My capri length jeans

I cut the length of each leg to shin length, then sewed all the way down the sides to create a super skinny fit width. Finally I just rolled up the bottoms to create the right length of leg and to make them look finished.

My shopper bag

In the future I want to create some really nice shopper bags, but for the moment I thought I’d try just putting one together with some black jersey material that I already had.

I cut out a long rectangle, then sewed up a hem and each end. I then sewed up the sides to make the bag. I then sewed diagonally across the fold to create a more rectangular base. After this I cut out some long strips to make the handles. I folded each strip in half, joining them along the length, then sewed them securely as handles. It’s quite roughly put together and won’t hold anything heavy – but it’s given me a good idea of how to construct a shopper bag better.

Anyway…

If you’re lucky I might manage to get some pictures up, and I still intend to try out a few more things. However, for now I’m going to stick to knitting and try to get my jumper finished.

Wonga – Short Term Loans

They’ll lend you up to £400 for up to 30 days to help you pay a bill, and they’ll approve it and transfer the money in under an hour.

The APR sounds shockingly high, but as the loan is only over the maximum of a month the repayment isn’t horrific, i.e. if you borrow £200 over 15 days you’ll have to pay them back an extra £35.90. You can even get them to pay direct to your service provider.

I certainly think in the past this could have helped me out, although it’s worth considering if the interest charges are going to be more or less than the bank charges. I guess time will tell if they’ll become a useful service for people struggling a bit with their cash flow, or if they will horrifically rip people off when they are needing help.

You know – that is better than the first site I made when I was 17….no, I’m not going to EVER let anyone see it.

Geocities-ize your site

Check out all the adorable little knitting things in this smashing magazine post – The Beauty of Knitting. These kinds of things always give me inspiration. Here is a few of the adorable creations.

Eye of the Beast by kathrynivy.com

Daphne and Delilah the Momma and Baby Monster by Rebecca Danger

Anyway…I’d been wanting to do a a parachute jump for a while, so when my friend Gill said she was going to do it I thought it would be fun. Always easier to do these things when you have someone along with you. We booked our ‘first’ appointment wa-a-a-ay back in September 2007, but thanks to the wonderful weather we have in Scotland we had to go up another 4 times to get the right weather. But what a beautiful day the 7th of February was. Gorgeous clear blue skies, a little cold though, well only -22°C in the sky!

We learned from our experiences to get to the centre sharp, to ensure we were one of the first to jump, so, nice and early we got all our gear on. Looking rather ridiculous in our dodgy hats, goggles and jump suits, but that’s all part of the fun. At this point we’re really not that nervous – after so many times going up the nerves just fade away. Off we shuffle to the little plane, my instructor Bob with his rabbit fur hat leading me out by a strap, like I’m a puppy on a leash. I’m jumping after Gill so I get into the plane first with Bob behind me – all snuggled up in the back, further away from the gaping hole in the plane – oh yes, the plane has no door – just what you need flying in below freezing skies.

As the plane lifted off the ground my nerves started up a little, but after about 20 minutes of looking at the beautiful scenery you kind of forget what you are about to do. At 8,000ft things start happening (We jump at 10,000 ft). We get ourselves strapped to our instructors tighter, and our goggles come down. Right – no time to think! Gill’s instructor shuffles forward to take her to the edge of the door. This is it! Before I know it Gill’s instructor has gone and I see Gill fall in to the sky. “Aaaaaah! What the hell am I doing?!?!”, but before I know it Bob is shuffling forward too! We’re on the edge of the door and I’m thinking ‘Don’t look down! Head back. Arms crossed. Legs under the plane’. Then I tip over…..and I’m gone. There’s nothing you can do now. I think I screamed for a little bit, but then I realised there is absolutely no point to it, and thought I’d better get myself into the right position. Free fall is amazing. Wind is just flying past you and you can barely see, then before you know it, you feel this gentle motion and then you are vertical again, lightly floating down to the ground. It felt so calm and relaxing, so even when I looked down at my toes wiggling thousands of feet above the ground it just felt nice. We did a bit of spinning round in circles, then started to prepare for the landing. We came in fast and bumped to the ground, no harm done. Then we pick up the parachute and trundle back to the hanger. And that was it over, it all happened so fast. I’m ready for the next time…I just hope Scotland’s weather is.

I think what caused the fuss wasn’t the actual content, but rather, the context it was sent in, i.e. by a developer to the whole company. It was seen as an insult, implying that the design team aren’t doing a good job, rather what it should have been, which was a comment on how we could all work better together. I do agree quite strongly that every designer should understand how websites are built. It can only be a good thing that the designer understands the capabilities of the tools to build websites, helping make best use of them to create a richer user experience.

On the other side of this though, the developer should also understand design. We can often battle against the belief that us designers are just styling. What we are really doing is attempting to create a good interactive user experience; considering a whole barrage of things, including content, structure, client brand, how to prioritise content and create visual cues, for example, by using contrasting or consistent colours and styles, using white space or even round corners to make it easier to distinguish between components.

Well, the list could go on and on, and I’ll hopefully get around to writing more on it another time, but the main thing to consider is that each member of a team has a role to play, and with good communication and understanding we would all create better websites.

It’s been a little hard going trying to keep my ideas fresh, but I’ve actually really enjoyed getting into creating the brand concepts for them. I’ve also been doing my emotional thinking, that I was talking about in my last post, to make sure that I’m doing something that users can identify with. Well, I still need to push myself in this way for all the design work I do, but it does feel nice that I’m progressing as a designer.

Installed the Simple Captcha plugin. Very excellent so far!

Anyway – aside from that I do feel like I’ve been neglecting this blog for a while. Got a couple of things I’d like to write about – I’ll get to it soon.

Monday is going to be a productive day. I’m certain.

Well, for me it’s all down to research, brainstorming and hardwork.  I try to soak up as much as I can about the subject, target market, brand or whatever, then start doodling, writing and sketching whatever comes in to my head. It can also be really useful to sit down with a bunch of colleagues and just bounce ideas off each other. All you need is a few not too bad ideas, then just work on developing them. I think with that you’ll get there in the end, and sometimes it will even turn in to that genius idea you were looking for.