101 Things in 1,001 Days : Year 1 Update

I can't believe it's been one year since I started my second 101 Things in 1,001 Days challenge already. It feels as though I've done more than I did at the one-year point the first time I did the challenge, but I can't really be sure. I've completed 11 items -- that's ten percent. I guess it's not too bad. Here are a few highlights:


DONE!
✦ read Ulysses by James Joyce - this book is considered to be one of the hardest to read in the English language, and I can see why. It's so beautiful and complex that I couldn't even attempt to review it. I would never have read it if it weren't for the Reading Ulysses with Conner Habib course. The course is run once a year to coincide with Bloomsday, which (actually coincidentally) is next week, on the 16th of June.
UPDATE: The course is now available year-round!

✦ finish making a blanket - yes, it's true, I have several blankets in progress, one of which I started when I was 14, and until a few months ago, had never actually finished one. If you read this blog at all, you'll recognise it as the one I made for my first solo art exhibition. I cherish it not only for the art in it, but the craft in it.

✦ get another tattoo - as with my other tattoos, I decided to get one design at first, but then changed my mind in the end. I got a candle in remembrance of all the forgotten people, all the people who have had violence done against them, who should be here but aren't. I chose a rose, poppy and peony for the flowers. The artist told me she usually does one flower showing from the back as her signature style, and I agreed to that. It only took 3 hours, and, I have to confess, it hardly hurt at all.

✦ watch 50 new movies - I finished this one very early, thanks to Netflix. I guess I'll increase it again next time, assuming we still have Netflix then!

IN PROGRESS!
✦ do nanowrimo - but isn't NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in November? Yes, it is. But I still haven't finished my story, so I consider it to be 'In Progress'. I'm pleased to say that I'm up to the final editing stage though. After those few final tweaks, all that remains is formatting it (after figuring out how it needs to be formatted), creating a cover image, and then uploading it to some self-publishing site (after I choose which one/s). I can't say when it'll be done, but I'll be sure to let you know when it is.

✦ go to 15 exhibitions - It seems I'll finish this point early, too. I've been to 12 so far, big and small, from paintings to jewellery. It's been very inspiring! I want to make it a regular occurrence, if I can. I saw an original Frida Kahlo! A Yayoi Kusama! And so much more.

✦ go to 30 new restaurants - since Husband and I started having regular lunches with our foodie friend, this point has been easy to work towards. I/We have been to 25 so far, from Korean to Colombian.

✦ donate 101 items (new) - I recently replaced a point I no longer wanted to do with this one. So far I have donated 15 items. 11 of them were books I gave to the Melbourne Central Little Library. I bought a box of 25 random children's books from an op shop for a bit of light reading, so there will be plenty more to donate soon.

My DNA Analysis -- Part 3

See Part 1 of this series to find out what I knew about my
family background before having a DNA test done. See Part 2 of this series for the results of my first test.

As I mentioned in my previous post in this series, I eventually decided to get my DNA tested again through a different company. It was a difficult decision to make -- the cost was even higher and, to be frank, I think Husband thought I was a little mad. But I had to know.

The second analysis was done through 23andMe, a company based in the U.S. The process was exactly the same as the other test. Because the kit was sent to me and sent back via courier, it was actually much faster than through AncestryDNA. The kit arrived at their lab within 3 days, and I had my results 3 weeks later. The analysis from 23andMe has reports from 4 different areas, not just my ancestry analysis, so I was interested to see what those were, too. (U.S. customers have access to health reports too, but these are not available for Australian customers. Some kind of annoying legal thing, typical...)

Here is my summary result:

And my detailed result:

EUROPEAN:
British & Irish: 55.5% (includes U.K., Irish)
French & German: 15.2% (includes Austrian, French, German, Belgian, Dutch, Swiss)
Scandinavian: 0.8% (includes Danish, Norwegian, Swedish)
Broadly Northwestern European: 27.8%
Broadly European: 0.6%

MIDDLE EASTERN & NORTH AFRICAN:
North African: < 0.1% (includes Algerian, Bahrani, Bedouin, Egyptian, Jordanian, Kuwaiti, Moroccan, Mozabite, Palestinian, Saudi Arabian, Tunisian, Emirati, Yemeni)

SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAN:
Broadly Sub-Saharan African: < 0.1%

ASIAN & NATIVE AMERICAN:
Native American: < 0.1% (includes Colombian, Karitiana, Maya, Pima, Surui)

If you've read my previous post about my results from AncestryDNA, you'll notice a few differences!

