A little slow today

For some reason - I don't know why - I feel kind of cast down today. It's not like something bad happened, or that I would be thinking sad thoughts. It's just so gray outside, I'm a little tired, a little bored and somehow a little slow with everything I do. Above and below you see pictures of the only book I made today. It is filled with paper that I folded last week. There are still 3 more books to do until I have used up those book blocks that I created in an outburst of working power last Friday.
Besides this book, I also worked on a book for the book arts forum swap. The theme this time is "Something New" and we agreed to all use a material we never worked with before. Possibly one that is not usually used for books. It was me who suggested this swap, and that so many people decided to join it, made me glad and feel more accepted in the community there.
But I am not really convinced by my approach so far. I had an idea that I still think is funny and witty. But it just doesn't seem to work. I'll have to see whether I am still dissatisfied with it tomorrow. (It may be that today is just a bad day for me to judge my work. See above). Luckily there is still some time left, but at the moment I feel like a) I shouldn't have made that suggestion because b) I already made all the books I could have entered in this swap - from which hat should I pull another one?

I mentioned another swap on Friday: Since about two months I am a proud member of the Bookbinding Etsy Street Team - abbreviated by BEST ;-). In the team we are having a book swap every 2 months. The good things about participating: I get a new nice journal or other book from one of my team members. And my book is shown and my name and shop mentioned on our team blog, where you can also find other information about our shops and tips and hints about books and keeping a journal. If you want to see more of the books we make just enter the keyword 'bookbindingteam' into the search box on Etsy.
So this other book went to Canada yesterday. I forgot to make a picture of it, but Rhonda will make some, and then I can show it to you.
The following is a picture she made of my books for the last swap in March, she also blogged about it here:
Other than that:
I don't think that the Künstlersozialkasse KSK with accept me as an artist. Being accepted would mean I could participate in the governmental social security system with the KSK paying half of it for me. As a self employed artist I am at the moment not fully secured. I don't want to try to explain the totally crazy and complicated German system. Just note that it is important to me.
I asked for and was granted an extension of the time until I have to provide them with evidence of serious artist activity. That means, I have to win an art prize, participate in an juried exibition or silmilar.
I am planning to apply for some shows, but as today I don't know how I should provide the required proof of being an artist until mid May.
I asked for the extension because I thought that until then I might have established a working contract with Vamp & Tramp, and that this contract could be such a piece of evidence. But today I received an Email saying that I won't hear from them until mid of May - I thought they would be back on May first. So that will anyway be too late.
The most frustrating thing is that, apparently, the mistake I made was to apply as a book artist. Those are under suspicion of working as a craftsman book binder. I should have applied as graphic artist or something similar and I probably wouldn't have had these problems.

Thanks for reading. For the next blog post I will be in a better mood. Hopefully

edit: I forgot to mention that this book, as well as those that I made the last days are all meant to be sold on a craft fair I am going to participate in August. It's still some time until then, but I'll need to fill a two meter long table. How many books do I need to do that? - I am a little intimidated by this... but this will be the content of another post.