I Wonder How Much Sawdust I Ate?

This week’s blog is brought to you by the letter D: the makers of Dreaming and Discovery- the pilot lights for your inspiration!





And now, on with the show!

Ugh.

UGH, I say! UGH!

I have sawdust in my pores.

Wait. Hold on. I gotta go jump in the shower. I can’t take this.

Ah…nice and clean. No grittiness anywhere!

Spent the weekend taking a class on how to make a flatbow. This was my first experience doing this type of thing and it was a lot of fun! I am, however, completely sore. I still have triceps, apparently. I had thought they jumped ship and left me, but no. They’re there and I know this because they hurt like crazy.

Using the planer was harder than it looks. Our instructor made it look so easy, gliding over the wood as if it were made of cheese…but you know, that doesn’t even matter since my arms get tired grating a block of cheese, too. Unskilled + sad upper body strength = working on something for a very long time.

The hours went by quickly, though. The pain didn’t even kick in until about an hour after I stopped and then I could barely keep my eyes open for dinner. Then I fell asleep, woke up, and went back to work on it some more.

My favorite part of it is what I’m working on now- shaping and sanding. With each hard edge gently smoothed into a soft curve, it’s looking less and less like the stick it started as and more like an object with an intention. REALLY REALLY want to put the stain on right now, but there’s still more sanding to do. Even though this is the first one I’ve ever made and far from being perfect, I need to do my best so I can be proud of my first effort.

I also need to do something about these weak arms of mine. Ohhhh-whoa-whoa, weak arms of mah-ee-yahh-ahhh-ayne!

So, this was a fun weekend and I finally got to do something I didn’t think I’d have a chance of doing anytime soon. Huzzah! I’m already thinking about trying to make another one with the tools I have: knife, sandpaper, files. Who knows?

When opportunities pop up to learn something new, take it. It’s a good feeling to feel like a kid in the classroom, eyes and ears wide open, hungry for more information. it’s good to be shown there are still more stones left to be unturned.

What's Up Doc? What's Cookin'?

Wooo…I have been absent. I have a good reason, though- been busy making stuff!

Guess what I discovered? When the computer is not on, I have more time to create. Really! I know, I know- crazy talk, but really- when I am not distracted, I can get down to the making and the creating! Who knew?

Obviously, not me. ho ho.

Before I go on, let’s give a nod to our sponsor for this week’s postings: the letter C, the makers of Creativity and Curiosity - just what you need when life gives you a flat tire!

So what have you been doing? Any new projects started? Old ones completed? Untangle that wad of embroidery thread?

The last post was me in tender mode. It has, fortunately, passed. The time spent working on the 3 art journals I have for a round-robin helped me work through the funk a bit, although there’s still a small nagging voice questioning where all this will take me.

It’s the Looney Toons angel/devil on the shoulder thing. The devil tells me all this crafting is frivolous and I should be ashamed I’m not spending more time worrying about my mistakes and flaws. The angel whispers calmly, that this is my ticket out of this self-imposed prison; that I need to allow, listen, and trust. Old habits die hard and you know, that voice that tells me to be fearful and full of regret isn’t going to go down without a fight. I’ll fight dirty if I have to, though. I’ll bite and kick it in the balls. I don’t care, I want to win.

Made a pleasant discovery this past weekend- I think I like embroidery. Freeform embroidery, anyway. Mom taught me how to embroider when I was around 6. Dishcloths with Vogart designs ironed on them. Pansies, kittens doing household chores, and I think there were fruits with faces. I liked it for the Little House on the Prairie feeling it gave me, but hated the constriction of having to follow the design. It would become very obvious when I grew bored when the tiny stitches suddenly turned into 1-inch leaps across the tea towel. Never pursued it after that.

But now…

now, I see it differently. Saw blogs where people refer to embroidery as painting with threads and it didn’t really sink in until this weekend. For one of the art journals, the journal’s owner has a Dia de los Muertos/Halloween theme. Decided to embroider a calavera that I could glue to one of the pages. So far, I’ve embroidered flowers in the eye sockets and outlined the calavera in a dark fuschia. I’m going to decorate the inside to look like vines and flowers, probably, and finish it off by stitching seed beads here and there. Each stitch is so much like the stroke of a brush, I was surprised by how relaxing it was. Very different from my previous experience of feeling resentful that I was stuck having to create a stupid smiling bunch of grapes.

In addition to having fun watching the colors appear across the fabric, it was fun to be able to take apart the thread and blend colors. Like mixing paint. This will be a good fiber-based craft to work on in the summertime. There will still probably be knitting since I have projects I want to have completed before winter comes, but if it’s really warm, I’ll probably take the embroidery to craft night.

