! I hereby deem Thursdays as my new roundup day for all the creative things I've done for the week.

 Monday's project was to use a pen and grease pencil to create a drawing. This is what came out of it! Also, the weird lens flare was my camera having an awkward flash moment...

"Taligunge watched the man sift through the drawer; his hands lingered over bits of cloth, pieces of paper, all the little odds and ends she had collected from surveying at different meet ups and gatherings. His fingers on her possessions made a spark jump inside her."

Tuesday, I wrote about 250 words of my first serial fiction experiment. This is a teaser sentence from it, so expect more of the story on the blog in weeks to come!

Wednesday I decided to start using the mannequin I bought to do some creative Photoshop work. This is a work in progress cartoon figure that hopefully will be starring in some later work.

Interested in other creative projects I've done? Check out the DIY Interlude series to see both tutorials and works in progress, or my Project by Project series to see the final results.