I’m doing film photography. Gets me out of the house now and again.

On a tech front i’ve been creating a whole custom dash for home assistant monitoring ny brewing. I can select a RAPT pill and assign it to a fermenter, put in my start sate, see the stats, get alerted when it’s held a target specific gravity for three days and is therefore stable enough to be “complete”. Whole card can be rolled up to just a title to get it out of the way if i’m not using that particular fermenter.

Haven’t coded for years. Tremendous pain in my arse. Great fun.

I even had a 3am whimsy to code animated bubbles to appear while status is still “fermenting”

Ok getting another post in here just before Wednesday finishes in a few minutes!!! Literally just finished this about 20 mins ago and took some pics, it is another birthday present for another friend.

She is really into her cross stitch and one of my personal favourite items of mine for my leatherworking is my little needle case that I made early in my journey. So I decided to riff on that needle case and add some more features to it based on issues with my own.

It is a simple little folded wallet type thing with divided pockets to put different sized loose needles in and a pocket at the back to contain whole packs or needle threaders or anything else which fits back there. The pockets are tight enough to not let the needles slip out but just in case I’ve added some little wrap-around straps to fasten it together. I usually just do simple snaps on the front flap but I decided to do something new to add a bit more visual interest. It still features my favourite signature of mine which is the X shaped stitch that joins two different leathers together rather than just have a single colour for the whole item.

One bonus is that it looks like some weird creature, especially when opened!

Update: She loved it :P

So yeah, pretty pleased with it and excited to give it to her tomorrow!

I’m designing a board game! It’s really niche and no one will play it, probably 🤣

I made this tiny pouch.

Not sure if it counts as creative, but I enjoy playing songs on my keyboard and guitar by ear.

I’ve also been messing around with my computer (I’m on Linux, so it’s infinitely customisable).

I need to get back to some of my other art projects, though. Maybe I’ll do that today.

It’s so damn hot these days that it’s been difficult to find the energy to be creative, but I am trying to tie-dye as much as possible! Been working on symmetrical folds, here’s one from this week.

Finally broke my hiatus. I posted this somewhere else at some point but might as well add it here :)

Long story short, I have a majorly lego obsessed friend and I like trying to make things for personal gifts but how do you combine lego and leather? Then I got such a silly idea in my head, what about a little belt holster for the lego brick removal tool?

So I made a paper mockup followed by a draft version in leather to check for fit. Once I was happy I formalised my pattern on my computer, making some updates (add the belt loop and keyring tab) and made the final version.

I was really happy with it, came out as I hoped. When he worked out what it was he was so happy with it, genuinely loved it and wants to bring it with him to a big lego convention in Denmark later this year.

I’ve even had a few comments from people urging me to put this into production as a fun gift idea for lego lovers! Pics below.

I’ve also done some other little projects to get me back in the habit, moved my working space downstairs onto the dining table in this heat and been making a few things for my sharp tools to protect them. Also currently working on an iteration of a needle case I made a long time ago, its another friend’s birthday tomorrow and she loves cross-stitch, so I thought this would be a nice thing. I’ll post it when I’ve finished it.