The Best-Laid Plans
At the end of February, I was full of plans for the next month. I was going to complete and submit a piece for the 5th Kaga Yubinuki Society Public Exhibition, make all of the pattern charts for the PDF workbook that will come with my intro to Kaga yubinuki course, get better at social media, and launch Morigokochi’s blog.
What I actually accomplished in March:
Made eleven yubinuki for my submission, only 4-5 of which will actually make it into the finished piece (the rest shall be deemed experiments en route to achieving the effect I wanted)
Posted 3 Instagram stories
Caught the flu or some horrible flu-like virus and became comatose for two weeks
That’s it. That was March.
Yubinuki in progress…
Not only did I fail to achieve any of my goals, I discovered, upon rereading the application for the exhibition, that I only have to submit the projected dimensions of the finished piece and a photograph of 3-5 of my yubinuki—there was absolutely no need for me to complete the piece by the April submission deadline. Cue the sound of my head banging repeatedly into my desk.
Without the pressure to complete the exhibition piece by the end of the month, I can turn my attention back to building the Kaga yubinuki intro course, which is a much more massive project than I initially anticipated. I have to use vector art to build all of the pattern charts, and a publishing program I’ve never used before to put together the PDF workbook. I need to make and film the making of ten yubinuki, plus make and photograph yubinuki in additional colorways. Then comes the video editing, voiceover recording, and making of any additional overlay graphics that might be needed for the video, and figuring out closed captioning so the course is accessible.
That’s… a lot.
To top it all off, my dog (studio assistant Azuki) had surgery last week and is banned from attempting the basement steps until she recovers, which means she cannot follow me to my studio. If I try to go without her, she cries and paces until I come back upstairs. We are currently negotiating a compromise, the terms of which will no doubt be biased in her favor.
All of this is to say that while I will still definitely accomplish my plans, I will have to seriously revise my timeline. Gang aft agley, indeed.
