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What creative projects have you been working on?
This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.
Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.
If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.
I am crocheting a blanket for a friend! Perfect stay in weather this weekend lol. But I started this I think early last year and I didn't get very far. Mostly because I had a break up and packed my craft stuff away for moving. But I've finally busted it out again and I'm so stoked! I desperately want to show my friend but I've been deeply resisting. I'm pretty sure I have enough yarn to get to the length I want but we'll see.
I'm using two strands at once, one of Malabrigo Mecha in Azul Fresco and one of Knit Picks Swish in Electric Blue. Both are 100% superwash merino wool. I fucking HATE using acrylic or other plastic yarns (partly a texture thing, partly a fist shake at all the plastic already out there). It just bothers me so much. But I wanted to use a natural fiber that was a little easier for the average person to care for, hence the superwash.
I'm still debating what to do for the border it's supposed to be water inspired so I might do a very light blue in two rows, one as the initial stitches and one as an initial row for a scalloped edge, and then do two rows of white to complete the scalloped edge.
But that's still down the way as I'm only at 13.5" of length and I want at absolute minimum 60".
There is a risograph studio near where I live that periodically offers workshops in which they teach you to use the risograph and you get to go home with some prints. I finally got a slot in one of these workshops so now I need to figure out what I want to try printing. I have some basic ideas but need to learn some basics of something like photoshop to actualize them.
I had to look up what a risograph was. Pretty cool! As for what to print, shouldn't it be this?
Still working on my novel! The Mount Rushmore Superhero Camp is at around 35000 words, and I think I'm at about the half-way point. Really enjoy writing it too - I see this book as sort of a creative vacation, as a lighthearted urban superhero YA story for teens is really not what I usually write (noir, hard sci fi, thrillers). I'm having a lot of fun though!
I've been painting abstract art! I've never properly tried it before until now. It has been fun to just go with the flow.
I'm also in the middle of painting a small bird.
I'm also still working on my Elephant sculpt. Although I mutilated it recently and cut it in half because I wanted to put a wire frame in it. So it's a little hard to get back to it because I've lost progress.
I've been plugging away at a word game that I made primary for my wife and daughter. It's here: https://www.gorillasuit.io
Who would have thought that scoring could be so convoluted! I have been through about a dozen different scoring schemes. Friends/family seem mostly happy with the current scheme, though it's not explained particularly well in the context of the game.
It irritates me that The NY Times made Wordle, etc. require a games subscription. I know there are free variants available, as well as a boatload of other free word games online, but this was one of the major motivating points to start thinking about a site with some free web games. I also thought it would be fun to try to figure out a way to make it all work where it could be (mostly) anonymous but still have leaderboards. That makes it more prone to cheating, I think, but I've tried to put some score/word verification on the backend to mitigate it.
It's a fun side project for learning/hacking and it's rewarding to see my wife and daughter play. :)
I think Wordle and all the other mini games are still free - my wife and daughter both do them and don't have an account. You need an account to do the crossword and to get Wordle bot scores.
I signed up for NYT for $1/week during a promo, and every time it is going to end, I go cancel and they offer me the promotional rate again. It's worth $1/week to have the crosswords and the wordle bot.
Wordle bot digression
The wordle bot is really what makes Wordle fun for me because I can see how optimal my picks were and improve my play. Otherwise, it just boils down to statistics and I can't tell if it took 5 tries because I was unlucky or because I picked ineffective words.
I guess I miss a non-ad-driven free internet. It’s a panacea, I suppose, but here we are. At the time I started making the site/game, my wife, daughter, and I couldn’t all play The NY Times games through the subscription we had because they only supported a single player profile. That’s what prompted me to try to make this in a way that multiple people could easily play on the same device.
I do like the Wordle bot! My family have suggested I try something similar, which I might do when I get time. :)
Second reply to say, I tried it, it is neat. The UX is very good, especially considering the complexity / non-standardness of it. Very creative!
Thanks for the comment and feedback! :)
I have been editing a lot of pictures this past week that I took on a trip over Christmas break. I have switched my editing software to Darktable, so editing these sets of pictures has been a good way to learn Darktable. As I have learned more of the software, I probably need to do a second pass on the earlier pictures. It is a mixture of family pictures, wildlife pictures, and a few artistic shots. I am considering finding a good place to share my wildlife and artistic pictures online, so if anyone has recommendations for online photography platforms I would be interested in knowing about them.