Weekly Ideas Post

[seryn]

It looks like everyone is in the same boat I am, where nothing I do feels creative. Even the food I have made this week has been the same kinds of dishes I always make. Seriously, the sum of my creativity for the week was adding a rubber stamp to a thank you card.

With that in mind, I think we should all challenge ourselves to come up with a creative project. What would you like to make or build? What questions do you have? Are there design issues you would like to address through discussion or do you tend to "wing it"? Feel free to make a whole post or to comment here (which I plan to do).

And thank you to all the new members for subscribing, the poster and commenters for participating, and the lurkers for lurking.

Comments

[seryn]

I should do more "yogurt art" like the icon. ;-)

My next big project feels more like a chore because I have no idea what I am doing. I have a rocking chair. Its legs were glued in originally but at some point someone added nails. I took the nails out when they were splitting the wood spindles and the seat. (One was at a bad enough angle to be causing the seat surface finish to bubble.) But now it is structurally iffy.

I actually own wood glue, but do not have any giant clamps like that Yankee Workshop guy has. Are there caveats I have not considered?

I would consider refinishing the chair entirely but the slight bubble on the seat is easily covered with the chair pad and the rest of the finish is better than I am likely to do, especially in the winter.

Every time I look at the chair I hear Bob The Builder saying, "Okay Team, Can we fix it? Yes. We. Can." So I need to work on it just so the voices in my head can mature a bit.

[reishka]

I think I'm the opposite -- I have so many projects waiting in the wings I don't even know where to begin! I have a winter quilt cut. It needs to be pieced, stuffed, and stitched. I have the plannings for next year's Christmas Quilt beginning to form. I also have some really nice asian-themed fabric that I want to incorporate into a quilt, but I haven't really started thinking about that one yet. I've started a katamari damacy-themed breadcover -- and I'm kind of winging that one as I go along, making it up without any real pattern. And I've been working on learning how to meake fabric flower hairpieces and learning how to whittle so I can make some wooden hairsticks.

The flowers have been stupidly tough -- I've found some pretty amazing tutorials, but my flowers keep coming out looking lopsided, or frumpy, or they don't hold together at all. I've decided that I need to go out and grab a glue gun, even though I was trying to avoid it.

My problem is lack of space and lack of time. School starts in a week, and I live in a ridiculously small apartment with my hubby. It pretty much leaves only the living room table available for working on projects... but our living room table is also the dinner table, the homework table, the laptop table, etc. I can't just leave a project as-is if I've started working on it and then go do something else. I have to clean it all up, put it away, and then drag it all out the next time I want to work on it. It's not a problem for the smaller things (such as the cross-stitching), but for working on quilts or even the fabric hairpieces it can be a PITA to drag everything out and then put it all away again.

[thistleingrey]

Good question. I have a needlepoint project lurking amidst my desultory knitting. Haven't done needlepoint since childhood, but I think I can handle it.... That's as close as I get to this post's topic, at the moment.