TWiP: The Last Week of the Year ⋆ Polka Dot Cottage

I can’t properly express how much it pleases me to be ending the year on a Friday. For TWiP purposes, all weeks end on Fridays, so when the end of a week corresponds with the end of the year, it just feels so neat and tidy.

2021, photographically speaking, was a departure for me. After twelve years of Project 365, I decided to take a more laid-back approach. It was definitely the right choice for me. And while, some weeks suffered a bit, it was mostly good. Plus the video-based practice I added was fun. I’ll post more about my 1-second clips in a day or two, but for now let me just say that I’m glad I stuck with it for a whole year, but I’m ready to challenge myself with something else for a while.

If I learned anything about my photography practice in 2021, it’s that I don’t need it to be daily, as long as I take out the camera a few times a week. Another thing that became clear to me is that it’s easy to be lazy about it. There were month-long stretches where I simply relied on my phone, and never touched the Big Girl Camera.

So, there are a few things I want to keep in mind at the start of my 2022 photo practice: keep the fancy camera in rotation as often as possible, and try to approach my subjects from interesting angles. I love the phone shots from above, but I love them a little too much. I will try to push myself to find different perspectives this year, literally and figuratively 😁

Happy New Year! May 2022 be kind to us all ❤

So, what is This Week in Pictures?

It’s a roundup of the little (and big!) moments I have captured all week. Some of these images are posted on Instagram, but many aren’t posted anywhere but here. Some days there may be no photos, and other days there may be multiples. It’s more laid back than the Project 365s of previous years. You can learn more here 🙂

Photos taken with 📷 (Canon EOS 80D) or 📱 (Samsung Galaxy S9).

TWiP Clips

We’ve reached the end of this TWiP Clip project, so here’s the last video, featuring 1.5-second moments from the week:

Saturday

Merry Christmas! We had a quiet day at home, playing with new toys. I took a few Polaroids of the tree.

Sunday

It occurred to me that I am so enthralled with Christmas tree bokeh, I always neglect to actually take a daylight, in-focus shot where you can see our other decorations. Situation duly rectified.

One of my coworkers gave me his old mechanical keyboard a few weeks ago, and pointed out that it could provide me with a new creative outlet. Since then I’ve been doing a bit of research on making Cherry MX keys from resin. My nephew got me the silicone molds for Christmas, and today I played around a bit and tried out three styles. My favorite so far is the sparkly one. I’m using it currently to replace the “Del” key, since that key is in a position on this keyboard that I am not used to. The hope is that the key will stand out now, and I won’t have to keep hunting for it 😀

Tuesday

I took an informal survey of my cardigan sweaters today, and yes, more than half of them have handmade buttons on them 😁
There are a bunch of free button making tutorials on my website, if you want to try it yourself. The newest tutorial (for the variety pictured here) has just landed. Enjoy!

Wednesday

Two holes in my favorite jeans + *Make Thrift Mend* for Christmas = how I spent my afternoon.
They’re cute now, but I didn’t really pick a sturdy fabric for patching, so I will probably have to repair them again before too long 😬

Thursday

So we all took some COVID tests (negative – yay!) and then had our 5-days-late Christmas celebration with Neil’s family. These two nearly filled up my memory card with their many silly poses 😍

Friday

We capped off the year with a front-yard, socially distanced, impromptu gathering with cousins who are visiting from far away. Naturally, there were silly poses involved 😁

Thanks for helping me celebrate the week! If you want to see some of this stuff as it happens, please feel free to follow me on Instagram ♥

Same Week Previous Years (2014-2020)

2 thoughts on “TWiP: The Last Week of the Year”

Kat
January 4, 2022
I love those patches so much! I’m now looking forward to getting some holes in my pants. What an odd thing!
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1. Lisa Clarke
  January 4, 2022
  That is odd, but I totally get it 😁
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