There is no Caucasian or South Asian DNA in this set of results. There's a lot less British, and barely any Scandinavian. There is no trace of Finnish or Russian in this set. However, there is African and -- a huge surprise -- Native American. However, remembering what I learned from my previous test, I reminded myself that these results are all probabilites, not definites.

The way the analysis is done is different too. My DNA is compared to samples from 31 regions, rather than 26 with AncestryDNA. The regions are split up differently, too -- British and Irish are one entity in this set. "French and German" is broadly equivalent to Western European in the other set, but the boundaries are different. My DNA was compared with 10,000 samples, which is more than Ancestry's sample size of 3,000, and of course the sample set comes from different people, so therefore the results could be different.

When I started looking deeper into these results, I saw that the way probability was handled is different. My data is displayed in the form of a 'Chromosome Painting.' I can choose the probability certainty of the results using a slider: from 50% through to 90%. 50% is the default, and this is what was displayed when I first saw my results. It means that for every piece of DNA examined, there was a 50% chance that it matched with a specific regional group. Actually, 50% doesn't seem a very high percentage to me! When I played with the slider, things looked very different.

Here is the slider set to 80%:

Now, the percentage of British & Irish DNA has dropped to 16.1%. The broader categories have risen. All of the lower-ranked regions have been relegated to the 'Unassigned' basket. Even with the slider set to 60%, the Native American portion of my DNA was shunted over to 'Unassigned'. It took a little while for this to sink in, but eventually this fact clicked in my brain:

Less than 1% of my DNA could be Native American, and
of that less-than-1%, there's a 40-50% chance it's from somewhere else.

And where that 'somewhere else' is, nobody knows. Perhaps I should be upset by this vague and unlikely result, but I'm not. It just confirms how difficult it is to pin down our DNA heritage.


This series of posts isn't meant to be a review or comparison of the two different tests. Both have different criteria, and different ways of displaying the results, neither of which is better than the other, I think. This website has a very comprehensive page on all the companies that offer genetic testing (currently 5). All offer slightly different services, so it's up to the individual to decide which one to choose. Apparently some hardcore genealogy fans have had tests done through all five!

Having a DNA analysis done is an experience that's hard to describe. It's a very emotional experience. Perhaps the emotions are different depending on whether you get along with your family or not, but they're there nevertheless. There's a chance that your DNA heritage could be different from your cultural heritage, and this could impact on your relationship with your family. There's also a financial component -- the test costs between $180 and $250, depending on the company. It's a big investment, and you want it to be worth it.

If you're thinking of having a DNA analysis done, here are a couple of things to keep in mind:

* Decide what kind of results you are looking for first: genetic testing, genealogy research, getting in touch with relatives, etc. and choose your service based on this.
* Don't expect precise results. DNA technology can't (and probably won't ever) be able to give you answers beyond a certain probability.
* Let go of any expectations. You may not be what you thought you were. Treat the analysis as a fact-finding mission, not a confirmation of what you think you know.


I, according to the results, am more Neanderthal than most people:

My DNA Analysis -- Part 2

See Part 1 of this series to find out what I knew about my family background before having the DNA test done.

Last year, individual ancestry reports via DNA analysis became available in Australia through AncestryDNA. I don't know very much about my ancestry and have always wanted to know more, so as soon as I heard about them, I very much wanted to have the report done.

The details of collecting the sample are slightly unsavoury, so I didn't take any photos. I received a kit with a tube in it, which I had to spit into until it reached a certain level. Then I sealed the tube into a bag and sent it back using the provided post satchel. After approximately 5 weeks, I received an email notifying me that my results were available and ready to see on the ancestry.com website.

WHAT THE REPORT SHOWED

Here is the summary graph of my DNA analysis:

Looking at the summary results, I could only come to the conclusion that I'm not what I thought I was. When I emailed the results to my Mum, I think she was a little shocked. She responded "after all you are 50% Dutch and as far as I know, the only mix on that side is some German and Swedish." (I didn't even know about the Swedish part before reading that email!) Surely then, my ancestry should have more Dutch in it and less British? It left me feeling very confused. When I looked further into the results however, I saw that things were much more complicated.

