Since then I’ve published something like 450 posts, with not quite 400 currently published after a cleanout a few years ago. Amigurumi crocheted from embroidery floss or yarn, with my own or others’ patterns; crochet outerwear and household items (including my basket fixation of a few years ago); a wide assortment of sewing projects including many pouches and bags; a surprising number of embroidery projects; and many one-off posts about other crafts I tried.

Of course, recently I haven’t published at all. My only post of 2020 was the inevitable mask-sewing post, and the majority of my 2019 posts were journal prompts rather than posts about things I’d made. I haven’t had the impulse to blog, probably in part because I can always share on Instagram, for far less effort.

However, I didn’t want my tenth blogiversary to go unmarked, so let me show you what I’ve been up to these past months…..

On New Year’s Day 2020 I started working on learning to draw. My previous attempt to learn to draw had been 5 years earlier, for the first few months of 2015. I don’t remember why I decided to make the new start – my journal is silent on the matter and my husband tells me I was admirably low-key about it – but this attempt has gone orders of magnitude better than the previous one. In particular, I am still doing it, and I’m pleased with my efforts.

Two drawing highlights of the last year-plus:

I started drawing a mushroom every day in my planner on Feb 4. This was inspired by a video by struthless, though my daily drawing subject was not nearly as specific as his. I’m continuing this year, with daily snails.

In October I did a daily drawing challenge, combining drawing prompts from Inktober, DoodleWash, and Creamtober with an overall theme of Fantasy Landscapes. It was a significant commitment but I was able to finish all 31 drawings within the month and I was really pleased with a number of them. My goal aesthetic was ink drawings with color accents, and while it took a while to get there I ended up with a few that were exactly what I envisioned.

On January 18, 2020, I started watercolor painting, a fact I know only because I wrote it in my planner – again my journal has no mention of it, and there’s no photographic record. This was a product of having been watching watercolor tutorial videos on YouTube just for fun (though who knows where that came from!), taking an art class in January that included Japanese ink brush painting, and seeing watercolor feature in some of the drawing tutorials I was watching. I’ve painted versions of a lot of photographs and other illustrations, and done many video tutorials.

Two watercolor highlights of the last year-plus:

I have been gradually filling a sketchbook with animal paintings, mostly animals whose faces appeal to me. There are many pages left!

Around the turn of the year I started painting overwrought planetscapes, the sort of thing you’d find on the cover of a science fiction paperback or prog rock album.

And of course I sewed and crocheted, and did random other crafts in 2020. Many fabric masks, several zippered pouches, crocheted Christmas ornaments, my first-ever candle wreath, a set of tea shelves made from tea boxes, and my 2021 planner!

I think have a few more posts in me this year; although I’m clearly not holding myself to any posting minimum, I’m also not ready to shutter this blog.

The post Happy 10th Blogiversary, ReveDreams appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

When I started this blog, I had just realized I didn’t want to stay in mathematics, but had no idea what my next career would be. I was a week or so away from first meeting the man who became my husband, and we wouldn’t start dating for over eight months.

2011 was incredibly productive for me, though I was still working full time as a mathematician the whole year. It was my second most prolific year by measure of entries into the catalog and third by total number of posts (popping up to a very close second if you prorate). Surprisingly little of it was older work getting blogged about retroactively – I simply did a lot.

My most productive time was when I was semi-attempting to be a professional craft designer and teacher, roughly April 2013 to April 2014. I lacked the requisite passion and grit to make that happen, and discovered I really dislike sewing to order. I had already begun web development, learning enough to modify this blog’s theme and proceeding from there. I joined my little startup in February or March of 2014 and tried to make that work.

At the beginning of last year I decided to abandon the steady, frequent posting schedule I’d been more or less maintaining. That was absolutely the right decision. The nomadic piles of stuff in my sewing room are gone now, after a little work that was worth blogging about and a lot that wasn’t. I have plans to get through more longstanding projects during this quarter of the year, which will get me all but dug out of old project plans.

After that? Next month I begin a new job. I’ll be doing web development full time in an office. Reflecting on 2011 makes me wonder how 2016 will turn out. Being on the computer all day at home makes it hard to get off the computer; working for a start-up and freelancing without succeeding financially, and then also job hunting, makes it hard to think you should ever stop working. 2016 won’t be as productive as 2011 – for one thing, I was single for the second half of that year – but I’m hoping to simply do a lot again.

The post Looking back, looking forward appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

I have one last FYDP accomplishment.

• Made rainbow soap. It may be weird colors that look more like an unappetizing jello mold than soap, but it’s rainbow soap.

We trimmed the edges off after I took this picture, which helped a bit.

