July 2023 | Lovely, packed July

Mai Quynh on 17. August 2023

I am exhausted from a packed July. It was a lovely July, with many great events that I looked forward to and enjoyed. But at the same time, time for myself vanished and I need a bit of that – time to myself. Since end of July, when my short holiday with friends in Bavaria ended and since I’m back, I haven’t really found (or only very slowly) my way back into everyday life. And I have so many plans. Thus, I am very restless.

But now I’d rather turn to lovely July and show a little appreciation and joy for what has been.

Summer was celebrated in July: I went to a garden party and the work’s summer party. People put in a lot of work to make it a good party and it was relaxed hours of eating, drinking, laughing and great conversations with people.

When I was in Bavaria, I took advantage of the Deutschlandticket to visit my former study town Ulm. Feelings of nostalgia and memories came up. We strolled through old places and enjoyed the summer day.

July is also the month I started jogging. But only because I’m preparing for a 5 km run (which I volunteered for haha). I ran my first laps along the field not far from us. I finally realised that it really does make a difference to run outside close to nature compared to running in a gym 😀

Last but not least, July also meant to me: start preparing for the autumn holiday. I’m really looking forward to it and I don’t think I’ve ever put so much thought into a holiday before (clarification: I’m not a good travel planner either). But work has just begun, so let’s see if the anticipation lasts he he. Where will we head to? Hint: the country has amazing autumn leaves!

Why do darning – a throw back

Mai Quynh on 17. July 2023

I continue with my very loose series called „My darning life“ (working title). I started with the post Darning, (my) a starting point. Today it’s some background stuff and a throw back.

A timeline: How did it start?

In fact, I wrote about the reasons in previous posts, long before I knew I was going to write this series. The first post on the blog about darning was About the sock siblings and darning and kind of prosaic (…at least I tried). It starts with beloved socks of mine having a hole at the heel and me being sad. From here on I quote from the post (english translation):

One day, the owner [me] was in a sewing café and heard for the first time about an activity called „stopfen" (eng: darning). They said it was a way to close holes. But not by pulling the edges together and sewing them. No – new fabric will be created at the spot where once there was a hole. The owner was confused and could not imagine such an activity. Creating new fabric where there is nothing?

How the story continued is no longer known. What is known is that the owner followed an Instagram account that focused on repairing and preserving garments and that’s how she learned about the word „mending“. The possibilities fascinated her.

And at some point, the sock pair owner understood: the technique she saw on the Instagram account was called "stopfen" in German.

But:

  • How does the technique of darning work at all?
  • What materials do I need?
  • Who can explain me how to darn?

While there are plenty video tutorials for other handicrafts like knitting or crocheting, it was not so easy for darning. I hardly found any video tutorials at that time (who knows what keywords I used to search; I probably only used the German keyword which was not so fruitful) and if I did, they were not satisfactory. Not much showed up in my trusted search engine either. In the end I found books on the subject and then ordered one: Modern Mending by Erin Lewis-Fitzgerald [1]. Even though I mainly just flipped through it since then and don’t work with it that much (because I only use two techniques anyway), it was an anchor for me. Being led by someone who has been working on the subject for a long time and has a clue.

With this little smorgasbord of information, I darned the first socks. And then I continued. When I’m darning, I get into a really strong pull and want to move forward. I’ve never experienced that with any other handicraft. In contrast, sometimes several months lie between two darning pieces.

Fascination about this fiddly work?

And now please answer the question: What does fascinate me so much about this fiddly work (which it is)??

This question is answered by the following quote from my other blogpost Back! with a repaired piece of work

Repairing culture is something I’m really fascinated by, in every way and I also think that repairing is healing. Not only for the piece to be repaired but also for myself. It’s like this feeling when you create something with your own hands and feet.

But on top, there’s this feeling of taking away the pain because you cared about the spot that has hurt.

And that is how the topic self-efficacy comes into play again. Often, it’s not even beloved clothes of mine that get darned/repaired. It’s honestly this fact of being able to repair something and make it usable again that makes me feel great. To learn a skill and then actually use it. The most impressive thing is to vizualise this skill by taking before/after photos. This is also tip 3 from the book mentioned above. The issue of sustainability also plays a role because I don’t think it would be okay for me to dispose a garment because of a hole without having tried to find a solution. And these two points lead more or less to the reason why I’m blogging about this - not only for me but also for you: sharing is caring. Sharing of: Feeling of self-efficacy; and also the knowledge to repair broken clothes.

 

And what happened next?

Thanks to Instagram’s algorithm, it was enough to find one account on that topic. After that, a whole world opened up to me like magic and many posts and corresponding accounts showed up. Other media forms also discuss this topic but not nearly as well as Instagram does as a photo platform in my opinion; in this respect, Instagram is currently my favourite medium on this topic.

Finally (I won’t end the post without) two Instagram accounts as a recommendation to start with:

If you’re interested in more content, just click yourself through their Instagram 🙂

And the book I mentioned:

[1] „Modern Mending“ by Erin Lewis-Fitgerald, available in Australian and UK/US editions.

June 2023 | study logbook. Something with photo

Mai Quynh on 7. July 2023

Aurelie and the mixed feeling

I mentioned, that I like to give names to my films.

My most recent film is Aurelie. What makes Aurelie special is that it was the first time I worked with a film speed/ISO 50 (before that it was either ISO 100, 200 or 400). I could have used the Sunny 16 rule and thus worked/exposed more safely, so to speak, but a spark of confidence in my skills said, „Whatever! You can do it without the rule now!“. Now, at the end of the film, I have a mixed feeling of anticipation and nervousness because I am afraid that it was an overestimation of myself. But I look at it positively: it was once again an experiment.

The film is ready and only needs to be developped. Especially in a case like this, where I cannot assess the photos and their quality and want to find out and learn, I try to avoid further sources of error/interference. Therefore, I prefer to take the film to professionals for developing.

Aurelie consists of portraits of friends, flora and fauna and also some self-portraits. The subject of self-portraits was eventually the focus of Aurelie. It was new and interesting and fun to do self portraits and I can only think „Fingers crossed!“ that they turned out well :‘)

Picture frames for the new home

As part of decorating my new home, I ordered picture frames. Picture frames add so much value to photos, I always underestimate that! What I looked for in the picture frames, apart from the frame itself, was the locking mechanism on the back. Oh goodness, you can spend good money on picture frames!

I ordered them online and after 1.5 weeks they arrived in two parcels. In one package, 3/5 of the frames were broken (broken glass). Fortunately, the complaint was answered positively on the same day and the replacement frames are on their way to me.

Image management software

Last but not least for June, I’ve been looking for an image organisation software. I don’t even have a bad organisation system for my pictures but that doesn’t mean it’s good or even optimal.

For Windows, most you can do is establishing folder structures but that’s not enough for me. I want to be able to assign keywords and jump between them quickly. And so I wanted to dig deep into the world of software programs but honestly, there’s not much to get there. Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is the number 1 among the recommended softwares and actually I am willing to spend money but I’m not ready to get a subscription and be tied to Adobe for the next year(s). Therefore, I’m currently trying my way through two alternatives which were recommended as well.