What are you doing for New Year's Eve?

More on personal growth: My sister Shula has created a really great and free workbook to help you review 2013, and she's made it available via her blog. Here is a link to the post:

Beautiful Endings and Beginnings

{Bonus: I created the cover artwork :)}

I love free things; don't you?

It's the end of the year again- that arbitrarily determined time when we all get an urge to review what happened in the last twelve months, and mostly vow that it will never happen again (or, that it will happen better). I steer clear of resolutions- mainly because I don't want anyone or anything trying to tell me what not to do!- and I don't really believe in the power of positive thinking (although I have been known to read a self-help book or three). I do, however, believe very strongly in the power of evaluation and planning, and I am a list lover, so! I do sit down too, and review the year that's been.

Few things are as powerful as hope. When I look back on my life, hope is often what gets me moving again when I have stalled. Hope is what I sit down with when I think about the year that's coming, and hope is what drives me to dream and make plans. That's the gift of a new year for me; I know there's nothing particularly magical about the change of date that a new year brings, but somehow New Year's Eve is a time to think about the passing of a season, and the beginning of a new one.

2013's been a really complicated year for me. I battled with plans falling apart, health issues, and a huge amount of worry. I lost many people, and people close to me lost many people. I went to the cemetery more times this year than I have in the previous ten years. Pain is never something one naturally considers a gift, but I know this year changed me in profound ways, and that certainly is a gift; as the Bible says,

Not only this, but we also rejoice in sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance,
and endurance, character, and character, hope. (Rom 5:3-4 NET)

No one asks for trials, and I'm pretty sure I need to ask God why He chooses to use them to shape our lives (-is it because they're going to happen anyway, so Grace makes them a gift, or did God do it on purpose?); but you know, as I consider this year, there is much to be thankful for, even in the pain.

I have heard it said before that one should think about one's eulogy, and I have found it morbid and unsettling, but this year I had a lot of opportunities to practise. One death in particular got me thinking a great deal about life, mission and purpose. Over and over again at the services before this dear person's funeral, and again in the eulogy, what came out was his devotion to God, his love for God, and how he used his gift to worship. Even though this man made mistakes- public mistakes, that everyone could whisper about- in the end, this was what mattered. It spoke to me powerfully, and I wondered what people would say in my own eulogy. When all is said and done, what was I about?

The point was brought home to me again when I was invited to attend a personal transformation workshop for artists by my friend Archie. As I said earlier, I am not one for positive thinking, but I came away from that workshop changed, and again the theme of mission came through. I really don't want to drift through another year, or continue doing things because I am "too scared to stop, and yet too tired to continue" (from the STOP workshop). I know that part of the reason for me thinking so much about purpose is my age; lately, I have thought much more about the time given to us, and how we use the time, and also about how quickly time passes.

So, as the year ends, I have sat down and scribbled thoughts about the year that was, and hopes for the year to come. I hope you get some time to do so too. As usual, if you don't have a clue where to start, I highly recommend Susannah Conway's workbook. My sister should be (maybe I should say could be) posting a workbook on her blog too, soon. And if that's really not your style, at least, friends, take a little time to think about why you're here, where you want to be, and how you're going to get there. It matters, because you matter.

Happy new year!

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Archie invited me to a personal transformation workshop for artists by Zwelibanzi Ndlovu, a personal transformation coach. I went without a clue about what to expect, and I had never heard of Zwelibanzi. My sister (@ooegooey on twitter, and she has amazing blogs here and here) came with me.

I was so glad I went! As I say in my next post, I have been thinking a lot about mission and purpose this year, and this was the perfect thing to tie everything together as I think about next year. Zwelibanzi spoke powerfully about how to think about your vision, mission and values (VMV), and how to strategically think about your life using STOP analysis (see his website here): Source, Target, Obstacles, and Plans. I have seen a lot online about vision/ visualising and so on, and it's so easy to write it off as just more psychobabble, but it's true that people who think about where they are going are more likely to get there. I'm also convinced that knowing and being able to outline one's mission and purpose are crucial to a life well lived. This workshop gave me practical steps to use as I work through the transition period I am in, and I am so excited to see the results in my own life.

Zwelibanzi is on Facebook here. I will definitely be referencing what I learnt in future posts.

