As 2021 came to a close, I downloaded a year-end compass and filled it out, looking at what I spent my time on over the past year, what I had hoped to accomplish, and what I had actually ended up accomplishing. As I got to the end of it, when I started setting my goals for this year, I realized that a lot of my goals are the same from the previous year. So I didn’t actually end up accomplishing what I had hoped to. Which made me wonder what I did all last year.

Looking back though, I actually did a lot. I started taking guitar lessons, I sewed some new pajamas, I did a bunch of drawing tutorials, I knitted myself a sweater, I hung out with friends, I spent a lot of time with Nick, I learned a lot more about 3D rendering and modeling, I started painting more Last Night on Earth figures, I played a lot of video games…

But going through my actual goals, I didn’t hit a single one. Which was kind of surprising. I’ve been working from home, so I have about an hour and a half extra each day that I’m saving on commuting. And I know I’ve let that time slide a bit, and I’ve done things like work on crossword puzzles, surf the internet, and sleep in, rather than anything related to what I was working on for the year. But I didn’t do that constantly, so I should have gotten more done.

Ordinarily, I would be disappointed in myself, pledge to do better, and then start out strong for the new year. Eventually, I would run out of steam or just not really feel like working on what I had planned to work on. And the cycle would continue. But this time I decided to look at what might be going on, and how can I fix it for this new year.

When I was younger, my goals were really simple: I would learn to draw better, learn to sew better, and knit more. But anyone who’s ever done goal training knows that vague goals like that are not ok. You need to have measurable goals. So rather than learning to draw better, my goal turned into create one drawing that I was proud enough of to put in an art show. Sewing better became create three pieces of clothing that fit me properly (not including pajamas, since I’ve made those patterns multiple times now, so they don’t count!). And knit more became create one sweater that fits me properly.

Looking at this past year, I don’t have one piece of art that I would consider putting into an art show. I have a lot of art that I created, but it was all tutorials, which aren’t original, so shouldn’t be in a show. I sewed two pairs of pajamas, and they fit better than any set I’ve ever sewn before, but I have been struggling to alter my t-shirt pattern to fit me properly, so I have no new clothes that I’ve created. And I did knit a sweater, but I did something wrong, and it has a really strange neckline and doesn’t fit properly. And after finishing it, I was a bit discouraged and didn’t want to start over again.

But I don’t look back at any of those projects and feel like I’ve wasted my time. I either learned a lot or enjoyed my time watching TV shows and working on making something, even if it isn’t something that I’ll ever show anyone or end up using. So maybe my problem is the actual goal? If I compare what I did last year to my younger-goal-setting-self, I hit every one. I have learned to draw better, sew better, and knit more.

So this year, I decided to go against all goal setting wisdom, and just have no goals for the year! I guess what I’ve decided to do is maybe more of a resolution? But my plan is to just enjoy my time and live more in the moment. If I decide I want to sew, then I’m going to sew. If I decide to just watch TV or surf the internet, and that’s what I will be happy doing, then that’s what I’m going to do. At the end of the year, I won’t have a measurable goal to have succeeded for failed at, but hopefully I will have a lot of experiences that I have enjoyed.

And we’ll see. Maybe next year, this year will have seemed like complete chaos, and I’ll have jumped around and started a bunch of projects that have never gotten finished. Or maybe it will be so freeing, that I’ll do the same thing again. We’ll find out!

About two years ago I started relearning how to 3D model. It was a very difficult task! I haven’t touched 3D since when I was in college years ago. And back then I used 3D Studio Max, which, while I still see mentioned on occasion, it does not appear to be used much in the industry anymore.

Because of that fact, I needed to figure out what program I should use. Not only did I want to learn 3D for mocking up games at work, I also wanted to use it for creating things that I could 3D print in my personal life. I ended up deciding to go with Blender. I chose it because it’s an open source program, and it’s free. The free part was probably the larger deciding factor. There was definitely a fear that I might not be any good at 3D modeling or even enjoy it. If that turned out to be the case, I only wasted a download and some of my time. Luckily, I enjoy it, and while I’m not a master, I’m getting better.

