It has been an eventful year. My husband quit his job and started another, and I made the commitment to myself to start my long-delayed fine art career. There’s a lot that needs to be done in connection to that, and it’s going to change my focus. A lot.

If I had to come up with a theme for this past year, it would be Change Inside, Change Outside.

ART
Finished Fine Art: 4
Songseeker Pages Posted: 18 (finished one chapter and started another)
Art Posted on deviantArt: 44 (12 new works/sketches, the rest were the first pages of Songseeker)

In January Songseeker was nominated for a Rose and Bay award.

February was the start of a round of self analysis that is still ongoing, but is greatly informing the work I’m doing right now. Self analysis is hard. And sometimes the things you discover about yourself are not things you want to know.

In May my oldest told me he wanted to put on an art show. In a real venue. And send invitations to all his friends.

All summer we made art.

In August we put on our art show!

In November I entered two of my paintings from the August show in the city art show. One got honorable mention, the other got 2nd place and People’s Choice award with a $50 cash prize! I also posted the most current page of Songseeker, and then put the project on true hiatus while I reconfigure my creative process for it.

In December I designed my own Christmas card รขโ‚ฌโ€œ something that I keep thinking I want to do, but end up buying cards anyway. Not so this year! I also posted some daily sketches to my Twitter and Tumblr feeds, but the pressures of the season prevented me from maintaining that activity for long.

WRITING
I wrote a lot of words, but not as many as I intended. I didn’t really track them.

CRAFTING
I finished one pair of socks.
I started but discontinued a pair of toe socks. (I knitted from toe to gusset and decided I didn’t like how they would fit.) The yarn will be repurposed for another project.
I started a “beehive” knit afghan project with my leftover sock yarn. (Look it up on Ravelry.com! It’s adorable!)
I also worked on another denim quilt — mostly cutting pieces, at this point, but I sewed some of them together to start making blocks.
I made progress on my afghan. It’s about three quarters done.
My grandma’s last hardanger is nearly complete, after which I’ll be giving it to my youngest sister for her wedding.

GARDENING
Radishes! Grew well, but we ate too few before the rest went to seed.
Sparrows ate the beet sprouts.
Onions! We used a couple, then I harvested the rest. I set them out to dry before putting them in the pantry… and they got rained on. And all went moldy.
Cabbage! Eaten by snails.
Broccoli went to flower before we picked it. Broccoli in flower is really pretty.
Artichoke! We ate one and let three go to flower. They’re really interesting flowers, too.
The bell pepper plants got stepped on by my toddler.
The banana peppers, on the other hand, robustly grew six very large peppers for us, and the Thai chili sprouted peppers all over the place (and was really cute). Too hot for my taste, but my husband really liked them.
The tomatillos… I watched for them to be ready to harvest. I checked them every day. One day they weren’t ready yet, and the next day, they were falling to the ground. This is what happened with our first tomatillo, too. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.
Tomatoes. Holy cow, tomatoes. We had tonnes, and ate LOTS of fresh tomatoes. Then we had a sudden frost that killed all the plants and destroyed the rest of the green ones so they couldn’t be used.

FAVORITE POSTS:
5 Things That Helped Me Feel Better
Someone ELSE had my idea — I’m coming around to this again this year, too. ๐Ÿ™‚ But someone else having your same idea is not a bad thing.