Slacking as a method of forward movement

Turns out when there's things I've promised I'd do, I get a great uptick in productivity. This of course only applies for productivity not related to said promises. It's unsustainable long term, but it can feel good. I just have to out-run the guilt.


This weekend was brought to you by unsent and unwritten letters & packages as well as un planned group vacations. (It now being Tuesday, I can confess the surge has worn off... now I just want to sleep to avoid doing promised things)

The weekend started off well- Friday night I went to see Puscifer at the Palace of Fine Arts. Great show but criminy- one of the worst audiences I've endured in a long time. Boo. Late night anticts by not-me resulted in Adam and I failing to get to dim sum the next day. This lead me to deciding it would be a good idea if I made steamed buns....



I followed this recipe which I approve of. For fillings I experimented with peanut-butter and apples (bad), spinach and Gouda (VERY bad- I blame the Gouda), beans and cheese (good), black berries and blue berries (good), and egg and beans (meh). Next time those buns are going to be half the size and the fillings just as wacky. I am not thwarted by bad ideas!

The rest of the weekend was spent pleasantly. A lot of it was spent bitching about the weather. SF has made me so weak- give me a gust of chilly wind and I whine worse then a 5 year old denied a pony. Capitalized on indoor time by finishing off the last of my hex hemming for the Settlers of Catan game. Yes- I am now done sewing down the hexes! WOOT! One could now hypothetically play a game with all the titles...


Am far from done with the quilt though. Need to sew snaps onto the hexes, need to "quilt" more tiles, need to sew hexes onto the titles and then I need to address all the other problems that come with making one's own set-- player pieces, ports, numbers for the titles... Am not dishearten by it. At the very least the quilt basic (ocean tiles + the few hexes that can snap to it) has been actively serving as a vital piece to our whole bed set-up. Did you know that SF gets really fucking cold at night?

Thrashing and Agile crafting

Am totally thrashing on crafting now. I've got intense urges to draw (with reasonable results), perhaps in feverish anticipation of the Inkling I plan to buy the second they go on sale. I've also got a half-skinned Zergling plush to finish, a Frankenturret plush to rev, a Frankenturret model to do final touches on, a Settlers of Catan quilt to limp along with, and a Halloween costume to plan. ... So instead I've found myself playing Mass Effect the last couple nights to chill. And any time I do pick up a craft, all I can think of is the other things I should be working on (or worse yet the nigglings of new ideas).

Despite this, I have been making minor progress. The weekends have been clobbered recently with socializing (parents in town! friends hanging out!) which leaves me only the evenings to squeeze in an hour or two of something (given how often Adam and I eat out and how much time that takes up... who would have guessed hanging out with your S.O. would consume so much time!)

I dislike the concept of Agile software development as I've actually encountered it so far. I think the ideas are nice and reasonable enough, but the way it has evolved at work is very displeasing... But! Let that not sully the entire Agile idea. I feel my recent (ongoing & diverse) Portal 2 projects sort of embody some of the basic ideas... Recently I was under the impression I could make a cute Frankenturret plushie that met the following requirements :

low complexity

machine sewable

durable

no non-snuggable parts

cute

small-ish

These are all things I'm bad at and need practice with. Which means it shouldn't be surprising that the first results look like shit:

The scale is too small to be reasonably machine sewable... I've no experience with fleece (though I must say it is awesome!) and I've stared too long at frankenturret details to easily abbreviate it. So much failure... But the point is iteration! I can't just expect it to be perfect on the first go. I've got to rev my designs, put forward due diligence to get each rev as close to the "done" state as possible, but not obsessively dwell or grind to a halt if it doesn't turn out the way I like it. Try again! Am giving up on the machine sewable portion rule (at least for the head) but hope to hold onto my other goals. If anyone has any ideas, I'd be very open to them!! The 'less is more' design concept for 'cute' is a struggle I seem never to be able to win.

At least I have my stalwart Catan quilt to stand by. It lives on the empty stereo box now and is mainly Duck's perch in the den. I'm down to 5 tiles to edge and then it's playable!!


The darkening days has it's pros to counter the obvious cons. The season of coding approaches. I'm excited to be getting back to the Tichu project soon. Coding while the sun is up is ridiculous... but now it's well into dark by the time I get home... which means my time will have yet another contender. Along those lines, I was at work until 10-something tonight. Working on a KnockoutJS demo for our project as it shifts into the wondrous realm of JavaScript. Holy poop- Knockout is flipping awesome. Seriously! I've no doubt I'll be doing the Tichu client with it.

General bland update

Too many projects all plodding along at the same time, with nothing finishing... Also, distracted with work and life and travel. All good things.

In the good news, progress was made at last weekend's very pleasant craft day. Settlers of Catan quilt base is finished binding. Most the hex titles are done. Now for the tedious task for snap sewing... the results so far are very promising!


Played Starcraft 2 this last weekend. Placed into Gold league with Vince and Adam, which is pleasing. Instantly turned around and started making a zergling plush... having never finished the hydralisk one of course. Am taking good photo-documentation notes however, and making progress. Am about... halfway done? Am "skinning" it currently... will post pictures next week. Main take away from that project though: Dude! Coins make perfect weights!!

I was hoping to finish it in one weekend, but was distracted by Adam and his continuing quest to make our front room awesome. Previous weekends it was shuffling around furniture and rotating shelves. This weekend it was hooking up the record player and sound system.

