2020: A Year in Photographs

2020: A Year in Photographs

January: Things start off easily enough. I release my Rhino Pouch and post it in my Etsy shop.
January: Created YouTube Channel: Ariane Zurcher ~ On the Other Hand.
February 20, 2020 – Posted my first Youtube video.
March: Designed and Posted my Abstract Pouch in my Etsy Shop
Found out I’d been granted a two week artist’s residency at the Chateau D’Oquevaux. All set to go in April, 2020, only to realize that wasn’t going to happen. Rebook my air travel for July, 2020 and hope for the best.
March: New York City becomes the epicenter of the Pandemic.
March: Home sewn facemasks become a thing.
And so do empty Manhattan streets in the middle of a day during the week. Pick a day, any day, the streets were empty.
March: A sobering moment when a mobile morgue parks just blocks from our apartment. NYC is unable to keep up with the numbers of people dying from COVID. Mobile morgues like this one begin showing up all over the city to contain the overflow.
April: The eerie silence of a great city in full lock down.
May: A little pandemic humor
May: And some beauty amidst the horror
June: Stores board up their storefronts in response to the demonstrations against rampant police brutality.
June: Design and release Otter Needle Roll
July: Outdoor dining transforms the streets of New York and brings a little magic to a stir crazy populous.
July: Design and release River Rocks Pouch
August: With little else to do, I continue to design, and release my Rock Gardens Bag
August: Celebration of my 60th Birthday on our roof with a couple of socially distanced friends.
September: Visiting an empty Highline
September: Design and release eyeglasses case.
October: My improvisational stitching idea continues.
October: Design and release scissor’s case.
October: A bike ride heading downtown.
November Humor
November: Fall in New York City
December: A little snow in New York City
Finish second improvisational stitching piece: “Perseverance”
December: A quiet Christmas.

Happy New Year!

2020: A Year in Photographs

My Youtube Channel is Monetized & Other Random Things That Pop Into My Mind

So, guess what!?

I bet you can’t guess…

Okay, I’ll just tell you.

My YouTube Channel, Ariane Zurcher ~ On the Other Hand, has become monetized! Woot! Woot! This means that my channel has over 4,000 watched hours and more than 1,000 subscribers.

This may seem like one of those, ho hum, who cares announcements, particularly as it began with such a build up… however, before you leave in disappointment, here’s the good news – I no longer have a time limit to my videos, I can go on and on and on endlessly for HOURS, literally hours. Just imagine!

“If you are verified, your YouTube videos can be up to 12 hours long, or as much as 128 GB.”

BusinessInsider.com

Okay, okay, so maybe that’s not the good news, and anyway I promise I won’t post any 12-hour long videos or even multiple hours, seriously, I swear, though I did have this one idea… Oh come ON, I’m just kidding!

Please enjoy this photo of a beautiful rose that I took while out on my once a week walk where I actually leave our home here in New York City

Also, I can now link to external websites, like this blog, if I could only figure out how to do that, AND, once I’ve converted my website over to the new website I’m planning, which will house this blog, my Youtube channel, a shop filled with fabulous new designs and all the other things on my to-do list, I can add links to that too, at least theoretically.

And then there’s the – is this good news or is this bad news part of the whole my-youtube-channel-is-monetized-exclamation-mark-aren’t-you-happy-for-me pronouncement and that is, there are now ads on every single video I have posted. I’m expecting a huge uptick in the thumbs down button being pushed by disgruntled viewers, however, just so you don’t become one of them, please, please try to remember that those annoying ads give me a tiny, tiny, infinitesimal, seriously small, amount of money, which means I can keep posting more videos, that hopefully you love and will find helpful! A win-win, right?!

More calming photographs of beautiful flowers while all of us take a breath.

But before you say – well not really, I hate ads and no amount of helpful or even mildly useful information will make me hate them any less, they’re annoying and a constant reminder that our world has veered precariously close to becoming some creepy melding of The Minority Report (without Tom Cruise at his prime) and Blade Runner (without Harrison Ford who was just heading out of his prime, though that may not even be possible…) which, by the way, were two really good reasons to even watch those two movies in the first place, and anyway even if those two guys were still IN their prime, it wouldn’t lessen the blow… before you say all of that, let me suggest that you think of this as a tiny (think thimble-sized) tip jar, which literally holds pennies, then maybe, just maybe you’ll feel less resentful when those ads appear, ruining your otherwise blissful experience of exploring the creative process or learning a new stitch or seeing a stitch you already know all about done in an interesting new way or maybe just done in a thread you might not have thought about until now or… okay, I’m running out of helpful suggestions here.