The hardest part about learning Blender for me was the tutorials. Everyone uses shortcuts. Which is great! I love shortcuts, and I use them often in my design work. But from a learning perspective, it’s really hard to remember all those shortcuts at once. And there are different ways to get to those shortcuts as well. So one tutorial might tell you to do a shortcut one way, while another one uses a different shortcut. Which is really confusing!

Then there’s the fact that I’m using a Mac with a Magic Mouse. I have to emulate a 3-button mouse, and that limits the shortcuts available to me. While people using a standard mouse can right-click and scroll wheel to get all these options, I can’t. (I know. This is my own problem. I could just get a new mouse. I might some day. But for now, I am familiar with how to do what I’m trying to do, and I’m not ready to throw that all out the window and relearn how to do things, since it changes navigation.)

To make things even more difficult, while I was just starting to understand how things were working, Blender went through a major redesign. Granted, I didn’t have to download the newest version, but I saw a lot of comments online about how it made it more user-friendly. So I thought it would be in my best interest to check it out. It turns out that for me, it did help a lot. And it also added more confusion, when I would open up older files I had made that looked good, and they now looked horrible. Why?!

Unfortunately, the redesign also made tutorials more difficult to understand. So while there are a lot of tutorials out there, a lot of them are not up to date and using the newest version of Blender. (I get it. I have never made a tutorial, but I imagine they take a really long time to make.) I think it was probably fine for older versions of Blender, but it was harder for me as a newbie to follow along when I had to look in a different place for everything. Now that I know Blender a little bit better, I can watch those older tutorials, and I usually know where to find what they are showing me. But when you’re first starting out, it can be hard to follow along.

On the good side, all of my searching online and trying different tutorials and getting confused caused me to find some great tutorials that really clicked for me and helped me understand things better! For anyone out there who is trying to learn Blender, I highly recommend CG Cookie (They are not paying me for this and have no idea I’m even recommending them). They have a lot of tutorials that are really informative and go over things in great detail. Plus, the basics tell you where to find something in the menus AND how to also use the shortcuts. This was a game changer for me. I now know that if someone uses a shortcut, I can likely find it somewhere else in the program, if I can’t right-click for it.

In addition to modeling, I have also decided to try to learn sculpting. I have some ideas for sculpts in my head that I’m excited to get into the computer and maybe even eventually 3D print. It will probably be awhile before I do that though. The tools don’t seem to always work the way that I expect them to, and since Blender has so many shortcuts, I sometimes accidentally hit a key, mess something up, have no idea what I did, and have no idea how to fix it. But that happened a lot in the beginning when I was learning modeling, so I’m sure I’ll eventually figure some of that out.

I have made a few things in Blender that I’ve 3D printed, but I’m finding that I am not able to be as precise as I want to be/need to be. I have measured things out and recreated them, and found that they don’t all fit together, so I have to resize them. Which is fine for a 3D render that will never be put into the physical world. But it’s not so great for items that I want to make and actually use. So I think I’m going to have to learn a CAD program for that stuff. But that’s a whole new world that seems more similar to working in a Microsoft program rather than an Adobe program. So I’m struggling a bit more with it.

Overall though, I’m really pleased with how much I’ve grown in my 3D modeling. I’m looking forward to learning even more and hopefully eventually being able to show you some real-world items!

As you may already know, I like to play board games. When Nick and I first got into the hobby, one of the games we purchased was Last Night on Earth, which is a zombie apocalypse game that has miniatures. Shortly after seeing other people painting their miniatures, I decided I was going to paint ours. Sadly, we’ve had the game for years now, and I hadn’t even primed any of them!

So last year, I decided to give myself a little push by priming all of the heroes in the game. I did it in the fall, knowing that in winter, I would probably get the bug to paint, but was not going to go out in the garage in the cold and prime everything. Plus, priming works best in non-sub-zero temperatures!

