4 Comments Awakening from the Spring Slumber. Hopefully

SO... Massive apology to anyone who's been waiting patiently for my next post (since I do have a couple of pending projects up my sleeve – I remember them all, and I promise I'll get better at keeping you up to date!). And just a regular apology to those who simply ended up here in this blog and would like to read a bit more about me or what I do.

I'd be lying if I said I was busy that whole time, although I kinda wish I had a bit more going on in my life than I already do. Truth is, I just couldn't get myself to blog either having nothing to write about at hand or simply finding myself too busy with other random stuff I do. 

On the bright side, I've been making clothes ceaselessly since my last post, and now I actually have quite a few pieces to share with you. What I plan to do is to shoot a couple of OOTDs with the items I made within the next couple of weeks or so and maybe do a little mix-n'-matching to show their versatility. 

There is one tiny problem though... The spring just wouldn't come here! Namely, it's been snowing (!) here in Moscow for the last two days, the weather steadily keeping at the level of a miserable mush. Although it's not the typical weather for this season per se, it is still pretty discouraging from going outside, hence I did very little picture-taking. The only hope now is the weekend which promises to bring some sun and warmth around.

Meanwhile I'll be finishing off some of the pieces, planning and hopefully shooting some looks already, and the posts should start flowing some time at the end of this- beginning of next week :)

Until then, let's play a little guessing game, shall we? Here's a picture of a lovely viscose blend crepe cut in a candy shade of pink. It is now a finished piece of clothes, and I'd like you, my lovely readers, to guess what I have turned it into. 

Perfect colour and texture for spring... IF IT WOULD JUST COME ALREADY!

Now, let me know what you think I made of it in the comments ;)

E.V.

2 Comments Bringing Photography Back into My Life

As you may have noticed, I added yet another tab to the navbar. This time it is photography, which is something I have been very fond of since I was about 15. I got my first and only DSLR (Digital Single-Lens Reflex) camera, Pentax K200D, at the age of 17 during the first year of my stay in the UK.

Since then (and it has been a 'wow!' 6 years already) I have been using it on and off, and in the recent years I only ever used it whenever I went for a holiday. For the most of it I simply didn't have time to go around taking pictures, and when I did I was kind of being too self-conscious to just take it out and start shooting, unless it was during a holiday trip. Because, apparently, it makes a difference!

The final blow was my camera sticking in the AF (auto-focus) mode for as long as two years. 90% of the time I would use MF (manual focus), so without it taking pictures instantly became rather dull. But, a very big thanks to this lovely forum thread, I fixed my cam and am now ready to pick up photography again! 

Testing the heart-shaped bokeh technique

Actually, I even got brave enough to start thinking about participating in Taylor Wessing photography portrait prize competition hosted by London's National Portrait Gallery. I mean, I sure can try – even if I don't win, getting lucky enough for one of my photographs to be exhibited will be winning in itself.

I still have until end of July to submit the photographs, so hopefully I will come up with a concept soon enough to start shooting. Wish me luck!

Have you ever taken up adventurous endeavours like that? Let me know in the comments ;)

E.V.

0 Comments The Horrors of My Writing Experience | Imported Post

The second and last imported post from Medium is here (I told you I didn't write much while I was there). This one is more of an introductory post for the blog rather than a regular stand-alone post, but it does express some ideas as to why I generally struggle to write. Again, sorry for the formatting, I swear it's not me!

"I was never particularly good at expressing my thoughts. And I think a lot on a daily basis, as many of us do, with a general tendency to overthink things. Sometimes I figure that maybe (just maybe) the whole magnitude of thought building up in my head over time is the problem, that I simply cannot cope and condense it to clever and elegant little thoughts to share. And this reveals the second problem, which is specific to my writing - even if I were to write something, would others find it enjoyable and clever to read?

See, I am an extremely fussy reader myself, and I get put off by great many things which others would probably find quite insignificant. Like grammatical errors. Or poor formatting (I am only not using Justified text formatting now since Medium only allows Left or Centre, and my ‘OCD Sense’ is tingling). I also tend to get bored of bad or plain writing pretty quickly and without guilt. And, since I am my best critic, whatever I think about writing (and sometimes I find my thoughts rather interesting) undergoes strict censorship inside my head by great many parameters, usually to the extent of leaving me with zero enthusiasm. Oh, and did I tell you English was not my first language?

The other big thing for me is engaging with the reader. You see, even though I am a massive procrastinator and regularly engage myself with admittedly pointless activities, I feel that writing something without expecting it to be read by at least someone, is a worthless waste of time and energy. And I’m not one of those free spirits who finds peace in simply letting it out. I find great satisfaction in knowing that people find something of interest in what I have to say, and maybe even more so when I see them interested enough to say something in return.

Finally, my circles… Oh, the horror of letting it slip to someone that I have started a blog!.. I am exaggerating, of course, but I do find my relative anonymity to the Internet community somewhat soothing, at least in the beginning. This blog is a brave new step for me, there is a lot of discovering to do along the way, and I hope my stories and thoughts will be worth your while."

E.V.

0 Comments On my Medium Experience and Another Blogging Issues

Ok, now that it's been just over a month since I created this new blog I think I'm finally beginning to understand what I want it to look like. 

Before I continue, I have to say that I experimented with Medium. At the first sight I was strongly attracted to Medium's simplicity, which supposedly took every bit of distraction away leaving a blank 'sheet' for one to write on. Pure creativity, no shenanigans. And I was happy with the way things worked - no customisation to worry about, minimum formatting, and so on. I even got a few pageviews and reads, too.

Soon enough, however, I began feeling a bit intimidated and plain annoyed with it. Looking through the suggested posts on the main page it appeared like the whole platform was inhabited by columnists, book-writers and overall some sort of professionals that came there to share their wisdom with the world. 

My suggested/recommended posts feed was filled with posts, or articles rather, along the lines of "Why <something everyone does> is a bad idea", "How to <make, improve, excel at> <some product or process> in few easy steps", "Why you shouldn't be doing <something that you do>", "What mistake has <a famous person from a specialised field> made", and many many other variations. A lot of them screamed of pretentiousness and fakeness around us, and how things like travelling have succumbed to being a vain rather than mind-opening activity. And although I did agree with a few of the ideas myself, in its entirety the content on that platform turned out to be very different from what I always understood by blogging.

Just to be clear, to me the idea behind it is probably one of the best ideas ever when it comes to blogging - minimalistic design with minimum distractions to help focus on writing. What could be better? But from what it looks like, using Medium has turned into somewhat of a 'fashion statement' screaming "I chose to leave mediocre mainstream platforms in favour of this professional-looking site where everything I say will look important". Or it is simply an article-writing platform.

I just think that blogging needs to be a bit more personal, a bit more engaging rather than simply tossing dry instructions or ideas at the reader. I believe that a bond should be formed between the blogger and the reader, where the story is told or a thought is shared, and where the reader follows the story and the whole blog just like reading chapters of an infinite book. 

What I try to achieve in my blog is to record whatever I would put in a personal journal with slight censorship correction, obviously. Stories? Maybe. Maybe even some creative writing, but I cannot yet say for sure. Hopefully something of interest to you as the reader. But I want to make it personal. I want to make it a continuation of myself, if I may say so. I want to share because I want to share and for no other reason.

I think the point has been made, so take care for now! 

E.V.