Was also distracted by going to see the movie Drive. A touch too graphically violent for my tastes. Adam and I both agreed we couldn't quite tell... what the director was trying to say with the film. Why was it made? The first half was pretty great though. No complaints about anything (acting, dialog, cinematography, music)... just... why? Best thing from it though? The soundtrack! Purchased from Amazon for $8, which seems very reasonable. Suggested tracks : Nightcall, Tick of the Clock, Wrong Floor, and After the Chase.

In closing, sad, news... the garden experiment is coming to an end. Lessons have been learned. Notes have been taken. I haven't given up entirely- there's still the catnip and the plants in the front room, and a couple tomatoe plans outside. I hope to put out some snow peas, but that's probably it. Next year- no lettuce! More pruning! More climbing! Watering.... still confuses me. To wrap up the garden experiment, may I present the tiny rewards I have reaped...

The background processes

I would just like to publicly state that I am still working on the quilt. Yay persistance! Boo lack of new content. It's hard to spiral out and do fantastical new projects when I've got the constant grind of hand sewing holding me down. Which isn't a *bad* thing-- stable "creative" work. It just means I'm limited in some acceptable ways.


(you can see the backing fabric to the left, the black binding on the hex tiles, and the blue binding for the quilt)

Have 10 of 19 hexes sewn up, though none of snaps on them yet. I've just now finished tying each quilt top hex to it's stuffing/backing with some basic floss. This means I can at least throw it around like a retarded (pin free) blanket. Need to either machine quilt it or hand sew the binding to the back now... am... not clear on which one to do... will I ever machine quilt it? Can I do it after the binding? I continue to learn a number of things from this... Have I mentioned that the next time I will be THROWING MONEY AT THE PROBLEM and hiring someone else to quilt the damn thing? (making the top is fun! this part... not so much... there's a place in Fremont I randomly stumbled into which I might use...)

Also, the plants are still sort of growing. I'm realizing that I have not yet found the balance of when/how much to water them yet. Many of my dear sweet green babies have yellowing/sad/dead lower leaves/branches. I think that means I'm wantering them too much... but they get so wilty so fast! I can't help but give them more water! It makes me think of a small child who throws a temper tantrum to get candy, always gets what they want, and is slowly becoming obese. I need to be more strict!

That hasn't stopped some of them from thriving though! Cucumber progress!

Also a number of smaller jars/experiments are... continouing to not die. The middle jar here is carrots. Hee hee! (on the left young mint and on the right older parsley)


Am enjoying myself. Already have ideas of how to do it better next year...

Crafting is sooo like Coding...

More progress on the Settlers of Catan quilt. Have the "ocean" tiles all put together. The whole thing is a little larger then 5'x5'. I do believe there's enough space at each corner for people to sit and not obscure the tiles.

Cut the tiles out and laid them down. Am angry at myself for not planning ahead better- I totally over-purchased tile fabric. Next step is to get some double sided bias tape and afix the backing to each tile. So, yeah, that's probably going to take some time... (the thought of making my own bias tape was quickly discarded).

After/as the tiles are backed I need to find something lovely to be the back of the quilt. Also need to find bias tape for the edging of the quilt-- I may make my own for this segment. Also aquire batting. Then it's the painful pinning and sewing of quilt front and back together... Ick. And then there's the whole actual 'quilting' bit! Double ick! Only at the very end do I sew down the snaps... so, yeah. That's a while away.


Have several clever ideas for further embellishments on the quilt/game but am trying to focus on the "now" and not get distracted by the "later". Am already kicking around another quilt idea- not good.

The title of this post is not sarcasm. Planning out the quilt and planning out projects at work feels very similar. There's all this pre-planning that you *should* do... but you can easily be foolish enough not to do it and just dive in. There's the same potential for sloppiness in process. The end product is a nice idea but secretly all the real fun is at the beginning during the planning/hypothetical stages. Perhaps this idea could be applied to more things then just crafts and code, but for me that's where I see the strongest similarities. There's certainly nothing like that in sketching for me. Or writing, or talking to people, exercise/sports, or what minuscule cooking I've ever done. Working with crochet in fact lacks the strong similarities-- it's primarily when dealing with fabric. Measure twice, cut once. Write the damn tests before you write the code. Same thing.

You can see how unfortunately similar the "desert" (swiggle lines) is to the "fields" (squares in squares)... I'm still grumpy that my green fields fabric was so completely shot down by everyone...
Also, have I mentioned yet how utterly stupid 1/4' seam allowance is? Just so ya'll know...

Ambitious projects

Other people have already thought of and created excellent Settlers of Catan quilts. I've thought of making my own off and on for several years but am finally buckling down to do it. The key goals of my quilt however are:

A: make it large enough that you can sit on it and play on it at the same time

B: make it an actually nice quilt to snuggle with since it will no doubt see more use as a quilt then a game board

C: make the tiles shuffle-able! I haven't seen any quilts that do this yet and the random-ness of the game is such an important part!

I'm excited about the colors I picked-- bright colors aren't normally my thing...

From top to bottom on the left it goes desert, forest, pasture (sheep), field (wheat), mountain (ore), and hills (brick). I've received negative feedback about my choice of field fabric-- people claim it should be more yellow. I'm taking it under consideration... it'll be quite a while till I have to settle on that.

Also picked up one of those rolly cutters for the first time- makes a *huge* difference with ease of cutting!! Washed and cut all the water pieces and started piecing them together.

My sewing skills are rather "rusty" if you're being nice- "shitty" if you're being honest. Pieced together the top half of the quilt and laid out the colors for the other half...


It's... simple work. Doesn't require constant thought or continuous creativity. Great for working on when watching TV...

So, yeah... I'm over here, worken' on that.