Friday | 24. January 2025
Finished the little fella who I wanted the basket for!
...Though, when all is said and done, I think she would probably benefit from a larger space, right? She's loosely based on this card, but I went a different direction with composition and whatnot. Besides that, I did more sewing here than I have for other needlefelting projects: the pillows in the background, of course, but also, to make her ears, I cut out shapes from a felt sheet and blanket stitched them together and sewed them on. That's a lot easier than trying to felt such a tight and precise shape from scratch! And I think the exposed stitching is rather cute, as well. Will definitely have to keep that in mind. (The sheets I got are an acrylic blend, though, not 100% wool, so it's kind of a pain to try to felt it normally.) And I tried to make the Meowth and Buneary in the background look a bit more 'simple' so they'd come off as plushies; their limbs and other things are also cut from felt sheets. By the way, you're so much more likely to stab yourself when working at such a small scale, ow!
The Phanpy herself is cute, but her front leg isn't even with the others -- not quite what I was going for, but it does make her fun to set around and pose; like she's mid step or reaching out.
I do really like that idea, actually; felting things that are more "interactive" or otherwise useful! Have I mentioned that I've been using the Mareep as a pincushion? She's a really nice sturdy shape, so she's kinda ideal for that. Hmm, what's something kinda practical I could put on my desk at work...
Other than that, my sister had a seizure suddenly the end of last week, completely fainted out of nowhere at work. She stayed with us for a couple days and seems fine enough now; she's on a medication that can sometimes randomly cause seizures, so maybe that was it? Still, she's been told that she's not allowed to drive for the next six months, or at least until they can make sure it won't happen again. My mom's been driving her to work, but she (my sister) works nights so it's kinda thrown everyone's schedules out of wack. Also, she's kinda been freaking out about it, both in terms of having the seizure in the first place and not being able to drive when she's normally the kind of person who's always out doing things -- the weather's been really shitty lately (shifted from 50F one day to -20F with windchill the next!), so she can't exactly go out and walk... I'm worried about her; seems a bit bitter, but otherwise doing alright, at least...
Also, I was trying to avoid whining about the job to not sound ~ungrateful~ or whatever, but my boss literally encourages us to complain / commiserate (like she handed out bingo cards to mark off annoying things clients say ("Hey, when are you gonna be done with those papers?" *just dropped them off yesterday*) or other things like crying from stress), so I'll take that as a green light to vent a little... *takes a deep breath*
This is the most milquetoast opinion ever, but bureaucracy is such bullshit! My current task is to enter tax info for each employee at every company onto the Social Security site, yes? The system automatically logs you out every hour or two and the boss has to authenticate your login with her phone, but she's super busy and I don't want to bother her, so that's super annoying. You have to both save both physical and digital copies of everything you do to prove that you did it: since each employee has four sheets of paper for their W2 (even if they only worked there for a few days or even just a few hours!), you go through **so** much paper! Like, one restaurant we do taxes for has three locations, and just *one* of them had over 150 employees last year. Think about how much paper that is!! And that's just for "our records." Bonus: my printer is fucked up and prints streakily, but also it straight up just throws a fit if the paper drawer is less than half full so you have to baby it. And it takes over ten minutes to print just nine pages! At home, I'm so frugal with paper so it really hurts my soul to see how much paper we go through here... Also! This is all just for Federal taxes right now! You have to go and re-enter all the same shit again for State right after! It really is the most nonsense, you're doing less than nothing job imaginable, omg. Still, as the boss says, "At least we have job security, you'll always need accountants..." *rant over, collapses on the floor*
All of that said, though, I don't mind it that much (for now, at least). The vibes in the office are decent and the pay is pretty good, even part time. I'm currently sharing my desk with another woman who works the days I'm off, so I figured I'd have to wait until she leaves to go full time... and I think that would probably be soulcrushing, but in small doses, this is fine and tolerable.
On another note, audiobooks are absurdly expensive and extremely difficult to pirate, it turns out! And podfics are much less popular than you'd think. I started relistening to Night Vale and started Alice Isn't Dead, might branch off into one of those popular DnD podcasts as well, one of these days...