I’ll take a picture when I’m done- probably this weekend. Sorry for the no-picture blog tonight. I need to go to sleep now, though. Got up crazy early this morning and I’m so tired, I have the queasy shakes.

Oh, and another thing I’ve been doing when I start to have anxious thoughts about the what ifs when I’m trying to go to sleep: I plot and plan a current or upcoming craft project. The embroidered calavera was born from one of these nights and I fell asleep pretty quickly as soon as I began to imagine what I would stitch.

It really is so much healthier to drift into dreaming, thinking about what I can create instead of worrying about what may destroy. Let the inspiration flood in and flush out the debris that has been blocking your path. Let it saturate the ground and see what starts to grow.

hmmmm… I am feeling, what Kelly Rae Roberts refers to as “tender.”

I like that term. For me, it’s feeling a little blue and a lot vulnerable. Started on Monday, after I had a bad dream of having my heart broken. Felt so real, just like the first time it happened in real life. When I woke up, it took me a moment to realize it was only a dream and I nearly cried with relief. Since then, the feeling has lingered off and on and has invited unwelcome feelings of doubt. It’s as if the dream was a nasty scrape that took off all the skin, leaving me…well, tender.

Times like this make me seek out the positive. Cannot stand to be like this, fussing over the things that worry me even though the worrying does nothing but steal sleep. There was a time, years ago, when this kind of existing consumed my life. Painfully homesick and overwhelmed by the future, all creativity stopped and it felt as though someone had placed a heavy, cold stone inside me. A lot of crying, a lot of sleeping. Interestingly, what got me to not just hole up and give up was the knowledge of how sadly disappointed my parents would be if they saw the state I was in. For all they have done for me, I just had to push forward and not cause them any worry. It was just so hard. Sometimes, physically painful.

When I started this blog, it was partly a commitment to myself to finally start something I had been thinking about for a few years. Then I figured at some point, someone would probably stumble across it and perhaps that person was in a bad way. They may be at a time of their life when things look bleak and the future just seems like another possibility for something else to go wrong instead of something else to go right

If right now, you feel empty and find no joy or inspiration in creating, don’t be hard on yourself. You aren’t alone in this. Just take it one step at a time, always facing forward. Keep in your heart, the certainty that somewhere on this planet, there are others walking that slow, difficult journey. Treat yourself to a small project. I’ve found that one benefiting others to be especially helpful. If even that is too much right now, then keep searching for the light. You owe it to yourself to be relentless in this.

So with this in mind, how about a short practice in gratitude? What 3 things are you grateful for right now? Nothing is too small or insignificant in this practice. It all adds up.

Here’s mine:

1. I just saw a funny commercial that made me laugh out loud
2. It’s bedtime and I look forward to have an inspirational dream
3. I get to go to work tomorrow and be with co-workers I adore

Dye Another Day

This week’s blogging is brought to you by the letter B, makers of Breathe and Believe- practice both so you can move forward!

Woo woo – I now have 2 more garden boxes! You know what this means? A dyer’s garden! Or…a garden to DYE for! Oh har har!

I want to be able to dye the fiber I get at the fiber festival this September, so whatever I plant will need to be fast-growing. Borrowed several books from the library and it’s just on the brink of overwhelming. The one I think I’ll be referring to the most is this book by Rita Buchanan. A small book and very organized. On the left page is a photo of the plant followed by a description, how to grow, and how to dye. On the right edge of the right page are photos of the colors you get from that plant, depending on the mordant used and on the fiber. It’s interesting to see the difference a mordant makes in the final product. I will be using only alum for this year.

Now to figure out what I’ll be growing!

Some aspects of Old World dyeing puzzle me. Like cheese puzzles me. Some techniques used fermentation. Some used pee. It makes me wonder who took that first step. With cheese, who looked at the smelly, moldy mass and thought, “Hm. I’m going to put that in my mouth and eat it.” Same thing with dyeing. Who thought, “I’m going to keep my pee and use it to soak fabric in.” or “Oh hey. This bucket of plant material may make a good dye, but first I’ll let it sit around in murky water and let it rot. THEN I’ll stick my fabric in it.”

And how about this- “Hm…I’m going to scrape all these bugs off this plant, smash ‘em up, and then use that as a dye!” Good times!

Does make me wonder what plants are out there yet to be discovered for dyeing making, though. I will probably let some of the weeds grow in for this purpose. I will not, however, be saving my pee.

I’m sorry. This will be it for today. It’s been a long day and I’m already falling asleep. Not even a photo to make things pretty.

