Creative Check-in

Happy Holidays!

I feel the need for another creative check-in. I continue to struggle during the school term to make consistent time to be creative. However, over the winter break, I seem to have made up for lost time. As an aside, I also notice how much more content I feel with life when I do take time for creative pursuits.

So, on with the update:

Blogging: I haven’t been posting much of late, as this blog evidences. However, I’ve been accruing a long list of blog topics, which is a good start. More importantly to me, I have taken on Movable Type’s CSS code and managed to redesign both of my blogs. I genuinely enjoyed the challenge of discovering how to manipulate the code to get the look I wanted, and my blogs feel like they are really mine once again. I’m excited to start writing again.

Book Reviews: After taking a hiatus from reviewing for the Sacramento and San Francisco Book Reviews, I have a lovely stack of nine new volumes on my desk, some of which appear on my bookshelf widget. I’ve also signed up to review for the new Portland Book Review when it gets up and running.

Knitting: I am proud to say that my yellow Warm Bundle baby afghan for Project Linus is off to a solid start. Having mastered some new stitches and gotten a feel for the pattern, I think I should be able to make steady progress now.

Photography: For the past few years, my steady sidekick has been my Canon PowerShot S1 IS.  Lately, however, the lens has been sticking just long enough for me to miss my opportunity to shot pictures. My anniversary, birthday and Christmas all fall within several weeks of each other. This year, my husband decided to splurge and surprise me with a new Nikon D5000 D-SLR with AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-55mm and Zoom-NIKKOR 55-200mm lens. During this winter break, I’ve been spending a fair amount of time reading about digital photography and testing out my new toy. And someday, if I can master its dozens of features, you may once again see my photography here!

Children’s Book: No, I haven’t actually started writing the book yet. I have a list of good ideas and a small stack of writing manuals as guides, but that is as far as I’ve gotten. However, I’m including it on my list because I’ve decided to make getting a draft done a real priority, rather than something I’d like to do someday.