Writings

February 2026

Another update post with what I’ve been doing in the past month of my year of creativity. Mainly, I want to do more writing and art than I did last year. Not working towards anything specific, but seeing where it takes me after years of setting art aside.

This month:

Cat content

Writing

One sunny day, I had a little impromptu photoshoot. (My cat is the real model.) Someone said it looks like an author photo, which is funny because I haven’t done any writing on my novel this month, but at least I can look the part.

I do have a few new drafts in my blogs folder. Some are even almost complete, but it never feels like the right time to just jump in and post something. What am I even doing here? The writing still feels mainly for myself.

Painting

Last month, I did some sketching and drawing. This month, I wanted to bring in some color. I got out the acrylics and did a few small studies from my camera roll, on black-primed canvas. These were fun. Got distracted by knitting.

Painting of stylized northern lights above a house Painting of clouds before sunrise Painting of autumn trees with fog and streetlamp Painting of a lightning bolt in black clouds

Knitting

Finished spinning and started knitting a sweater with the result. The pattern had a contrasting collar that transitions into the main sweater through stranded colour-work, but the collar looked too heavy for me in this variegated yarn, so I redid it.

Handspun multi-color yarn Knit swatch of the handspun yarn Knit round collar and yoke of a sweater White sweater with round yoke colorwork

It turned out, but not sure how much I’ll wear it. I bought the coloured fibre over 10 years ago, so just frugally going through old supplies. Now I have cleared space for new ones!

Started sketching design ideas for three new projects. Unfortunately, I seem to be developing a knitting-related repetitive strain injury in my left shoulder, so I’m taking a break for now.

Observations

While knitting, I often listen to podcasts, watch YouTube. (Couldn’t decide on an audiobook.) After going through my subscriptions, I branched out a bit. While searching, I began to feel fatigued by titles that seemed to be appealing to a sense of moral superiority; too much seemed rage-bait adjacent, like it would be draining to engage with. So I stopped consuming content while knitting for a while.

People say knitting is meditative, and if you are doing a very repetitive section, maybe. My problem is that thoughts can arise that I tend to ruminate on. These thoughts are also draining: regrets and slights from the past, nothing to be done now. Once I realized that, and made the association with meditation, I could let the thought go and refocus on the stitches. Soon, different thoughts popped in my head and I had a bunch of new ideas. I guess it worked.

Designing

I tweaked my portfolio a bit and applied for another batch of jobs. Had a few conversations. Waiting.

Started coding a mockup of an “app” version of my expense tracking (and sharing) spreadsheet. So many details to work out yet. Maybe I’ll add functionality later, but the spreadsheet works. (Fake numbers.)

Of course it’s responsive

Next

What will I do this month? I put off writing and paused on learning more 3D. Maybe I can pick those back up. I also have an idea for a larger painting, hovering around what ideas I might want to express through art. Eventually. I want to try getting more abstract yet and finding my style.