A New Beginning, of Sorts

It seems 2014 has suffered the same fate as the mythical October of the previous year.  It just won't exist on this blog.  Somehow, I managed to go the entire year without posting. I thought about it now and then.  I even seriously considered posting several times.  In fact, just before midnight on December 31st, I tried to post something just so that there would be one post for the year... but then my computer had a nervous breakdown in the middle of my attempt, and all was lost.

I suppose it isn't quite the same as the month that I keep mentioning, and then crossing out as a stupid joke, because that month was miserable.  I am not about to claim that all of 2014 was equally miserable... quite the contrary, I had plenty of fun and worthwhile experiences throughout the year. Highs and lows, successes and failures, completed projects and abandoned efforts.  I just... didn't end up posting about any of them.  I think this is largely because I haven't been sure what the purpose of this blog is.  I'm still not sure. And along with all the times I thought about posting, there were times I thought about deleting the whole thing.  I guess until I decide what in blazes I'm doing and what I want to get out of it, I'll just keep posting stuff... because spending a whole year not posting in it certainly didn't help me figure anything out.

Enough dramatic musing! Here's a necklace!  I finished this last month... I think.  I discovered spiral bead crochet quite by accident last year, and after a few false starts just to test the waters, I designed and made a beaded rope to match an opal and brass pendant I had made previously.  I didn't like how the pendant looked on chain or ribbon, and the beaded rope proved to be the perfect solution.

 

You really can't tell, but there is a pattern on it. The antiqued brass colored beads, of which there are actually three different shades, form little curly vines and flowers that are supposed to match the flowers on the pendant.  No, really.  They're there.  It's just that they're rather lost in the random mix of four other colors of beads that are supposed to match the opal.  Yeah... my first original bead crochet design is not entirely successful.  I mean, it turned out really pretty, and it matches the pendant perfectly... but considering the time I spent planning out the pattern and putting all those tiny beads on the thread in exactly the right order... well, we'll just call this one a draw.

 

I've started another one with a not-so-original design (found the pattern online) that has fewer colors, more contrast, and a wider circumference, so we'll see how that one turns out.  Hopefully, the branches and flowers on it will actually be visible!

 

Bleargh

I'm just glad August is over.

And frustrated that August is over, because starting a new month really isn't going to fix anything.  Tomorrow will be pretty much the same as yesterday... only I'll be going to church instead of the post office.

Unfortunately, I have nothing to talk about.  I haven't finished any projects at all this month, or even planned any new ones... at least, none that I can think of at the moment.  August has been utterly wretched.  It has gone by in a listless blur,  with the passage of time marked by alternating bursts of stomach turning stress and soul-weary apathy.

Some good things happened too... I did some tedious but useful work, spent time with friends and family, figured out how to program walk/run intervals on our treadmill and placed my crummy little TV in front of it so I can get going on my half marathon training, and... uh... ate garden fresh tomatoes.

Anyway, I'm determined to have a far more worthwhile September.

The Hutch Reborn

So... I managed to get permanently locked out of my original project blog.  The details of how this came about are uninteresting and unimportant, so I'll just leave it unexplained.  That being the case, The Hutch of Chaos will only ever have two posts.  Only one of which was an actual project.

So here I am, staring over with a new blog.  I debated with myself over whether I should even bother with it.  I knew that to do it properly, I would have to put in a lot of time and effort, and that alone makes it kind of a ridiculous thing to do.  I have too many projects, and my solution is to take on another one?  There is a twisted sort of logic to it though, if I look at the blog as a system of organization and a way of enforcing some sort of accountability.  Then the self-deprecating part of my mind kicked in, suggesting that not only would I utterly fail at completing projects and posting them with any regularity, I would really just be making a pathetic attempt to show off.  It's hard to argue with.  It's mean and stubborn and it makes any defense thrown against it sound childish and weak.  "I am not!" or "So what if I am?" both make that nasty little voice feel like it's winning.  Wording aside, what other arguments are there?

Clearly, since I'm sitting here posting in a new blog, I either won the argument in the end or went ahead with it despite having lost.  I'm honestly not sure which.

Naming the thing was another problem.  I tried to think of something else I could use to carry on the "my projects multiply like rabbits" theme, but nothing sounded right.  Eventually I dropped that idea in favor of a single-word title, preferably a word that was made up.  I've been rather fond of the word "tatterdemalion" from the moment I first heard it, and it wasn't hard to change it up a bit. So here we are.

I don't know how long this blog will last, or how often I'll post in it.  I question my own motives.  And I have no idea how to use half the stuff on here.  If it's anything like the coat that I started back in 2006 and still haven't finished... well... I suppose time will tell.  Perhaps I will go work on that coat now.