Recently I mentioned that one of my techniques for accomplishing a task I'm not keen on is giving myself a reward after finishing that task.
I thought I'd need to do this with creating the power point for tomorrow's lecture. it certainly seemed to as I started this morning. First, I was a little resentful that, having already created this lecture, I was essentially, redoing it from the beginning. Mind you, that resentment was directed at me, but it was definitely there.
The grumbling continued through the first few slides as they seemed to take a really long time. "I'm going to be here ALL day!" I thought. The slow progression of those first couple of slides was also my fault as I insisted (to myself) that I had to create the images in InDesign and then import them to PowerPoint. Huh?
I can't even argue this was the first time I've discovered this unnecessary step.
Anyway, after an hour or so, things began to flow and I found myself charmed, yes charmed, by the images of things I used to make with my hand crafted fabric.
Can't decide which I like better, the coasters or the picture of the coasters perched on my beloved cake plate.
Loved looking back on these pillows. I made a bunch of them at one point.
Had to laugh at this creation. Why did I make a tufted pillow out of some drawn hand dyes??
Yesterday I mentioned that there were similarities and differences between my business then and now. The similarities are mostly in the process; I use pretty much the same wax and method for creating dye baths. I certainly finish the fabric in the same way, boiling and rinsing, washing and ironing.
What's changed is intention. A few years ago my goal was to figure out what I wanted to make, thus the tufted pillow. Now the focus is more about creating a unified look for all things a stitch in dye and figuring out how to make it as efficiently as possible. I'm more in the small batch production rather than the artisan mode. That's not a bad thing, but I'm a little surprised I didn't really notice until I spent time looking through older images.
That's also why, after a rough start, I found making the slideshow fun. I learned something about myself, laughed more than once, and now, am super excited to present my talk tomorrow night.