I spend too much time thinking about the things I want to make instead of actually sitting down and making them. This is how my dreams often go, too. I have so many dreams where there’s a destination or object to get and I always get sidetracked. Always. These dreams are cousins to the one where something is chasing you and the hallway gets longer or your legs get really, really heavy.

Having deadlines helps and I came across a great one to last me through next year. The link was on Gingerbread Snowflakes. Please read the poem, take a look at The Butterfly Project, and pass it on. I plan on making several and I wonder what will result form being inspired by sadness and anger. Can’t even imagine what 1.5 million looks like.

Being part of something creative to help ease suffering or increase awareness is another way to keeping moving along the creative path. There are always people who need help. It forces me to always reconsider my priorities and reminds me that no matter how little I sometimes feel I have to offer, I actually do have something to give. More importantly, knowing I am one of thousands involved in such projects gives me hope. For all the pain shown on the news, there are always total strangers compelled to ease it. Like an invisible thread that ties us to one another.

Well, this will be it for the post. Wanted to get the word out about The Butterfly Project. There’s more crafting stuff to write about, but that’ll happen this weekend.

Looks Like Somebody's Got a Case of the Mon-days!

Before, I begin, I’d like to send a word of thanks to our sponsor. This week’s blogging has been brought to you by the letter A, the makers of ART and ATTITUDE. Remember, it’s what you create and present to the world!



Does the Monday feel like the start of a marathon workweek? Do you wonder, “How will I make it through to Friday?” If yes, please wander over to Susie Hewer’s blog. I listened to her Craftsanity podcast this weekend and it left me inspired and amazed! I will be spending my breaks at work this week catching up on her blog. And I must say, she has excellent taste in picking out blog templates!

Mondays will always come around, no matter how tightly we hold on to Sunday. There’s no point in fighting it. That being said, let’s start it gently and with gratitude.

Here are 3 things I’m grateful for right now (what are yours?) :

1. The huge tree outside my window and how it sounds like the ocean when the wind blows through the leaves.

2. The birds and squirrels who hang out in this tree, cruising over to the plate of seeds, the bird feeder, or the birdbath. Sometimes I’m perplexed by how easily they will capture my attention for long periods of time. You’d think I stepped into a fairy ring.

3. The long days in late spring through summer. I love that the summer seems to have started early and the seeds I planted have all started to sprout.

While I actually really like my job a lot and my co-workers even more, it’s hard to shake that feeling of, “Awww…I can’t sleep in and do whatever!” In light of the economic situation, though, I’d be grateful even if I had a job I hated with people to match. The reality of it, for me, is that if left to my own devices, I don’t think I’d really get that much more crafting done if I didn’t have to work. I’d do a lot of puttering about. Besides, there’s something about being at my desk and interacting with my co-workers that inspires ideas. Is it wrong that I actually miss them when I take a stay-at-home-for-a-week vacation? …or is it wrong that so many people don’t experience this? Every single day at work, I am guaranteed giggles and laughter. When bad things happen, people are kind and caring to each other.

The other part about my co-workers, which I appreciate so much, is their talent. As it turns out, there are several people who are very artistically talented. When I bring in something I’ve made, it’s fun to be able to share and get feedback. During our breaks, there’s no stupid gossiping or backstabbing. We talk about our hobbies and what we did over the weekend. We arrange play dates instead of hanging out in bars, complaining. It’s nice. Fantastic, really. Now that I’ve just written this and read it over, I really am fortunate, especially considering what diverse backgrounds we all come from.

That’s one thing about getting older that I love so much: differences matter less. Some of those differences have simply faded and are no longer vivid enough to earn anything more than a passing, curious glance. Positive changes.

The other part about getting older that I love is how much less I care about what others think about what I make. It’s come down to whether or not I enjoyed the process. That part of the creating is something solely within me and what I hold important. It feels great to get compliments, but if someone were to insult what I made, it wouldn’t mean much. It would be like me taking a vacation somewhere and having someone tell me how much they hate my destination. It wouldn’t matter since the trip was all mine to experience anyway. To those who seek to bring down with insults, I blow a raspberry in your general direction.

Oh- and I went and bought some papyrus, by the way. Then went to the library and borrowed several books on paper making. Haven’t looked through them yet, but the papyrus is still small anyway. Right now, it’s sitting outside in a bucket with a water hyacinth and some other water plant that I’m too lazy to look up the name of. As an added bonus, I discovered that it came with a teeny, tiny snail. Just a little bigger than a grain of rice. I will love him and squeeze him and call him George.

Well, the stagecoach turned back to a pumpkin and Monday is here. Go off and buzz around, busy bee. Remember- the task may feel small and redundant, but it’s an important part of the big picture. Go out and help things prosper.