Today I went to Joann Fabric (RIP queen) and bought, like, $160 worth of stuff for $30. Which is insane, obviously (I was actually hanging out with friends at Rochester and we were like "I could use some incredibly discounted fabric" and just kinda... went there LMAO). They had these sketchbooks there and I grabbed, like, two of them. I have this idea in my head that if I buy two of the same sketchbook, I'll be less scared to fill one up. This is, aparently, an issue I now know that I share with at least two other people. I guess I have to fill up a sketchbook now, then. I haven't done it in a while, I'm pretty excited!

Anyways, what I've been up to...

I finished up with school. I'm taking a little "break" next semester (by "break" I mean I'm taking exactly one credit -- I can't get away from school LMAO). But now I'm at a weird point where I really don't know what I'm going to do in the spring next year. I could enroll for Big School, but I don't really have any money... I'll figure it out by then. I've got lots of time.

I also made another hat. I don't remember if I talked about my previous hat. Unfortunately, I won't be talking about my previous hat because I moved and idk where it is. Anyways, here's the new hat:

Anyways, I think I used to suffer from a different, similar issue with yarn that I do with sketchbooks. I used to, and kind of still do, avoid using my "good yarn" on any of my more experimental projects. With this one, though, I bought a really nice-looking yarn (it was not nice to work with. It was torturous) and just went crazy. Hats are my kind of "safe" projects, though -- they usually don't take a ton of material, they're hard to screw up, and whether or not you do good or bad, by whatever metric you measure the goodness of a work by, people tend to notice if you're wearing a clearly handmade hat, and they will tell you it looks good almost no matter what. But, like, I can't just keep making hats forever, right? I could make a billion hats, but I won't ever get less anxious about using up my best yarn if I keep using it to make something I'm already really good at making.

In the end, whether or not you fill up that sketchbook or use up that good yarn doesn't actually matter that much. Like, I guess with yarn, it can kind of matter. I always do that thing where I finally decide to use something, realize I don't have enough, and you always kind of run the risk of winding up with some yarn from a different dye lot and all your shit's just slightly mismatched, not enough for any old person to notice, but just enough to bother you, specifically, but I've accepted since this is how I operate as a person, this is how things will be. Art as a thing you do is far more interesting to me than art as a product of an action. I want to make beautiful things, beautiful by my standards, but, like, sometimes it's just nice to say "I need a sun hat" and sit down and make one, and then go out and wear it on a hot, sunny day, even though you can see every little flaw you lovingly put into it with your own hands. And sometimes you want to learn to draw a horse, so you draw them really badly in your nice sketchbook until they don't look as bad anymore, not as much as evidence of your imperfection, but evidence of your effort and your growth.

Anyways, I'll probably start actually posting a bit more art, if I remember to. My cat's trying to eat my yarn, so I've got to wrap this up. Thanks for reading, and I love you!!