Fun times. Then I had to decide on a fancy pattern, and I quite liked the puff stitch I saw when I was doing research. I inherited two crochet dictionaries- invaluable things!!- and have been practicing stitches from there. There is a stitch called pineapple stitch in there which looks enough like the puff stitch mentioned in one of the links above that I think it may be the same thing. So that's the stitch I decided to go with.


The only tricky bit was deciding how to start new rows, but I decided to do 2 ch. and that worked out fine. Here's my progress with the pineapple stitch. The only thing I would do differently is to be more careful with my stitches, as some of them were quite loose, and it shows.


So after ages and ages of struggling with double knit wool and a 3mm hook, I joined the top with slip stitches, bringing things together in a star pattern. I found that pretty easy, and the result is not bad at all. So this is the final product, which this nice old man was willing to model for me:



It was a lot of fun, and took only an afternoon to do, with a decent result. It's the reason I prefer crochet to knitting :)

Now playing. Very nice :)

It's about time I wrote a post about this invaluable resource, since I depend on it so much. I've been using If This Then That (IFTTT) for a year or two (don't remember exactly). I probably first heard about it on Lifehacker, but only see it mentioned occasionally around the interwebs, and only by geeky types. It's dead simple to use, and will change your online life.

What IFTTT does is to create triggers so that when you do one thing online, something else happens. For example, when I post a picture on Instagram, it is automagically shared to my blog in a new blog post. There are many other things you can do, like say you can be notified when a book becomes free on Amazon, or (one of my favorites) get a specific news feed sent to you by email. You don't have to set these things up yourself; it's easiest to use what others have set up (or recipes; see below).

So, first you set up an account on ifttt.com. Then you can either connect all your channels, (which you can think of as apps, or the websites that you want to have work with the service), or you can do what I did and first browse for "recipes". Recipes are formulae that others (or you) have created to trigger specific responses when specific events happen. When you select a recipe, and then click to use it, IFTTT will tell you if the channels you need to make the recipe work need to be activated. By clicking through and following the steps, you can input your passwords and activate the necessary channels (or have Lastpass do it for you automatically if you roll that way- like I do).

After that, everything is pretty straightforward. Recipes can be turned on and off. You can set your own triggers too (although I haven't bothered to do so). You turn recipes on and forget about them. You do sometimes get recipes that stop working (for example, when a a link in the recipe changes), but that's easy enough to check and fix. New channels are added fairly regularly (and there are recipes to tell you what's new on IFTTT).

There are recipes to record your tweets to an Evernote notebook, and to automatically download Gmail attachments to Dropbox (or Drive, or wherever). You can tell IFTTT to post to Twitter when you post to Facebook, or to change your Twitter avatar when you change your Facebook profile picture. You can create a note in Evernote in preparation for a meeting on your Google calendar. Njalo-njalo, as we say here (=etc).

There are many, many more recipes and channels that I haven't mentioned here, some of which don't even work in my part of the world :) Most do, though. Oh, and the website is beautifully designed and super easy to use. And did I mention that all this is free?!

Have fun.

PS. Since I'm posting this from my phone, I won't be able to post screenshots in any way that makes sense, so another time maybe. I hope this makes sense without them :)

In line with my current desire to dress everything (mainly me) in what I knew as Java print fabric when I was growing up (aka African prints), I decided the other day that my phone has an African identity, and it, too, needs to be dressed to express that. I took a few pictures of fabric around the house, and cropped them to something like 1280x800, and am now sharing them with you for- whatever, really :)

Here you go.

I missed most of Intwasa, Bulawayo's exciting and growing arts festival (and our answer, I suppose, to HIFA); but I did go to the free show featuring dancers late on Saturday afternoon at the City Hall, and it was amazing! There were some really gifted dancers, and I was especially impressed by Abatsha and Simunye, both excellent.

Below, a few images:

I'll be sure to attend next year!

(Also, props to the organisers and sponsors for doing such a good job. We just don't have enough events like this!)

http://xkcd.com/1256/

http://xkcd.com/1261/

In quiet moments, I'm probably creating patterns in Illustrator. I find it exciting to see something come together- and it's strangely restful, too :)

http://xkcd.com/1254/

http://xkcd.com/1247/

Since my last post on apps for my Android phone, I have finally bought a ‘good’ phone (for an arm, a leg, and various other body parts, because that’s just how things work around here). Here is a list of the apps I have installed currently; many of them are apps I have talked about before, so I won’t add any new thoughts about them.