And now I have some painted miniatures to show you! So far, I only have four done. It’s been a slower process than what I thought it would be. But they are so small, that whenever I get an area looking how I want, I end up hitting the brush somewhere and having to touch things up. (After taking photos, I saw that one of them has a spot of blue in their hair that needs fixing!) But I’m getting better at it! And I purchased some magnifying glasses, which is helping, and added bonus, I look super cool wearing them (that’s sarcasm, in case it didn’t read).

Before starting, I watched a lot of videos and read painting guides. Plus, one of my co-workers, Andrew Chesney, is a really good painter, so I’ve gotten some tips from him. It’s crazy to watch him work. He can complete a couple of minis in a night, and they look awesome! I take way more time than that! But I also haven’t been doing this for years. I did try to paint one of my brother’s minis back in high school. It didn’t really work well. I didn’t understand shading or even how to paint and make something look 3D. So the mini ended up looking really flat and kind of cartoonish. Good to see that these are much better, and I’m making progress!

I started with the heroes because they will be the easier ones to paint. For me, it’s really confusing when you play a game, if the mini doesn’t look anything like the character’s photo on your character card. So I am painting the minis to match what I can see of the character’s hair color, skin color, and outfits. But for the zombies, I can do whatever I want. So I thought it would be better to get these started and make them match something, and then for the zombies, go crazy!

One thing I do wish I would have known before I primed my minis was that the minis should be cleaned up a bit. Especially with game minis like these that are more cheaply made and tend to have mold parts and other pieces that weren’t meant to be a part of the mini but ended up not being removed in manufacturing. One of the female minis looks like she’s wearing a necklace, which she could be, but I don’t see a necklace in any of the photos. So it could be a mistake. But since I had already primed it, I just went with it, and she’s now wearing a necklace.

Another difficult thing with minis that are more cheaply made is that they don’t have a lot of detail. So the dry brushing technique tends to not work the same way it would with really detailed minis. I think the faces have been the hardest part for me. I have had to redo the eyes so many times because I feel like they should be more detailed, but the eyes are so small, that just getting them to look like eyes and not make the characters look cross eyed has been hard!

I’ll post more as I get them done, but for now, this is what I have. Enjoy!

Last year, I bought some new fabric to make myself a classy pencil skirt. I don’t know that I’ve ever owned a pencil skirt, so I was excited to add one to my collection. Since I planned on wearing it in colder weather, I also decided to line it, which proved to be pretty difficult!

I got the fabric from S.R. Harris, and I love it! It’s recycled, so it’s a little different from anything I’ve worked with before, but it’s nice because it’s hefty and looks classy.

I didn’t have a regular pattern for this skirt. I used the book Flirt Skirts to draft one by measuring out the pattern in the back of the book and recreating it on a large sheet of paper. The original size that I drafted wasn’t fitting right, so I put it on inside out and did some alterations. In my altering, I tapered the skirt in a little more near the hem, since the shape looked more pleasing. I didn’t realize until wearing the skirt to work one day, that my tapering was too much, and I now have to unzip the skirt to use the bathroom, since I can’t bring it up over my hips! Oops!

As I mentioned above, the lining was difficult for me. I’ve never lined anything before, and the book didn’t have instructions for it. So I searched the internet, watched some YouTube videos, and got started creating the lining. I’m not exactly sure what I did wrong, but the lining is much smaller than the skirt. So it’s a little tight in some areas that would not be tight if it were just the skirt. I also had a hard time making the waistband of the skirt because the lining was so slippery. I put the skirt on and folded the waistband, since that seemed to be the easiest way for me to figure out how to get it to work. But that caused its own problems, and now the zipper is not lined up correctly. But on the good side, the skirt feels pretty hefty, and the lining is nice.

If I were to make this skirt again, I would also have added a kickpleat. Not having one makes it difficult to get in and out of the car. And I’m a tall person and take large steps, and without a kickpleat, I feel like I’m being restricted to walking slowly, which I don’t love.

So, overall, I’m pleased with the skirt. As long as I wear a longer shirt to cover up the zipper, it looks nice and is a great new piece for my wardrobe!