Not inspired but persevering

I am finding it hard to get going with my design exercises lately. We are supposed to find a photo that we like and then use it as an inspiration to draw. And then, eventually, to come up with a textile idea base on it.
I had trouble finding a photo I liked that I also wanted to try drawing. Not that I don't like a lot of my photos, I just didn't feel much like drawing them.

Finally, I found one that I thought I could play around with.

I did a few little drawings that seemed to all turn out the same, even though I did some 'cropping' to try to make it more interesting.

Part of my problem was that I printed out the photo using my rather cheap printer that seems to print in blocks so that there were lots of lines across the page. It also came out quite dark - in fact, the image above has been lightened considerably due to the problem.
I was going to be away all day and took the picture with me to work from. That's my excuse anyway.

When I got home and had another look at the picture on my computer, I realised that there were things in the image that I just had not seen at all. So I decided to play around with the image using Photoshop.

I have been visiting a blog of someone I have not met but am determined to catch up with, we live in the same city and belong to the same Embroiderers Guild. So far we haven't caught up but I am sure it will happen.
She has been playing around with photo manipulation recently and inspired me to have another go at my task, using the computer rather than my reluctant drawing.

So here are some of the results. I am not sure how I would turn them into textile pieces, tapestry weaving is definitely coming to mind. I have some past ones developed from the same location, Darebin Parklands, so I could see myself weaving another and calling it a series. One day.
At the moment I am just playing around with ideas, not working towards any particular outcome, or using any particular technique. I am not sure if this is freeing or if it is what is holding me back, making me struggle to be interested. I'll just have to persevere and see what develops.

This gave me a clearer idea of areas to work on. One of the tasks was to put in some texture, so this was a start for that too.  Then I cropped it to see if that was more interesting.

 Another task was to get a pattern from our drawing or photo. I couldn't see myself drawing one, so I played around with the pattern-making capabilities of Photoshop. The following images are all just little bits of the photo repeated, some are also flipped and turned.
I have NO idea how I would develop them in textiles but I had fun doing it and maybe someone at the class will be able to suggest something. The value of being in a group, sharing ideas.