Total accomplished projects:

1. Mending: 7
2. Non-mend sewing: 5
3. Elimination: 11
4. Website updates: 6
5. Crochet: 3
6. Other crafts: 1

Before starting FYDP, I made a long list of projects that were lingering. Here’s the breakdown of items that haven’t been crossed off that list.

Total remaining on list:

1. Mending: 5
2. Non-mend sewing: 4
3. Website updates: 4
4. Crochet: 2
5. Other crafts: 1

I am very happy to see that, even ignoring eliminated projects, each category’s “accomplished” number is at least as high as its “remaining” number. Total totals: 33 accomplished, 16 left on list. Two-thirds taken care of.

What did I learn? That having a time set to be mindful of lingering projects skyrockets the probability I’ll finish them, as does public accountability. That counting elimination as an accomplishment helps greatly in making it happen. That sustaining momentum for a project over three months is nigh-on impossible.

I hope this was a productive period for all of you. Maybe we’ll do it again sometime.

The post FYDP Final Roundup appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

With this post I inaugurate the craft blog ReveDreams.com. The posts will largely be about sewing and crochet, with a healthy dose of quilting and embroidery, and smatterings of other fiber and non-fiber crafts. The current schedule has me posting Mondays and Thursdays, and I hope to have a good mix of completed projects, works in progress, tutorials and patterns, links elsewhere, and contemplations of practical matters (from systematic investigation of technique to useful ways to store materials). I welcome comments, suggestions, and questions, even if they come a long time after the original post, and whether or not they are relevant to the post at hand!

Other than the posting schedule, this is still current; it’s just not concrete enough to plan around. Over the last month I’ve thought a lot about my purpose in blogging, prompted partly by the full-tilt schedule I’ve kept recently. This is my 53rd post of 2014 and we’re 90 days in — that’s over four per week! I like having new posts every other day, but that rate does not allow consistent high quality. Since it is also easy to have neither frequency nor quality, my paring back needs to be purposeful.

I’ve also been thinking about what would be best for me in terms of site organization and navigation, Ravelry, and Facebook. One thing at a time, though. Today let’s just talk about posting goals. This doubles as a recap of many of my favorite posts from the past year.

ReveDreams Posting Goals

1. A new pattern in the store monthly: Not only a new pattern, but a pattern presented with creative photos a la the Sluggos, Snouty Hippos, and Big and Little Pi.
   
    
2. An in-depth technical or educational post or series monthly: This could be as simple as exploring the needle join or identifying a mystery stitch. However, I like to really dig in and produce pieces that compare a variety of methods, such as double crochet turning chain modifications or ways to work single crochet in the round (in particular, ways to join those rounds), or that teach techniques in depth, such as useful knots for crafting or how to embroider crochet pieces.
   
   
    
3. Something fun monthly: This could be a free pattern or tutorial, quick and easy (magic chain in crochet, back seat cupholders) or more involved (miniature Christmas trees with decorations, bicycle handlebar saddlebags). It might be a free extension to a pattern for sale, like the One-Eyed Sluggos. Or it might be a photo spread, like the recent Ami Folklore pair or the more distant Assyrian Monsters shoot (of which most of the photos are on Stumpy’s Facebook page).
   
   
    
4. Web curation monthly and behind the scenes: There is a lot of useful, interesting, and inspiring material in the World Wide Web, and especially if I had to spend a lot of time separating the wheat from the chaff on a particular subject, I like to share my findings with you. This is a key component of most of my static pages: Learn Crochet is self-contained as long as you don’t want videos, but I link out not only to videos but to additional instructions given with words, photos, and diagrams, as mine are. I plan to continue to expand and refine that resource as well as Sewing Tidbits, Scrap Users, and Learn Hand Embroidery. Although I include relevant links in many of my posts, on the blog my curation is concentrated in my First Friday posts, of which I most want to emulate two done in the last six months: art journaling with fiber, which featured other crafters’ work, and mythical origin stories of crafts, which involved a lot of needle-in-haystack research (pun intended, but only retroactively). Look for more descriptive titles on those posts henceforth.
   
    
5. Spontaneous, irregular posts of projects and thoughts worth sharing: This will form the remainder of my posts, with no quota. I want to share my creations and experiences, but will apply the Mr. Ed Rule and speak only when I have something to say. I’d expect very occasional posts on productivity, organization, teaching, or other ancillary subjects, and for most of the posts in this category to be projects. A few favorites from the last year: first overlay crochet project (and pattern review), bassist monster, and embroideries from my husband’s drawings.
   

Incidentally, the part about comments from my initial post is still true — don’t be shy, even if the post is almost as old as the blog itself!