The AncestryDNA test compared my DNA to that of 3,000 samples from 26 regions in the world, and these were the results (most likely result is in brackets):

EUROPE: 98%
Great Britain: 40-96% (67%)
Ireland: 0-30% (14%)
Scandinavia: 0-25% (9%)

(The following were listed under "low confidence regions")

EUROPE: cont.
European Jewish: 0-5% (2%)
Italy/Greece: 0-5% (2%)
Western Europe: 0-9% (< 1%)

Finland/Northwest Russia: 0-3% (< 1%)

Iberian Peninsula: 0-2% (< 1%)

Eastern Europe: 0-3% (< 1%)




WEST ASIA: Caucasus: 0-3% (< 1%)




SOUTH ASIA: India and Surrounds: 0-1% (< 1%)

As you can see from the percentages above, the results are both very vague and very specific at the same time. Many of the results have a range starting from zero. This happens because my DNA is chopped into 40 pieces and each piece is analysed separately. So, for example, some pieces had anywhere up to 96% Great British DNA, but none had less than 40%. At least one piece had zero Scandinavian DNA, and the rest anywhere up to 25%, but the average amount was 9%.

Any region that has less than 15% maximum and 4.5% average is listed under "low confidence". This means that I am much less likely to have DNA from these groups than I do from the higher-percentage groups. These regions are shown on the map as a ring rather than a solid circle:

In my report, extensive information about each region can be found by clicking on it. There is a map, and illustrated information about the history of the area, similar to a Wikipedia page. Probability is also plotted on these maps in the form of concentric rings. For example, here is the map for the Great Britain region:

There are 3 concentric circles on the map, reflecting the area that people from this region come from. The probability is highest that people in this DNA group come from the central area. The probability is lower the further out you go. Note that the second ring on the Great Britain map covers the Netherlands, Belgium and northern France.

The map for Western Europe (above) also covers the Netherlands area. So, there's a possibility that I could have Dutch DNA heritage from either of these regions ... or none. And where did the Caucasus and South Asian DNA come from? Did I have an ancestor that travelled to Europe along the Silk Road? It was an exciting thought, but I'll never know the answer.

Other, more sobering thoughts came to me as well. What if I don't have as much Dutch heritage as I thought? Are my Dutch ancestors migrants that came from somewhere else relatively recently? And if so, where did they come from? I never really related to Irish culture much, but I could be up to 30% Irish -- how do I reconcile that? As the website explains, a person can inherit more DNA from one parent than the other ... would I have to acknowledge that more of my DNA comes from the side of my family I don't get along with?

That's the frustrating thing about getting a DNA analysis done. I'll never know for sure. All of the statistics are just probabilities, and statistics can't tell the story of human lives. It niggled at me for a long time. I wondered if the results were correct, if the 40 pieces of DNA were a representative sample. I even wondered if the sample had been contaminated. That's why I eventually decided to get a second opinion.

In the next post, I'll talk about my experience with getting a second test done through a different company: 23andMe.

My DNA Analysis -- Part 1

This post ended up being extremely long, so I've split it up into three parts. Today, I'll be talking about what I knew (or thought I knew...) before having the test done. Part Two will look at the results of my AncestryDNA test and why I decided to get a second test done. Part Three details the results of the 23andMe test and some final thoughts.

WHAT I KNEW BEFORE

I don't know that much about my ancestry. Many of my family members are out of touch, and of the others, mental illness and other factors have led to confusion about what is actually correct. My grandparents on my mother's side never liked to talk about the past because of the bad experiences they went through in World War II, and I always respected that and didn't press them.

{Picture Source}
This is the sum total of what I knew (or thought I knew!) about my ancestry before sending away for the report.

On my father's side, the family comes from England and there was a Scottish connection, and possibly Welsh. I can't remember the details very well as I was told them when I was a small child and possibly remember the details wrongly. The first ancestor on that side of the family to come to Australia was a policeman; he arrived here in the 1850s.

On a side note, this caused some embarrassment to me as a child! In 1988, at the time of the 200-year anniversary of the 'discovery'/invasion of Australia, interest in ancestry surged. A list of the convicts on the First Fleet, the first Europeans to settle in Australia, was released, allowing people to trace their ancestry back to these original founders. It was 'cool' to have a convict ancestor. In that atmosphere, I was almost ashamed at having a policeman as an ancestor!

This isn't my actual ancestor: just for illustration purposes!

{Picture Source}
On my mother's side, my family come from the Netherlands. My mother was born there and travelled to Australia with her family as a baby, arriving in 1956. (I remember that detail precisely because it was the same year the Olympics were in Melbourne!) This makes me a second-generation migrant on one side. I know that my family come from the southern area of the Netherlands, and I still keep in touch with some of my maternal grandmother's family there. I've been told that some of my ancestors were from Belgium and I apparently had an Italian great-auntie, but she wasn't in the direct line of my ancestry.

