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.”
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.
Every morning my husband and I read something we find interesting and thought provoking, and then we discuss. It’s become a ritual of sorts and has been incredibly helpful, even transformative in many ways. Not least of which is that I so often am reminded of creativity and stitching, and how both are a process and ideally, embraced.
Every day I sit in my little creative room and I stitch. Each day that act of stitching is a new experience, an exploration of the physical, but also of the emotional and even the spiritual. I gather together my materials, usually beginning with colors, and then I either sketch out an idea or just begin stitching something. What’s interesting is that sometimes things just unfold beautifully and without interruption and 45 minutes to an hour later I have something I like or, if I’m really lucky, something I love. But there are other days when that just doesn’t happen. I struggle, I tear out, I undo, redo, undo again. I walk away, I come back, I sketch an idea, I start again. Hours can go by and eventually I end up with something that I’m okay with, although perhaps not thrilled with. Still, I’ve learned to leave it alone and days later I may come back and think – I love this! Or not. The point is, it’s all a process and it’s the process I’ve become increasingly fascinated by and have learned to love.
Circle #42 took 45 minutes start to finish. Circle #44 took several hours… (And I made up a variation on the whipped woven circle that I’ve not seen before, though I do not claim to have invented this, I’ve just never seen it before, so if it exists, it does so without my knowledge of it.)
Each circle has its own personality and each one was a different experience to stitch. What I’ve learned from years of designing is that I must trust the process. I must trust myself. I must trust that if I stick with it, something magical will reveal itself, even if it’s not always in a way that I instantly recognize. It can be said that this is true for life as well.
My Tendril Circle. I can’t remember how long this took, but I had an idea and went with it. There wasn’t any ripping out and beginning again, but rather the steady process of continuing to let it unfold.
Every Wednesday I am devoting a video to creating, designing and the creative process. Those videos can be found ‘here‘. Stay tuned for a new one coming tomorrow!
I know today’s Thursday because I post a new blog Tuesdays and Thursdays, and also because I have my glasses on and my iWatch conveniently tells me that it’s Thu April 23rd. I also now know that it’s cloudy outside, and at this moment 42℉. Of course, one is putting a great deal of faith in one’s iWatch if you trust all of this, because personally, I’ve gone outside, wearing the appropriate clothing for 42℉ weather, only to find I’m way under or over dressed, and that it doesn’t feel like 42℉ at all, but instead much more like 50℉ or, conversely, 30℉.
One morning I woke up and my iWatch helpfully told me the weather was “Unusually sensitive”, which I thought bizarre and had me in search of a magnifying glass just to make sure my eyesight hadn’t suddenly gotten much, much worse. I then wondered if my iWatch was commenting on my emotional well being. That idea was so creepy, I felt compelled to google: “my iWatch is telling me the weather is “unusually sensitive” what does that mean?” as one does, and I learned that this was referring to the air quality. I felt a bit foolish then as that actually made sense, sort of, but still it felt weirdly prophetic and throughout the day I was on high alert for anything or anyone that/who might cause me to feel “unusually sensitive”. Thankfully, I made it through that day and am still here to tell all of you.
All of this reinforced my feelings that my iWatch was not an entirely reliable narrator. However, I do trust it to tell me what day it is. So today is “Thu” and it is, in fact, the 23rd. Who knows what month it is, my iWatch neglects to give me that information. And anyway this confusion is all a result of the current pandemic we find ourselves bit players in. Each day melds seamlessly into the next; the months are beginning to bleed into each other as well. Oh come on, I am not the only one out there feeling this way!
They need to add a calendar to this sign so people know whether it’s Mon. Wed. or Fri. and while we’re at it – “knock if mask is needed” seems, on the surface, to be such a lovely and generous idea, but who knows where that mask has been?! Am I the only one concerned?
I tell you all of this because I have been doing YouTube videos on Sue Spargo’s #InstaStitchWithSue 90-day project and, as each day rings in a new circle, I do my best to keep track of which circle I’m recording on which day. In an attempt to speed up my taping process, I sometimes try to tape the intro to several days all on the same day, which I then edit and post on the correct day. If you’re confused right now, you can only imagine how confused I am. It doesn’t help that I’m not quite caught up, and every now and again I drift from Sue’s beautiful design and use her stitches as inspiration to do my own thing. So I decided to talk about that process yesterday I mean today in my video, which I am helpfully leaving below. You’re welcome.
In addition to all of this, I am also making my way through Sue Spargo’s Creative Stitching book and posting videos covering each of the stitches she features in that book, but stitched left handed, which you might not think makes much of a difference, but I can tell you, it kind of does! This was my original concept for my channel in the first place.
My attempt to keep what stitch I’m recording and posting on which day and the ensuing mess that all of this “organizing” is creating. My mind does not think in organized ways. This is something I’ve come to realize, appreciate and accept.
I have to go now, because I only have a limited time to tape while it’s still quiet and before everyone starts getting up, including the two construction sites that are both using jack hammers on either side of us. We live in New York City after all. There’s construction going on all the time, even during this pandemic.
Stay safe, stay home, wash your hands, wear a mask, not necessarily in that order.
During this time of quarantine, particularly in New York City where most of us do not have a back yard we can wander or just sit in, to get a little fresh air, doing something that connects us, feels less like a luxury and more like a necessity. A connection to our planet, to one another, things once taken for granted are what call out during this time of forced isolation.
My mother sent me a video from an unknown source that uses works of art to underscore what we are currently going through and what many are feeling.
A man in Barcelona plays John Lennon’s Imagine from his balcony, courtesy of YouTube.
In Florence Maurizio Marchini serenades his city
Art – the ways in which we express the wonder and beauty of life through our emotions, creativity and talents is how we connect to each other, to ourselves, and to this world.
I haven’t stepped foot out of our house since Saturday, but I have had hundreds of interactions with people from all over the world, which is both amazing and delightful. Community. During a period when we cannot actually be with our friends and extended family, connecting over common interests is all the more desirable.
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.
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.
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