Catching up

vance

vance

— 5 min read

Oh gosh it's been a while since my last post here, sorry about that! I had hoped to update this blog at least once every month, but depression has had its own plans for me... But, even though writing has been particularly hard (I've had the same blog post in progress since December!), I've still been making stuff when I can!

One reason I haven't posted in a while is that I've been feeling pressure to make posts that can be valuable to people instead of just random babbling, and in particular, to provide worthwhile content to my paying subscribers (who I am constantly SO, so grateful for!!). And that feels pretty intimidating. The downloads and subscriber posts that I have up here so far represent work I did years ago, not new content I'm creating on-demand month after month. Even when I think about existing work I might be able to offer as downloads, the effort of formatting them properly for download and getting the posts written to describe older work that's no longer on my mind has just felt like too much for me lately. So I'm going to try to start right now with permitting myself to take a smaller step and just break my silence by writing some general updates about what I've been making. That's what this blog was really meant to be for, anyhow. Then, hopefully, I can work my way back up to posting something more "worthwhile".

I wrote last fall that I was taking my first steps experimenting with crochet. Well, I'm happy to say I've made a lot more progress on that front, and actually completed a few pieces that I like! Look for a whole separate post on my crochet adventures soon.

A pouch made of shiny yellow yarn at the bottom and then the rest in a yarn that's a gradient of light blue tones with a few yellow spots. There's a gold cord strung through a series of holes at the top to make a drawstring. It's sitting on a wooden table next to a power strip.
My second or third completed crochet project, a drawstring pouch custom-sized to hold a charger!

I spent December doing quite a bit of drawing. I've been posting these to my Instagram, Pixelfed, and sometimes Twitter. I tried to continue with it into the new year, but it's no longer a regular habit like it was starting to be in December. Here's a few favorites:

A sketchbook page with line drawings in pink ink, showing a wavy-haired woman smiling in a long buttoned jacket. Next to that are some small gesture drawings of crouching figures and a bust of someone in a baseball cap.
A sketch of Xochitl Gomez when she was on Dancing with the Stars - I was obsessed with this outfit!
Drawing of a girl with her hair up in two buns, wearing a tee shirt with a pattern of many different kinds of mushroom, high waisted jean shorts, and high heeled boots with a floral pattern. She's standing with her hand on her hip and smiling slightly. There is a rough bottom layer of the sketch in yellow pen, the main lines are in blue pen, and the details of the clothing are colored with orange pen.
Another one inspired by fashion: this was a sketch of an outfit I liked in the game Fashion Dreamer. That yellow pre-sketch was key!
Sketchbook open to two pages of pen drawings, with only part of the left page shown. Left page: head and neck of a short-haired person with cat ears sleeping on a pillow. Right: a leafless tree with a squiggly pattern over the trunk, and then, a nude woman with long curly hair cradling a moon in her arms.
Left: I was trying to draw this catboy every day for a challenge, for a while. Right: I was at a full moon party so I drew a... moon lady I guess??

A big reason for the drop-off in drawing is that I've been participating in a coding bootcamp these last few months! It's a totally free online bootcamp run by the amazing folks at Bad Website Club, following the curriculum from freeCodeCamp's first two web development certifications. Here's two of my web dev projects below: a product landing page for the scifi novel I'm writing, and a breathwork timer visualization. (The breathing timer is actually a much older project that I just revisited and tweaked a bit recently--there's not a lot of room for making original projects while following the fast pace of the bootcamp lessons, especially given that my creative time is largely going to other endeavors like crochet.)

Web page with white text on a black background and highlights in neon-like red and cyan. The headline says "Symposiac: a sci-fi suspense adventure". Under a heading that says "characters", there are three boxes. One with a lightning cloud symbol says Jason, one with an eye symbol says Soo Jin, and one with a brain symbol says Zack.
Hypothetical "product page" advertising the novel I'm (very slowly) writing, for a freeCodeCamp project.
The heading "let's breathe" in purple on a mint green background. There are instructions for a breathing exercise saying to follow the circle, and then in the center of the page there's a large purple circle.
A breathing timer made with CSS animations - this one was just my own idea, not for the bootcamp!

And December was a big month for more than drawing: it was my very first time selling at a craft fair! We hosted our own little market at Prototype PGH and I had a fantastic time making and selling a variety of stickers, zines, and 3D printed/laser cut keychains and pendants.

Pendants in the shape of syringes and the transgender symbol, some on necklaces and some on keychains and a pair of syringes on earrings, sitting on a wood table. There are also stickers of pixel art apples.
A variety of keychains and ornaments laid out on a blanket. Some are syringe designs, some are medicine vials with a star shape cut out inside, one is a trans symbol, and some are pride flags made of Perler beads.
A craft fair table display. There's a light blue sheet over the table and a folded piece of paper labeled "caesium tea" in the center. Several items from the above images are scattered around the table, with necklaces and ornaments hanging from a small tree.
My booth at the craft market!

I also made a point to browse lots of other holiday craft markets to get inspired and rev myself up for the idea of applying to sell at other craft markets! The coding bootcamp has dampened my efforts a little, but when it ends next month, I'm very much aiming to pick up speed again on trying to get into my first "real" (i.e., not organized by me) craft fair this year, with my sights set particularly on the Queer Craft Market and Pittsburgh Zine Fair!

And just recently, I made the decision to finally release a visual novel that I created 12 years ago, Chasing the Sunlight! I called it "a brief meditation on light and beauty", and you can find it on itch.io. Please mind the content warnings; it was definitely a Depression Piece.

Photo of sunlight coming through tree leaves with these words over it: "Autumn has always been my favorite time of year, painting the world in all its spectacular bright colors. But today, they seem too bright, over-saturated, garish. Despite the wonder, it's nauseating. It's like cake that's too rich for more than one bite to really be pleasant. All of this vibrancy, it's too much to take in. The trees glowing in the sunlight--a dizzy green, that was how a little girl in a book I once read described it. The world is shot through with the power of the sun, lit from inside like putting a lighter to a glass pipe. Something about it hurts."
A screen from the visual novel.

So all in all: pretty busy with learning JavaScript rn, and putting the brakes on the crafting a little bit, but hoping to pick up the pace next month and start getting more serious again about making stuff that I can sell! Especially stickers, I have SO many plans for stickers!! (Remember my old menhera sticker set preview? I even dusted off that project recently!) The next you'll hear from me should be either a download of my sewing zine for subscribers, or a longer post about my crochet adventures and mishaps! And here's hoping I can get back onto a monthly blogging routine and let this site live up to its intent as a rolling chronicle of whatever I'm making at the moment!

Thanks as always, see yinz around <3

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