From these snippets passed on from my family, I would expect my ancestry to be entirely European -- mostly Western and Northern European.

I do have to admit, I've always related to the Dutch side of my ancestry much more than the British side. I'm not in contact with anyone from my father's side and, growing up, I spent a lot more time with my Dutch relatives than my British ones. I was exposed to Dutch customs, food, music and even interior decoration to such an extant that I started thinking of myself as a 'Dutch-Australian' rather than 'half-Dutch Australian'. Even though I knew my DNA would only be half-Dutch at most, I have to confess, I did have a hope going into this adventure that my bias would be confirmed.

In my next post, we'll find out!

{Picture Source}

Comfy

On the weekend, Boy and I visited his lovely, lovely parents. We had a gorgeous roast lunch, and I was lucky to come away with some yarn and this pattern book:

The two aren't specifically meant to go together, but somehow a new project magically appeared soon after I got home:

It's a pair of bedsocks! I have some nice warm slippers, but they're the type with no back, so I can't really wear them when I'm curled up on the couch. Also, they fall off whenever I get up from my computer chair. So I thought a pair of socks would be the perfect solution. I'm about 2/3 of the way through the first sock already. Despite the fact that it's a 'beginner' pattern, some parts of were quite confusing, but I nutted them out in the end.

I hope this unseasonably cold weather lasts long enough for me to finish them!

I've also been working on the Giant Granny Square Baby Blanket quite a bit, while watching such TV shows as Man Vs. Wild with Bear Grylls. In a perverse way, I enjoy watching him struggle through the wilderness eating raw bugs while I sit with a hot cup of tea crocheting with a warm wool blanky spread over my lap. I'm not knitting it to a pattern, so I can make it any size I like, but think it only needs a few more rows. Here it is at the moment:

Recent Activities, Crafty and Otherwise

1. Last weekend I went to the European Masters from the Staedel Museum at the National Gallery. There were some familiar faces and some unexpected pieces. It was worthwhile. It was a beautiful, sunny winter day and the company was lovely.

2. I've been working on a baby blanket. I'm calling it the Giant Granny Square. Cos that's basically what it is. It's good zombie knitting crochet. I'm using Bendigo Woollen Mills wool (love that stuff) with coloured stripes. It keeps my lap so toasty warm when I'm working on it that I'm tempted to keep it!

3. Yesterday I went to visit the baby in question. I hate babies normally, but I love this kid! He's my nephew, so I'm probably genetically forced to love him, but I don't care. Isn't he adorable?! I had a lovely time hanging out him and his Mummy and Daddy.

P.S. That's not my hand, it's Boy's. Just thought I should point that out. =D

4. I whipped up this scarf for baby Alex earlier this week. It's so short, it's actually amusing. It wasn't even long enough for him to wear as a headband. I put extra long fringes on, but it did nothing at all to disguise its lack of length. I've realised that, no matter what I make for Alex, he'll probably already have at least 10. I just can't help myself though!

SHOP STUFF
It's been literally years since I did an update on Shop Stuff. The shop has been kind of chugging along in the background a bit. Up until this week I hadn't made any sales for two months - but it took me a long time to even realise that. And I was surprised to find that I wasn't really fussed. In fact, it made me feel motivated to write new zines. I even had 2 ideas in one day! When I'm in that mood, I compose in my head while I'm on mail runs at work and then write it down in my lunch break (if I can remember it!). Then this week I made 3 sales! Phew! I'm happy, but at the same time it kicks off my anxieties: what if the person doesn't like my zines? What if something goes wrong and they don't arrive in the mail or there's some other kind of problem? In my more confident moments, I know I can handle all of that. But Negative Nancy has to stick her big nose in and try to stop me from putting myself and my stuff out there! Well, get stuffed, Negative Nancy!

Suddenly Serviceable

Last week I finished Boy's Hat:

A man walks down the street in that hat, people know he's not afraid of anything!
Yay! Now his head and his ears will be warm! There are more details about the hows and the whys in this post.

And, I'm pleased to say, that today I finished S's scarf in time for his birthday shindig (with about 5 hours to spare, as a matter of fact).