Wednesday | 15. January 2025
Oh, this genre of PokéArtwork has singlehandedly brought back my will to live.... I don't know what it is, but I'm just so in love with the look of linographs / pen sketches! Most of these are from a promotion called "Pokémon Sepia Graffiti," which seems to be a limited promotion done by the Poste Italian in 2023. It was a bit difficult to find decent quality images, but if you scroll through the official Instagram long enough, you'll eventually see them. Also, I learned about this promotion, which seems to be (somewhat, at least) based off Andrew Lang's series of Fairy Books from the late 1800 and early 1900's. <3 (Ah, I really need to figure out how to use HTV... or I've also seen people embroider their bookcovers and that looks really cool, also!)
Anyway! It's been a while again since I last wrote a journal entry, huh? In any case, happy late New Year! I've seen some people making new year's resolutions and recapping the last year and what not, so I guess I'll try that out, as well.
Looking through an old (physical) journal, it seems like I did actually make myself a list of goals for 2014: try to be more sociable and participate in events both online and in person, get a job (and / or leave the house regularly, at least), exercize more, etc. Unexpectedly, at the last second, I kinda did end up achieve (almost) everything on that list, actually, one way or another. The way I wrote it was pretty wishy-washy, though, so a bit difficult to quantify. The one thing I didn't do at all was practice crocheting -- in fact, I think I pretty much did everything in the world except crochet, oops!
...but wait, does that mean--? Yeah, I suddenly got a job offer in the middle of December, and I started about two weeks ago now. It's just part time at an accounting office for now, but eventually it'll be full time. I don't really have much to say about it: it's a small office and everyone else is very busy, so I'm just starting by doing little tedious things, like adding up payrolls to make sure they match what's recorded, data entry, making Excel templates for the new year, etc. In between tasks, I've been doodling random pics from my camera roll on post-it notes:
Besides that, the owner likes to garden and the office is full of plants which is nice and it's kinda funny to see how snarky everyone is when they get off the phone with a client. I probably will bring a pair of headphones into my next shift, though -- or look up some good fanfic scenarios to play through in my head.
On the social front, I did end up doing a lot of little events and challenges through the year (I basically ended up doubling my word count on AO3, but that's not really saying much...) and talked a bit on forums (mostly juice-bar.net) and whatnot, but didn't really do much chatty-chatting. When I was younger, I'd go on Omegle for little conversations, but that no longer exists (and it is, admittedly, for the best)... To be honest, though, I don't really feel much of a need to talk to people, and feel a bit uncomfortable when anyone gets too close. I've probably overshared way too much on this site already, but, contrary to popular belief, I have such a fear of being vulnerable, like to the point of being a prey animal, a deer running off into the woods upon hearing someone stepping on some sticks. The therapy-saga didn't really work because I was too scared to actually talk to her about my life, and when I finally did open up, even just a little bit, I freaked out and never went back... The only reason I can kinda talk here is because (and I think I've said this before), it feels like I'm just talking into the void. But then, when it turns out there are people who do actually seem to care about what I say, that just kinda scares me and makes me feel self-conscious and want to delete everything and hide. A vicious cycle... So, I guess, if anything, I'd want to try and work on that. A more tangible version of this would probably be to try to speak up more at club meetings in real life & Discord chats, etc. It's kind of a complex issue, though...
Also! Art goals for this year: I really, really, really do love the look of inkwork and I want to improve on that. Something I've learned since the last time I posted about this is, on calligraphy forums, they recommend using watered down gouache rather than ink to get a nice flat effect. So I can just use what I already have rather than buying a bunch of bottles of ink. I also have acryla gouache, so I could use that if I wanted to watercolor a sketch or something. I managed to get one of my nibs rusty already, by the way; forgot to remove it from the handle after cleaning. It's not on the tip or anything, though, so it should be fine.
I've seen other poeple talking about Do Art Daily, but I think I would die if I tried to do it, or rather posting about it. I think I'd feel too much presure to make presentable pieces... I guess that's kind of the point, though. Überperfectionism that leaves you scared to ever write anything, to ever make any marks on the page doesn't help you improve -- you have to try to get rid of the feeling that everything has to be perfect and just practice.
