Time for a mid-year check in on how my Creative Goals 2026 are progressing! I’m a bit later than usual because I was busy doing some other creative projects at exactly the 6 month exact-middle-of-the-year point, which honestly feels like a good sign.

1. Set up my new creative space

This has been such a joy!  My new office is still messy and filled with boxes that I haven’t quite figured out how to unpack, but it reached functional early on and has been going through a lot of refinement.

Some highlights:

• I’ve co-opted the glider chair we bought when I was pregnant and I used for late-night nursing when my kid was little.  It’s now my reading and knitting and writing space and I love it.
• I put curtains on the window so I don’t have to use the finicky blinds and it’s made such a difference.  They still need hemming but I at least know where my sewing machine is even if I haven’t got it set up so that’s something.
• I rearranged my vintage yellow table and crummy apartment ikea desk so they function like an L-shaped desk and I’ve got enough space for painting during long corporate rah rah business quarterlies.  Or just painting because I feel like it.  It’s great.  I probably need to upgrade the lousy ikea desk but this works while I figure out exactly what would suit me best.
• I got a pegboard to put in the tiny space behind the door when it’s open, and the little shelves on those have been great for putting up art and organizing stuff that I’m more likely to use if I can see it.  After I took the picture below I put up two more above and below so it’s a full wall of art and supplies.

My reading/writing area in my office by the window, showing lots of mess but also the new curtains, the comfy glider chair, and the pegboard art setup on the wall.

Some lowlights:

• The office is noisy when the AC is going strong and too cold in the winter.  It’s got 2 exterior walls and one that backs onto the garage, and I suspect the garage one in particular doesn’t have enough insulation (it was noticeably colder than the two exterior walls), but it could be all three causing varying amounts of cold.  We’ve hacked things by plastic coating the window which helped but I also had blankets and even a small electric heater in here for when it got too cold.
• I still own too much yarn, so not all of it fits on the shelves.  Having this visible and in my space is really reducing the amount of shopping I want to do, but I’m going to have to make some decisions about how to handle the rest of the shelving because I don’t love having 13 giant plastic bins plus a pile of smaller ones in here that i have to rearrange every time I want something in one of them.
• I don’t have a setup for my spinning wheel, which is a bit of a shame and it’s part of why I didn’t do tour de fleece this year: I forgot but could have joined late if setting up hadn’t felt like a hassle. I’ve got a new espinner coming and it should fit nicely on the painting table or the table by my glider, so I think that’s going to be the plan for spinning for the next 6 months anyhow while I get to really know the new gear.

Despite those annoyances, I’m really happy with how things are taking shape.  I’ve unpacked all the boxes I found that seemed to belong here and rearranged stuff into various plastic bins for now while I decide what stays and what goes.  I spend a lot of time in my office writing and just enjoying my space on top of the times I need to be in here for work or to play our regular guild wars 2 night.

Dahlia watercolour painting (from a book exercise).

And on top of all that, kid and I have co-opted the last upstairs bedroom to be a craft room!

• Nice big table right under the window for painting and drawing, with two chairs for us to sit.
• Single bed for sitting on and so it can be used as an emergency guest bedroom or “Everyone has allergies and is snoring really loud” option.
• My sewing machine desk is up here, though I haven’t really set it up yet.
• I’m slowly migrating the craft supplies into the closet.
• We replaced the light with one that doesn’t make a horrible high pitched noise that only my kid can hear.  (most of this house has ancient halogens and some of them are bad enough that I can hear them but this particular one was out of my hearing range)

We use this to paint or draw pretty regularly, sometimes because I’m doing daily drawings and just invite my kid to join me, but often he’ll instigate drawing time too.  We got some really cute how to draw chibi dogs and birds books plus I’ve got a rotating set of painting books out of the library, so there’s always inspiration or lessons to try.  I think J had some vision of our craft space being in the basement, but honestly the lighting is so nice in this room that I don’t think we’ll be moving even when we finally get the basement into a usable state (it’s currently a disaster of half-unpacked boxes, but thankfully not an outright disaster since we were spared the flooding that hit a lot of our neighbours).

2. Crafting for my new climate

Made a sweater for me, a fluffy scarf for my kid, and I’m still slowly working on that double-knit dr who scarf for J.  Plus I’m always always making more socks as bus/work/out-and-about knitting.  I kind of want to start another sweater but I think the scarf will never get done if I do so that’s probably all the projects for this year unless my kid wants something.

Time of the Doctor double knit scarf, about half-finished.

3. Painting with Fountain Pen Ink

I have done *so* much painting.  Relatively little of it actually included fountain pen ink, but the skills I’m building will transfer so I’m not too concerned that I’ve abandoned this goal.  I had the idea that I’d paint with the leftovers from my pens every month, but it turns out that because I choose fairly contrast-heavy colours they don’t blend well and I did’t like the way they looked when I tried them in a single piece at the end of the month in one of those ink colouring books.  Trying to plan out colours and spread them across a bunch of pages and hope I eventually used inks that went well with them didn’t seem like fun to me, so I’m going to regroup and try something else.  Here’s today’s effort, using some “leftover” ink (Teranishi Guitar Brilliant Mint, I think?):

A notebook with two dogs painted in watercolour. The top one is labeled “Doggust 2026 Dunker” and features a beagle-like dog with a striking grey dappled pattern on middle and tail that contrasts with the tan and white on the rest of the dog. The one below that is not labelled but features a white and black Tibetan Terrier with long sweeping hair, and the area around the dog is coloured in a bright blue-teal using the Brilliant Mint fountain pen ink.

The fountain pen ink definitely beheaves differently than the watercolours (doesn’t quite absorb the same way on the paper) but I think I might be able to have some fun making my doggust stuff more colourful and maybe even sparkly while I make use of some little leftovers in sample vials and inks that I didn’t love in pens.

Other than that, I’m really enjoying painting in general and I’m excited to keep doing that!

A couple of flower painting exercises on my beloved vintage yellow table. They depict a magnolia and snowdrop.

4. Write for joy

My biggest writing project in the first half of the year was for a fandom event and I have never ever gotten so many comments on a work.  It was a really playful story and as a result my readers were having fun, I was having fun, it was absolutely the bringer of joy.

Beyond that, I’ve been trying out some weekly prompts, joining events, did a fanfic gift exchange, and I’ve just been having such a good time with fanfic and writing.   I’m constantly entertained that my new fan writer community is not entirely dissimilar to my open source communities — I supposed it’s not surprising since they’re both the sort of people who put things for free into the world, even if the skills they’re sharing are different.  And as I’ve mentioned before, it’s been really motivating to have “sprinting buddies” so there’s folk to write with even if we barely interact other than cheering each other on and gossiping in between timed writing sessions. Having a little community continues to be a source of joy and motivation.

I’m also starting to add a bit writing about life to my monthly posts here.  Nothing fancy and carefully thought out, but it’s nice as a warm up.  I’ve got some ideas for more technical blog posts I’d like to write but haven’t made the time yet because writing fiction is more fun.  That said, I should have some writing opportunities at work and I’m hoping to take advantage of that as I find them!

Overall, I think I’m doing well on goals, but I am going to have to push myself a bit to try more fountain pen ink art experimentation, so hopefully that’ll come up more in the last chunk of the year.  And if not, my painting practice has improved my life regardless of what supplies I’m using!