The old scarf-photographed-on-the-windowsill trick!
I was a bit cheeky: he's not one for being showered with gifts (gosh knows why!) so he declared that everyone should take the money they would have spent on a gift for him, and buy/do something nice for themselves. Well, I enjoy buying yarn and knitting things with it, so why not knit something for him? And I had a red hot go at it as well. I spent about 45 minutes choosing this yarn at Cleg's. I ignored the price tag completely. It's an absolutely gorgeous blend of wool and alpaca. And 'cause alpacas are just so darned cute, I had to find us a pic:

Cute!!
And look at these amigurumi alpacas from Moon June!:

It's a well known fact that everything is cuter in amigurumi form.
And, in a blindingly white ultra mega moment of the ultimate productivity, I finished an art journal page today too!:

Materials used: gesso, acrylic paint, scraps of newspaper, envelopes, magazines, wrapping paper, Sakura Gelly Roll pens, Pilot Choose gel pens, Signo Uniball gel pens, Think wedge felt pen, vintage Japanese rubber stamp and ink, spirograph, metallic rub, deco tape, embroidery thread

I really just put the finishing touches on it: some dabs of green paint and metallic rub, a couple of swirly bits and a quote from Ray Bradbury about creativity. I have quite a large collection of quotes saved on my laptop now, and I felt like using one. So I did! For some reason, it really irks me the way that quotes are traditionally presented, with the person being quoted at the end. I always look at that part first, and then I know who is speaking when I read the quote. If I read it as presented, then just as I'm letting the profundity of the thought sink in, I get interrupted with a jolt by the sordid detail of who it's attributed to. It irks me. Is that just me? I thought so. Anyway, I thought I'd put the author at the start and see how that feels. The quote says:

Ray Bradbury: Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't try to do things. You must simply do things.

It's an important thing to keep in mind when doing art. Perhaps not so much when doing craft. But it definitely applies to meditating.

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P.S. About that subject line: my powers of alliteration failed me today.

Better Late than Never

Here are some pictures of the two washcloths I made last week for Baby Nephew Alex (well, more for his Mum to use on him, really!). I've been interested in dishcloth / facewasher patterns for a while. There are so many different patterns and colours, they're quick and easy to make, and then you get to use them every day! Having something handmade and colourful always make those daily tasks much more fun. (Or slightly less tedious, anyway.)

In one week, I managed to make two:

Item number 1 below is a knit/purl relief cloth with a Rubber Ducky on it. Cute! The pattern is from Ravelry [member access only]. I enjoyed making this one. The only issue was - it only came in the form of a chart, and I can't read charts for the life of me, so I had to spend some time 'translating' it into written form, i.e. Knit 4, Purl 3, Knit 7, etc. I think I made a mistake somewhere on approximately the 50th row, but I managed to fix it up as I went along.

Rubber Ducky in Ochre.
The second cloth was my first attempt at Illusion Knitting. Check it out. This is how it looks straight-on:

Chequerboard in Honeydew and Denim - try to ignore the mistakes!
But if you lay it out flat and look at it from an angle, a picture emerges - voila!!:

One has to bend right over to see this effect.
See? See what I did there?
It looks really cool in the picture, but actually, I'm not that impressed with Illusion Knitting. I've only ever seen it used for scarves and dishcloths. And how often are you going to lay your scarf out on a flat surface to look at the picture? The chequerboard pattern was just a simple beginner's pattern, true, but they all look the same when viewed straight-on - i.e. stripes with weird, slightly bumpy bits here and there. The process of knitting it was intensively boring, and would be ten times worse with a more complicated picture. So my answer to the question of Illusion Knitting is, "thanks, but no thanks."

The yarn for both of these is Cotton from Bendigo Woollen Mills. Yeah, it seems a little exxy at $12 per ball, but they're 200g balls rather than the usual 50g. That's massive! The balls didn't look any smaller at all after I'd finished, so I think you could squeeze at least 6 washcloths out of each one. Or 4 hats. Or 2/3 of a shrug....

In more current news, I've started making a hat for my friend Bec who is doing the World's Greatest Shave. I'm so proud of her! When she asked me to knit her a hat, I was eager to get straight to it. Hopefully there'll be something worth photographing soon.

My Nephew!

I've been rather busy lately, and here's the reason why!

Introducing my nephew Alex.
Awwwwwwwwwww. I hate babies, but I love this kid!
I've been working hard on things for him, and done lots of work in my art journal. I'm also taking a new approach to writing. I've had ecstatic highs, and crushing lows. What is this, a cheap romance novel?

