Hello! I know it's been a while, but don't worry, I never intended to abandon this blog. It's just that, well, life got in the way for a while. So if you'll indulge me, I'll do a little update on the arts, crafts, garden, hobbies, and all the other random stuff that this blog covers. Then hopefully I'll do some expanded posts on a few different topics soon.
2022 was a bit of a topsy-turvy year for me. "Strange" is the word I've heard most when people were describing their year, and I'd have to agree.
I was diagnosed with several 'new' chronic illnesses. I was already pretty sure I had most of them for a while, so there weren't any big surprises, but it was nice to have the diagnosis confirmed. I was then able to start sorting out the best treatments, etc. This kept me busy with appointments, new doctors, new medications, etc.
My style and sewing Youtube channel has been continuing. In the beginning I was hoping to make a video once a fortnight, but in 2022 it ended up being once a month, on average. I'm still very happy with that, because along the way I've learned many new video-making skills, and it's been a lot of fun. My channel is here if you haven't heard about it yet and you're interested.
2022 was a topsy-turvy year with art, too. In the first half of the year, my Collective and I staged 3 exhibitions. (That's a lot!) Then we took a long break. I didn't do any art for a long time -- I guess I was burnt out. Around July I slowly started doing some art journalling and started a junk journal. I wanted to ease back into things by doing something very low-key and low-energy friendly. In December and early January we had 2 exhibitions scheduled, so towards the end of the year I started to ramp things up a bit and make sure I did everything I wanted to for those. Plus, I made a real-proper website for my real-proper artist stuff. It lists all my past/current/upcoming exhibitions, projects I'm working on, etc. It's not quite finished yet, but if you'd like to see it, here it is.
Arguably, a lot of my real-proper art has some definite crafty elements to it, as you can see above. Unfortunately though, I didn't do much crafting just for myself in 2022. I did start a new tablet weaving, but the tension was wonky and it was a bit of a mess. Husband promised that he would make some improvements to the weaving loom he made last year. After some delays, that was done last week and I started a new weaving. (Yay!) It's going to be a bracelet, but I'll probably end up with 2 or 3 as the base threads have to be at least as long as the loom, so I may as well make as many bracelets as will fit on.
The Spring/Summer of 2022 here in Australia has been such a strange one. It rained a looooot more than normal in Spring, and some days were cold enough to still be Winter! Many of my plants were confused and didn't know whether to grow or not, so things got off to a slow start. I did buy quite a lot of new plants, but I'll introduce them in a separate post.
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| Note: this isn't at my house but a spot nearby. |
I did a huge project in June to tidy up my Hobby Room / Studio. It was for a studio tidying challenge online ... and I won the challenge! I put it mainly down to stubborn persistence, and remembering to take 'before' and 'after' photos. Perhaps the 'after' photos don't look that much different, but to me it's a huge change. I was never a minimalist ... I think I'm firmly in the pro-Cluttercore camp. :)