The post Happy blogiversary, ReveDreams appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

There will be one final roundup in April — I’ll do it in a week if all projects for FYDP that I intend to blog have appeared, and otherwise I’ll delay until that’s happened. I hope this was a productive period for you! I am glad to look at my list of totals and see, especially, the high number after “elimination.”

FYDP achieved its main goal: counteract my tendency to just sit on things. While I certainly didn’t finish my list (we’ll discuss that in the final roundup as well), I made a much bigger dent than I would have if left to my own devices.

Totals:

1. Mending: 7
2. Non-mend sewing: 5
3. Elimination: 11
4. Website updates: 6
5. Crochet: 3

The post FYDP Roundup 12 appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

Totals:

1. Mending: 7
2. Non-mend sewing: 5
3. Elimination: 11
4. Website updates: 5
5. Crochet: 1

The post FYDP Roundup 10 appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

• Nothing!

Totals:

1. Mending: 2
2. Non-mend sewing: 2
3. Elimination: 7
4. Website updates: 3

Did you have a more productive FYDP week?

The post FYDP Roundup 4 appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

1. Behind the scenes, I improved the SEO of the patterns in my store by giving them meta descriptions (this becomes the excerpt/blurb you see on a search engine results listing). Without a meta description, the part of the page below the photos (where I put the details, but not the overview) is what shows up on the search page. Now someone finding one of my patterns through a search will have better information about what it is they’ve found; the meta description is a version of what appears to the right of the photos on the product page.
2. Less behind the scenes but still online, long ago I had links to pages at Annie’s Attic with brief Quicktime videos of crochet stitches being made. They were linked from my Crochet Reference page and possibly my Learn Crochet series, though probably only before it was expanded from a single page into a set. Annie’s took them down, replacing them with longer YouTube videos, which I found very disappointing. Later on, but still rather a while ago (cough cough), I found the videos still existed at Annie’s online magazine Crochet World, and wrote a note to reinstate the links. Well, that finally happened!
3. An embroidery project I was maybe 1/3 of the way through was not going well. I dismantled it.
4. My boot-style slippers each had a split up the back of the lining, and my heel would slide into the bottom of the split instead of fully into the slipper. I stitched them up.

Totals:

1. Mending: 2
2. Non-mend sewing: 2
3. Elimination: 7
4. Website updates: 2

The post FYDP Roundup 2 appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

2014 it is! This year holds my third blogiversary, a prime number birthday, my second wedding anniversary, and my fourth crochetiversary, in that order. But before any of that, for the first quarter of the year, it’s going to be Finish Yer Dang Projects time here at ReveDreams. I hope you will play along at home in finishing or eliminating all the projects that fill all kinds of crafting space. My list already includes almost 30 items, and that’s without some containers I haven’t inventoried yet. The projects range from mending to design, across a variety of crafts, and even include some computer work. Since today is Wednesday, and in the spirit of Work in Progress Wednesdays, I’ll post a brief synopsis of the week’s progress every Wednesday. Blog posts will continue as usual and include non-FYDP items (including handmade Christmas gifts) so the Wednesday posts will let you know which items are from the “just do this already” list, and list finished projects that didn’t get posts.

The post Happy New Year! appeared first on ReveDreams.com.

Ah, there it is. What we used to call “bobbin art” in the costume shop, and what I just discovered online is called “birdnesting” by others. This happens when there is insufficient tension on the top thread to pull the bobbin thread up and out of the way, so it gets caught by the hook again and again, along with the later lengths of bobbin thread. “Insufficient tension” really means “no tension” in this case, so let’s have a look at the tension disks.

Yep, I missed completely. That thread should be one disk back from where it is.

Now, I’ve been sewing for well over 20 years and sewing with this specific machine for close to 15. This is just something that happens from time to time, and why we recommend completely rethreading the machine as the first step to diagnosing or solving any machine problem, “we” meaning us at the Sew-op. Learning to deal with these sorts of problems is the main benefit of Basic Sewing – thread gets caught on the presser foot. You catch a part of the fabric in your seam you didn’t mean to. Your seam line veers too far toward or away from the edge of the fabric. In the era of seam rippers, all are fairly quick and easy to fix, and if you want sewing to be a relaxing hobby I think it’s better to just accept the occasional necessity of ripping stitches. [Though thread caught on the presser foot typically just needs to be pulled out.]

In other news, I’ve decided to mostly depart from scheduled posts. I have one lined up for tomorrow morning, and I will try to post twice a week still, but I think it is silly to delay things I’m ready to show until some arbitrary time.

The post It happens to everyone appeared first on ReveDreams.com.