All is well with the world…

Just know that I appreciate your watching my videos even if they are now encumbered by annoying advertisements about things you don’t care about, have never heard of or, as is the case with this blog, photographs of old men’s hairy legs with captions that read “12 Ways You Know You’ll Have a Heart Attack in the Next 5 Years” and things like that. And remember, I love you for your patience in putting up with them and will continue to post videos that, I’m hoping, you will enjoy watching.

Bizarre patterns in the sidewalk in the Meat Packing District a few blocks from where I live.

There. Full disclosure. Whew. It was touch and go there for a minute. Thursday’s post will be full of musings from New York City where we are still in the lock-down-that-will-never-end-and-even-if-it-did-who-will-feel-safe-enough-to-go-out-anyway?

By the way, you have no idea how difficult it was to find photographs to enhance this post, thereby lessening the blow of the difficult news I felt compelled to impart. But we made it. And here we are! It’s a beautiful thing.

2020: A Year in Photographs

1,000 YouTube Subscribers and Some Gratitude

Eight weeks ago today, I posted my first video to the YouTube Channel I created, On the Other Hand. Yesterday I hit 1,000 subscribers!

What began as an idea to benefit Left Handed people who love to sew and hand stitch, has grown into a much larger more all encompassing vision and where I demonstrate all kinds of things: tutorials for left handed embroidery stitchers, tutorials for left AND right handed stitchers, tutorials on how to do things such as make a perfect circle, emboss silk velvet, make a perfect stem, use Sue Spargo’s Spoke Easy, make a tuffet, applique tips, how to make a mask, suggestions, and encouragement to any and all who share my passion for creating, designing, stitching and fabric. And in the coming months I will be making more YouTube Videos devoted to design and the creative process.

These are two improvisational pieces that came out of my demonstrations of stitches used during my YouTube tutorials.

When I began making videos I watched a lot of YouTube videos on how to make Youtube videos. There is a certain humor in that. I also watched a great many videos giving suggestions for anyone beginning a channel on everything from how to create a banner, to how to insert links into your video, how to make thumbnails, how to edit on iMovie and lots of other topics involving the making of videos. YouTube is its own sprawling beast, with “influencers” and people who are making a LOT of money through their youtube channels. And some of the biggest influencers are people who make videos advising others on how to make videos. Does anyone else find that hilarious?

I began this channel planning to post a video once or maybe twice a week. I then decided I would post Monday, Wednesday and Friday. This plan was quickly revised to posting two videos a DAY, seven days a week! It has gotten totally out of control!!! On one day I posted THREE videos in a single day, but that was because Sue Spargo began telling me the stitches she will use on the following day’s circle for her #InstaStitchWithSue project, which I then created a playlist for, because it’s so popular and so many people are following her and it. For more about her project go ‘here‘. She is also telling me the stitches she is using for her popular Block of the Month. (I have almost finished all of the stitches she’s using in April’s block.)

My #instastitchwithsue Project

To say I’m grateful doesn’t cover it. During this time, when things are in such upheaval, when the future seems more fragile than ever before, this channel has grounded me, challenged me and kept me very, very busy! That so many people are now watching the videos I make, commenting and reaching out to me, means more to me that I can express. Yesterday morning I posted the video below to express my gratitude to Sue Spargo, her family and the people who have subscribed, watched, and followed my channel.

https://youtu.be/Ww-pf9ealjQ

There is one other person who has shown me more support than anyone else, and that is my friend, Anna Bates. I’ve mentioned Anna before, but I cannot write about my channel and its growth without talking about her. Anna is the person I first mentioned my idea to, over a year ago when we were in Tucson at a Sue Spargo Workshop held at Tanque Verde Ranch by Madeline Island School of the Arts. Anna was the one who first encouraged me to go for it. Anna has continued to be my biggest cheerleader, giving me shout outs on social media, her blog,Woolie Mammoth, and on the weekly blog she writes for the Quilt Show. Without Anna I would not have more than 1.000 subscribers in just under 8 weeks. Making the adage – “Together we can do so much more than any of us can do alone” truer than ever.

Tanque Verde Ranch in Tucson, Arizona

Thank you Anna. ❤️