Music, Rumors And Wedding Album Design, Oh My!
A quick glimpse around the main floor of the house (because it again has heat. yay!) will show you what is filling my hours and keeping my hands busy this week. This piano has been with me since my childhood. It hasn’t received much love over the past decade. But this week, it is getting some attention. My last few visits to Minnesota had friends filling the evening hours with lovely music and talented hands. Watching the keys be moved and listening to their music made my heart ache and realize how much I have missed making music. I am changing that this week. My fingers are clumsy. My eyes are slow in sending messages through my brain to my hands in how these notes should be played. But it feels good to sit here and see a bit of muscle memory restore. Slowly.
I am half way through knitting this scarf for my boy child. I love how soft it is with alpaca fibers spun into this yarn.
Our laundry room flooded last week when the pipes to our washer burst in eight different places. There was no way to shut off water for this to stop the flooding, except to turn off water to the whole house. It was an interesting couple of days with no water. I fetched water from the pool to flush toilets. And we took showers at our neighbor Jeanne’s home. I love her to pieces. She is a fantastically wonderful and thoughtful soul. However, it was a bit awkward when my honeys was coming out of her house with wet hair and a duffel bag and towel in hand while walking towards our house as the UPS guy walked up to her house house to deliver a package. This may be the start of some interesting rumors. Don’t believe everything you hear, people.
Did you notice the daylight behind those pipes coming in through the siding? Even though it has warmed up considerably outside and all of our snow from last week melted, it was a balmy fifty degrees in my laundry room. I had to do something about it and spent an hour cutting insulation and stuffing it into these cracks and crevices. I don’t think the temperature in the laundry room had anything to do with the washer breaking and flooding the laundry room again. Just one day after the pipes were fixed. February? I think you’re acting too much like January and you need to stop this behavior!
This wedding album is coming to a close and will be getting sent off soon for printing and assembly. I’m so excited! I love seeing photographs in print and being able to hold a wedding album. LOVE. I also love getting to hand these albums over in person and watching my couples’ reactions as each page is turned. It’s a good feeling. One that sends to me to sleep at night with a silly grin for nights on end. Sometimes weeks.
And then this album is moving into the beginning of revisions. I think I end up spending just as many dozens of hours designing and revising albums as I do initially choosing and editing hundreds of images from my couples’ wedding days. I have design templates for album spreads that I could use. But something about that feels a little distanced and removed to me. Sure, it could save me some time. But I love designing albums. Personally and uniquely for each couple. I love that I can customize each spread and my wedding albums can tell stories. That it’s not just one photograph per page. And I love working with my couples and hearing back from them about what they like or want changed on various spreads. Collaborations make my heart sing in a way that I never experienced in the corporate world. Hearing different ideas and suggestions is energizing and inspiring to me because it helps me know that each album is perfectly tailored for each couple and will be cherished for decades to come.
I’m working from underneath this afghan today. It makes me happy. I crocheted it in the fall and I love the rainbow of colors. I love how thick it is because I used a big crochet hook to combine two strands of yarn together in each stitch. This is the first afghan I ever made for myself. Most things handmade, I don’t keep. I give away to my friends and family. Or I sell. This felt a little selfish and luxurious to keep, but it makes me so happy every night when I cover my legs. I want to make another. I like to keep my hands busy. That makes me happy, too.
