New garden urn

I bought a fibreglass garden urn.

It was an "orphan", the last one in stock, so it was reduced in price. I gave in to the impulse to buy it.

I am doing a typical Impatient Beginner thing, and experimenting with hydroponics. So far I only have one tomato, one lettuce, and a pot of flat-leaf parsley growing hydroponically, but if they work out who knows how far it will go? I thought the fancy urn would be a good show-off container for the tomato plant. When I got it home I made the sad discovery that the container the tomato is in will not fit inside the urn, and I don't want to disturb the plant by repotting.

So I have a choice - I can either make another hydroponic pot system that will fit inside the urn, or I can fill it with potting mix and grow a marguerite daisy or something. I think I will paint it before I decide.

Now that I have one urn, I want another... But they cost quite a few dollars, so it might be worthwhile to try making one. If I used a plastic bucket as a base, and carved decorative ribs and medallions out of styrofoam, and built everything up with premix concrete and hessian strips, I think I could make one. A BIGGER one, of course.

But I am not going to. Or not just now, anyway. I have enough projects on the go as it is, so a handbuilt urn is not going to happen this summer.

Sewn magazine

I subscribed to a new online magazine called Sewn, edited by Lisette Carrithers. The first issue came out a few days ago.

The mag includes a feature called "Essentials" for how-tos and shortcuts (probably spot-on for us Impatient Beginners). The way it was described was "we will be giving you tools to make that vision in your head a reality". (Wonder if they have one for wire jewellery?)

I am a sewing chicken, really. Even working with second hand fabric I am nervous of experimenting too adventurously. I have a few ideas I would like to try, though! So here's hoping that Sewn will give me the confidence to go ahead.

The "Stash" feature in the magazine also sounds great. It is intended to be an online fabric mall. Quote - "We worked with some of the online fabric retailers to pick out fabrics that work with the Fall 07/Winter 08 color report. Each of these links takes you right to the retailer that sells that fabric. The beauty of this is that you can coordinate across retailers so that you can have your one of a kind wardrobe without all the bolt diving and swatching."
The fabrics look wonderful, and I would enjoy shopping this way but the cost of shipping to Australia is terrifying so I will have to try to find a similar service here.

Here is the url for Sewn:
http://www.sewnmagazine.com/

Starting new chain

I have started work on some new chain. It is intended to be a neckpiece (more a collar than a necklace) made of crescent-shaped links. It may be similar in appearance to chain maille but the large links will not be closed rings, so I hope it will look airier and be lighter to wear.

There are still some design details to work out. The size of link I am trialling is a bit small for my clumsy fingers to connect, especially in the top row. But that is a part of the design process that I really enjoy - finding a way to take an idea and turn it into a real, wearable item.
- 21 November 2007

Editing family photo album with GIMP

One project that I am working on is a family album. On my visit to Canada recently I took the opportunity to re-photograph prints in the albums of several family members. The quality would have been so much better if I had been able to scan them, but snapping them with my 3 megapixel camera is all I was able to do in the time. Now back at home, I am working on putting together a collection that will be put on CDs so everyone will be able to have a copy of the "core collection".

A good number of the photographs were taken in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Some are faded, torn, or creased - but at least they aren't missing. My photoediting skills are minimal but I am patching tears and creases, removing spots, and improving contrast and sharpness a bit.

I am using the GIMP as my photoediting software. It's free, open source and will do the job. Being an Impatient Beginner, of course I have not read the full GIMP manual. Only what is directly relevant to what I am doing sticks in my mind, so there is no point in my trying to learn a complete technique in one go. I need small tutorials, sort of sound bite tutorials, that I can grab and run with. There are some good GIMP tutorials on the internet but finding them can be time consuming.

I have the intention of writing a few 'sound bite' GIMP tutorials myself. These would be very basic, matching my skill level, and I would write them as part of my learning process rather than from the POV of a GIMP wizard. I intend to put them on this blog along with links to other tutorials that I find useful.

But the weather is good and the garden is calling me, so maybe tomorrow.

The First Post

I B Impatient Beginner.

Impatient Beginner wants to do cool stuff right away, right now, immediately, without wasting time learning how to do it. Things probably take longer that way, but IB explores lots of territory that otherwise might not get visited.

The major directions that IB is galloping off in as at November 2007 are jewellery making (wirework and polymer clay), photography and photo editing using GIMP, gardening (or more accurately, trying to tame the jungle currently occupying the space where the garden should be), basic sewing (interested in renovating old garments) ... not to mention blogging.

Impatient Beginner's blog will be the record of my adventures learning some of the above skills. As I learn how to organise posts according to subject or whim, the look of the blog may change. Probably unpredictably. But I hope that the basic areas of interest will persist and reveal some progress.

So Hello World. Greetings from IB, and welcome to IB's blog.

Now I buzz off for a while and do stuff so I will have something to write about later.