I'll show you some of this stuff when I get around to taking some photos.

Have a good week!
xx

What I've Been Up To

I've been dividing my time pretty evenly between art and craft.
On the craft front, I've started the famed Shrug:

I've decided to call it the Little Trilobite Shrug, as that's what the lacy shapes remind me of. I've done the upper back and just started the left front. I've also been plugging away on the Chequered Baby Blanket and I'm probably about 1/3 of the way through. I could be an Auntie any day now! So I'm starting to feel a pretty urgent need to work on it.

Last week I drew my second Mandala:

I've also been working on my Art Journal:

I decided to ephemera-ise (?!) the brochure I got at the "A Day in Pompeii" exhibition by gluing it into my art journal. This is one of the rare pages that I've had a plan for from start to finish. I really like how it's turning out. Perhaps I should plan them more often! I just had an image in my head of how I wanted it to look. All except for the inside of the brochure:

It's taken me about a month to get this far. I seem to start a lot of pages and then don't know how to finish them. Last week I went through my journal and marked all the pages in progress with sticky notes for convenience. There were 14!! Then I went through again and marked all the pages that I had a plan for. There were 4. But I'm not too worried about that. The whole point is to have fun!
This is another page that's been in limbo for a while. I started working on it again yesterday:

It's sort of dedicated to food and cooking. I cut some images of foods from supermarket catalogues. The page had a quote on it that was really irrelevant to the theme, so I copied it out on another page and painted over it. Today I tried doing some gel transfers on it, but they didn't really work out (see bottom left-hand corner). I'm sure I'll think of something to do with it one day soon!

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P.S. By "ephemera-ise" I just mean: "don't chuck in the bin."

Changes, Part 2 (Electric Boogaloo!)

The next craft project on the chopping block is this:

Ripped! Gone! No Longer!
It's a cushion cover that I was making from the 200 Crocheted Blocks book. When I got the book, I loved it so much that I just wanted to make something ... anything ... from it. So I grabbed some random wool and started on a random block. At some point I decided to make 3 more and turn it into a cushion. Then when the weather got really hot, my brain was too fried for complicated patterns. I started to hate it because the yarn was ugly, the block didn't lie flat, and I'd have to sew a backing for it. So it fell by the wayside (literally: it ended up on the floor next to my bed).

Skip to quite some time later, and I was enthusing over the projects in 200 Knitted Blocks book. I wanted to make another project from it so badly, but Sensible Me knew that starting another blanket would just be silly. Not only do I have the Your Chequered Heart Baby Blanket to finish to a deadline, but I also have the Stitch Sampler Bedspread, the Circular Rug and the Lost Dogs' Home Blanket to finish. One of which I started 18 years ago!! (Not the Lost Dogs' Home Blanket, though my conscience twinges whenever I think about it. Yes, it's true. I have craft guilt.) So, no, another blanket is out of the question.

The book had samples for a couple of cushions as well as blankets, and that seemed like a capital idea. After all, I have 2 new couches that are just begging for a little adornment. And if I chose my design and yarn carefully, this could be a project I loved from start to finish. So on the weekend I sat down and designed some cushions:

I had a lot of fun with this - combining drawing, design and crafting. Well, crafting on paper, anyway. Years ago I read about young architects - very rarely do their designs ever get built, but they design anyway for practice and experience. They call it Paper Architecture. I guess what I was doing was Paper Knitting. I may make them one day. I may not. It doesn't really matter. I have to return the book to the library in a distressingly short period of time, so it's comforting to know that I have some-ready-to-go projects stashed away in my Blue Book. (That's just my drawing journal, but lately I've been thinking of it that way because it has a blue cover.)

As promised a while back, here's a photo of the doodle I drew in my Blue Book when the weather was too hot to do anything that required brain power:

It's my first attempt at a 'doodle' style drawing. I really like it. The only negative was that I coloured it in with watercolour pencils, and then it took FOR. EVER. to go over all the details with water and a brush, making sure they dried in between so they didn't bleed. It was a major pain and I gave up about half way through. Next time I think I'll use normal pencils. I added some mandala motifs in there. I want to try doing a full mandala next.

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P.S. In an effort to make sure I blog regularly, I actually wrote this post before I even started doing anything about the Former Cushion Cover. I'm eager for blog-love! Really!

P.P.S. The photos today come from the Can't Be Arsed School of Photography.

P.P.P.S. I've started writing a new zine!